Free Republic

At 59, Staff Sgt. Monte Gould is the oldest-ever graduate of the Army's current Basic Combat Training Course, finishing Aug. 27 in the top 10% of his class. Now, a decade or two older than retirement age for most career soldiers, he's starting a new journey -- with plans to join his son, Spc. Jarrod Gould, in the 405th Civil Affairs Battalion's Las Vegas detachment. In an Army news release, Staff Sgt. Gould spoke about the challenge of making it through the rigorous BCT, the Army's entry-level training course. A veteran of the Marine Corps and Army National Guard, Gould...

      A FRIEND IS...... The person who gives you the better of two choices. Holds your hand when you’re scared. Helps you fight those who try to take advantage of you. Thinks of you at times when you are not there. Reminds you of what you have forgotten. Helps you put the past behind you, but understands when you need to hold on a little longer. Stays with you so that you have confidence. Goes out of their way to make time for you. Helps you clear up your mistakes. Helps you deal with pressure from others....

The Democrats' true colors are showing through, for those who couldn't seem them clearly already. Former US Attorney General Eric Holder joined other Democrats on Saturday in calling on Joe Biden and Senate Democrats to pack the Supreme Court if they retake power in November. Holder said the conservative majority on the Supreme Court would be "illegitimate" if President Trump fullfills his Constitutional obligation to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "You would have a conservative majority on the court, an illegitimate conservative majority on the court, ruling on these matters that will affect...

The new Annual Rifle Qualification (ARQ) will replace Annual Rifle Training (ART) with a challenging new course of fire that forces Marines to apply basic marksmanship skills in a more dynamic environment, which will include moving targets and night shooting scenarios. The Marine Corps marksmanship community, recognizing the need to focus on lethality instead of standard marksmanship, drafted the new ARQ course of fire in October 2018 at the annual Combat Marksmanship Symposium.

Something smells rotten on Staten Island — and it’s not the old dump. Residents believe the stench is coming from Albany. The borough’s beloved Joyce’s Tavern — which has a heavy FDNY constituency — lost its liquor license following a “surprise, random” visit during a 9/11 fundraiser on Sept. 11 by State Liquor Authority (SLA) inspectors. The Irish pub’s supporters say the raid was a political hit job, and that a new videotape will soon prove the bar and grill did nothing wrong — and could exonerate it as soon as this coming week. Tavern backers believe the ill-timed raid...

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Friday evening sparked some very solemn responses from people of all political stripes. While generally most would prefer to use the time immediately following the death of a public figure to remember their legacy, the political implications of RBG’s death left people on the Right and the Left to speculate about what will happen with the vacant seat left now on the highest court in the nation. In fact, RBG’s death sparked a huge surge in donations on ActBlue. But some on the Left started promising violence, not just political action.

The Black Lives Matter movement is linked to more than nine-in-ten riots across the country, according to a recent study. The U.S. experienced 637 riots between May 26 and Sept. 12, and 91% of those riots were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the US Crisis Monitor, a joint project of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University. Forty-nine states, not counting Washington, D.C., experienced riots during that time period, the study found. California led the nation with 86 riots during that time, closely followed by Oregon with...

SEATTLE — Investigators with Seattle’s Office of Police Accountability say officers did not intentionally target a young boy when they hit him in the face with pepper spray during a protest. Video of the boy crying, with milk running down his face to lessen the effects of the spray, went viral after the May 30 protest and led to 13,000 complaints filed with OPA. According to an OPA description released Friday, “(The boy) and his father moved towards a protester who had grabbed an officer’s baton and was pushing into the police line. An SPD supervisor used pepper spray to...

@paulsperry_NEW: The Biden campaign is running radio ad spots in Georgia, S.C. & N.C. featuring an African-American narrator claiming Trump "downplayed" the threat from COVID & cost "tens of thousands" of black lives: "This virus is literally killing us. And Trump did nothing to stop it."

Justice Ginsburg has had quite a few health scares over the past little over a decade. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009 and subsequently resisted pressure to retire from the Court under ObamaÂ’s administration. With multiple hospital stays this year and a recurrence of her pancreatic cancer, many question how long she will be able to stay on the Court and if she will outlast President TrumpÂ’s incumbency, while some liberals express frustration that Ginsburg did not retire under President Obama. Retirements and replacements from the Court occur in different patterns. The current situation harkens back to Justice...

The Mysterious Death of Cape Cod’s David Bacon In September of 1943, witnesses saw David Bacon drive his sports car off a California highway and into a bean field. As would-be rescuers rushed to his aid, he pleaded for help. Blood soaked the interior of the car. Who had done this to him, they asked the dying man. Bacon didn’t answer then, and the question remains unanswered to this day. Born in 1914, Bacon came from a privileged background. His parents named im Gaspar Griswold Bacon. His grandfather worked as a partner in J.P. Morgan’s financial empire and took a...

Assistant U. S. Attorney Mark W. Pletcher (619) 546-9714NEWS RELEASE SUMMARY – September 18, 2020 SAN DIEGO – Two doctors, Susan Vergot and Carl Lindblad, were sentenced in federal court today for participating in a health care fraud scheme that bilked TRICARE – the health care program that covers United States service members – out of tens of millions of dollars by prescribing thousands of exorbitantly expensive compounded drugs to patients they never saw or examined.Dr. Vergot and Dr. Lindblad were sentenced to 24 and 28 months in custody, respectively, by U.S. District Judge Janis L. Sammartino. The custodial...

Explanation: Orion is a familiar constellation. The apparent positions of its stars in two dimensions create a well-known pattern on the bowl of planet Earth's night sky. Orion may not look quite so familiar in this 3D view though. The illustration reconstructs the relative positions of Orion's bright stars, including data from the Hipparcus catalog of parallax distances. The most distant star shown is Alnilam. The middle one in the projected line of three that make up Orion's belt when viewed from planet Earth, Alnilam is nearly 2,000 light-years away, almost 3 times as far as fellow belt stars Alnitak...

A new poll conducted shortly before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed that an overwhelming majority of U.S. adults of all political stripes supported holding hearings for a nominee if a vacancy opened on the nation's highest bench. Marquette University released the survey results on Saturday that showed 67% of adults believed the Senate should hold a hearing if a vacancy occurred during 2020's race, with only 32% opposition — and similar strong numbers across Republicans, Democrats, and independents, who supported holding confirmation hearings at 68-31%, 63-37%, and 71-28% respectively. The poll was completed three days...

One of the co-founders of the official Black Lives Matter group, Alicia Garza, is reportedly partnering up with a Chinese organization that has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party — and that group now appears to be funding one of Garza’s ventures, according to an investigation by the Daily Signal. Garza is one of several co-founders of the official “Black Lives Matter” group, and in 2018, she launched a project called “Black Futures Lab,” which aims, its website says, to help activists in the black community maintain interest in civic participation and civic activism year-round. The group “gathers information...

ISIS militants have taken over paradise islands in the Indian Ocean, burning down hotels and imposing Sharia Law. Luxury islands off the coast of Mozambique, where A-list celebrities spend their holidays, have been overrun by insurgents linked to Islamic State. Luxury hotels, wildlife, and homes have been torched and "reduced to ashes" in the militant attacks. The ISIS insurgents have ordered residents to abandon the islands of Vamizi and Mecungo - where celebrities like Daniel Craig, Bono and Prince Albert of Monaco have holidayed in luxury. Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo and political leader Nelson Mandela have also been known to have...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argues there are economic ramifications to a larger coronavirus stimulus bill. He also provides insight into protests and the historic peace deal in the Middle East. Video...

  James S. Brady Press Briefing Room1:30 P.M. EDTMS. MCENANY: Good afternoon, everyone. I just spoke with the President, and he wanted to thank the commissioner of Big 10 football, Kevin Warren, and all of the players, parents, coaches, and fans who wanted more than anything to play football.The President was happy to get this thing going. And now you will have players in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Nebraska who will now have access to football, which is very good to see.Transitioning to a much more somber topic and one that is...

The Trump Administration is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that would require the President to include illegal aliens in the population count used to reapportion congressional seats. The President properly determined that illegal aliens should be excluded from the apportionment base to the maximum extent feasible and consistent with the discretion delegated to him by law, and the Administration intends to vindicate that policy determination before the Supreme Court and implement the President’s policy decision. The President’s decision will ensure that American citizens do not have their representation in Congress diminished based on counts of...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg should “radicalize” Democrats ahead of November’s election. "Let this moment radicalize you," the freshman representative said in a Friday night Instagram Live video. “Let this moment really put everything into stark focus because this election has always been about the fight of and for our lives. And if anything, tonight is making that more clear to more people than ever before.” Ocasio-Cortez urged viewers to check and update their voter registration and vote for Joe Biden despite progressive disagreements with his policy platform. “Voting for Joe Biden is...