Free Republic

What if I told you police in your town could desensitize themselves to the idea of shooting a (armed) child, pregnant woman, or young mother, for just a couple of bucks? The "No More Hesitation" series from Law Enforcement Targets Inc. offers exactly that. For less than 99 cents per target, police can shoot at real-life images "designed to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training." Update: The marketing team at Law Enforcement Targets, Inc. sends along this helpful explanation for the "No More Hesitation" series: "The...

A Ukrainian lawmaker from the far-right Svoboda Party has provoked international condemnations after referring to Jewish actress Mila Kunis as a “zhydovka”, a Ukranian slur that translates to “dirty Jewess,” on his Facebook page. “She is not Ukrainian, she is a Jewess by birth. She is proud of this and the Star of David,” politician Igor Miroshnichenko wrote on in the online message. “[S]he says nothing and expresses nothing positive about the country in which she was born. I can’t bring myself to say she is Ukrainian. Let her love America or Israel, people must not attach her to the...

NEW YORK: A 40-member American peace delegation is leaving for Pakistan next week to protest drone strikes and promote peaceful relations between US and Pakistan, it was announced on Friday. The delegation, organised by the activist group CODEPINK, a group of women peace activists, will meet with the families of drone victims, lawyers, academics, Pakistani politicians and US officials. On October 7, they will march to South Waziristan in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to protest US drone strikes that have killed more than 2,500 people, including civilians, CODEPINK said. “President Obama’s counter-terrorism chief John Brennan insists that US...

Gun-friendly Utah is surprisingly queasy when it comes to the kinds of paper targets shooters are allowed to use on state-owned ranges. Well, one state agency is, anyway. Now a Beehive State legislator wants to know why. “’The range belongs to the people,’ Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Eagle Mountain, said. ‘We need to make sure that people are not restricted in their use because of an overstep of authority.’” Or an overabundance of political correctness . . . It is not against state law for human form targets to be used inside the gun-friendly Beehive State, but Utah’s Division of Wildlife...

U.S. Marines defending the American embassy in Egypt were not permitted by the State Department to carry live ammunition, limiting their ability to respond to attacks like those this week on the U.S. consulate in Cairo. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson “did not permit U.S. Marine guards to carry live ammunition,” according to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blogs spotted by Nightwatch. “She neutralized any U.S. military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy.” If true, the reports indicate that Patterson shirked her obligation to protect U.S. interests, Nightwatch states.

A Taliban spokesman said Monday that the terror group would use "all our strength" to kidnap or kill the U.K's Prince Harry, who just begun serving a four-month tour of duty as a chopper pilot in Afghanistan. "We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by phone. "We have informed our commanders in Helmand to do whatever they can to eliminate him."

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama issued an executive order on Thursday that would increase the number of cogeneration plants in the U.S. by 50 percent by 2020, a move that would boost U.S. industrial energy efficiency and slash carbon emissions by 150 million tons per year. The order is the administration's latest effort to deploy cleaner and more efficient energy production in the country by working around political resistance to climate change and "green" energy legislation on Capitol Hill. The measure aims to accelerate investments to help manufacturers expand their use of combined heat and power (CHP) facilities,

Peter Bogdanovich is no stranger to violence -- either onscreen or off. In an eerie foreshadowing of the Colorado tragedy, his very first film, 1968's Targets, starring Boris Karloff, ends with a sniper, an angry Vietnam War vet, picking off teenagers at a drive-in movie theater. But while that movie reflected the rising discord of the late '60s, it wasn't until 1980 that Bogdanovich experienced, first-hand, the full impact of violence when his companion, Dorothy Stratten, the Playboy model and actress, was brutally murdered by her estranged husband. People go to a movie to have a good time, and they...

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder's "three criteria" for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S. Pressed by House lawmakers about a recent speech in which Holder described the legal justification for assassination, Mueller, who was attending a hearing on his agency's budget, did not say without qualification that the three criteria could not be applied inside the U.S. "I have to go back. Uh, I'm not certain whether that was addressed or not," Mueller said...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is sending five American military officers to South Sudan amid recent outbreaks of violence in the newly independent African nation. The White House said the U.S. forces will join the United Nations mission in the capital of Juba and focus on strategic planning and operations. They are not expected to engage in combat operations, but will be armed for personal protection. Obama issued a memorandum Tuesday declaring that the U.S. officers could not be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court during their deployment because South Sudan is not a party to the ICC. The White...

Two dogs attacked a 62-year-old woman who was exercising on a track at a senior center on Long Island Thursday morning...The woman suffered serious wounds but was able to call police... Nassau County cops responded to the area, near Brookside Junior High School in North Merrick, and found the dogs attacking the woman at the edge of a parking lot. The dogs, believed to be pit bulls, shifted their focus to the officers, who fired at them. ... In a separate incident not far from this area, some dogs attacked an elderly man around 1 a.m. Authorities believe the same...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Authorities say a Philadelphia woman found dead in her home had been fatally mauled by her own dogs. Autopsy results were released Thursday on 50-year-old Carmen Ramos.

SNIPPET: "There are some good reasons for allowing at least a few jihadi forums to operate." SNIPPET: "However, there are limits to our ability to exploit all the intelligence opportunities a forum may present. To put it another way, jihadi forums contribute to future terrorism in ways that are unpredictable and/or beyond our ability to control. This would be the view held by those other government agencies who prefer to seek out and destroy forums and to take down forum activists. For my part, I can live with keeping online those forums we have sufficient access to monitor and resources...

Israeli airstrikes hit smuggling tunnels along Gaza-Egypt border as well as a Hamas training camp in central Gaza; action follows rocket attacks against Beersheba and Ashkelon; no reports of injured in attack. Talkbacks (8) IDF aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip in the early hours on Thursday, Hamas said, a day after Palestinians fired about a dozen rockets and mortars across the border, striking deep into Israel. There were no reports of injuries in the attacks. Hamas said Israel targeted smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, as well as one of its training camps in central Gaza.

Recently defunded NPR apparently thinks it's funny to falsely accuse Michelle Malkin of being a birther while making lame jokes about her family. This, at a time, when Malkin's kin is frantic with worry over the disappearance of her niece. Malkin has a transcript of the inane little radio skit so I won't duplicate it here. Her comments: The premise of Jobrani's p.c. comedy gag is completely false, as actual readers of my work know. I was one of the first conservatives to criticize Birthers who go to the extreme and have never accused President Obama of being a "secret...

LUBBOCK, TEXAS -- A Lubbock resident and a citizen of Saudi Arabia is in FBI custody on a federal charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari allegedly purchased chemicals and equipment necessary to make an improvised explosive device (IED) and his research of potential U.S. Targets. Aldawsari, was arrested late Wednesday evening... He was lawfully admitted into the United States in 2008 on a student visa and is enrolled at the South Plains College near Lubbock. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of attempted use...

MEXICO CITY - As his fellow officer was dying in the seat beside him after gunmen ambushed their vehicle this week, U.S. special agent Victor Avila, wounded himself, telephoned the U.S. Embassy here to shout that they were under attack. Avila and Jaime Zapata were traveling in an armored Chevrolet Suburban with diplomatic license plates on a popular four-lane highway four hours north of Mexico City. They were returning from a meeting with fellow agents in Monterrey, who had met them at a halfway point near San Luis Potosi to exchange technical equipment. According to U.S. officials who spoke on...

When did demonstrating at the private homes of politicians or corporate executives become an acceptable way to voice one’s political opinions? Nearly two dozen activists from DC Vote swarmed House Speaker John Boehner’s Capitol Hill residence at 7:30 Thursday morning, chanting “Don’t tread of D.C.” and “No taxation without representation” to protest congressional “meddling” in the District’s local affairs, in particular a House continuing budget resolution that would cut $80 million in federal payments and prohibit the city from using local funds to pay for needle exchange programs and abortions. “Speaker Boehner is coming to our home telling us how...

There is a move underway, suggested primarily by the RATS and endorsed by some RINOs, to sit together during the State of the Union Address on 24 January 2011. The purported idea is to demonstrate the "unity" of America. The REAL, albeit unspoken, reason is to dilute the victory of last November and to make it appear more people support this President's policies than oppose him. It is the practice of many football teams to mix up the guest tickets among the home team supporters. This dilutes the voices of the visiting team's supporters and plays mind games with the...

In last Thursday’s column, Paul Krugman admitted to having fun watching “right-wingers go wild.” One of the things that apparently delighted him was the map which Sarah Palin posted on her Facebook page...Each of the cross-hairs represents a Democrat from a conservative district who voted in favor of health reform. Immediately after highlighting the map, Krugman wrote: All of this goes far beyond politics as usual…you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing, anything that even hinted at an appeal to violence, from members of Congress, let alone senior party officials….to find anything like what we’re seeing now you have...