Free Republic

A Fond du Lac man was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday, Jan. 7 for the 2018 murder of a Beaver Dam man in rural Dodge County. The judge ruled Nigel Schultz, 21, will never be eligible for early release. Schultz entered a plea of no contest to one count of first-degree intentional homicide on Aug. 16. Prosecutors said he killed his friend, Bradlee Gerke, 36, in cold blood -- as part of a pattern of escalating violent behavior. SNIP In the call, Schultz explained to his mom that he shot Gerke to keep him quiet about other crimes he...

Suspect didn’t want to pay 25 cents each for saucesA Florida woman who was upset when a McDonald’s employee told her that she needed to pay for dipping sauces yelled at restaurant workers and threatened to rob the fast food eatery, according to the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies said they found 19-year-old Maguire McLaughlin yelling profanities in her car in the drive-thru around 3:45 a.m. New Year’s Day. They said she was irate, smelled of alcohol, had glassy eyes and her speech was slurred. Employees said McLaughlin ordered a large amount of food and when she got...

Finding out she was pregnant only adds to the surprise of drawing both elk and moose tags for Grand Forks womanThe surprises didn’t stop there. Shortly after learning she’d been drawn for once-in-a-lifetime North Dakota cow elk and cow moose tags last spring, Megan Anderson of Grand Forks found out she was pregnant. Written By: Brad Dokken / Forum News Service | Jan 12th 2020 - 8am. 125 Megan Anderson and her husband, Cody, of Grand Forks, celebrate Megan's successful moose hunt Sunday, Oct. 20, near Mohall, N.D. Megan drew both a cow moose tag and a cow elk tag...

Out of twenty-one local Saudi aviation students investigated in connection with the Dec 2019 Pensacola terrorist attack, fifteen had child pornography on their computers. That’s a rate of seven out of ten (70%). What’s wrong with these people? Supposedly the Saudis send the best of the best for this training. If the perversion rate of this elite group is 7/10, how much higher is it for the lesser beings over there? Experts on the psychology behind child pornography believe this activity stems from a deep sense of sexual inadequacy or from traumatic early childhood sexual experiences. Considering the Muslim culture...

Actor Danny DeVito formally endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for president Monday after also lending the Vermont senator his support in 2016. “It means the world to me to be on Bernie’s side because I know that’s the right side of history,” the “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star said in a video endorsement posted Monday. “He’s the guy to do it. He is the man to beat Trump. He is the man to change our whole system.” “We’re going to fix ourselves. And then we’re going to be an example — the shining example that we should be,” DeVito...

A pastor explains why the idea of a Godless, purely naturalistic universe is impossible.

An off-duty Secret Service agent fatally shot a dog that charged at him in Brooklyn on Monday night, police said. The agent fired one shot at the dog, striking the animal, on Caton Place near East 8th Street in Windsor Terrace about 9:45 p.m., cops said. Police said the agent saw the dog coming at him as he turned a corner.

A U.S. judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration is operating within its authority when separating families stopped at the Mexico border, rejecting arguments that it was quietly returning to widespread practices that drew international condemnation. The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the administration was splitting families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions including traffic offenses. It asked the judge in July to rule on whether the government was justified in separating 911 children during the first year after the judge halted the general practice in June 2018. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw indicated he was uncomfortable second-guessing government...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump authorized the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani seven months ago if Iran's increased aggression resulted in the death of an American, according to five current and former senior administration officials. The presidential directive in June came with the condition that Trump would have final signoff on any specific operation to kill Soleimani, officials said. That decision explains why assassinating Soleimani was on the menu of options that the military presented to Trump two weeks ago for responding to an attack by Iranian proxies in Iraq, in which a U.S. contractor was killed and four...

link only:https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2020/01/13/oscar-nominations-2020-biggest-snubs/4434765002/

For many people who have hearing problems it is noisy environments, such as busy restaurants, that are their main problem. Hearing aids help somewhat, but even the most advanced ones can’t amplify only single individuals that the user is talking to when there are other speakers nearby. At CES 2020 we ran into OrCam, an Israeli company that has developed technology that combines computer vision with audio modulation to know who the intended speaker the user is trying to listen to and to only amplify that person’s speech. This is a smart reworking of a similar technology in OrCam’s other...

January 14 2020 Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Sm 1:9-20 Hannah rose after a meal at Shiloh, and presented herself before the LORD; at the time, Eli the priest was sitting on a chair near the doorpost of the LORD’s temple. In her bitterness she prayed to the LORD, weeping copiously, and she made a vow, promising: “O LORD of hosts, if you look with pity on the misery of your handmaid, if you remember me and do not forget me, if you give your handmaid a male child, I will give him...

A year after he helmed "The Haunting of Sharon Tate," in which Hilary Duff played the doomed starlet plagued by visions of her death, the director is carving out his own unsavory subgenre of exploitation, stripped entirely of Tarantino-esque artistic notions. Try as actor Mena Suvari might to imbue Brown Simpson with some sense of wistful, melancholic tragedy, Michael Arter's script offers both women little in the way of poetry or empathy. Try she does, though: 20 years on from the teenage promise of "American Beauty," Suvari's sincere attempt to make something hurt and human of a character largely scripted...

EW ORLEANS (AP) — President Donald Trump turned sports fan for an evening as he watched No. 1 Louisiana State University and No. 3 Clemson battle it out in the College Football Playoff championship.

Its been made official that there was a terrorist attack on the United States December 6th at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. The attack that killed three and wounded eight was perpetrated by Saudi Air Force Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrami who was undergoing military training. The confirmation today came not from the President of the United States, nor the Secretary of State nor the Secretary of Defense, but from Attorney General William Barr..... Special Commentary Back before 9/11 terrorism was seen as strictly a law enforcement matter in the days of President Bill Clinton. Now it looks like...

The debate starts at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14. The event will air on CNN, CNN International and CNN En Español and will be livestreamed at desmoinesregister.com and CNN.com. Last Democratic presidential debate of 2019 Chris Carlson | AP South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the Democratic debate in December. What is the lineup for the January Democratic debate? The six candidates sharing the stage will be: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren Former Vice President Joe Biden Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg Billionaire businessman Tom Steyer

Gun permit applications surged nearly 1,000 percent in New York’s Jewish community since the December 28, 2019, attack on Hasidic Jews in a rabbi’s home. The Washington Examiner reports that the surge is clear in Rockland County, the very county in which the rabbi’s home was attacked. The Rockland County Clerk’s office reported the “nearly 1,000 percent increase in gun permit applications in the week following the Dec. 28 attack.” Erik Melanson, owner of Rockland County’s Precision Gunsmiths, said, “A lot of people are worried, especially the large Hasidic and Jewish community in Rockland County. I have had rabbis come...

A cyclist who is still recovering from serious injuries months after being hit by a truck in Huntington Beach is getting a lot of help from an unlikely new friend: the driver who struck him. Tom Sovilla, left, and Jack Keith, right, are seen in a photo posted to a GoFundMe account. Tom Sovilla, left, and Jack Keith, right, are seen in a photo posted to a GoFundMe account. The crash that altered the lives of Tom Sovilla and Jack Keith happened along the Pacific Coast Highway on May 25, 2019, according to the two men, who shared their unusual...

Abby Huntsman announced on Monday she’s quitting “The View” to join her father, Jon Huntsman Jr., on his Utah gubernatorial campaign. But Page Six is told that the campaign isn’t the real reason for her exit from the ABC fixture, which has recently been rocked by a breakdown in the relationship between Meghan McCain and her fellow panelists. “It’s an unhealthy environment — just the way that things are handled during shows and how people deal with each other,” said an insider familiar with Huntsman’s thinking. “It’s intense.” “Abby made an issue [to executives] about the overall environment. She’s felt...

The real problem with nationalism, the kind that President Trump campaigned on, is that it offers true and therefore intolerable normality in a clown world. It is normal to want to stay out of foreign wars, to preserve your religion, language, people, and culture.