Free Republic

Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200m to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes. US district judge Christopher Conner awarded $106m in compensatory damages and $100m in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions”. In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8m...

ABILENE, TX -(Ammoland.com)- Why would the Census Bureau request customer records from American gun holster companies? That is the question AmmoLand News is asking. Several major holster manufacturers/providers received notices from the Department of Commerce Census Bureau requesting order numbers, product descriptions, and where the items were being shipped. A few holster companies have refused to turn over the requested information to the federal government. ... The companies worry about the Biden administration using the information to target concealed firearms carriers. Since the Bruen decision, there has been an explosion of people in the former “may issue” states looking...

A would-be robber was critically injured after being shot by a store owner in Norco early Sunday in a dramatic incident that was captured on surveillance video. An employee who reached out to KTLA said the video shows a man armed with an assault-style rifle walk into the Norco Market at 816 Sixth Street around 2:45 a.m., point the weapon at the owner, and order him to put his “hands in the air.” Within just a few seconds, the owner steps behind a glass display and fires a shotgun at the suspect, who immediately runs out of the store screaming...

President Sergio Mattarella has dissolved Italy's parliament. The move comes after several key parties refused to form a coalition with Prime Minister Mario Draghi, prompting his resignation. Italy's President Sergio Mattarella has signed a decree dissolving the country's parliament. This now paves the way for fresh elections to be held.

UTVs with antitank guided missiles have been a staple in the conflict. The Drive reports that the Ukrainian military has been using UTVs, thought to be Polaris Rangers and Polaris MRZR Alphas, armed with Stugna-P antitank guided missiles to combat Russian tanks. These antitank guided missiles, or ATGMs, can be mounted on vehicles, shoulder fired, or launched from the ground. There have been reports of Ukraine’s military using UTVs as far back as 2019, before the current conflict with Russia. Some of these have been seen with ATGMs mounted on them while others seem to just be used as transportation....

Joe Biden used the e-mail pseudonym 'Perter Henderson'. Check out the following image of a Hunter Biden email with 'Love Dad'. This was an email sent during a time when Hunter was devolving quickly and getting divorced. People were coming out of the woodworks and getting sloppy with their email security. Other Internet reports have Hunter labeling his dad as a pedophile, and there is plenty more information out there to support that claim. This opens up a lot of email and text messages on Hunter's laptop that put Joe Biden in the crosshairs of knowing about and perhaps participating...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 988, the No Patient Left Alone Act, to guarantee Florida families the fundamental right to visit their loved ones who are receiving care in hospitals, hospices, and long-term care facilities. No health care facility in Florida may require a vaccine as a condition of visitation and every health care facility must allow their residents and patients to be hugged by their loved ones. ... Although the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reinstated federal visitation protections for long term care facilities in late 2020, CMS continues to waive visitation...

SAN RAMON, California — Chevron intends to sell its vast headquarters campus in San Ramon, keep its head offices in the same East Bay city and shift jobs to Texas, a move that could deal a fresh blow to the Bay Area economy. The energy giant said it will cover relocation costs for some employees to move from San Ramon to Texas. “Chevron plans to sell our Chevron Park campus and move to new modern leased space in San Ramon,” the oil titan said in comments emailed to this news organization. ... “Chevron will remain headquartered in California, where the...

U.S. liquified natural gas exporter Freeport LNG will shut down its export facility in Texas for at least three weeks because of an explosion incident. According to Reuters, Freeport LNG informed about this late on 8 June 2022, after evaluating damage to the facility. The facility is located in Quintana along the Texas Gulf Coast, about 112 kilometres south of Houston. Freeport LNG operates one of the largest LNG liquefaction and export facilities in the world; specifically, it is the seventh-largest in the world and the second-largest in the U.S. Therefore, this shutdown will likely impact European and Asian LNG...

The Supreme Court has weighed in on when federal law enforcement agents can be sued for excessive force. In a 6 – 3 decision on Wednesday, the court ruled against a man who had sued a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent for use of excessive force, USA Today reported. Robert Boule, the owner of the bed and breakfast, Smuggler’s Inn in Blaine, Washington, said that a border patrol agent had pushed him to the ground in 2014 and said that after he reported the agent to his superiors the agent reported him to the IRS. ... “The 6-3 conservative...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation against "Twitter for potentially deceiving Texas consumers" as well as Texas businesses, over fake bot accounts on the platform. This comes after Elon Musk's attorney filed a letter saying that the $44 billion acquirement deal could be on the rocks if Twitter doesn't reveal the number of fake accounts on the platform. Paxton released the information about the investigation that Twitter is in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, saying "Twitter has received intense scrutiny in recent weeks over claiming in its financial regulatory filings that fewer than 5%...

The company revealed that it has lost $660 million outfitting the next presidential jets—so far. Boeing should have rejected then-President Donald Trump’s proposed terms to build two new Air Force One aircraft, the company’s CEO said Wednesday. Dave Calhoun spoke Wednesday on the company’s quarterly earnings call, just hours after Boeing disclosed that it has lost $660 million transforming two 747 airliners into flying White Houses. “Air Force One I'm just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation, a very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken,” Calhoun said. “But we are where...

The Biden administration says it’s ruled out conducting one type of anti-satellite weapon test. While on a visit to her home state April 18, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech at Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., formalizing the administration’s prior admonishments of an ASAT test by Russia in 2021. Harris committed the the U.S. will not “conduct destructive, direct-ascent, anti-satellite missile testing.” She said the decision was one step toward “writing new rules of the road to ensure all space activities are conducted in a responsible, peaceful, and sustainable manner.” Harris cited not only Russia’s recent test, but also...

WASHINGTON >> One Navy SEAL candidate died and a second was in the hospital after falling ill just hours after they successfully completed the grueling Hell Week test that ends the first phase of assessment and selection for Navy commandos, the Navy said Saturday. The Navy said both were rushed to the hospital in California. The Navy said neither one had experienced an accident or unusual incident during the five-and-a-half-day Hell Week.

Boeing has decided due to the US District Court halt of the mandate and due to State level bans on mandates to drop the covid-19 mandate for US employees. Boeing posted this decision to their internal employee newsletter Boeing News Now.

I got a call from a friend in Ridgewood, New Jersey, who said that Ridgewood High School teachers will be providing classroom instruction from home via video while substitute teachers monitor the class with the students present. It is claimed by the school that teachers are too valuable to be in the classroom and exposed to covid, so they are hiring substitute teachers to be in the classrooms to monitor the students. The students must be present in the classroom while wearing masks all day. It seems substitute teachers must be expendable since they can be in the classroom, and...

Independence Pass east of Aspen is listed as closed according to the state’s transportation department, but the road was not shut down Wednesday because of mudslides but rather to lessen traffic. Earlier in the day, the Colorado Department of Transportation marked the road as closed on its travelers update site http://www.cotrip.org because of a “safety closure due to mudslide,” and Pitkin County Undersheriff Alex Burchetta said Wednesday afternoon the county sent out an alert about 3:30 p.m. as such, based on that information. However, there were not any mudslides and the messaging “evolved” and was changed by CDOT, Burchetta said....

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that federal laws banning firearms dealers from selling handguns to customers under the age of 21 were unconstitutional. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said in the decision that there was no reason to treat the Second Amendment any differently from other constitutional rights citizens enjoy no later than the age of 18. The court ruled that 18-year-olds possess Second Amendment rights, and the federal government failed “to justify its infringement of those rights under the appropriate level of scrutiny.”

This is totally a social media sourced oddball thread, but does anyone else have a video of this and can capture what Jennifer Ware claims to have captured? Do any of you know what that black figure could be?

A statement issued by the Turkish Ministry of Defense regarding the ownership of the Incirlik base and all the weapons systems at its disposal! The announcement came as a blow because US Pentagon officials themselves did not expect any Turkish moves or statements involving the Incirlik base. And yet the announcement of the Turkish Ministry of Defense does not simply involve the Incirlik base but refers to the Turkey-US Defense Treaty that was first revealed by WarNews247 a few days ago. The Turkish media clearly state that this is Ankara’s response to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.