Free Republic

On eBay, buyers often hunt for hard-to-find items. Ismael Almada was one of them. Except that he was searching for military-grade weapons and accessories — and they weren’t for fun or sport. Almada and his brother, Carlos, used over 50 PayPal accounts to avoid suspicion. Steathily, they made purchases of tactical gear like grenade launchers, gun parts, night-vision goggles, and bullet-proof vests. Ismael was also using his mother’s credit card to make many of the purchases, he would later admit to the DEA. Then, the brothers provided the gear to New Generation — a fearsome cartel operating in Jalisco, Mexico....

The new law, which went into effect immediately, also allows local governments to be sued if they fail to stop a riot. "As we saw last summer, some of the local governments are actually telling, not necessarily in Florida but throughout the country, basically telling these folks to stand down, telling police to stand down while cities burnt, while businesses were burnt, while people were being harmed," DeSantis said. "That’s a dereliction of duty. "What our bill says, and what I’ll sign into law today, is that if you're derelict in your duty as a local government, if you tell...

Popstar Demi Lovato took aim at a small frozen yogurt shop for daring to offer sugar-free options to its customers. In an Instagram story post, Lovato attacked The Bigg Chill Frozen Yogurt shop in Los Angeles, California, for being alleged “diet vultures.” The store is known for its wide variety of low-fat, sugar-free frozen yogurts and treats. Lovato claims it was “triggering” for her to walk past the sugar-free cookies. “Finding it extremely hard to order froyo from [The Bigg Chill Frozen Yogurt] when you have to walk past tons of sugar free cookies/other diet foods before you get to...

A small number of people (eight) had signs of previous natural covid-19 infection. Compared with those without previous infection, their antibody and T cell responses after the first vaccine dose were significantly higher (691-fold and fourfold, respectively). The study also found stronger T cell responses in people who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine, with 31% of this group producing detectable T cell responses compared with 12% of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine group. The researchers said that the clinical importance of the difference in T cell response was not yet clear, but it could be important when dealing with variants of covid-19....

Former President George W. Bush reflected in a new interview on the surprise many Americans expressed at his friendship with former first lady Michelle Obama. In an interview released on Sunday with CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell, Bush noted several times that his friendly relationship with Obama has gone viral, including when they hugged at the 2016 opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and when he passed her a cough drop during former Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2018 funeral.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a batch of legal battles involving the federal lifetime ban on firearms for people convicted of certain nonviolent crimes, sidestepping a contentious issue involving the Second Amendment. The justices rejected appeals from three people who are barred from possessing firearms under federal law because of nonviolent misdemeanor and felony convictions. In declining to take up the cases, lower court decisions that found their Second Amendment rights were not violated by the ban remain in place. The decision by the high court to stay away from the politically charged issue of gun rights comes...

Canadian gym refuses new memberships to those who’ve had COVID jab due to fear over side-effects'To put it simply, the unknown health effects of the mRNA vaccines, as well as reported side effects such as viral shedding, seizures and death following the administration of these vaccines, are not covered by our liability.'KELOWNA, British Columbia, April 19, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian gym posted a notice to its website that it will refuse new membership applications to those who have received COVID-19 “mRNA vaccines” because the “the unknown health effects” of such jabs are not covered by its “liability” policy. “Please...

My Pillow Inc. has sued voting-machine maker Dominion Voting Systems Monday morning in Federal Court in Minneapolis, a massive counter move after Dominion sued the bedding company and it’s CEO Mike Lindell earlier in 2021. Dominion sued Lindell over defamation clauses over election-fraud claims, claims that Lindell has provided significant evidence to as well. We’re working on a statement form Mike Lindell himself on this historic lawsuit here at The DC Patriot. This is a developing story, and we’ll have more details as the filings become public.

[Catholic Caucus] How To Behave: Bishop Schneider Tutors Washington CardinalIt is evident that Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may not receive Communion because of their pro-death activism, Bishop Athanasius Schneider told the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima on April 16 (video below).By giving them Communion, the Church implicitly approves their intention to murder innocent children, he explained. Schneider referred to Saint Ambrose who refused the Roman emperor Theodosius (+395) Communion twice. Once, after Theodosius took the side of Jews against Christians in Callinicum, the other time, after Theodosius allegedly killed 7.000 people in Thessaloniki.Schneider called Theodosius the...

Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Hejazi had also been accused by Israel of being responsible for the precision missile manufacturing program for the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. April 18, 2021 Brigadier General Seyyed Mohammad Hossein Hejazi , considered the "number two" of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the elite ideological and military body of the Persian regime, died of a heart attack this Sunday afternoon., as reported by the Islamic Republic. The Revolutionary Guard itself announced the death of Hejazi "after long years of tireless and selfless service in sensitive places to defend the Islamic Revolution and the holy Islamic Republic of Iran."

They're still there, planted in front of stately homes in wealthy suburban neighborhoods, on flag poles in middle-class communities, and along the front stoops of inner-city row houses. Whether they say "Trump 2020" or simply "Trump," there are plenty of people who have left their sentiments planted on their own personal hill. It is not just here in Pennsylvania. The signs are not hard to spot as you travel to the Great Lakes, the Midwest, and Appalachia. The reason is complex. People who come from a variety of socioeconomic, religious, and political experiences formed a conservative populist coalition long before...

A proposal to use $30 million from the city’s share of the latest COVID-19 relief package to fund cash assistance payments to Chicagoans struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic is set to be introduced to the Chicago City Council on Wednesday. The proposal authored by Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th Ward) would send 5,000 families $500 per month for a year as part of an effort to study whether a universal basic income could help Chicagoans recover from the economic catastrophe of the coronavirus pandemic and fight poverty.

In its filing submitted to the NLRB, the union listed 23 objections surrounding Amazon’s behavior during the monthslong campaign, including allegations of employee intimidation and manipulation. The RWDSU said Monday it has requested a hearing before the NLRB to discuss its objections.“The objections constitute conduct which prevented a free and uncoerced exercise of choice by the employees, undermining the board’s efforts to provide ‘a laboratory in which an experiment may be conducted, under conditions as nearly as ideal as possible, to determine the uninhibited desires of the employees,’” the RWDSU said Monday.Amazon spokeswoman Heather Knox told CNBC in a statement:...

KENOSHA, Wis. - The Kenosha County Sheriff's Department identified on Monday, April 19 the suspect from the Somers House tavern shooting that left three people dead and another three wounded on Sunday. He is identified as 24-year-old Rakayo Vinson. Vinson is currently in custody at the Kenosha County Jail.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has backed Democrats’ effort to pack the Supreme Court by adding four new seats that would be filled by President Joe Biden, arguing the courts should not be allowed to overturn laws passed by Congress. The Washington Times reported: “I do think we should be expanding the court,” she told reporters. The New York Democrat, part of the progressive “Squad” collective on Capitol Hill, reasoned the justices overturning laws is part of the problem with the 6-3 conservative majority. “The idea that nine people, that a nine-person court, can overturn laws that … hundreds and thousands...

Carl Mock, 40, who lived in the park gateway community of West Yellowstone, died Saturday, two days after he was attacked while fishing alone in a forested area along the Madison River... managed to call 911 after the attack and was found after searchers looked for him for about 50 minutes. The grizzly was killed Friday after it charged a group of seven game wardens and other personnel as they approached the scene of the attack. Several people fired at the animal and it died about 20 yards (18 meters) from the group, Jacobsen said. Officials said they are confident...

How did the mass murder perpetrator in last week’s shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis have the ability to buy his firearms? Both local police and the FBI had intervened a year earlier after his family warned law enforcement about his mental health, and police had seized his shotgun at that time. Shouldn’t that have initiated a hearing under Indiana’s “red flag” law to bar Brandon Scott Hole from acquiring replacement firearms? It might have, the county prosecutor told the media today, had they pressed the red-flag case. Instead, Ryan Mears said, they stopped at the confiscation because prosecutors...

A brief response to our favorite Quislings. The time has come to address the accusation from some of America’s biggest appeasers of woke authoritarianism that we on the right are the “authoritarians” our fellow citizens should fear. The leaders of this smear campaign are people like David French, Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, and other self-appointed thought police of conservatism. For them, it is one step from fascism for Americans to direct governance toward the common good, i.e., toward breaking the grip of corporate oligarchs waging culture war against our country and our ways of life. Merely raising taxes on global...

NASA's Ingenuity today hovered in the skies of Mars making the equipment the first human-made helicopter to take flight on another planet.Amid cheers in the control room, engineers confirmed the diminutive helicopter had spun up its rotors, taken off, landed, and spun everything down, leaving the stage set for further tests. An image from the helicopter's onboard navigation camera showing its shadow on the surface of Mars was swiftly followed by another sequence from the Perseverance rover showing the helicopter hovering.Ingenuity's shadow on Mars. Source: Screengrab from NASA/ESA live feed (click to enlarge)As one of the newest bits of kit...

Sen. Chuck Schumer pressed President Biden on Friday to use executive action to wipe out up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, centering veterans and service members in his latest push. Flanked by a group of local veterans at Hunter College on the Upper East Side, the Senate majority leader said that too many college graduates — including combat veterans who risked their lives overseas — are shackled with crushing debt that plays an outsized role in their life decisions.