Free Republic

AMAC keeps pushing PureTalk over other wireless carriers as having no agenda or being "un-woke". How does PureTalk rate compared to other carriers in terms of access, reliability, cost and customer service? How easy is it to switch over?

On February 14, 2022, the Virginia House voted to repeal the controversial “red flag” law, which gave the power to any attorney or law enforcement officer in Virginia to ask a judge for a “substantial risk order” to confiscate guns from a person who poses a “substantial risk” to himself or others. The law also created a registry of such orders. The bill had passed the Committee on Public Safety by an 11 to 10 vote. It passed the house 52 – 47.The controversial Red Flag bill had narrowly passed in 2020 while Governor Northam was in power and Democrats...

School mask mandates have recently been lifted in New Jersey and in Delaware. Massachusetts is also considering lifting its mandate. But in Loudoun County, Va., students who attempt to enter school maskless could face arrest. According to a leaked email, a security official for Loudoun County Public Schools coached principals on obtaining a warrant to arrest students who attempted to enter school maskless. The email was sent on Feb. 1, by John Clark, the Director of Safety and Security for Loudoun County Public Schools to the district’s principals. “If you determine that an individual should be trespassed then a school...

Gizmodo reported on the leaks. A hostile offshoot of the defunct neo-Nazi group Vanguard America, Patriot Front formed in late August 2017 less than three weeks after the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (James Alex Fields Jr., who was convicted in December 2018 of killing 32-year-old anti-racist protester Heather Heyer at the rally, was seen there holding a shield emblazoned with the VA logo. VA later denied he was a member.) The split from VA followed months of infighting between Thomas Rousseau, the Front’s founder, and VA leader Dillon Irizarry, who was seen accusing Rousseau in...

""At this point in my life I just do not give a DAMN and am considering simply to live and eventually die of the cancer as I am sick and tired of government BS. Eventually if my health gets worse to the point the pain is excruciating I plan on grabbing my bottle of single malt scotch, one of my good cigars and go out in the woods and either get drunk or die.... I am seriously considering abandoning the VA health care system and just live or die with the cancer as I am fed up with the Biden...

Charlottesville, Virginia (CNN)A jury has awarded more than $26 million in damages after finding the White nationalists who organized and participated in a violent 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, liable on a state conspiracy claim and other claims. The jury in the federal civil trial said Tuesday it could not reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy claims. The violence during the Unite the Right rally turned the Virginia city into another battleground in America's culture wars and highlighted growing polarization. It was also an event that empowered White supremacists and nationalists to demonstrate their beliefs in public rather than...

@daveweigel Asked Youngkin (at RGA meeting) about "going on offense" on abortion, as he said he'd do if he won. "A pain threshold bill is something that I would entertain," he said, but it's not part of "day one plan" - that's schools, parole board, cutting back regulations.

After keeping Virginia schools closed for over a year and repeatedly moving the goal posts on reopening, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten successfully delivered the state to Republican Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin last week. Despite appearing at a final campaign rally for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, parents showed up to vote against her endorsement and anti-parent education policies. Now, Weingarten is finally admitting it's time for a pandemic off ramp. "It was clear that vaccines for teachers helped us reopen schools. Maybe it’s vaccines for kids helping us get to an off ramp for masks and getting to a new...

Gutfeld!' panel discusses the Democrats' reactions to Tuesday night's election defeat

Two months after the Pentagon began requiring all troops to get the coronavirus vaccine or face dismissal, the vast majority have now had shots, in part because none received a religious exemption, military officials said. https://t.co/3zpPg5hpG6 — NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) November 4, 2021 Troops who refuse the coronavirus vaccine won’t see any extra protections or leniency in how their dismissals are handled, Defense and Veterans Affairs officials confirmed Wednesday. Instead, decisions on whether to give those individuals other-than-honorable discharges — potentially blocking them from a host of veterans benefits — will be left to local commanders, and their cases won’t...

Fairfax County is rescanning roughly 20,000 ballots from multiple early voting sites after there was a technical issue with a thumb drive the votes are stored on, according to Fairfax County's Office of Elections Public Information Officer, Brian Worthy. County officials said there is a paper trail of votes cast and staff are working on them as of now. Worthy told WUSA9 that the county had some problems with the thumb drive votes are recorded on. He said this thumb drive holds 20,000 ballots from four early voting sites. Rescanning the thousands of ballots from those early voting sites means...

@RandPaul I was proud to endorse @GlennYoungkin. His win tonight is a clear and much needed signal for personal freedom and that parents are the deciders of their children’s education and future.

Do You Know What’s Happening in Virginia Public Schools? You should. Virginia state law explicitly states that “a parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child.” (Va. Code Ann. § 1-240.1) But government officials and schools are secretly working overtime to take away parent’s rights, to make sure that most people—including many parents—don’t know what’s actually happening in their children’s schools.

Our favorite Based Iranian Father returned to the Loudoun County School Board last night. Rather, I should call him Master Based Iranian Father. The last time we saw him, he said "Master" is his preferred pronoun. Master B.I.F. returned to express his disagreement over how the school board covered up one or two alleged rapes that happened in the school. You wanna push that garbage down my kid's throats, I will make you call my kids KING and QUEEN. That's how you will address my son and daughter. And when you look at me, you will call me Master." Barack...

Video at link.

A fair warning for your next trip to the liquor store: Several states across the U.S. are still experiencing booze shortages related to COVID-19, and it's unclear when supply will be able to meet demand. Early in the pandemic, it was common to find libations low in stock after some liquor stores briefly closed amid statewide lockdowns and skyrocketing consumer demand for alcohol. But continued reports of shortages from Vermont to New Jersey to Ohio persist more than a year later, and some states are rationing their liquor supply amid ongoing supply chain issues. The Pennsylvania state board in charge...

There are many reports of 'boom-like' sounds associated with a couple of fireball sightings from northern Virginia around 14:30 UTC on September 17 (10:30 EDT). It's possible this event produced meteorites in the northern Virginia/eastern West Virginia area. The currently available data are insufficient to determine a trajectory, but a strong fireball-like signature shows up at 14:24 UTC in the GOES 16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) data, permitting an estimation of the energy of this event.1 A comparison to a previous fireball with good ground and GLM data puts the brightness of this morning's meteor at magnitude -12, the same...

RICHMOND, Va. -- A man robbed in Richmond pulled out a gun and shot his assailants, Crime Insider sources told Jon Burkett. One of the men died as a result of the shooting, the other was taken to the hospital. The incident happened Friday afternoon along the 1100 block of Commerce Road in South Richmond. The wounded men drove away after the shooting. They were later found less than a mile away near East 18th Street and Fairfax Avenue.

A 20-year-old Triangle man who was fatally shot last month by a Dale City woman in what police determined was a justified act of self-defense has been connected to five recent armed robberies at area 7-Eleven stores, police said Monday. The man, identified as Azhar Laurent Smart, 20, of Triangle, was found by police suffering a gunshot wound at 12:25 a.m. on Thursday, July 22, outside a home in the 4100 block of Hoffman Drive, a residential area off Prince William Parkway near the Sheetz gas station, according to a news release issued at the time. Smart was shot by...

After the longest war in our country’s history, the United States is on the verge of ending its open involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. As we wind down these wars, our nation owes a great debt to those who volunteered to serve. Our technology, politics, and culture look a lot different than they did 20 years ago, and our Veterans Affairs should look different too. Our country’s newer veterans need an adaptable, agile, and flexible VA to meet their needs. However, the VA has shown it is neither adaptable nor flexible despite Congress approving new authorities and massive increases in...