Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat who was one of the longest serving members of Texas’ Congressional delegation and a longtime advocate for progressive causes, died on Friday amid her battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 74. Jackson Lee began her congressional career as an underdog, defeating four-term U.S. Rep. Craig Washingtonin the 1994 Democratic primary, before establishing herself as a fixture in Congress and Houston with ties to the highest reaches of the Democratic Party. Jackson Lee was a progressive fixture on Capitol Hill for decades. She was an early opponent of the Iraq War and advocate...

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court struck down a West Virginia law that protects female athletes from male athletes who think they are women. According to NBC News, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to halt the law, which prevents so-called “transgender” athletes from competing on teams that align with their “gender identity” in the state’s public schools and colleges. Reportedly, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old “transgender” child, argued that the law prevented “her” from running on the girls’ cross-country team and track teams at her middle school (NBC News):The federal appeals court, which is based in Richmond,...

Prominent Detroit synagogue leader Samantha Woll was found stabbed to death outside her home Saturday morning, according to police and reports. The “politically connected” synagogue president, 40, was found outside her home in the city’s Lafayette Park neighborhood, east of downtown, the Detroit Free Press reported. Detroit police responded to a 911 call of an unresponsive person around 6:30 a.m. and found a body outside a home on Joliet Place, according to multiple published reports. Detroit police are probing the deadly mystery, but in a statement posted on social media, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she was “horrified to...

It has been reported that the family had watched YouTube tutorials to prepare for living in the wildnerness.Earlier this month, a solo hiker near the Gold Creek Campground made the grim discovery of the bodies of Rebecca Vance, 42; her 14-year-old son; and her sister, Christine Vance, 41, all residents of Colorado Springs. The mummified remains of a family who attempted to live off-grid were discovered in July in Colorado's Gunnison National Forest. According to NBC News, the family reportedly relied only on YouTube videos. It's a sad lesson in the dangers of unprepared wilderness living. The pandemic inspired off-grid...

August 27 2023 Black Rock Desert, NEVADA - "30 seconds, send your leader to my vehicle, let's talk, get off the fucken road" - Tribal Ranger announced on the highway leading to #BurningMan festival where climate activists blocked the road. About 37 seconds later a ranger RAMMED through blockade, made arrest at gun point. Climate activists from XR and “7 Seven Circles” shut down highway leading to the Burning Man Festival, withing the tribal lands. Attendees quickly became irate, confronting the group blockading the road and physically attempting to remove the blockade. Some attendees sped thru close by the chained...

Five women intentionally clogged a toilet inside a Florida chicken wing restaurant over the weekend, igniting a brawl between the group and employees, police said. The incident began around 9 p.m. Saturday at Papa Bees in Longwood, a suburb of Orlando. A supervisor told authorities that the women stuffed a restroom toilet with wads of toilet paper. The women were blamed because they were the only customers inside the restaurant. An employee cleaned the bathroom. However, one of the women went inside the bathroom afterward and the toilet was stuffed with toilet paper again, according to an arrest report obtained...

A Russian fighter jet accidentally bombed the Russian city of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine, causing a massive blast that injured three people and lifted a car onto the roof of a store. The incident involving a Sukhoi-34 supersonic plane took place late Thursday, causing an explosion and leaving a huge crater near the center of Belgorod, located just 25 miles from the Ukrainian border. Video from the scene showed piles of detritus littering the street, multiple mangled cars and a building with shattered windows. The footage also showed a car resting upside down on the roof of a...

A California mother has filed a lawsuit against several different Shasta County institutions over the slaughtering of her 9-year-old daughter’s pet goat. Jessica Long originally filed the lawsuit in August against multiple sheriff's deputies; the lawsuit was amended last month to include the Shasta District Fair and Event Center (referred to as the Shasta Fair Association), the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department and Shasta County. It states that in July, two Shasta County sheriff’s deputies drove over 500 miles to Sonoma County to confiscate Long’s daughter’s pet goat, Cedar, and return him to the Shasta Fair Association to be slaughtered.

The Flagler County Sheriff Office arrested a 17-year-old boy at Matanzas High School for attacking his teacher. Deputies say, upon arrival they saw a female paraprofessional on the ground with severe injuries after what they say was an unprovoked attack. This video contains graphic content and may be unsuitable for some viewers.

A former FBI agent and senior official for counterintelligence operations in New York was arrested and charged for his involvement with a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to Fox News. Charles McGonigal, special agent in charge of the counterintelligence division of the FBI's New York field office from 2016 to 2018, allegedly violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian who was charged in 2022 for violating sanctions against him. McGonigal was among top FBI officials who learned of claims from President Donald Trump's team that Russia had compromising knowledge about then-candidate Hillary Clinton, which subsequently...

Barbara Walters, the groundbreaking TV journalist who interviewed presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama, died Friday. She was 93. Walters’ death was announced by her longtime employer, ABC News. Her cause of death was not reported. ...

Police in Monroe County Pa., have arrested a man in the fatal stabbings of four sleeping students at the University of Idaho last month. The killings discovered Nov. 13 at the off-campus apartment house shocked people across the nation. The town had not had a single murder in seven years prior to the quadruple murder. Arrest paperwork filed in Monroe County Court obtained by the Associated Press said Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was being held for extradition to Idaho on a warrant for first-degree murder. The students, three of whom lived together about a mile from their campus, were: Kaylee...

Vladimir Putin does have early stage Parkinson's disease and pancreatic cancer, leaked spy documents have alleged in the latest unverified claim about the tyrant's ill health. The Russian leader has been plagued with rumours about his illnesses for months and he has regularly appeared twitching and unsteady in public, sparking hope in Ukraine and the West the despot could soon relinquish power. Claims have been circulating among opposition figures, fuelled by his unexplained absences and his shaky public appearances, that he is battling serious health problems but they have always been rubbished by the Kremlin. -snip- 'Putin is regularly stuffed...

An electric vehicle ran out of juice on a road in West Virginia. Thankfully for the driver, there was an ironic group that came to the rescue – five coal miners. Randy Smith – a Republican member of the West Virginia Senate representing District 14 and a coal miner – shared an intriguing situation that happened on Friday. An electric car ran out of battery charge on U.S. 48, and stopped right in front of the Mettiki Coal access road in Tucker County. Luckily for the stranded driver from out of town, workers from the fossil fuel mine were ready...

A recent event in West Virginia was dripping with irony. Apparently, tourists traveling from DC in an electric powered vehicle (EV) laughed as they passed gas stations until they ran out of juice 170 miles into their journey. Ironically, their trip abruptly ended ended at the entrance to a coal mine. The DC folks in the dead EV stopped laughing and had to be rescued. 5 heroic coal miners pushed the dead vehicle to their plant to be re-charged and saved the day. Recently, our crack Commander-in-Chief set a goal of 50 percent of new car sales will be electric...

Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whose rise to power in the Soviet Union set in motion a series of revolutionary changes that transformed the map of Europe and ended the Cold War that had threatened the world with nuclear annihilation, has died in Moscow. [A classic New York Times eulogy. VERY long, but an excellent political history of the USSR from the 1930s to the late 1990s. No NYT pay wall. MSN.com publishes all of it.]

Watch the German delegation’s response at UNGA when Trump says “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”

VIDEO AT LINK.................... Biden admin targets Amish farmer | Tucker Carlson Miller’s Organic Farm is located in the remote Amish village of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. The farm supplies everything from grass-fed beef and cheese, to raw milk and organic eggs, to dairy from grass-fed water buffalo and all types of produce, all to roughly 4,000 private food club members who pay top dollar for high quality whole food. The private food club members appreciate their freedom to get food from an independent farmer that isn’t processing his meat and dairy at U.S. Department of Agriculture facilities, which mandates that food be...

It’s the height of summer, and Amos Miller has much on his mind as he surveys the bounty of the land. The Upper Leacock Amish farmer and proprietor of Miller’s Organic Farm thinks about the field of hay he must bale before an impending thunderstorm arrives. He studies his herd of 45 dairy cows staying cool underneath a grove of trees. Miller contemplates ongoing food shortages that have hit grocery stores for months around the country. He also has the looming threat of a possible jail sentence and more than $300,000 in fines in relation to his years-long court battle...

An 80-year-old woman has been banned from a YMCA pool after she demanded a transgender employee leave the women's locker room. Julie Jaman was at the Mountain View pool in the City of Port Townsend when she was made aware of the trans worker, identified as Clementine Adams, being in the changing room while she was taking a shower and 'heard a man's voice'. 'I saw a man in a woman's bathing suit watching maybe four or five little girls pulling down their suits in order to use the toilet,' Jaman told KIRO. 'I asked if he had a penis...