Free Republic

As described by U.S. naval veteran Edward L. Beach, service on a World War II submarine represented ‘stress to the ultimate degree’. Men had to be constantly on the alert for attacking aircraft, prepared to make dangerous dives and endure prolonged depth-charge attacks.The dangers faced by submariners during World War II are apparent in the high attrition rates. According to one estimate, 1,280 submarines were lost in action or by accident during the Second World War.8 In the U.S. submarine service, about 16,000 officers and enlisted men made war patrols; from among these 3,406 died in action. This amounted to...

He says he went into the restaurant and found nobody in the kitchen, and no customers in the building.If you've tried to order from a fast-food restaurant recently, you may have noticed a longer wait for service. A Pittsburgh's Action News 4 viewer shared a video of one local restaurant with not a single employee or customer inside. (Click the video player above to watch.) "Showed up to this Burger King on Noblestown Road, and there is nobody in here. Nobody in here. Went to the drive-through, nothing," he says in the video. In the video, Lazz Tantalo described his...

Cops responding to the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre “made the wrong decision” when they waited to breach the classroom door where a gunman had barricaded himself inside with children, a top law enforcement official said Friday. The on-scene commander made the call that the carnage at Robb Elementary School on Tuesday had gone from an active shooter situation to a “barricaded suspect” situation, Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a briefing Friday. “With the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision, it was the wrong...

Two boys, at the time 13 and 14, were arrested in 2018 for planning a Columbine-inspired attack on an Uvalde school — in 2022. The boys, who were not named at the time of their arrests, would be 17 and 18 now. Earlier this week, an 18-year-old young man shot and killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. At the time of the teen’s arrests, Uvalde Chief of Police Daniel Rodriguez said that a Morales Junior High School student, 14, and a former Morales student, 13, were planning to conduct the attack four years from...

California’s rate of gun deaths has declined by 10% since 2005, even as the national rate has climbed in recent years. And Texas and Florida? Their rates of gun deaths have climbed 28% and 37% respectively. California now has one of the 10 lowest rates of gun deaths in the nation. Texas and Florida are headed in the wrong direction. Obviously, factors beyond a state’s laws can affect the rate of firearms deaths. The national health statistics take into account differences in the age distribution of state populations, but they don’t control for every factor that might affect gun deaths.

Harold Billow, 99, the last known survivor of a World War II POW massacre during the Battle of the Bulge, will be laid to rest Thursday in Pennsylvania. Billow, who died May 17, was attached to the Army’s 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion when his unit surrendered and he was taken prisoner by Waffen SS soldiers as German forces launched an offensive in Belgium to try to change the war’s tide in December 1944. According to various accounts, the Germans opened fire on the unarmed prisoners in a field, killing more than 80 in what came to be known as...

After several weeks of deadlock, Russia’s military appears to have found a way to advance in the Donbas – pounding it with such intense, unsophisticated artillery that Ukraine’s exhausted defenders are having to yield.Volodymyr Zelenskiy rarely gives casualty figures but Ukraine’s president said last Sunday that “50 to 100 Ukrainian troops die on Donbas frontlines each day”, meaning perhaps 3,000 a month in the grisly war of attrition.Wounded will typically be three or perhaps four times as much, a serious loss for a Donbas defence force estimated at 30,000 before the war began, although the numbers increased following Ukraine’s mass...

The FBI might not have found any Civil War-era gold at a remote woodland site in Pennsylvania - but it's definitely got records of the agency's 2018 dig, and will soon have to turn them over to a father-son pair of treasure hunters. A federal judge has ordered the FBI to speed up the release of records about the search for the legendary gold, ruling Monday in favor of Finders Keepers, the treasure hunting outfit that led FBI agents to the remote site. The group accuses the Justice Department of slow-walking their request for information. The FBI must turn over...

Worthy spoke with the “Stoney & Jansen Show” on 97.1 The Ticket and voiced is frustrations with modern professional basketball, saying the “rush” of players spending less time in college is hurting the sport at the next level. “I mean, Kareem had four years with John Wooden, Michael Jordan and I had three years with Dean Smith, Isiah [Thomas] had some years with Bobby Knight,” Worthy explained. “So you learned the fundamentals,” Worthy said. “Not only that, you learned how to live. You learned how to balance your freaking checkbook in college, there’s a lot of things. When you don’t...

Several children at Uvalde Elementary School made 911 calls begging for help as a lone gunman shot their classmates and teachers during Tuesday’s massacre in the western Texas town of Uvalde that killed 19 students and two teachers. The report of the 911 calls was made by Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw at a press briefing Friday. McCraw also said the on scene commander, the Uvalde police chief, decided the situation was a barricade and not an active shooter, even as 911 calls came in throughout the hour from the children, and held off storming the classroom...

"The platform's choice to release this special now, during a wave of unprecedented anti-trans legislation, is unconscionable," according to Vox.This week, British comedian Ricky Gervais released a new Netflix standup special, SuperNature, which has been widely heralded by cultural critics in the media as transphobic.. At this point, deeming standup specials transphobic—and taking to task the company that has platformed them—is a well-polished act. The only thing that's changed since this last happened, to Dave Chappelle, is Netflix's resolve to stand its ground. In October, Netflix employees crashed a meeting of company executives and staged a walkout over the streaming...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to create a new alliance, an alternative to the EU, that could include the Baltic states as well, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera has reported citing its sources. This alliance could include, in addition to the UK and Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and possibly later Turkey. Johnson believes that the members of the alliance would be motivated by their distrust of Brussels and their frustration with Berlin’s reaction to Russian aggression, united by enthusiasm for national sovereignty, liberal market economy, and a completely unambiguous assessment of the...

Student calls to 911: 12:03—whispered she's in room 112 12:10—said multiple dead 12:13—called again 12:16—says 8-9 students alive 12:19—student calls from room 111 12:21—3 shots heard on call 12:36—another call 12:43—asks for police 12:47—asks for police

The 2022 midterm elections are now 165 days away, and Republicans have a six-point lead in their bid to recapture control of Congress.The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, if the elections for Congress were held today, 47% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Republican candidate, while 41% would vote for the Democrat. Just four percent (4%) would vote for some other candidate, but another seven percent (7%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)Republicans have lost three points of their advantage since last week, when they led 48%-39%. The Generic...

The Calf Canyon Fire was caused by a “pile burn holdover from January” that was started by the Santa Fe National Forest Service, officials said on Friday. The blaze later merged with the Hermits Peak Fire – also started by a federal prescribed burn – to become the largest fire in New Mexico history. The Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire has burned more than 312,000 acres as of Friday morning and is 47% contained. More than 3,000 personnel are battling the blaze that has destroyed 761 structures, including hundreds of homes. “The Santa Fe National Forest is 100 percent focused on...

Dr. Mehmet Oz has seen enough, and he isn’t waiting for a recount. Sitting on a 910-vote lead in preliminary, unofficial tallies from Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary race as of Friday morning, Oz declared himself the presumptive winner in a new video release in which he took a definitive turn toward a general election campaign between two unorthodox candidates who rocketed to personal fame in wildly different ways. That race to come, for a Senate seat currently held by Republican Pat Toomey, who did not seek re-election this year, is also one of a handful that will be pivotal in...

President Joe Biden plans to travel to Uvalde, Texas this weekend to “grieve with the community” following a deadly shooting that left at least 19 elementary school students and two adults dead. It’s the closest Biden will be to the southern border since taking office. The president is right to visit Uvalde, but there’s no reason he can’t visit the border too, even though he will most likely use his trip to grandstand about restricting Americans’ access to guns. Uvalde is about an hour from illegal immigration hotspots such as Eagle Pass and Del Rio, making them an easy stop...

Wisconsin voters took legal action against their state’s five largest cities on Wednesday over the illegal use of unmanned drop boxes during the 2020 election. Filed by the Thomas More Society on behalf of voters against Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee, and Racine, the legal complaints allege that city officials ignored state law by implementing unmanned drop boxes over the course of the 2020 cycle. “In 2020, the cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay made an agreement with the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life [CTCL] to use the drop boxes to get these cities’ residents...

President Joe Biden said the the ‘protests’ in the summer of 2020 unified people of every generation. First of all, they were more like riots than protests. Secondly, the only people they united were the far left radicals doing the rioting. Most people were repulsed by the left’s behavior. Parts of cities were burned or destroyed in other ways. Biden thinks this was unifying? This transcript is directly from the White House: You know, I know events remembering your loved ones, even though they’re meant with great reverence, are really hard. Everything is coming back as if it was —...

At a press conference Wednesday in the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott almost said something profound. Almost. Asked by reporters about gun laws in Texas, Abbott responded by talking about the need for more “mental health-resources” — a catch-all term often bandied about by Republican politicians in the wake of mass shootings like the one in Uvalde, in which 19 elementary school kids and two teachers were killed by a deeply disturbed 18-year-old. Abbott, though, began going in a different direction with his response. He noted that 18-year-olds have been able to buy rifles...