Free Republic

Florida Keys deputies Wednesday morning shot and killed an off-duty federal law enforcement officer who they said pointed a semi-automatic rifle at them. The deputies shot Lane Morgan Caviness, 48, at a house near mile marker 95 in Key Largo around 10:42 a.m. Eastern time. Monroe County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Adam Linhardt said deputies were at the house after receiving reports of an armed, intoxicated, suicidal man. Caviness was a commercial airline pilot who was also a sworn law enforcement officer with the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Air Marshal Service,...

Encouraging reports indicate that the more sensible of the states have finally begun to confront not only the leftist takeover of corporate boards and executive suites, but against the attempts by the modern malefactors of great power – Larry Fink and BlackRock, Brian Moynihan and Bank of America, and the rest of that crowd – to dictate American economic and social life under the banner of ESG. Things are moving quickly. Just recently Governor DeSantis announced a “flat ban” against investing Florida state or pension funds in ESG-involved investments. West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore listed the firms, including BlackRock, with...

On July 15, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton amended the complaint filed in federal court against the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, in the Texas lawsuit against the ATF. The complaint challenges the constitutionality of the NFA and the Gun Control Act of 1968 to regulate privately made silencers/suppressors/gun mufflers made and kept in Texas. The amendment incorporates the Second Amendment decision by the Court in Bruen, which establishes a refined and clarified procedure for courts to use in Second Amendment cases.The Texas case came into existence as part of the requirements of HB 957, which became law in Texas...

Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute has a much-linked article in the current (Summer 2022) issue of the City Journal with the title “The Corruption of Medicine.” The subject matter has substantial overlap with a Manhattan Contrarian post from last November with the title “The Progressive Neo-Racist Cancer Has Completely Destroyed The AMA.” Mac Donald’s piece goes deeply into what she calls “two related hypotheses” that have recently come to dominate the medical profession: Medical education, medical research, and standards of competence have been upended by two related hypotheses: that systemic racism is responsible both for [1] racial disparities...

The Bible In Paintings 2 ENCOURAGEMENT FOR APPRECIATING AND APPLYING GOD'S MESSAGE INTO THE FIERY FURNACE D A N I E L CHAPTER 3 King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, ninety feet high and nine feet wide. He then summoned all the provincial officials to come to the dedication of the image he had set up. So they stood before it. Then the herald loudly proclaimed, “As soon as you hear the sound of music, you must fall down and worship the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship...

"The man whose personal pronouns are “slippery when wet” and whose name became a verb after he was caught on an October 19, 2020, WORK Zoom call with WNYC radio and New Yorker staffers ‘taking a trip to palmdale’, Jeffrey Toobin has quit FakeNewsCNN after two decades of lying about Conservative Republican Patriots in general and years of doing so about President Donald Trump specifically. Some are taking part of his announcement (specifically “Oklahoma City bombing, coming in 2023”) as a threat and with many people in Oklahoma City covering things in tarps it is beginning to resemble the front...

Russian paratrooper reveals how he had NO idea he was invading Ukraine until the shelling started and tells how his comrades were slaughtered while using rusty machine guns and 'the tactics of our grandfathers' Pavel Filatiev, 33, highlights Russian army's shortcomings in explosive new book Paratrooper Pavel was part of invading force, but quit on medical grounds He now opposes war and said: 'We had no moral right to attack another country' Soldiers under Putin are 'dissatisfied' and under-supplied amid 'terrible war' Mr Filatiev, 33, dressed in his army uniform, was part of Russia's invading forces on February 24. But...

No, that headline’s not a joke. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, once so popular it had its own TV show solely dedicated to its heroics, has become a hyper-politicized, jackbooted bully that no longer serves the American people or the U.S. Constitution, which its employees are sworn to protect. It has become, instead, the intelligence arm and domestic enforcer of the far left. Did we say defund? Yes. But we don’t mean simply to cut its funding, as leftists have disastrously proposed for police forces across the country. We mean tear down the entire rotting edifice of the FBI and...

Federal agents removed top secret documents when they searched former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida residence on Monday as part of an investigation into possible violations of the Espionage Act and other laws, according to a search warrant made public on Friday. F.B.I. agents seized 11 sets of documents in all, including some marked as “classified/TS/SCI” — shorthand for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information,” according to an inventory of the materials seized in the search. Information categorized in that fashion is meant to be viewed only in a secure government facility. It was the latest stunning revelation from the series of...

We are in danger of losing not only the habits and institutions of republican self-government, but our very ability to remember and understand them. It will be as if America never existed. "We are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are . . ." — Leo Strauss It is possible (not certain, but possible) that within the next 20 years or so, the United States will no longer exist. That would be a great setback for human liberty. The end of the American republic would most likely mean the end of self-government all over the...

John did a commendable job filling in the all-important role of TWiP curator while I was away, though by his own admission he is weak at the Star Wars/Star Trek game, not to mention the semi-obscure semi-academic items I like to include, like send-ups of the stupid trolley car hypothetical beloved of idiot moral utilitarian bipeds who walk among us. And speaking of idiot moral utilitarian bipeds, such as the ones working for the FBI and Department of Justice. . .

Retired United States Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian predicts that the supply of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) missiles provided by the U.S. to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression will be depleted within the next three or four months. "[Three to four months is] a pretty wild guess, but I don't think that's crazy," Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Newsweek. "Some people have estimated a month or so. I don't think they're firing them that fast." "We will get to that point where the U.S. will have to reduce the number...

WASHINGTON (AP) — With inflation raging near its highest level in four decades, the House on Friday gave final approval to President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act. Its title raises a tantalizing question: Will the measure actually tame the price spikes that have inflicted hardships on American households? Economic analyses of the proposal suggest that the answer is likely no — not anytime soon, anyway. The legislation, which the Senate passed earlier this week and now heads to the White House for Biden’s signature, won’t directly address some of the main drivers of surging prices — from gas and...

Join with fellow FREEPERS across the world to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Agri-Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, Technology, and the Media.I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. (1 Timothy 2:1-2) Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

A cab driver who was accused of kidnapping a female passenger in Chicago and then sexually assaulting her pleaded guilty this week to one count of criminal sexual abuse causing bodily harm in exchange for a sentence of two years of probation, according to court records. Prosecutors dropped five Class X felony charges in their deal with Tarek Masri, including multiple counts of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Masri, now 59, was arrested at his Joliet home in 2018 after DNA material generated a hit in the sexual assault, which occurred three years earlier, police said. Early on...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

Almost 30 percent of children who received Pfizer’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine suffered heart-related effects, according to a new study out of Thailand. The study, released as a preprint that has not yet been peer-reviewed, examined 301 Thai students between the ages of 13 and 18 who had received the first dose of the shot without any negative effects to see how they reacted to the second dose. “Cardiovascular effects were found in 29.24% of patients, ranging from tachycardia, palpitation, and myopericarditis,” the preprint said. “Myopericarditis was confirmed in one patient after vaccination. Two patients had suspected pericarditis and four patients...

If you have followed my reporting you probably know about the protests happening in the Netherlands. Tens of thousands of farmers have taken to the streets to protest against new climate goals which will force farmers to shut down their farms. They have set hay bales on fire on motorways and dumped manure and even blocked supermarket distribution centers. According to calculations done by the Finance ministry, a whopping 11 200 livestock farmers will be forced to shut down by the government to reduce nitrogen emissions in order to meet European environmental rules. Another 17 600 farmers would need to...

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe argued that it is "virtually impossible" to prosecute his onetime boss, former President Donald Trump, for alleged mishandling of classified material. While chiding the FBI for "acting as the muscle" of the Democrats, the Trump-era spy chief hearkened back to Hillary Clinton's email situation and surmised that Trump possessed the "ultimate declassification authority," shielding him from liability. "I thought, surely this is not about classified documents and the president being in possession of those. It has to be more than that because the Department of Justice and the FBI have already set a...

Miranda Galbreath is a licensed professional counselor for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. In a two-minute video, she makes her case for regarding what she refers to as Minor-Attracted People (MAP) as the most vilified group of people in our society. She maintains that these harmful views are a result of our incorrect (read: ignorant) assumptions about pedophilia, which is a term that should be banished for all its pejorative connotations. Ms. Galbreath goes so far as to say that pedophilia has moved from being a diagnostic label to a hurtful, judgmental insult. Really? Where does she think the word...