Free Republic

When it comes to gun control, there’s one thing everyone can agree on: criminals and psychopaths shouldn’t be allowed to get guns. The real question is how to stop them.

ROME–When Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg was 11 years old, her body had started to shut down due to severe self-starvation tied to debilitating depression. She spoke to almost no one but her immediate family. She was afraid of crowds. She was lost in her own world, and the world very nearly lost her. But thanks to the formal diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome coupled with high-functioning autism and obsessive compulsive disorder, the now-16-year-old Swede has become quite literally the poster child for the generation that will have to deal with the destruction of our planet. Once she started receiving...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has dropped out of the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, blaming “the ingratitude of Democratic voters for the unique perspectives I’ve brought to the campaign.” Among the “unique” perspectives cited by the Mayor were “the overlooked progress I’ve made in converting New York into a model society. I’ve championed efforts to unlink compensation from work or achievement. My programs have gone a long way toward enhancing the habitat for urban vermin and allowed their populations to increase. San Francisco and Los Angeles have been garnering most of the headlines and few...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry has declared “World War Zero” on those who oppose liberals’ climate change agenda. “We're going to create a movement here in America, I believe, that will - and across the world, actually - a global movement called WORLD WAR ZERO,” the former Obama Administration State Department head said in an interview announcing his net-zero-carbon-economy-by-2050 initiative on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday: “And you can go to WorldWarZero.com now, and there's an introductory page. In October, we'll be filling out the full web site, but we will be announcing this in full with big...

If you’re looking to enjoy some tailgating at “Hawks Alley” right before this weekend’s Seahawks game, you’re likely going to compete with homeless tents and dilapidated RVs for the space.“We’ve had issues with employees going about their business being threatened,” Erin Goodman, executive director of the SoDo Business Improvement Area, told KOMO’s Kara Kostanich. There’s supposed to be a cleanup in the area, but it’s scheduled for after this weekend’s Seahawks game. KOMO reports the city won’t move the date due to staffing issues. If the homeless are as aggressive during game day as they are during a normal weekday,...

Now it is evidence of “racist views and anti-Islamic views” simply to ask whether or not Islam is a religion of peace. The question cannot even be asked without bringing on a police investigation. Simply asking about the content of Islamic doctrine is not allowed. It is a nefarious, “sneaky way to make people feel othered.” But the question nonetheless lingers in the air, and Sherwood Park residents will have to deal with it sooner or later: “Islam: Religion of Peace? What if it isn’t?”

Today’s post is in honor of Army Sgt. Tyler N. Holtz, who was killed on this day in 2011 in Afghanistan’s Wardak province by enemy small-arms fire. The 22-year-old native of Dana Point, Calif. was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and was serving his fourth tour in Afghanistan. Holtz was assigned to 2d Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash. 1780: Maj. Gen. Benedict Arnold learns that British spy Maj. John André has been captured, along with the evidence that would expose Arnold’s secret plot to turn West Point over to the British. He flees to the...

The future of money might be a digital version of the cash that’s already in people’s wallets—potentially upending the currency system that the world has known for many decades. Such a future, of course, might be a disappointment to many libertarians and tech-savvy investors who are pinning their hopes (and in some cases their money) on private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Instead, central bankers and governments—the entities that cryptocurrencies’ backers hoped to render obsolete—are increasingly warming to the idea of “digitizing” their own national currencies. That is, they would issue money that would exist only virtually, without a paper or...

Remember all the (hopeful) recession talk recently by many in the mainstream media who found it hard to hide their desire for bad economic times to harm President Donald Trump's 2020 re-election? Some, such as Bill Maher didn't even try to hide their hope for a recession. In fact Maher was publicly hoping for such a recession to stop Trump.  Well, sad news for them but very happy news for most others. Bloomberg on September 20 reported that such dire economic hype is not born out by the economic data in "Hold That Recession: U.S. Indicators Are Trouncing Forecasts" by Jeff Kearns and Steve Matthews.

Soon after the speech, Thunberg and 15 other children filed a human rights complaint with the United Nations against five nations for allegedly violating a 30-year-old treaty in failing "to prevent the deadly and foreseeable consequences" of climate change on children.... ...CNN reports, "The petition names five countries -- Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina and Turkey -- which they say have failed to uphold their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a 30-year-old human rights treaty which is the most widely ratified in history."...

When it comes to his sister, Curtis Ingraham doesn’t exactly hold back. Over the past year or so, Ingraham has won a reputation — and a significant Twitter following — for attacks on his high-profile sister, Fox News host Laura Ingraham. At different times and on a wide variety of platforms, he has called his sibling “a monster,” “a Nazi sympathizer” and a “racist.” But after the controversial pundit compared Greta Thunberg and other youth climate activists to Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” on Monday night, Curtis Ingraham took things to the next level. “Clearly my sister’s paycheck is...

Stocks traded lower on Tuesday, giving back earlier gains after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will make an announcement on possibly impeaching President Donald Trump. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 200 points, or 0.7% after gaining more than 100 points. The S&P 500 fell nearly 1% while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 1.5%.

DES MOINES — An hour before kickoff at a game this month at Hoover High School, the opposing football team, Indianola High, pulled up and unloaded the large video monitor that would let its coaching staff analyze plays, moment by moment, throughout the game. The coaches at Hoover High, where most students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, would have to make do with watching the old-fashioned way. Another loss, a Hoover student told the principal, seemed imminent. Indianola ran 84 yards for a touchdown on their first play, the running back shedding Hoover’s smaller players like a video-game villain....

A teacher who threw his terminally ill 79-year-old mother to her death from a first-floor balcony spared jail as judge describes it as a "mercy killing". A "devoted, loving son" who killed his dying mother to end her suffering by dropping her from a first floor fire escape at a care home has been given a suspended jail term. Robert Knight, 53, pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of his 79-year-old mother June at an earlier hearing at Basildon Crown Court. The languages teacher had denied murder and was cleared by a jury. ...

The Austin Diaper Bank serves 10,000 Central Texas families and distributes close to one million diapers each year. The need has doubled since last year... “Diapers are a basic need item just like food, water, shelter for every parent,” McDaniel said. “If you ask any mom what would you do if you didn’t have enough diapers? They would panic it is terrifying and it can lead to illness and sickness and trauma for families.”... A lot of the clients that we serve have told us some pretty awful stories where they are trying to find a way to provide a...

President Trump addresses the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

he Federal Reserve on Tuesday injected longer-term cash into the U.S. banking system in an effort to meet the funding needs of banks and Wall Street following a bout of turbulence in money markets last week. The New York Federal Reserve added $30.0 billion cash into the banking system through 14-day loans to primary dealers. These 14-day term repurchase agreements (repo) were on top of the $75 billion in temporary cash through an overnight repo operation. Primary dealers, or the top 24 Wall Street firms that do business directly with Fed, borrow from the central bank by using their Treasuries...

Like growing numbers of public high school students across the country, many California kids are receiving classroom instruction in how race, class, gender, sexuality and citizenship status are tools of oppression, power and privilege. They're taught about colonialism, state violence, racism, intergenerational trauma, heteropatriarchy and the common thread that links them: “whiteness.” skip Advocates believe they are within striking distance of making ethnic studies a graduation requirement in high schools across the country, making it a prerequisite for preparing students to navigate the world, much as learning about the Western tradition had once been. Skip “We don’t want students to...

Contract employees at Google's Pittsburgh campus are voting on whether to unionize Tuesday. If successful, this will be the first union with the Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals, a new arm of the United Steelworkers. Renata Nelson, a Google contractor in Pittsburgh, said the main priorities are to improve wages and benefit, and to cement job security. "Our salaries are fairly low compared to industry average," Nelson said. "We've seen people being hired at lower and lower rates recently." Google contractors in Pittsburgh are employed through international consulting company HCL Technologies. According to United Steelworkers, HCL employees work at Google's...

Trying to out-socialist Democratic frontrunner Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders has a fresh new idea: Ending billionaires. Here's his genius tweet: Bernie Sanders ✔ @BernieSanders Billionaires should not exist. https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/1176459557473804297 … NYT Politics ✔ @nytpolitics Bernie Sanders is unveiling a proposal for a new wealth tax on the richest Americans, including a steep tax on billionaires that could greatly diminish their fortunes https://nyti.ms/2mm9QB9 44.3K 6:01 AM - Sep 24, 2019