Free Republic

Events are being held in many countries to mark 70 years since the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945, but in fact the last large-scale engagement of the conflict began three days after the Nazi capitulation. More than a thousand people, mostly German soldiers, were killed in a largely forgotten battle against U.S. and Soviet troops plus Czech irregulars on May 11-12, 1945. (RFE/RL)

Westport is the latest shoreline town to find "White Lives Matter" fliers dropped outside homes. It's the third instance in two weeks. Residents of East Haven and Milford also noticed the racially charged leaflets, which first showed up amid violent unrest in Baltimore over the police-custody death of Freddie Gray. Although it's not clear who is behind them, the fliers in all three towns look identical: "#White Lives Matter" is printed in large black font on a white sheet of paper. The fliers are enclosed in plastic bags and weighed down with rocks. The phrase appears to be in response...

Iowa Rep. Steve King took President Obama to task Saturday, blaming him for the conditions that caused civil unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson. “President Obama has consistently driven wedges between people. And he perceives a difference on race, maybe on ethnicity, well yes on ethnicity, sexual orientation—wedge after wedge after wedge. I didn’t really imagine they were going to drive a wedge between the law and law-breakers,” King told reporters at the South Carolina Freedom Summit in Greenville. King cited the example of Obama’s “Beer Summit” early in his first term with Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard...

A high-ranking communist official who defected to the United States in the 1970s now says the Soviet KGB was behind the tidal wave of “liberation theology” that swept through Catholic countries in Latin America before the opposition of Pope John Paul II effectively ended the movement. Ion Mihai Pacepa, a former three-star general in Romania's Securitate, or secret police, said he first learned of liberation theology during meetings with Nikita Khrushchev and General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, then chief director of the KGB, when Sakharovsky accompanied the Soviet premier on a six-day visit to Romania in October of 1959. “Khrushchev wanted to...

Timelapse of sunworshipping pussy cats: View post on imgur.com

In its crusade against homosexuals, the Islamic State is now resorting to sting operations, using jihadists posing as gay men to coax out offenders and execute them. According to reports, a special unit of militia has been formed within ISIS to deal specifically with the eradication of homosexuals from Syria, Iraq and Libya. One method employed is for militiamen of the Caliphate to send anonymous invitations for blind dates for men only; those who respond are summarily executed. According to dissident groups working in the area, ISIS religious police have also begun pretending to be gay men in order to...

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Sunday that his opposition to reforming Social Security doesn’t make him sound like a Democrat — but like an American. The former Arkansas governor has broken with his party and his rivals for the nomination by opposing GOP proposals to cut benefits or raise the retirement age for Social Seucurity and transform Medicare into a voucher-style program, measures aimed at preventing the popular programs from going broke. Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/10/mike-huckabee-americans-dont-want-social-security-/#ixzz3ZlVVjFNC Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

China overtook the US as the world’s biggest importer of crude oil in April, the culmination of a seismic shift in global energy flows over the past decade. Chinese customs data showed crude oil purchases from overseas hit a new high of 7.4m barrels a day in April, equivalent to roughly one in every 13 barrels consumed globally and topping US imports of 7.2m barrels a day. The US routinely exports about 500,000. While China’s imports are not expected to consistently surpass those of the US until the second half of this year, the move illustrates how the US shale...

Park City has wisely teamed with other towns in the western U.S. to recommend that royalties be added to the cost of coal as a means to disincentivize its use and reduce CO2 emissions. This is, of course, important to protect the winter tourism industry in Utah, which stands to lose mightily from chronic lower snowfalls. If such steps are taken, the entire local economy stands to benefit as well.

hatever one might have thought about the Maryland Transportation Authority's decision to raise tolls four years ago, no one can say the two-phase proposal wasn't scrutinized from all angles or that the public wasn't given sufficient opportunity to ask questions or make comment. The same can't be said for the agency's decision to roll them back — in some cases below what they were before the last price increase. That secrecy and abrupt decision-making should give Marylanders pause about what's going on at the agency that owns and manages some of the state's most important — and costly — transportation...

Apparently only communists were invited After 17 years as a personal bodyguard of Fidel Castro, Juan Rienaldo Sanchez recently claimed in a new book that the Cuban dictator was a major trafficker of illegal drugs into the US for years- and profited handsomely from it. Sound plenty believable to me, North Korea exports meth for hard currency- and El Jefe was close with Columbia's coke-producing communist rebels/terrorists FARC. Other interesting revelations would be that Fidel kept his immediate family a secret -had more kids out of wedlock- and was kind of a lazy slob that 'always slept until 10 or...

The drop in oil prices was supposed to help the economy this year. So far, it seems to have mostly hurt. The theory of why lower oil costs should boost U.S. growth is simple. Despite gains in domestic production from the shale boom, the country is a still a net importer of crude. So when oil prices fall, American consumers and businesses spend less money on stuff produced abroad, leaving them with more to spend on stuff produced at home. And gross domestic product goes up. Yet GDP expanded at an annual rate of just 0.2% in the first quarter-a...

OKLAHOMA CITY - New information is coming out regarding the rookie Oklahoma City police officer who was beaten by a suspect with his own baton following a burglary on the northwest side of the metro. An armed witness may have been the only thing that kept that officer from a more serious beating, or worse. It happened just after 2 p.m. Tuesday in the 2800 block of W. Park Pl. Rookie Officer Adam Eller and field training officer Sgt. Michael Lambert were responding to the burglary call. ... During the chase the two officers became separated. Eller found himself alone...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)During a passionate address at historically black Tuskegee University Saturday, Michelle Obama said she refused to let the "sting" of racial bias define her. "Over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited a little bit of 'uppityism,'" the first lady said. "Cable news charmingly referred to me as 'Obama's baby mamma.' "All of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting, all of it was just noise," she said. "It did not define me, it didn't change who I was, and most importantly, it couldn't hold me back." Conjuring up the incidents in...

Subway faces backlash after worker cheers deaths of 2 cops By Chris Perez A suspected Subway sandwich store employee has sparked outrage with tasteless social media posts celebrating Saturday’s killing of two Mississippi cops. “2 police officers was shot in hattiesburg tonight.!” cheered Sierra “C-Babi” Mccurdy, in a message posted overnight. “We can turn this bxtch into Baltimore real quick,” she posted on Facebook. “Police take away innocent people lives everyday now & get away w/ it, fxck them…[no mercy].”

The GOP presidential primary is on course to be flooded with super PAC money. But in 2016, candidates will need more than a little dough to win over voters.The GOP could have a dozen deep-pocketed presidential contenders, and they'll all learn next year that when it comes to actual votes, that extra money doesn't buy what it used to. Already, super PACs are arming second- and third-tier candidates with tens of millions of dollars while the supposed GOP front-runner, Jeb Bush, promises a record-setting haul. This combined fundraising guarantees that by the time Republicans have picked their nominee in summer...

Republican Senator Ted Cruz skipped two Senate Armed Services committee hearings earlier this year in favor of speeches and TV appearances, a BuzzFeed News review has found. On February 26, the Texas senator missed an Armed Services committee hearing about worldwide threats, which featured testimony from National Intelligence Director James Clapper. The discussion covered an array of national security issues, including the threat of the Islamic State and the Iranian nuclear talks. Cruz mentioned many of the same issues when he spoke at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that afternoon.

WASHINGTON (CNN) —Amid health concerns, former President Jimmy Carter had to cut his trip to Guyana short.

When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1996, I heard the same thing again and again: Do not leave the boundaries of Hyde Park. Do not go north of 47th Street. Do not go south of 61st Street. Do not go west of Cottage Grove Avenue. These boundaries were fairly explicit, almost to the point of being an official university policy. The campus police department was not committed to protecting students beyond the area, and the campus safety brochure advised students not to use the “El” train stops just a couple of blocks beyond them unless...