Free Republic

For the first time since his trial began four months ago, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dropped his blank, impassive demeanor and showed emotion as his Russian aunt sobbed uncontrollably and had to leave the witness stand. Tsarnaev, 21, grabbed a tissue and repeatedly dabbed his eyes and cheeks while his aunt became so upset that she was unable to testify on his behalf as his lawyers try to persuade a federal jury to spare his life. Tsarnaev had maintained an uninterested expression since his trial began in January, most of the time staring straight ahead and only occasionally glancing...

SNIP ...the women stole a purse from a dance studio on Wednesday and then within 30 minutes made a false New Mexico driver's license. Surveillance video showed the women using the stolen credit card to make purchases at drug store and a grocery store. Police said the operation is new to them and that it's surprising the women were able to produce a fake driver's license so quickly. SNIP

Today FBI agents and a bomb squad were at Simpson's home in an apartment complex in north Phoenix conducting searches of the apartment. Officials believe Simpson is the person who sent out several Twitter messages prior to the attack on Sunday, in the last one using the hashtag #TexasAttack about half an hour before the shooting. Prior to that, the Twitter account holder had published messages sympathetic to Islamic terror groups such as ISIS. Dunston Simpson said his son worked at a dentist's office but was "on vacation" for the last few weeks and that the two last spoke three...

Mothers across Santa Cruz County donate breast milkThey say it takes a village to raise a child. That rings especially true for a four-month-old baby in Santa Clara County who recently lost her mother. Four-month-old Isabella Van De Leur is the light of her daddy's life. Kevin Van De Leur says she is the reason he is able to keep it together. At the end of March, Isabella's mother, Yinna died suddenly from a heart attack. She was just weeks shy of her 33rd birthday. "It's a very difficult situation," Kevin said. "She's (Isabella's) keeping me positive." Aside of dealing...

<p>Novi, Michigan(CNN)Gov. Scott Walker on Monday sought to use President Barack Obama's slipping popularity on foreign policy issues as a punching bag and sought to bolster his own credentials ahead of a likely presidential bid.</p> <p>Speaking in Novi, Michigan, the Wisconsin Republican rallied around the plight of a Michigan man who has been held hostage in Iran since 2011 and blasted Obama for failing to do enough on the missing man's behalf--as well as failing to ward off attacks by Islamic terrorists around the world.</p>

Controversy over the use of the word “thug” in the wake of the Baltimore riots continued Sunday with former CNN host Soledad O’Brien weighing in to claim the word has racial overtones. “I can’t think of a situation where there’s ever been a headline or someone has called a white young person who’s in the middle of a violent protest, demonstration, whatever, a thug,” she told guest host Frank Sesno on “Reliable Sources.” “We use it all the time when we’re talking about people in the inner city.” Sesno pointed out that no racial connotation s given in the dictionary...

The court was told that the culprit had not slept for three days A 25-year-old Australian man, Nathan Thompson — who brutally bludgeoned to death nine puppies in March while high on meth — has been sentenced to 18 months in jail by a court in the eastern state of New South Wales. Thompson will serve at least a year of his sentence, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. He is also banned for life from owning animals.

A University of South Carolina student is facing felony charges and possible jail time after allegedly being caught on camera spitting and pouring chemicals into her two roommates’ food in early February, police said. Police say Hayley King, 22, can be seen in the video taken by her roommates Feb. 4 spitting into multiple containers of food and pouring Windex into the food in the apartment they shared off campus, according to a Columbia Police Department incident report. King’s two roommates informed authorities they had set up secret cameras in their shared apartment because they were afraid of what King...

Molten lava, rocks and gas went flying through the air on Hawaii's Kilauea volcano after an explosion was caused by the partial collapse of a crater wall. The collapse triggered a small explosion, spreading lava and debris around the rim of Kilauea's Halemaumau Crater, the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory says. Janet Babb, a geologist with the USGS, compared the blast on Sunday to taking a hammer to the top of a bottle of champagne.

152nd Field Artillery participates in the First Army Maneuvers near Pine Camp NY in August 1935, as part of the 68th FA Brigade and the 43rd Division. For a companion reading piece, see the Field Artillery Journal article from the Nov-Dec 1935 edition: http://sill-www.army.mil/FAMAG/1935/N...

In 1955 the United States military conducted a large training exercise that covered a substantial portion of Louisiana. Named Operation Sagebrush, the focus of the exercise was to evaluate the effectiveness of military operations in a nuclear environment. The exercise lasted for 15 days with 85,000 troops

Freely downloadable at the Internet Archive, where I first uploaded it. 1942 U.S. Army Film Bulletin #15 "Your Army In The Making." National Archives description: "On army maneuvers in North and South Carolina, 1941. Consists mostly of brief scenes of representative activities by various branches, corps,

Titles read: "WAR GAME - LARGEST PEACETIME US ARMY MANEUVER [sic]".

Republican Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and unabashed culture warrior, enters the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday facing competition for the support of social conservatives who backed him in 2008. The ex-governor of Arkansas, 59, became a national figure by staging an upset win in Iowa's kickoff nominating contest during his 2008 presidential bid. This time around other Republicans with national recognition have emerged as rivals for the role of leading crusader on social issues such as abortion rights and gay marriage. Polls show Huckabee's support among Republican voters is only in the single digits....

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has met with the Ethiopian Jewish soldier whose beating by two police officers, captured on CCTV, sparked days of violent unrest fuelled by decades of repression suffered by the minority community. Netanyahu met Israeli soldier Damas Pakada a day after thousands demonstrators, who saw the footage as evidence of police racism and brutality, clashed violently with officers on the streets of Tel Aviv. In a tweet on the prime minister's Twitter account accompanying a picture of himself and Mr Pakada embracing, Netanyahu wrote: 'I was shocked by the pictures. We cannot accept it, we will...

A film report on a practical field test of men and equipment under simulated combat conditions. The peacetime maneuvers, held in Texas in 1940 and involving 70,000 men from around the country and trucks and other vehicles from Detroit, demonstrated new standards of motorized mobility for the United

1941: U.S. ARMY STAGES REALISTIC MASS WAR MANEUVERS IN SOUTH CAROLINA

May 5, 2015Tuesday of Fifth Week of Easter    Reading 1 Acts 14:19-28 In those days, some Jews from Antioch and Iconiumarrived and won over the crowds. They stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city,supposing that he was dead.But when the disciples gathered around him,he got up and entered the city. On the following day he left with Barnabas for Derbe. After they had proclaimed the good news to that cityand made a considerable number of disciples,they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch.They strengthened the spirits of the disciplesand exhorted them to persevere in...

MILLSTADT, Mo. -- At first glance, it seems absurd to suggest that a small company on the outskirts of St. Louis could be a serious player in the race to provide the U.S. Army with its next handgun. This is, after all, a major event in the realm of military weapons -- having happened only twice in the past 100 or so years. And it's expected to draw the attention of the industry's most powerful names, including Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Ruger and Glock. And then there's tiny Detonics, a five-person operation in Millstadt that fashions itself more tech company...

Do you know how to get lots of people to hate you in America? In the age when people seem to bend over backwards to let you know that they’re offended, it’s actually pretty easy. You just need to be successful at anything or you can try to be successful at anything or you can even tell OTHER PEOPLE that they CAN BE successful. Having money will also definitely do it. So will being white, male, Christian, conservative or Republican. For that matter, all you really need to do is have an opinion of some sort and somebody who holds...