Free Republic

Roanoke has banned guns from city-owned parks, libraries and offices as well as from municipal recreation centers and events in public spaces. Gun shows eventually will be prohibited at the city-owned Berglund Center, though an event already under contract can go forward, specifically Saturday’s Roanoke Valley Gun Show, City Attorney Tim Spencer said. In addition, the gun prohibition will cover parades, political marches and similar gatherings that require an assembly permit to be held on city property or public rights-of-way, officials said. Some exceptions will apply. The Roanoke City Council approved the guns ban in a 6-1 vote Monday, with...

President Joe Biden said in an interview broadcast Wednesday that he plans to raise taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 a year as his post-stimulus legislative plans come into focus."Anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase," he told ABC News. "If you make less than $400,000, you won't see one single penny in additional federal tax."Speaking with NBC News, two administration officials earlier confirmed that Biden and his top aides are discussing the framework to increase taxes on Americans making more than $400,000 and on large corporations.The officials stressed that the full...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray is calling for unarmed citizens "to peacefully intervene to prevent violent crimes by using the 'five D' strategy. The five Ds are Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct." "Say you see someone being assaulted by a gang of thugs," McCray said. "The first thing you should do is distract the attackers by making yourself an alternate target. You could shout 'hey, stop hurting that person.' The thugs will probably refocus on you, giving the original victim an opportunity to escape. You could then delegate the least aggressive of the assailants...

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D) is promoting an “Assault Weapons” ban and suggesting that she is doing so in order that her daughters can grow up in a country that will “protect them.” Duckworth suggested that “Congress has a duty to act” on gun control and responded to Congressional refusal to pass more gun laws by saying, “enough is enough.”

A woman from London has been sentenced after attempting to defraud her insurer through a fraudulent life insurance claim worth £397,153. Thuile Bhebhe, 51, reported that her husband had died in Zimbabwe in August 2016, submitting false documents to her insurer, Aviva, in order to substantiate her claim. Discrepancies in the paperwork submitted by Mrs Bhebhe raised the insurance company’s suspicions, leading them to carry out further enquiries into the case. Simple checks quickly revealed that her husband was alive and well, and in fact working his shift as a nurse at a London hospital on the day he was...

Vice President Harris supports changing the filibuster practice in the Senate in order to limit the ability of the minority party to easily block legislation, her office confirmed to Fox News Wednesday.

It started with a nice gesture. Adam Anderson, the CEO of Innovex Downhole Solutions, wanted to buy his employees a Christmas gift. So he ordered 400 North Face jackets and asked that their corporate logo be included. Then came the bad news. The North Face company would sell Innovex the jackets but wouldn't include the energy company's logo. The reason? Innovex was an oil and gas company, and it would be a bad thing for North Face's public image to associate itself with the industry. Not happy with that answer, Anderson struck back with some public relations of his own....

If someone were to ask me what the United States of America's greatest mistake was, I would answer without hesitation: slavery. The legacy of slavery is a cloud that hangs over our nation much like clouds of genocide that hang over China, Germany, and Russia. One of the solutions proposed by people who want to move beyond the shadow of slavery is to pay reparations to those who were hurt by slavery. Opponents of the idea of reparations claim that both the people who carried out slavery and the people who suffered under slavery are dead. It is hard to...

Some simple, obvious facts are too politically incorrect for academics to state publicly. Georgetown University just fired law professor Sandra Sellers and forced out professor David Batson. Sellers' offense? "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks," Sellers' said in discussion with another professor at the end of a Zoom call. Batson's offense? He didn't condemn the statement, but instead sympathized with Sellers’ concerns. “What drives me crazy is… my own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things” might be responsible for their poor scores, he said. The logic...

White supremacist propaganda reached alarming levels across the U.S. in 2020, according to a new report that the Anti-Defamation League provided to The Associated Press. There were 5,125 cases of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ and other hateful messages spread through physical flyers, stickers, banners and posters, according to Wednesday’s report. That’s nearly double the 2,724 instances reported in 2019. Online propaganda is much harder to quantify, and it’s likely those cases reached into the millions, the anti-hate organization said. The ADL, which was founded more than a century ago, said that last year marked the highest level of white supremacist propaganda...

The list of governors include Phil Murphy, Tom Wolf, and Gretchen Whitmer Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said Wednesday on "Fox & Friends" that Democratic governors in other states should be investigated for their nursing home policies, along with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. ELISE STEFANIK: "Well, they should face investigations, and again as you remember the mainstream media was holding Governor Cuomo up as you know this bright, shining light. New Yorkers knew otherwise, particularly the thousands of New Yorkers who lost loved ones. So, unfortunately, Democratic governors across the country, rather than abide by CDC and CMS guidelines, followed...

The IEA said daily gasoline demand dropped by a record 2.9 million barrels in 2020, down more than 10% from the previous year.The world's thirst for gasoline isn't likely to return to pre-pandemic levels, the International Energy Agency forecast, calling a peak for the fuel that has powered personal transportation for more than a century.The Paris-based energy watchdog, in its closely followed five-year forecast, said an accelerating global shift toward electric vehicles, along with increasing fuel efficiency among gasoline-powered fleets, will more than outweigh demand growth from countries in the developing world.The forecast comes as auto makers have pivoted recently...

Attorney General Merrick Garland faces his first test on federal executions as the Supreme Court considers reinstating a death sentence for the Boston Marathon bomber. The court since October has been mulling a Trump-era federal appeal to rehear a death penalty case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, along with his brother, killed three people and injured more than 200 others at the 2013 Boston Marathon. When then-Attorney General William Barr took the case to the high court, he vowed to do “whatever’s necessary” to see Tsarnaev executed. But the Biden administration has displayed a contrary attitude on the issue. Biden promised...

Video LinkIt's springtime and I'm in love!If you've got a pulse (and you're a guy), you will be too.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that embattled New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should step down if the allegations of sexual harassment against him are proven true.

URGENT - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED Tornado Watch Number 29 NWS Storm Prediction Center Norman OK 1135 AM CDT Wed Mar 17 2021 The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a * Tornado Watch for portions of Western and central Alabama Central to eastern Mississippi * Effective this Wednesday morning and evening from 1135 AM until 700 PM CDT. ...THIS IS A PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION... * Primary threats include... Numerous tornadoes expected with a few intense tornadoes likely Scattered damaging winds and isolated significant gusts to 80 mph likely Scattered large hail and isolated very large hail events to 3 inches...

The European Commission on Wednesday proposed the issuing of COVID-19 immunization certificates to allow for free travel within the bloc’s member states. The EU is hoping to revive the travel sector, but there are fears over the fairness of such certificates amid a slow vaccine rollout. Dubbed “the Digital Green Certificate,” the proposal is set to facilitate the movement of people from one EU member state to another. The certificate will provide information on COVID-19 vaccination, recovery and test results. The EU will also coordinate with the World Health Organization for the certificates to be recognized outside Europe. …

Data Leak Shows Regulators Had Major Concerns About Pfizer’s mRNA VaccineLeaked documents show that some early commercial batches of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine had lower than expected levels of intact mRNA, prompting wider questions about how to assess this novel vaccine platform.By Serena TinariAs it conducted its analysis of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in December, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) was the victim of a cyberattack. More than 40 megabytes of classified information from the agency’s review were published on the dark web, and several journalists — including from The BMJ — and academics worldwide were sent copies of the leaks....

Protecting children from confusion or from harmful experimental 'treatments' is neither abuse nor neglect, but under the Equality Act, it would be treated as such.Consider the following scenario, rooted in the actual experiences of some parents. Your 14-year-old daughter, who has never before questioned her gender identity, comes home from school one day declaring herself to be a boy after hearing a transgender teenager speak at a school assembly. She persists in her claims and demands cross-sex hormones, even though her experiments with a transgender identity seem more about winning peer approval in school and on social media than about...

Economic adviser to late President Ronald Reagan Arthur Laffer joined Fox Business yesterday to dismantle the nutty economic thinking behind President Joe Biden’s leftist tax agenda. Fox Business host Larry Kudlow asked Laffer if it was “true that rich people and corporations — and by the way, small business tax hikes are in this Democratic plan — is it true they don’t pay their fair share?” Biden has been reportedly eyeing the “first major” tax hike since 1993, which would include reversing some of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Laffer didn’t hesitate in his answer: “No, it’s not true,...