As I worked down a bluff wall with a ned rig searching for smallmouth, the screen of my fish finder lit up. The boat had just gone over a submerged brush pile, and boy oh boy, were there crappie on it. I quickly reeled up, clipped the ned rig off the Trika 10X spinning rod in my hand, and tied on a crappie jig. I turned to the back of the boat and fired a cast just beyond the brush pile and let my jig get to depth. After a few cranks of the reel, I felt a “tap, tap……

NEW YORK (AP) — A U.S. civil rights agency has determined that the federal government can bar transgender employees from using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, dismissing an appeal from a transgender woman who worked for the U.S. Army. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission decided Thursday against a civilian IT specialist who worked for the Army at Fort Riley, Kansas. The EEOC repeatedly declared her to be man even though the worker informed her managers that she identified as a woman in the summer of 2025 when she asked to use bathrooms and locker rooms aligned with her gender…

The East Coast might have gotten walloped with a blizzard this week, but the spring season is tantalizingly close. There’s no stronger evidence of that than a bunch of outdoor brands dropping their spring 2026 collections. There’s almost too much new gear (but in reality, there’s no such thing). Backpackers have got a bounty of new products to look at. YETI released a line of backpacks designed for everything from casual dayhikes to weeklong adventures in the backcountry. Rab also dropped the Mythic 20, its lightest-ever sleeping bag, with a bunch of new tech to keep you toasty warm in…

If there’s one thing I think most of us can agree on, the concept of “rules for thee, but not for me” is the epitome of the worst thing lawmakers can do. That’s actually true, more or less, across partisan lines, even. No one likes the so-called elite getting a legal pass whereas we are held to a different standard. Most only shout about it when it’s the other side doing it, but the feeling tends to be pretty universal, even if partisan blinders help people ignore it when it’s inconvenient.I try to be consistent…

There are a lot of people walking around with a badge, a carry permit, or both, who have never actually been taught to shoot. They’ve been taught to qualify. Those are not the same thing. Paul Costa has spent nearly two decades in law enforcement watching that gap up close. As an assistant range master responsible for firearms training for over 700 officers, he had a front-row seat to what institutional training produces: people who can pass a course of fire on a known range, under no stress, with no time pressure that matters, and who haven’t meaningfully developed as…

According to one mediator, the United States and Iran have made significant progress in talks with Iran. Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi was the mediator for these discussions and said that they lasted nearly six hours. A senior U.S. official told Axios the discussions were “positive,” though sources said American negotiators were initially disappointed with Iranian positions presented earlier in the day before the tone improved during afternoon sessions. -RT These negotiations are taking place amid heightened tensions after U.S. ruler Donald Trump increased military deployments across the Middle East. Washington has repeatedly stated that it would not allow Iran…

Dexter Taylor is sitting in a maximum security prison in New York today, serving a ten-year sentence for the crime of making his own firearms. The Brooklyn software engineer was never charged using any of his guns in the commission of a crime, or selling his unserialized firearms on the black market. Simply for building and possessing his own unregistered firearms in violation of New York law, Taylor was given a tougher sentence than what some armed robbers receive in the Empire State.  Taylor may soon have company after police on Long Island busted a…

Owning a firearm isn’t easy anywhere in Hawaii, but Honolulu may actually be the worst jurisdiction in the country when it comes to exercising our Second Amendment rights.  Here’s how the process works. You go to a gun shop and find a pistol that you’d like to purchase. Before you can do so, you have to obtain a Permit to Acquire a Firearm, and in order to do that you’ll first need to get a Handgun Safety Training Course Affidavit signed by the firearms instructor who taught the mandated course. Now, if you’re a first-time gun…

The law that bans marijuana users, even those who have medical marijuana licenses in states that legalize medical marijuana use, from possessing of purchasing firearms has faced lots of challenges lately. Now, before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case U.S. v. Hemani, things have changed somewhat, with President Donald Trump recently rescheduling pot to Schedule III. However, the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to take an anti-Second Amendment stance on the issue, as it has a few other times during the second Trump Administration. The case challenges the federal law that bars firearm possession by anyone who “is…

This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.  When Special Counsel Jack Smith was investigating Donald Trump and people in his orbit, he ended up surveilling then-private-citizen Kash Patel and Trump Chief of Staff Susie Wiles during 2022 and 2003. Patel, now head of the FBI, told Reuters on Wednesday that he found out about this, and the FBI buried the files in a “Prohibited” category deep within the bureau’s computer system so they would be extremely difficult to find. Getting down to it – the subpoenas targeted metadata showing who called whom and when – called ‘toll records,’ as well as…

When the One Big, Beautiful Bill passed, it eliminated the NFA tax for suppressors and short-barreled long guns. Now, the reason this is important for today is that the NFA was always billed as a tax, not gun control. In 1934, gun control was untenable. Taxes, less so, and this was a tax to anyone who asked. Now, though, the actual tax is gone, but every other aspect of the law–which were supposed to be about making sure people paid the tax–remains, and there are a couple of lawsuits out there challenging that fact.And then…

Of all the uniquely dangerous jobs soldiers had during the Vietnam War, Army veteran C.W. Bowman’s task ranks near the top of the list. Bowman was a “tunnel rat.” Bowman, a former staff sergeant, volunteered for the highly stressful but important position of finding enemy intelligence rummaging through the Viet Cong’s vast underground tunnel system. He has plenty of wild stories of overcoming fear and what he encountered in those dark, dank tunnels. Bowman shared a few of his memories during a presentation at the Richland Library Main on Feb. 13 in Columbia, South Carolina, according to The Post & Courier. Receiving his…