Free Republic

President Joe Biden spoke at the 40th Annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service on Saturday, using the occasion to push gun control, police reform, and the narrative that the January 6 protests were an “insurrection” and a fundamental threat to democracy. The president spoke on the steps of Capitol Hill, praising the Capitol Police who defended the building during the January 6 protests. “Here, nine months ago, your brothers and sisters thwarted an unconstitutional and fundamentally un-American attack on our nation’s values and our votes,” Biden said. “Because of you, Democracy survived.”

A jury on Thursday found a Virginia man, accused of shooting his next-door neighbor, guilty of first-degree murder. Michael Hetle, a 52-year-old former police officer and NASA executive, shot 24-year-old Javon Prather seven times, a video of which was caught by a Ring doorbell camera, local news outlet WTOP reported. Hetle and Prather had feuded for years, arguing over mundane things like dog poop and loud music, according to local news outlets. Since 2016, Hetle has called the police to complain about barking dog noises coming from Prather's house, WTOP said. Before the jury, Hetle's attorney argued that he acted...

Dear Gov. Cooper, We write to you today as citizens of the state of North Carolina, many of whom voted for you, who care deeply about social justice issues, and who own firearms. We are writing to you about H.B. 398, which has passed the North Carolina House and Senate on party-line votes and now sits at your desk. We ask you, despite the partisan nature of previous votes, to sign this bill, as we consider the current law does nothing to promote firearms safety or social justice, and instead is a tax and legal burden on working class...

On this episode of the Resistance Library Podcast, Sam and Dave discuss Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston is a singular figure in American history and consciousness. During the early period of his acting career, he was known for historical and Biblical epics. After his career waned throughout the 1960s, he was reborn as a science fiction actor, thanks to his starring role in Planet of the Apes. While often viewed as a bit of camp today, this film and the series that spawned it was the biggest popular science fiction movie franchise in the pre-Star Wars era. For our purposes, however,...

President Biden’s cratering poll numbers with independent voters have received a lot of attention. Less noticed — but just as important — are his plummeting numbers among Hispanic voters. Biden won Hispanics handily in 2020. While it’s true that this demographic moved in former president Donald Trump’s direction compared with 2016, Biden still trounced Trump by a 65-32 margin among Hispanics according to the exit poll. Those good feelings carried over into the early months of Biden’s presidency. In late May, Biden’s job approval among Hispanics averaged 60 percent, with a net approval margin of 32, a bit larger than...

A Pennsylvania elementary school teacher has been arrested after allegedly threatening to shoot district officials because janitors removed a plastic barrier he set up in his classroom to protect against the spread of COVID-19, reports say. Chad Gerrick, an educator at Sinking Springs Elementary School in York, is now charged with one misdemeanor count of terroristic threats, according to Fox43. Last Friday, a cafeteria worker said she heard Gerrick threaten to “shoot all them f—–s” at the district’s administrative offices, the station reported, citing a criminal complaint affidavit filed by Northern York County Regional Police.

Welcome to our ongoing Law of Self Defense coverage of the criminal trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.As you all know, Kyle Rittenhouse has been charged with a number of crimes for his conduct in Kenosha WI on the night of August 25, 2020, amidst violent rioting in the city fomented by elements of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and sympathizers of those groups.Most of the charges against Rittenhouse are serious felonies, including the charge of first-degree reckless homicide for the killing of Joseph Rosenbaum, first-degree intentional homicide for the killing of Anthony Huber, attempted first-degree homicide of Gaige Grosskreutz, and two counts...

Driving the news: On Monday, a new group, Front Row, will launch a political NFT marketplace — and only allow Democratic campaigns and causes to use it. The first NFTs for sale will be digital collectibles from the Texas Democratic Party. For example, for $250, a political activist can purchase a digital "Wanted" poster, with animation, of different Texas lawmakers who fled the state this year in a failed effort to block its new restrictive voting law.

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Portland police said officers responded to 13 shootings in a span of 28 hours over the weekend, which left one person dead and three others hurt. Police said in the east side of the city, five shots calls were taken in the span of about 3 hours. These shootings placed a significant strain on resources during that time. At one of the shootings, a sergeant was left to process one of the crime scenes alone, police said. At another crime scene, officers needed the help of community members to block traffic while they looked for and...

LAUDERHILL, FLA. (WSVN) - Police have arrested a woman accused of shooting her former boss, the manager of a cellphone store in Lauderhill, over being fired. Lauderhill Police said 27-year-old Rachel Boisette has been charged with attempted murder in connection to Friday’s shooting at the Metro by T-Mobile store at Inverness Plaza, located along the 5500 block of West Oakland Park Boulevard. Investigators said the suspect and her former employer had an altercation about her termination that escalated until she took out a gun and opened fire, striking the victim several times in the chest. According to the arrest affidavit,...

Governor Gavin Newsom has signed several notable bills into law in recent days They include a bill that will see California public schools and colleges stocking their restrooms with free menstrual products In another 'woke' bill, large department stores must now display products including toys and toothbrushes in gender-neutral ways It does not completely outlaw traditional boys and girls sections at stores but says large stores must also have a gender neutral section to display On Saturday Newsom signed off on a new law banning gas-powered equipment that uses small off-road engines Gas-powered equipment includes generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers,...

The outspoken North Carolina politician was attacked for saying that graphic gay and transgender material has no place in public schools. North Carolina’s Mark Robinson got launched in politics when he spoke his mind about our right to bear arms. Since then, he has continued to refuse to back down when he runs afoul of the ever-growing list of leftist shibboleths. Most recently, cancel culture came for him when he referred to graphic gay and transgender material in school libraries as “filth.” True to form, while defending every person’s right to equal treatment under the law, Robinson made it clear...

Incidents of academics being targeted for their views are on the rise, according to a new report by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). FIRE notes that the number of targeting cases has sharply increased from 24 incidents in 2015 to 113 in 2020. Unfortunately, that trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down in 2021. But one professor at North Carolina State University has decided to push back. Stephen Porter is a professor in the College of Education, where he teaches graduate courses in statistics, causal inference, and workflow of data analysis. A conservative, Porter claims that university...

On Wednesday morning, CNN again tried to blame crime in liberal states on the laws of more pro-gun states as co-host Jim Sciutto recalled complaints in New York about guns being transferred from Southern states. Discussing a new CDC report documenting the surge in homicides, the CNN host did at least acknowledge that the morale of police officers has been hurt, contributing to the spike in crime, but did not clarify the role the media has played in making it that way with their over-coverage of police-involved violence. Speaking with Oakland, California, police chief LeRonne Armstrong, Sciutto suggested the availability...

First, last month still saw sales of some 2.2 million units in total, exceeding every year prior to 2020. Moreover, for the first three quarters of 2021, firearms sales reached nearly 30.5 million – compared to 28.6 million for the same period a year earlier. Clearly, that was the result of the pandemic, followed by a wave of violent protests across the country that occurred following the killing of George Floyd over Memorial Day weekend 2020. It is true as well that last year’s fourth-quarter sales were strong, driven in no small part to the election of President Joe Biden,...

GOP gubernatorial candidate Geoff Diehl has landed a big deal endorsement. Former President Donald Trump is throwing his support behind the conservative candidate in a race where rivals are still lining up and Gov. Charlie Baker has yet to declare. “Baker is bad on crime, disrespects our police, does nothing for our Veterans, has totally botched the Vaccination rollout, presided over the collapse of the MBTA, and has seen crime go to record levels,” Trump said in his endorsement Tuesday night. Diehl has branded himself as a conservative counterweight in a race where most of the other candidates swing far...

Road rages can often turn out to be quite dangerous especially for elderlies. Senior citizens are at a huge risk of getting their cars stolen by young thieves who can easily overpower the elderly or by younger people who can try and attack them. However, not all senior citizens are easy targets because this incident that happened is proof that sometimes people pick the wrong person to mess with. We have a received a footage showing an 82-year-old man fighting off a immigrant who tried to attack him in his car. The elderly man was defending from the younger man...

The United Kingdom and governments throughout the world will try to brand climate change as a public health issue in order to expand their powers, as they did during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Baroness Claire Fox warned. Speaking with Breitbart London during the Reform UK party conference in Manchester, Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley said that while she is the “opposite of a conspiratorial thinker”, she believes that governments will try to retain the powers they have acquired during the pandemic by raising fears over a range of other issues, including climate change.

No, Ana Navarro, the Principle of Separation of Church and State Does Not Justify AbortionAna Navarro, a co-host of ‘The View,’ recently opined that she would not personally decide to kill her unborn child by abortion because of her Catholic upbringing, but she also believes the principle of separation of church and state prohibits her from imposing that view on others. Navarro’s is an often repeated but nonsensical argument that should be dispensed with once and for all—especially coming from a self-proclaimed Catholic. Her comment sadly reveals she understands neither Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion nor the...

Not long ago, firearm instructor Karl Rehn of KR Training and I discussed why some people attend defensive firearm classes for little reason beyond recreation. In addition to having taught thousands of students, Karl’s an engineer, thus analytical by nature, and he hit the nail on the head. He said people do what they want or need to do, and while many gun owners want to shoot guns for fun, most don’t think they’ll need to defend themselves, so they don’t take defensive training seriously.I’ve also heard conservatives say they don’t have time to train, because they have jobs and...