Free Republic

Several people were injured Monday when a car drove into a carnival procession in the central German town of Volkmarsen, police said. "According to first reports, several people have been injured," police said in a statement, adding that the driver of the vehicle had been arrested. The local Waldeckische Zeitung daily cited witnesses as reporting some 15 people injured, "including small children". Volkmarsen is situated in the central state of Hesse, northwest of the city of Kassel. A silver Mercedes station wagon drove into a group of people at around 2:30 pm, according to a report in the Hessenschau.de. The...

For the past 11 months, Robert Hoogland, a father in Surrey, British Columbia, has been forced to watch as his 14 year-old daughter was “destroyed and sterilized” by court-ordered testosterone injections. After losing his legal appeal to stop the process in January, Rob (previously anonymized as “Clark” or “CD”) is making a desperate attempt to bring his case into the courts of public opinion, even though it breaks a court order demanding his silence about the case.“I had a perfectly healthy child a year ago, and that perfectly healthy child has been altered and destroyed for absolutely no good...

True to form, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) -- also known as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the largest terrorist funding case in U.S. history, and a designated “terrorist organization” for nations allied to America -- is again protesting my forthcoming appearance to the U.S. Army War College, urging the latter to “reconsider its decision and disinvite Ibrahim,” since my presentation will no doubt be “hypocritical, ahistorical and hateful.” This, of course, is all déjà vu -- a repeat of events from eight months ago. As CAIR itself notes in it new press release, which came out on Feb. 21,...

A Michigan family is grieving the heartbreaking death of their 62-year-old relative, who police said was found frozen and emaciated inside his mobile home last weekend. According to WJRT-TV, police found Arnoul Jaros dead in his below-freezing home in Saginaw County on the afternoon of Feb. 15. Jaros’ family described him as a “recluse” who also suffered from extreme social anxiety. “Arnie,” as his family called him, rarely interacted with anybody and had not held a formal job since his 20s, his family told MLive. Karina Jaros told MLive that her uncle was fiercely independent and avoided situations where he...

The upcoming film “Onward,” which will be in theaters on March 6, will feature a self-identified lesbian heroine with a girlfriend, the first-ever animated LGBT character in the Disney-Pixar universe. The character, named Officer Specter, will be a Cyclops cop, voiced by openly gay screenwriter and actress Lena Waithe, Yahoo Entertainment reported. “It just kind of happened,” the film’s producer, Kori Rae, was quoted as saying. “The scene, when we wrote it, was kind of fitting and it opens up the world a little bit, and that’s what we wanted.” Director Dan Scanlon stated, “It’s a modern fantasy world and...

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court said it would consider the city of Philadelphia’s decision to exclude a Catholic organization from its foster-care program because the group indicated it wouldn’t work with same-sex couples as foster parents, a case with major constitutional implications for church and state. The justices, in a brief written order, said they would consider an appeal by Catholic Social Services and others who say the city’s position violates constitutional guarantees of religious liberty. Philadelphia says private groups that contract with the city to care for abused and neglected children must abide by the city’s antidiscrimination laws, which prohibit bias...

U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in the west Indian city of Ahmedabad Monday, beginning his first official visit to India with the inauguration of the world’s largest cricket stadium. In his two-day visit, Trump is expected to raise several issues, including religious freedom, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Accompanied by First Lady Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump addressed a gathering of about 100,000 people at the “Namaste Trump” event at the newly-built cricket stadium in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, the home state of Modi, Monday afternoon. “All over the planet, people take great joy...

Why do our political leaders want to take away our plastic bags and straws? This question is even more puzzling than a related one that I’ve been studying for decades: Why do they want us to recycle our garbage? The two obsessions have some common roots, but the moral panic over plastic is especially perverse. The recycling movement had a superficial logic, at least at the outset. Municipal officials expected to save money by recycling trash instead of burying or burning it. Now that recycling has turned out to be ruinously expensive while achieving little or no environmental benefit, some...

Hundreds of people have been filmed queuing up to buy face masks in the city at the centre of South Korea's coronavirus outbreak. A long line of people snaked out the doors of a supermarket in the city of Daegu on Monday as people tried to protect themselves against the spread of the disease amid fears of a global pandemic. South Korea now has the largest number of confirmed cases outside of mainland China after infections spiked at the weekend, standing at 830 by Monday morning.

For decades, liberal activists yearned for a European-style, single-payer health system that they argued would lead to more affordable, efficient, and comprehensive medical coverage for all citizens. When Vermont four years ago enacted a landmark bill to establish the nation’s first single-payer health care system, they saw their long-sought dream about to be fulfilled. But reality hit last month. Governor Peter Shumlin released a financial report that showed the cost of the program would nearly double the size of the state’s budget in the first year alone and require large tax increases for residents and businesses. ---SNIP--- In short, if...

This reads like a Tom Clancy novel on steroids. Like a bizarre merger between Debt of Honor and Executive Orders, our hero, Jack Ryan/Donald J. Trump as the Boy Scout who can't be bought, has to deal with a myriad of seemingly disparate circumstances that intertwine into a cataclysmic finish that only our hero can navigate. But unlike in a "normal" Clancy thriller, our hero is not presented with three simultaneous crises. In our real-life adventure, Trump is dealing with more than double that number. Our in-your-face villain is the Deep State, who, in an unusual turn, has decided to...

While Michael Bloomberg's Nevada debate performance was justly and widely panned, he attacked Bernie Sanders effectively, demonstrating he's probably the only candidate who can derail the Vermont senator's nomination. By the same token, Sanders can wreck Bloomberg's hopes by mobilizing his own base against the billionaire at the convention or even running as an independent candidate. Each man has the ability to take the other one down, and that dynamic is the key to who eventually wins the nomination. The sudden ascent of Bloomberg to the top ranks of Democrat contenders is generating plenty of speculation about machinations within the...

President Trump spoke at an unusual graduation ceremony on Thursday and inspired the class of graduates, all former prisoners. HOPE for Prisoners assists formerly incarcerated people with reentry into society by providing long-term support and services. Founder Jon Ponder experienced significant challenges on his release from prison and noted the lack of resources for others in his situation. He started HOPE for Prisoners to help others.Trump has often expressed his support for criminal justice reform, signing into law several acts that reduced sentencing, shortened jail terms, and stopped the chaining of women in prison as they give birth. His...

And if Cuba had trains, they’d probably run on time, too. Now that Bernie Sanders has the inside track on the Democratic presidential nomination, some of his more colorful defenses of left-wing dictatorships and communism have finally gotten attention from the mainstream media. Sanders sat down for a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, who played clips of Sanders praising Fidel Castro for having “totally transformed the society, you know?”Sanders didn’t disavow the sentiment, but instead praised Castro’s “literacy program”: Bernie Sanders defends his 1980s comments about Fidel Castro in an interview on 60 Minutes. https://t.co/ySqvQKoiBU pic.twitter.com/lTwuXWp9sA— 60 Minutes...

This is for the average gun enthusiasts and newbies that enjoy shooting and want a little more understanding of how a barrel twist rate can affect accuracy. So does barrel twist rate affect accuracy on an AR15? The short technical answer is that barrel twist starts the bullet spinning at a given rate to stabilize the bullet. The rate has to be constant for the utmost accuracy. On the opposite end of the spectrum – Decreasing the twist rate will almost certainly result in a dramatic decrease in accuracy. Another factor is can the wrong weight of the bullet for...

TORONTO — David Ayres was sitting in the stands with his wife at Scotiabank Arena when Carolina Hurricanes goalie James Reimer went down with an injury. The on-call emergency netminder in Toronto, Ayers left his seat and got half-dressed into his gear on the off-chance something might happen to Carolina's second option, Petr Mrazek. Midway through the second period, Ayres noticed his cellphone started to blow up. What he didn't realize was that Mrazek had been hurt in a scary collision with Maple Leafs forward Kyle Clifford and was down on the ice. "One of the equipment guys came in...

According to a new Lifeway Research survey, while 47 percent of “mainline” pastors now support same-sex “marriage,” only 8 percent of evangelical pastors do. More specifically, “Presbyterian or Reformed (49%), Methodist (47%), Lutheran (35%) and Christian/Church of Christ pastors (20%) are more likely to see nothing wrong with same-sex marriage than Baptist (3%) or Pentecostal pastors (1%).” None of this is surprising in the least.First, as noted by Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research, “The movement we see among pastors’ views of same-sex marriage has less to do with their denominational tradition than their view of the Bible.”Accordingly, those...

On one side of Interstate 980 in Oakland rise the new glass skyscrapers of the city’s Uptown neighborhood, home to a bustling entertainment district and Silicon Valley’s spillover tech startups. On the other lies West Oakland, a “food desert” where two-thirds of residents live below the poverty line. West Oakland residents should be able to benefit from the growing number of amenities available in Uptown, since they technically live in walking distance. But crossing the 560-foot-wide interstate and two frontage roads is a daunting task. It’s a prime example of one of America’s most divisive freeways—literally.

In 2018, California implemented the California Values Act, which gave special protection to illegal aliens by mandating that California law enforcement agencies cannot cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) thumbed its nose at California and arrested two people in Sonoma County Superior Court. California has lots of reasons to hang onto its roughly 2.2 – 3.5 million illegal immigrants. They provide cheap, easily-exploited labor. They swell the state’s population, which matters for electors and congresspeople, as well as the distribution of certain federal funds. As illegal immigrants are fed into the system, they provide...

Socialist/communist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders loves to sing the praises of a small Scandinavian country, Denmark. It seems he has fallen out of love with his previous favorite countries, the Soviet Union and Cuba, which he “warmly praised” in the late 1980s. After spurning the USSR, the country he spent his honeymoon in, shirtless, singing along drunkenly with his fellow communist comrades, he has moved on to northern Europe as representing his idea of utopia.   As CNN reported about Bernie’s newfound love, Open a newspaper on any given day here in this small Europe nation known for high...