Free Republic

A jury on Friday convicted of Stacey Vaillancourt of manslaughter and child cruelty in the 2019 death of Harper Rose Briar in Vaillancourt's home in Rutland. The 6-month-old was found unresponsive while in Vaillancourt's care, and an autopsy determined she had high concentrations of diphenhydramine, the sedating ingredient in some over-the-counter antihistamines including the brand Benadryl. The drug is not recommended for infants without a doctor's order, and there was no such order for Harper... Vaillancourt, who denied giving the infant anything that wasn't provided by her parents, was released on an unsecured appearance bond.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Monday to CBS News that Israel did not have a right “to kill 12,000 people in six, seven weeks” in response to the October 7 terror attack. Sanders said, “Well, this was how I respond. Look, Israel was attacked in an absolutely horrific way by Hamas, 1,300 innocent people were slaughtered. Israel has a right to defend itself, but what Israel does not have a right to do, in my view, is to kill 12,000 people in six, seven weeks, two-thirds of whom are women and children. That they don’t have right to do, that’s...

The alleged gunman in the suspected bias attack shooting of three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont has been arrested, according to police. Jason Eaton, 48, was taken into custody Sunday afternoon after he was identified as a suspect, Burlington police said, according to CNN. Eaton lives in an apartment building near where the triple shooting happened and was arrested Sunday around 3:30 p.m. for allegedly wounding the three 20-year-olds, authorities said. .....

Three Palestinian Arab men were shot and injured in Burlington, Vermont, on Saturday in what authorities suspect could be a hate-related crime, The Hill reports. The Burlington Police Department (BPD) said in a press release on Sunday that two of the three victims are in stable condition while the third sustained “much more serious injuries.” The three men, who are each 20 years old and of Palestinian Arab descent, were visiting the home of one victim’s relatives in Burlington for the Thanksgiving weekend and were walking along a street when they were confronted by a white man with a handgun....

New money follows $200K the senator's campaign sent to family's nonprofit this year. ... The institute was established by Sanders' wife, Jane, and his stepson, David Driscoll, six years ago as a think tank to elevate progressive mouthpieces. However, the group has appeared to perform very little work while paying Driscoll six figures worth of compensation. ... "The facts present in this case and the family ties involved certainly raise legitimate concern," Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, previously told Fox News Digital. "Obviously, a senator is not allowed to use his campaign to...

The estate of a donor to Middlebury College can sue to stop the de-naming of a chapel funded with his bequest, a Vermont judge ruled recently. Judge Robert Mello greenlighted the lawsuit on behalf of Governor John Mead’s estate. The estate, represented by former Vermont Governor James Douglas (pictured, left), argued that the school has a contractual obligation to keep “Mead” on the name of its memorial chapel, in the face of cancellation calls over Gov. Mead’s (pictured, right) alleged support for eugenics. The school removed Mead’s name in 2021. Judge Mello ruled that there was enough evidence to suggest...

Dominick Varney, also known as 'Priscilla Poppycocks,' spoke to high schoolers on May 4 ... A Maine public high school paid a gay drag performer $1,000 to speak to minors at a workshop, according to Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) documents. Drag performer Dominick Varney, also known as "Priscilla Poppycocks," spoke to Bangor High School students on May 4 as part of the school’s "Support, Educate, Empower" series to "empower" LGBT students. ... The school paid Varney and another performer, whose name was redacted from the FOAA documents, $1,000 each out of the school’s $15,000 grant from the Nellie Mae...

Ben Cohen was protesting in support of Julian Assange ... Ben and Jerry's founder Ben Cohen was arrested Thursday by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) police for blocking the entrance to the Department of Justice (DOJ) building in Washington, D.C., where he was protesting the detainment of Julian Assange. Assange is currently imprisoned at Belmarsh Prison in London and may soon be extradited to the U.S. Images from the scene showed Cohen sitting next to a woman holding a "free Assange" sign as police and security personnel stood nearby. Later images .. showed Cohen being lead away in handcuffs by...

An Indigenous tribe descended from the Native American nation that originally controlled the land in Vermont the Ben & Jerry's headquarters is located on would be interested in taking it back, its chief has said, after the company publicly called for "stolen" lands to be returned.Don Stevens, chief of the Nulhegan Band of The Coosuk Abenaki Nation—one of four descended from the Abenaki that are recognized in Vermont—told Newsweek it was "always interested in reclaiming the stewardship of our lands," but that the company had yet to approach them.It comes after the ice cream company was questioned as to when...

Ben & Jerry’s parent company has lost roughly $2.5 billion in market cap amid calls to boycott the Vermont-based ice cream maker over a July 4 tweet condemning the US for existing on “stolen Indigenous land.” Shares of Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch multinational firm, slid as much as 1% at Thursday’s opening bell after closing down .5% the previous day. The company’s stock price has fallen to roughly $51 after closing at $52.28 during Monday’s shortened trading — and the day before Ben & Jerry’s posted its unpatriotic tweet. The result has seen its market cap drop to $131 billion from...

Ice cream company Ben & Jerry's sparked outrage with a July 4th tweet calling for the United States to return 'stolen indigenous land' starting with giving Mount Rushmore back to the Lakota Sioux tribe. The company, which was founded by longtime Bernie Sanders allies Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenwood but has since been sold to British multinational Unilever, tweeted the message to its 494,000 followers. 'This 4th of July, it's high time we recognize that the US exists on stolen Indigenous land and commit to returning it,' the company's official account wrote. Outrage was swift on social media following the...

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in one prominent Vermont town will be able to vote in local elections and serve on the community’s selectboard if elected, after the Democrat-controlled state Legislature overrode the Republican governor’s veto of the Brattleboro charter change. A half dozen cities and towns in California and Maryland have lowered the voting age to 16 for either all local elections or school board elections, according to the National Youth Rights Association. Organizers of the push to lower the age in the southern Vermont town of Brattleboro say the community of 7,300 is the first one in the country where...

A Vermont school district has just reached a settlement to pay one local family $125,000 in damages after disciplining them for speaking out against a transgender student that was creeping out high school girls in a school locker room. In addition, the school has promised to reinstate Travis Allen as a middle school soccer coach, as well as remove any records of discipline against him and his daughter in the school database. -snip As reported by The Daily Signal, the legal battle began last October with the Allen family filing a lawsuit claiming that Travis and his daughter Blake "were...

An Enosburg Falls man who attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., has been charged with a felony for marching with a torch during a demonstration with other white nationalists. Ryan Roy, 34, faces one count of burning an object with the intent to intimidate. He's at least the fourth person indicted for participating in the August 11, 2017, rally on the University of Virginia campus. Marchers carried lit torches and chanted things such as "Jews will not replace us!" and the Nazi slogan "Blood and soil!" Roy, who grew up in Essex, did not respond to...

Below is a slightly modified version of my column in The Hill on the call of Democrat members for Joe Biden to circumvent Congress and simply raise the debt limit unilaterally. It is more than a flawed constitutional theory. It is an abandonment of the core premise of our constitutional system that each branch would jealously protect its own institutional interests and powers. It is reminiscent of when Democrats applauded wildly when Barack Obama told them that he was going to circumvent Congress entirely after it refused to approve his immigration and environmental legislation. They were applauding their own institutional...

WASHINGTON—Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), a former Louisiana sheriff, physically removed a protester who crossed into a Republican news conference on May 17 and approached Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in a way Higgins described as “threatening.” The news conference, during which Higgins, Boebert, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and others expressed their opposition to ongoing treaty negotiations with the World Health Organization, was interrupted when a left-wing protester began heckling members of Congress. After the protester crossed into the news conference, Higgins removed him. The conference was in the House Triangle, one of the most popular news conference...

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., is slamming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for hosting an antisemitic event commemorating the so-called Palestinian "Nakba." ...an annual observance by Palestinians that denies the right of the State of Israel to exist, thus denying political self-determination to Jews — and only Jews — in their own homeland...The term refers to the defeat in 1948 of the Palestinians and other Arab forces who tried to crush the newly-formed Jewish state as it declared independence. They failed, and about 700,000 Palestinians fled as refugees.The Arab world, which had encouraged...

WASHINGTON–Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill on May 4 to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 per hour. The proposal, which is more than double the current rate of $7.25, was unveiled to the cheers of various labor leaders outside Capitol Hill. “It is time to pass a new livable wage,” Sanders said. He was joined by AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, who said the increase would not burden large corporations, citing a leaked McDonald’s earnings call wherein the CEO says the company would do “just fine” under a $15 minimum wage. Last December, McDonald’s opened its first largely...

If you had any doubt that Bernie Sanders (I-USSR) was an actual Communist, doubt no longer. The guy who stands ready in case Old Joe retires and the Democrats opt to pick another octogenarian Leftist sat down Friday for a chat with Chris Wallace on HBO Max, and declared that if someone earns more than $999 million in a given year, the U.S. government should seize all of it. That’s right: all of it. Not 90 percent. Every last penny. And he showed no indication of having any idea why this policy, if it were ever enacted, would kill the...

No billionaires at all! Not American ones, at least. That’s the newly proclaimed policy of Bernie Sanders, who most definitely is not challenging the Democrats to nominate him for president in 2024, as he did in 2020. Nope, Bernie is perfectly comfortable with the policies being followed by President Biden’s handlers. Presumably, in exchange for not rocking the boat as he did in 2020, forcing the party’s controllers to pick an already senescent Joe Biden just because he was easy to control with all these bribes that could be exposed when needed (cough! Stay tuned as Biden’s desire for re-election...