Free Republic

A mischaracterization of the Tueller Drill — the so-called 21 foot rule — deprived Michael Drejka of a potentially effective defense. On Friday, August 23 , 2019, a Florida jury convicted Michael Drejka, the handicap parking spot shooter who killed Markeis McGlockton, of manslaughter. As a result, at his September 10 sentencing hearing the 48-year-old Drejka will likely be sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life in prison, without possibility of early release. My problem with this outcome has nothing to do with the fact that Michael Drejka was found guilty—maybe he was guilty. My problem with...

The man shot and killed while trying to break up a fight that he noticed after his youth football team’s game concluded was a beloved and respected coach who had an impact far beyond the field. Police say 36-year-old Norzell Aldridge of Cheektowaga died at the hospital after a shooting just after 7 p.m. Saturday on Koons Avenue and Sycamore Street, on Buffalo’s east side. A source close to the football organization tells News 4 Aldridge had been stepping in to protect young people during a fight when he was shot in the chest. The shooting happened not far from...

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Fort Rucker, AlabamaFort Rucker is a U.S. Army post located primarily in Dale County, Alabama, United States. It was named for a Civil War officer, Confederate General Edmund Rucker. The post is the primary flight training installation for U.S. Army Aviators and is home to the United States Army Aviation Center of Excellence (USAACE) and the United States Army Aviation Museum.The U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence is the dominant military facility at Fort Rucker. Training, doctrine, and testing are all key parts of the Center's mission to develop Army Aviation's...

Fair warning, industrious reader: You may want to request off from work now. CNN has carved out nearly eight full hours for a climate change town hall featuring a smattering of the gajillion still declared Democratic presidential candidates. Scheduled for September 4, the event will run from 5 P.M. to midnight, when, presumably, viewers who tuned in for the entire spectacle will immediately commit felo de se. That makes Senator Cory Booker's face the last many doleful viewers will see before the fatal act. How fitting. The event is called a "town hall," but it's not clear what town it...

President Trump deserves enormous credit for his exceptional commitment to free speech at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. Foreign leaders, like our own illiberal, liberal activists, are chomping at the bit to introduce ever more online censorship. At the G7, European leaders introduced a measure that would have drafted tech companies into the role of government censors, forcing them to police online content and remove anything that bureaucrats deem to be insensitive. Emmanuel Macron struggled in vain to conceal his disappointment as he announced that the United States had refused to sign on to his pet G7 compact, which...

Comparison: Tesla Model 3 vs. 20 Chinese EVs That Sort Of Look Like Ford Raptors But Have 'Jeep' On Them the Tesla Model 3, a sleek four-door electric sedan with about 258 horsepower and a range of around 220 miles. The Fur-RAPTOR has a 1200W motor, which I think comes to around—can this be right?—under two horsepower or so? I’m not certain, but it’s not that much. And this thing is cheap: $1,650 gets you one, which is why we’re able to get 20 and still be well within our $35,000 budget. Wht the hell do you need to go...

See the Lincoln-Douglas debate #6. Stephen Douglas: We then adopted a free State Constitution, as we had a right to do. In this State we have declared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we have also declared that he shall not be a slave. We had a right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as good a right to adopt the other policy. I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter...

The Trump Organization has promised to fund a new school and a health centre in order to win permission for a luxury housing estate near Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf resort. The local council’s head of infrastructure, Stephen Archer, recommended councillors approve plans from Trump Golf Scotland to build 550 luxury homes and holiday villas in the first phase of a new development. Archer said the Trump Organization had agreed to part-fund a new health clinic in the town of Ellon, about eight miles (13km) away, plus a primary school and a new waste and recycling centre in nearby Balmedie. It...

Israel received surprising support from Bahrain’s Foreign Minister, who backed the Jewish state’s retaliatory strikes in Lebanon after the Hezbollah terror organization attacked IDF targets on Sunday, blaming Lebanon for the situation. The aggression of one state against another is prohibited by international law. A state standing by, watching battles taking place on its borders and putting its people in danger is a state that greatly neglects its responsibilities,” Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa tweeted. He further said that “it is unacceptable for Lebanon to be put in a situation of a possibility of a devastating war in which it has no...

It will be a day at the beach for President Trump’s re-election campaign on Labor Day. The campaign is taking to the skies on Labor Day to fly banners over beach-goers to show its thanks for workers fueling the economy. “Labor Day is the perfect time to thank American workers for everything they do for our country,” said Tim Murtaugh, Trump campaign communications director. “Under President Trump’s policies, the economy is strong and growing, and more Americans are working than ever before. The American economy is the envy of the world and our American workers are the best on the...

The Hypocrisy of Mayor PeteIf we are truly born-again Christians, then before we condemn sin in others we are to examine ourselves to see if we are in some way and degree guilty of what we condemn (and other sins), and repent, lest we be judged accordingly. (Matthew 7:1-5; cf. Romans 2:17-24) However, Pete Buttigieg majors on calling conservative Christians "hypocrites," meaning that what they say and support is contrary to what they profess to be, yet that is just what Buttigieg is blatantly guilty of by calling himself a Christian. For Scripture is the supreme definitive source of...

PENN HILLS, Pa. (WHTM)- Sharena Islam Nancy ,25, has been charged with kidnapping, interference with custody of children, and concealment of whereabouts of a child in her involvement in the trafficking of a 2-year-old girl. WTAE reports that Nancy told police the girl’s father “sold” the girl to “an unnamed individual” for $10,000. Nancy claims the father asked her to drive the 2-year-old girl “20 minutes from a gas station in Monroeville along U.S. Route 22.” Authorities who issued an Amber Alert for the toddler in western Pennsylvania say her abductor has been located but the child is still missing....

Well, it’s been (almost) three solid years into the Donald Trump Presidency and not one treasonous criminal action has been punished. Not one. ZERO. Zilch. Na-da. Take for example when Hillary Clinton literally laughed out loud at a question about her email investigation — had to wipe her eyes, she laughed so hard. She laughed at us, at America, for being so clueless as to think she’d ever answer to our laws. And she’s still laughing, because she’s right: she’s untouchable. The consensus is that even though we know that the first email investigation was rigged by the FBI to...

Seemingly every year, some prominent conservative goes out of his way to contemptuously mock the U.S.-recognized federal holiday known as Labor Day. The general rationale for such scorn is that Labor Day came into being and, to some extent, still exists to glorify and harken us back to the once-dominant labor movements of yore. Labor Day, the narrative goes, was a capitalism-undermining governmental fabrication that bestowed unnecessary social capital and legitimacy upon the restive, and oftentimes outright violent, unionized forces of the proletariat. Play Video It is true that sometimes, shibboleths and outmoded orthodoxies require fresh, innovative thinking. But it...

Windell Davis-Boutté, a DeKalb County dermatologist who caused a bride-to-be to become permanently brain damaged while dancing and singing during a tummy tuck, has been ordered to pay $190,000 in consumer restitution after a slew of malpractice suits against her. Attorney General Chris Carr said that Boutte’ and the practices she owns—Premiere Dermatology & Surgery, LLC, Aesthetic Laser & Boutique, Inc. and Boutté Contour Surgery & Dermatology, P.C.—have entered into a consent judgment with the State of Georgia in response to allegations that they violated the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act by falsely representing Boutté’s medical certifications and failing to...

In 2007 and 2008, Barack Obama put together a groundbreaking campaign structure that took him from freshman-senator obscurity to the presidency in less than two years. Obama used the same campaign structure to survive a serious challenge in 2012, winning a second term with fewer votes than the first, the only time that's happened in the modern era. His masterful use of grassroots volunteers, social media targeting, and ground-up messaging should have charted a path to the presidency for everyone who followed him. Yet more than a decade later, it's an open question as to whether either major party has...

“Seinfeld” actor John O’Hurley sounded off on Hollywood for suppressing “diversity of thought” in the wake of Debra Messing and Eric McCormack calling for supporters of President Trump to be outed. Trump plans to attend a Sept. 17 fundraiser in Beverly Hills during a trip to California that will also include visits to the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, officials said. The “Will & Grace” co-stars took issue with a Trump fundraiser happening in their city and called for donors to be doxxed. “I think they have the bully pulpit right now to say it out loud. I don’t...

All that this dialogue has led to is Christian leaders being quiet about Muslim persecution of Christians, for fear of offending their dialogue partners. Has this been reciprocated by Muslims? Have Muslim spokesmen stopped being critical of Christians and Christianity? Of course not. The “dialogue” is all dawah on one side and Useful Idiots, eager to be deceived, on the other. Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, said it on February 8, 2013 as he was suppressing a planned talk (by me) at a Catholic conference on that persecution: “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that...

Police announced on Friday that they had arrested and charged a woman who set an American flag on fire. The flag was part of a Sept. 11 memorial gesture that hung flags on overpasses along Route 66 in Arlington, not far from the Pentagon, which was attacked on 9/11. Kayla Caniff, 22, was allegedly caught by an Arlington police officer who noticed the large flag on fire just before midnight on Thursday. She was charged with destruction of property and released a short time later. Among the 2,977 confirmed deaths by terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, 125 were working...

Television and film star Debra Messing went to social media trying to look for help getting a new Hollywood Blacklist and a voter Whitelist (American’s of color who support President Trump) started. The Brandeis and NYU graduate invited anyone to call her with ideas...