Free Republic

If you were an ATF agent or prosecutor handling the case of Joseph Roh, you probably lost quite a bit of sleep over the past five years. That’s because Roh, who was charged in 2014 with illegally manufacturing and selling AR-15 rifles in California, recently almost forced a judge to upend decades of ATF precedent and policy.Mr. Roh’s attorney made a surprisingly simple argument in court that got him off the hook — and it almost demolished the ATF’s very definition of what a gun is, too. Through a series of concessions and deal-making, Roh walked free. The ATF agreed conditionally to drop...

Tom Brokaw to Joe Biden in 2008: “Wasn’t it inappropriate for someone like you in the middle of all this to have your son collecting money from this big credit card company while you were on the floor protecting its interests?” Article quote cited in Video: "Biden's candidacy also is bringing new scrutiny to his family's business dealings, especially those of his son Hunter, 38 years old." Source: The Wall Street journal, "The Biden Pick: Scrutiny of Biden Focuses on Lobbyists Ties, Family" dated August 25th, 2008

Netflix continually shows an absolute lack of regard for basic decency when it comes to the content they offer subscribers. Perhaps the single greatest offender among Netflix’s offerings is ‘13 Reasons Why,’ their smash hit teen drama laced with suicide, rape, graphic sex scenes, and more. Everything you want your children to be inundated with all in one convenient television series, right? 13RW goes beyond typical sin-glorifying entertainment, however. Centered largely around the suicide of Hannah Baker, one of its main characters, the show has prompted copycat suicides. According to the American Family Association, a young woman, Anna Bright took...

E-cigarette or vaping-linked lung injuries that have killed 29 and sickened more than 1,000 people in the United States are likely to be rare in Britain and other countries where the suspect products are not widely used, specialists said on Monday. Experts in toxicology and addiction said they are sure that the 1,299 confirmed and probable American cases of serious lung injuries linked to vaping are “a U.S.-specific phenomenon,” and there is no evidence of a similar pattern of illness in Britain or elsewhere. “What’s happening in the U.S. is not happening here (in Britain), nor is it happening in...

When 69-year-old Marietta Jinde died in September 2016, police had already been called to her home several times because of reports of possible abuse. A detective described conditions at the woman’s home in Gardena as “horrendous.” She was so emaciated and frail that the hospital asked Los Angeles County adult protective services officials to look into her death. Yet by the time a coroner’s investigator was able to examine Jinde’s 70-pound body, the bones from her legs and arms were gone. Also missing were large patches of skin from her back. With permission from county officials and saying they did...

Lawyers for a defendant in a civil action in California over the 2015 undercover videos that exposed Planned Parenthood and the American abortion industry's profiting from baby body parts say lawyers for abortionists have flubbed. The civil lawsuit by abortion interests targets David Daleiden, Sandra Merritt and the Center for Medical Progress, including board member Troy Newman. They released a series of videos that show, among other things, one abortionist seeking higher pay for baby body parts because "I want a Lamborghini." The civil case, in which abortionists are seeking monetary damages for the videos, are a prelude to the...

The initial shock was so violent from the blown engine on Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 that pilot Tammie Jo Shults thought there had been a midair collision. “We couldn’t see, we couldn’t breathe, and a piercing pain stabbed our ears, all while the aircraft snapped into a rapid roll and skidded hard to the left as the nose of the aircraft pitched over, initiating a dive toward the ground,” Shults wrote in her book “Nerves of Steel,” which was released Oct. 8. On Flight 1380 on April 17, 2018, from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Dallas Love Field, a fan...

It used to be that American politicians abided by a code of conduct when visiting other countries that included leaving politics at the water’s edge. That meant politicians didn’t go overseas and bash the president or America to foreign audiences. That was then … this is now. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to Copenhagen last weekend. The freshman congresswoman from New York was invited to speak during the C40 World Mayors Summit. The summit brought together mayors from around the world to discuss climate change. Apparently AOC is an internationally recognized expert on the subject now. Since she was in town anyway,...

HYDE PARK – Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton was presented by her mother, Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton, with the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal for her contributions to education and children’s welfare. She was one of four others to receive the prestigious honor, which the elder Clinton won in 1995. The other recipients were the chief executive officer Celebrity Cruises Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, who was the first woman to lead one of Royal Caribbean Cruises’ brands; Zainab Salbi, Yahoo! News and Public Broadcasting System personality and founder of Women for Women International; and John W. and Gloria...

According to GQ Magazine, “new masculinity” is men wearing earrings and giant dresses that resemble sleeping bags while crying. Yes, really. “@Pharrell covers GQ’s New Masculinity issue, an exploration of identity, culture, and style in 2019,” tweeted the magazine. .@Pharrell covers GQ’s New Masculinity issue, an exploration of identity, culture, and style in 2019: https://t.co/4W0UkG3ndE pic.twitter.com/tRwzm5F1PR — GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) October 14, 2019 The cover shot shows the musician wearing an earring while dressed in what many people are describing as a cross between a dress and a sleeping bag. Other images from the shoot show Pharrell crying and wearing...

A 2-year-old boy was shot in the stomach in a "cowardly, violent act" of apparent road rage in Baltimore, authorities said. "You shot a child. Whoever you thought you were shooting at, you didn't shoot," Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said. The 2-year-old, who had been in the car with his family, was taken to the hospital in "somewhat stable condition" and is expected to survive, police said Saturday. The boy remained in the hospital Monday morning as the suspected shooter, Javon Johnson, 33, was charged, said police. It's believed the suspect's car and the victim's car were among those...

Going solar isn’t necessarily any protection from California’s new “planned” power outages, and local residents and businesses are enduring a lot more than just a few inconveniences. Bloomberg’s Chris Martin has a story on California’s troubles with one of my favorite headlines ever: “Californians Learning That Solar Panels Don't Work in Blackouts.” Apparently, many of California’s would-be Earth-savers had no idea that just putting solar panels on their roofs doesn’t mean they’ll have power when PG&E switches it off. As Martin explains:

San Francisco, CA – The RICO case filed by Planned Parenthood against Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, and other pro-life activists, including Sandra Merritt, David Daleiden, and Albin Rhomberg, who were involved in investigating the trafficking of aborted baby body parts for profit, continued yesterday with a development of note. An observer inside the courtroom told Operation Rescue that one abortionist took the stand who said he had a brief discussion with undercover journalists from the Center for Medical Progress. When asked why he wanted to talk to the journalists, who posed as representatives of an organ procurement company,...

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame, who has launched a Democratic run for Congress in New Mexico, raised nearly $450,000 last quarter, nearly double her total from the previous filing period. Plame's campaign said in a Monday statement that it raised $446,749 between July 1 and Sept. 30 from more than 16,600 individual donors. The average donation was $26.87. The campaign has raised a total of more than $683,000 since Plame announced she was running for Congress in May. “It’s encouraging to see all the thousands of supporters who want to be a part of this team and agree with our...

FULL TITLE: Woman with Perforated Uterus Rushed from Planned Parenthood Abortion Facility that Possibly Supplies Aborted Baby Tissue Providence, RI – An ambulance was called on June 11, 2019, for a 21-year old African-American woman who suffered a perforated uterus during an abortion at the Providence Health Center Planned Parenthood in Rhode Island. A perforated uterus means that a hole was torn through the uterine wall and into the abdominal cavity. It is a potentially life-threatening abortion complication that can cause severe pain, hemorrhaging, internal bleeding, infection, and death. Perforations have been known to also damage other organs inside the...

As Iranians breach nuclear deal in protest of US sanctions, British embassy says ‘we are upholding our obligations to cooperate’ with Tehran on modernizing Arak facility TEHRAN — A team of British experts arrived in Iran on Monday to begin work to upgrade the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor, the UK embassy in Tehran said. Iran removed the core of the Arak facility and filled part of it with cement as part of a 2015 deal that gave the country relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear program. Located southwest of Tehran, the reactor is to be...

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, stands at the center of the impeachment of the president scam. And as word gets out about his real game and how he got it — through a spying operation aimed at the White House that he directed, he's starting to get weirdly wobbly. Two instances just from the weekend are starting to stand out. First, in stark contrast to the big hullabaloo he made about hearing from the so-called "whistleblower" in Congress ahead of the planned Trump execution, Schiff suddenly doesn't think the whistleblower is so very, very necessary to...

Donald Trump is president. He may not be a very good one, but he won an election. And no amount of irresponsible commentary from his defeated opponent will change that. The fact that Trump received nearly 3 million fewer total votes than Hillary Clinton doesn’t make him any less our president under the constitutionally prescribed Electoral College system. And the fact that Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election with a preference for Trump — something reports from special counsel Robert Muller and both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have found — does not, on its own,...

The focus of the last two weeks has been President Trump and the congressional impeachment inquiry. But next week, Democrats running for president will take center stage again. With less than four months until the first votes are cast, the scrutiny is going to become sharper and there are lots of questions facing the candidates as they head into primary crunch time:Questions discussed in the article: 1. Do any of the candidates go after Joe and Hunter Biden? 2. Does Elizabeth Warren face new scrutiny and how does she. handle it? 3. How does Sanders do, given that this is...

Fired former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe admitted to former Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein that "the dossier compiled by Steele had its flaws. Steele warned us that he couldn't verify its contents and that we should not take it as 'gospel.' But President Obama was pressing us on the need to prevent Donald Trump from becoming the next president. Under these circumstances I think people will understand that a rigid adherence to the law would not have allowed us to do as he asked." "By nature, much of the information spies like Steele obtain is hearsay, innuendo, and inference," McCabe...