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A $50 gift card was available for a non-functioning firearm, $100 for a shotgun or hunting rifle, $150 for a revolver or semi-automatic handgun, and $200 for a semi-automatic rifle.

Newly released body-camera footage shows the moments Houston police officer Orlando Hernandez, 25, was speeding, driving with one hand before hitting and killing 62-year-old Michael Wayne Jackson. On Dec. 4, Jackson was walking to his barber when the officer hit and killed him with his police cruiser. The case is yet to be presented to a grand jury by prosecutors, said Dane Schiller, a spokesperson for Harris County district attorney’s office.

Breitbart News reporter Warner Todd Huston was recently suspended from Twitter for stating his belief that transgender people suffer from mental illness. Breitbart News reporter Warner Todd Huston was recently locked out of his Twitter account following his reply to a tweet published by the Independent. The Independent‘s tweet related to Sheila Jeffreys, an Australian academic and feminist who claims that transgender woman are not real women. Jeffreys described transgender rights movements as: “[One of many] internet exploited sexual fetishes that try to make themselves a rights movement.”

A Texas woman, wanting to give a homeless guy some reprieve from the cold and a warm place to rest, invited him in to stay the night in her spare bedroom. -snip The 66-year-old woman, whose name was not released, lives alone with her two granddaughters in Houston. With a spare bedroom and a big heart, she offered the space to Thomas Smith, who had no place else to go. Everyone in the house had turned in for the night, or so the woman thought, when she was woken up by what Smith was doing, just after 1:30 a.m. According...

Christians across the nation are mobilizing to defend a group of Houston pastors who were ordered by the city to turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity issues or Houston mayor. Their message is simple – Don’t Mess with Texas Preachers. Dave Welch, the executive director of the Texas Pastor Council, is one of the five ministers who received a subpoena. He said he will not be intimidated by Annise Parker, who is the city's first openly lesbian mayor, nor will he comply with the city’s demands. “My answer to that is – bring it on,” he said....

FULL TITLE: Houston Mayor Annise Parker calls Phil Robertson a 'redneck wingnut' whose views are 'completely irrelevant' “I have never watched ‘Duck Dynasty,’ so I don’t think about it much at all,” Parker responded. “I’ve been a gay community activist since the mid-70s.

In this epsiode of the Conscience of Kansas radio program I interview movie producer Jeremy Boreing from Declaration Entertainment. Next we have a moment of truth from Doug Giles from Clash Radio. I also talk to writer Warner Todd Huston about the Andrew Breitbart case. It is an exciting show and we invite you to listen and comment.

One of the best ways to cajole a reader into accepting a point of view is to use emotional descriptives in writing. It is the difference between opinion style editorials -- like what I write -- and straight news -- like what a wire service like the Associated Press is supposed to be writing. Unfortunately, the AP has been adding ever larger amounts of emotional language to its news and, not surprisingly, that emotion is used to give support to the American left and to denigrate the right. A recent AP story about the rise of the new conservative movement...

Greenpeace activist 'harpooned' while freeing tuna in the Mediterranean A GREENPEACE activist trying to free tuna from a commercial fishing net in the Mediterranean was harpooned through the leg by fishermen on a French boat, the environmental group said. "In a non-violent action, Greenpeace activists in zodiac boats attempted to lower the side of a purse seine net with sand bags to free the fish," said Isabelle Philippe of Greenpeace France. "At that moment, fishermen violently attacked the activists, harpooning one of them through the leg," she said. The injured man, a British national identified by the group as Frank...

In this epsiode of the Conscience of Kansas I interview Lynda Tyler from Kansans for Liberty. We discuss the upcoming TEA Party in Wichita Kansas. Next we hear from Doug Giles of clashradio.com talking about man made global warming. In the second half of the program we talk with Warner Todd Huston about the national story of Marvel Comics and Captain America and TEA Party goers being depicted as a white racist hate group. Get the details here!

On the surface, they seemed like an odd match. Classmates knew Nur Mohamed as the guy who brought drugs to school. And they knew Danish Minhas as the guy who made the morning announcements over the campus intercom. Now, Houston police are saying Minhas hired Lee High School classmate Mohamed to kill his mother and the two are due in court Thursday morning for the murder of 43-year-old Tabassum Khan. "Nur Mohamed confessed to stabbing Khan several dozen times," said Sgt. Brian Harris of the Houston Police Department.

Chronicle staff writer, Robert Collier, wants the US to "negotiate" with the radical, Islamist, terrorists and the old guard Saddamists that are vexing Iraq's attempts to move into the 21st century preventing them in their laudable attempt to build a nation answerable to Iraqis of every stripe. "U.S. must negotiate with insurgents and militias, experts say", Collier breathlessly informs us. His "experts", though, leave much to be desired for reliability. Collier seems to think the insurgents and terror outfits should be treated as if they are merely interested parties, as if they were the same kind of political party...

It amazes me that this Kwanza business has been washed of the real life criminal activity of its creator. The man was a race monger, a violent thug, a rapist, a torturer... just a horrible human being. Yet never a word of this man's evil is ever uttered when his pseudo holiday is discussed in the MSM. And the Cox News Service did it again on Christmas in theirs titled Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years. Kwanzaa turns 40 today. The colorful holiday, invented by California professor Maulana Ron Karenga in 1966, is like a jazz musician who fuses...

On March 15th, 1784 at twelve in the afternoon, after eight long, exhausting years of war, General George Washington unexpectedly entered a room filled with his highest officers gathered together to consider how to address the Continental Army's predicament. A shocked gathering listened to their commanding General address them. A letter had recently been passed around the officer corps of the Revolutionary army calling for them to consider leading their army in a march upon the Congress, to lead a coup and take hold of the recalcitrant government forcing them to subservience to the military. The officers and men had...

Once in a while an Op Ed will cross the wires that is so egregious, so absurd, that it deserves special attention. The honors this time goes to James Reston, Jr. (I am sure his Father would want us to distinguish the secondary status) for his surreal garbling of history in The American Inquisition, that he penned for USA Today. (Published on 4/17/06, go here for article) Reston is obviously one of those anti-religious types who sees an evil "Right-wing Christian" around every corner. He takes his place as the newest member of the Chicken Little Club (maybe a Chicken...

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and been trying to shed light on the murky world of "earmarking" and from N.Z.Bear's www.porkbusters.org we have the latest report card on Sen. Coburn's efforts. It's sort of hard to get the public's interest on this issue because it is so technical and not an issue easily sloganed or 10 second sound-bited. "Earmarks" don't sound very ominous, for sure. But these earmarks are rotten to the core and usage of this spending convention is one of the things that is bleeding us dry and is responsible for some of the worst waste in government. When...

According to an entry in Media Bistro's DC Fishbowl, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has sent out an email whining that the Media are so put upon as to imagine they might be forced to martyrdom at the hands of the nefarious Bush administration, cheered on by Bush's henchmen. I don't know about you, but I hear the strains of the world's tiniest violin wafting through the air. Or, as my sainted Mother always said when we kids were complaining, "Let's throw a pity party" for him. Galileo-like, Keller seems to imagine he is headed for persecution by...

The Let Them Rest In Peace Act now winding its way through the Illinois state government is an important piece of legislation, not only because of what it is targeted at today, but also because of its larger consequences. Many may have heard of a sick-minded organization that has been picketing the funerals of US soldiers. Their position is that US soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of the punishment visited upon us by God because of our society's acceptance of homosexuals. Tortured logic, or shall we say no logic at all, to say the least....

George Will has an interesting article about our Illinois Gubernatorial candidate, Judy Barr Topinka. (A 'Straight Talk" Test For 2006) It's mostly just straight forward discussion of the GOP's tenuous possibility to get back in political power in Illinois, with a mention of same in California and New York state. But, the article is mostly about Illinois' situation with our brash "straight talking" candidate, Judy Barr. Most of it isn't too revealing until you get to the last two paragraphs and then you hit paydirt... Topinka says Karl Rove urged her to run, hoping to offset in Illinois a probable...

Now THIS is a crazy story. (Funeral Ambush Story) I am sure many of you are aware of the computer game Warcraft and the large community of on-line players who have created characters and have gotten to "know" other players through this outlet. Many of these people have been playing this game for years and their characters have gained a certain level of notoriety amongst other players. They then form clubs (called "Guilds" in the game language) and fight other clubs for status. Whole communities of these characters have been formed and real people spend thousands of hours in this...