Free Republic

Junior Johnson, a stock-car racing giant whose career spanned the sport’s history from its moonshining roots to its modern era as a fierce, hard-nosed driver and an innovative mechanic and team owner, has died. He was 88. Johnson’s passing was confirmed by the NASCAR Hall of Fame. He had been in declining health and entered hospice care earlier this week. Johnson was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in its inaugural Class of 2010. He won 50 races in NASCAR’s top division — the most of any driver without a championship — and added 132 victories and six championships...

Retiring GOP Rep. Mark Meadows has emerged as a leading candidate to replace acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who has been unable to escape President Trump’s doghouse, according to a reports. Mulvaney is expected to bolt from the administration after the Senate wraps up its impeachment trial, Politico reported, citing five administration sources. And that leaves Meadows — the staunchly pro-Trump North Carolinian — as the president’s apparent “chief-of-staff in waiting,” according to the website.

Screenshot from WBTV, green text by Dean Weingarten A view of firearms as a zero-sum game, where the destruction of a firearm means there will be one less firearm in the world, is a simplistic and childish view of reality. Firearms are a manufactured product. They were first manufactured with 14th century technology. Manufacturing them today is much easier.The idea that removing a few firearms from society makes society safer is a delusional view of reality. It is widely held by true believers in population disarmament. Police Chief Kerr Putney has the authority to sell 18,000 firearms held in storage,...

This horror video shows the moment a school police officer slams a young child on the ground twice before dragging the child off camera. The footage was recorded in Vance County middle school in Henderson, North Carolina on Thursday December 12. As the school resource officer — which is a member of law enforcement in charge ensuring school safety — makes his way with the child down the corridor. Then, suddenly, the officer stops and picks the child up before slamming them to the ground. The officer picks the child up off the ground before he slams the student down...

Lanisha Bratcher was finishing breakfast at home one morning at the end of July when there was a knock on her door. She had been discharged from the hospital the night before following a miscarriage that left her mourning the loss of her child. Her partner opened the door – it was the police. They burst into their North Carolina home “like the Dukes of Hazzard”, Bratcher said. There was a warrant out for her arrest, they told her. Bratcher had no idea what for. Her crime? Voting in the 2016 presidential election. Bratcher faces up to 19 months in...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — If you're systematically stealing money from a bank vault, it may not be a good idea to post the evidence on your social media pages. A bank employee in Charlotte, North Carolina, allegedly stole $88,000 from the bank's vault, according to a release from the United States Attorney's Office, Western District of North Carolina. And he wasn't bashful about advertising to his social media followers the life of luxury he was funding. The release said a criminal indictment was unsealed this week in federal court after the arrest of Arlando Henderson, 29, by the FBI in San...

In February 2018, California Rep. Devin Nunes released a four-page memo on “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The memo included two key claims: that the now-discredited Steele dossier “formed an essential part” of the Carter Page application, and that the application was compromised. Though Mr. Nunes has now been vindicated by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, at the time he was widely derided. Those who dismissed him included his Republican counterpart chairing the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr. In a July 24 story headlined “Burr breaks with Nunes,” CNN quoted...

Assignment asks middle schoolers 'How many slaves would equal 4 white people?' KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — A local middle school social studies assignment is raising serious concerns. Students at Kannapolis Middle School were asked how many slaves would be needed to equal at least four white people. The question was asked as part of a lesson on the Three-Fifths Compromise, which is a 1700's law to count slaves as less than white people. Content Continues Below But, parents are wondering why a teacher would think the assignment was acceptable. [‘Set your price for a slave': Missouri teacher placed on leave after...

On Wednesday, Wake Forest became the second Wake County town in a week to cancel its Christmas parade over safety fears. Santa Claus was planning to come to town on Dec. 14, but Wake Forest officials canceled the parade for what is though to be the first time since it started more than 71 years ago. Town officials said they had received credible information that “extremist” groups on both sides of the issue of how — and whether — to preserve and interpret symbols of the Confederacy were making plans online to attend the parade. Crabtree said no one from...

CMPD will be ending the electronic GPS monitoring system for homicide suspects in the Queen City. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney announced Friday that the department would be ending the electronic GPS monitoring system for homicide suspects. According to CMPD, the department is currently monitoring 463 suspects who have been ordered by a judge or magistrate to wear a monitoring device as a condition of their pre-trial release, including 31 people charged with murder. To date, 127 of those out on electronic monitors have cut theirs off and ran - with 18 still being sought....

Putney told WBTV News he will stay in his current position through the “preparation and execution” of the Republican National Convention in late August but didn’t give an exact retirement date. (Source: Paige Pauroso) CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - At the tail end of a press conference discussing how to improve electronic monitoring of homicide suspects, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney altered his plans to retire at the end of the year. “I intend to retire,” said Chief Putney. “It will not be January 1, 2020.” Putney told WBTV News he will stay in his current position through the “preparation...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has thousands of confiscated firearms stored in their facilities, according to Chief Kerr Putney. In an interview with WBTV anchor Molly Grantham, Putney explained why the department is keeping the confiscated guns locked behind closed doors when some of the firearms could be sold to vendors. “I don’t want to be responsible for having one of those weapons take a life here in Charlotte when we could have done something that’s within our purview because of a law enforcement reason to keep that from happening and that’s what I stand by,” said...

FBI and two of its former directors — Robert Mueller and James Comey — look increasingly incompetent ... It is now widely known that bureau officials who were directly tied to the “collusion” investigation against Donald Trump and the email security inquiry against Hillary Clinton had strong political bias against the current president. ... that anti-Trump bias is just the tip of the iceberg. Evidence such as the discredited Russian dossier and the bombshell wiretapping memo make it clear that Comey and the entire agency began with an agenda and then worked backwards, doing whatever was necessary to make their...

President Donald Trump has achieved more concrete progress for blacks, gays, and Jews than any other American president.That claim is sure to be disputed, if not mocked, by those for whom grievance and identity politics are a profession or a psychological crutch.Yet it remains true — and was thrown into sharp relief this week, as the Jussie Smollett case turned from one of the most horrific attacks in recent memory to the worst hate crime hoax in history.There are two reasons the media, Hollywood, and the Democratic political elite believed Smollett’s claims.First, he belongs to several victim categories: black, gay,...

RALEIGH Social studies teacher Keisha Worthey wants her 13-year-old students to consider the Native American perspective as they celebrate the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Worthey asked her students at East Millbrook Middle School in Raleigh to go beyond the traditional story about Pilgrims and their American Indian neighbors celebrating the “First Thanksgiving” in 1621. The seventh-grade students heard about how Thanksgiving is a day of mourning as opposed to a day of celebration among many Native Americans. “Our question for the day is how do we frame the narrative — or the story — of Thanksgiving?” Worthey told her class on...

The left’s latest charge against North Carolina Republicans is a doozy: They’re too cheap to prosecute criminals. That’s how they’re spinning a recent Charlotte Observer report that about half of all weapons charges in the state are dismissed —including 68% of cases in Mecklenburg County, 58% in Durham County and 45% in Wake County. The left’s attempt to blame the GOP rests, of course, on the idea that we can solve this — like every other problem — by spending more money. There’s some truth to this, as the Observer reports that North Carolina spends less per capita on its...

Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported. The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats. These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) charities and involved the active compliance with civil rights groups, government...

When folks across the eastern United States hear the term “nor’easter” they typically think of snow. But the recent storm that brushed the region’s coast left some thinking of a different word -- sand. The brunt of the "no-name nor’easter," as some are calling it, focused on the coast of the Carolinas, particularly the Outer Banks. “For much of the weekend, winds [were] gusting over 60 mph around Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, fueling massive waves that demolished dunes, exposing homes to the brutal surf,” AccuWeather National Weather Reporter Jonathan Petramala said during a report on the AccuWeather TV network.More images...

“I chose my life because, not for the money obviously, but because I get to see my family every day. That's what it's about. I got to see my parents every day growing up. And my kids get to see that too,” said Klinkner, the father of three with another one on the way. On Trump, Klinkner is pragmatic, “I am very happy with his policies, I just wish he’d put that Twitter down,” he said of the president’s unorthodox style of communicating. This cuts against the national media’s narrative that farmers will dump the president because of the trade...

Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl contends President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. John McCain made comments that interfered with his right to a fair trial at Fort Bragg. A military court has agreed to hear the appeal of Bowe Bergdahl, the Army soldier who left his post during a deployment in Afghanistan in 2009 to walk to another American base but got captured by the Taliban and held prisoner for five years. At a court-martial at Fort Bragg in 2017, Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion to shirk hazardous duty and to misbehavior before the enemy. He was sentenced to a $10,000...