Free Republic

The Virginia State Police cleared an anti-Israel protest at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville on Saturday and reportedly took over two dozen protesters into custody. Law enforcement officials in riot gear were seen approaching the pro-Palestinian encampment that sat on the university’s lawn and spraying chemical irritants as they began clearing the encampment, according to a video posted by The Cavalier Daily, UVA’s student-run newspaper.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a video statement on Sunday insisting that Israel will not agree to Hamas’s demand that it end the war as a condition of a deal to release the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. “Israel has been, and still is, ready for a pause in the fighting in order to free our hostages,” he said. “[But] Israel will not agree to Hamas’s demands, which would mean surrender; it will continue fighting until all of its objectives are achieved.”

Daily Readings from the USCCB“I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another.” John 15:15–17Just prior to the passage quoted above, Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what...

Does anyone still talk about the Three Rs in education? That would be reading, writing and racism ...whoops, my mistake, 'rithmetic. It isn't difficult. Every weekend, my inbox fills up with readers demanding to know what I think about this or that news story, but in the end all the news stories are the same. Just from the last couple of days: ~At McGill University in Montreal, cute young predominantly female students in masks and keffiyehs take over the campus to demand "intifada until victory"; ~At the University of Texas in Austin, a comedian attempts to point out to members...

Hamas claimed responsibility Sunday for a barrage of rockets fired from the town of Rafah toward the Kerem Shalom border crossing, which is responsible for the entry of trucks of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. There were several casualties. The Times of Israel reported: At least seven people were wounded in the Hamas rocket attack on the Kerem Shalom area, according to Hebrew-language media reports. Several of those hurt in the attack are listed in serious condition, the reports say.

Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE), now the president of the University of Florida, slammed pro-Hamas demonstrators this week who have created chaos on college campuses across the U.S. and the weak leadership at the universities that has allowed the behavior to happen. Sasse’s remarks come after the school released a statement early in the week revealing that numerous arrests were made on campus because the school would not tolerate disorderly conduct that was in violation of the school’s policies. “Higher education has for years faced a slow-burning crisis of public trust,” he wrote in an op-ed at The Wall...

rump's "hush money" trial is all about smearing Donald Trump One year ago, New York City district attorney, Alvin Bragg, was asked by a reporter, "What crime did Trump commit to be on trial?", and Bragg replied that he didn’t have to tell him what the crime was, because the law doesn’t require it. The legal theory behind the People v. Trump Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s "Theater of the Absurd" entered its third week, still without any evidence of crimes committed by the accused. When Bragg first brought charges against Donald Trump in March 2023, the legal theory behind...

In cities across the country, highways have been blocked, trains have been delayed and sections of college campuses have been shut down by hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets. They’re protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Members of the movement say the size of the demonstrations is a response to the killing of more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Pro-Israel groups, meanwhile, are pushing Congress and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate whether any of the protests across the U.S. are getting...

Like every major college protest since the 1960s, the pro-Palestinian—which is to say, the anti-Israel—protests sweeping college campuses today have early and often been compared with the protests of that annus horribilis, 1968. There are plenty of similarities but also plenty of differences. History repeats itself as student and faculty protestors align themselves with the totalitarians. Then it was the Viet Cong, Mao, and the Khmer Rouge. Today it is the Sunni Muslim terrorist group Hamas, the main puppet master of the “pro-Palestinian” agitators. One apparently striking difference is the strong current of anti-Semitism. It is ubiquitous now; it was...

... It was the third papal meeting for Laura, 57, a saucy Paraguayan sex worker who, in her realest moments, described herself as “una travesti,” outdated Spanish slang for “a transgender woman.” She lived by a code: Tough girls don’t cry. But the first time Pope Francis had blessed her, she couldn’t suppress her tears. On their second meeting, they chatted over lunch. He came to know her well enough to ask about her health. On top of her longtime HIV, she’d had a recent cancer diagnosis. During treatment, the church sourced her a comfortable hotel room in the shadow...

The devastated fiancé of the Wisconsin elementary school teacher who was arrested for making out with a fifth grader has called off the wedding, one of his friends told The Post. Madison Bergmann and her betrothed, Sam Hickman, were due to tie the knot in July — but the revelation of her sick love affair with one of her 11-year-old students has halted any plans of a flowery ceremony.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mick Jagger briefly waded into Louisiana politics, taking a verbal jab at the state’s conservative governor, as The Rolling Stones performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The band had finished “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” during Thursday evening’s set when Jagger began talking about inclusion, according to New Orleans news outlets. “We want to include him too,” Jagger said of Gov. Jeff Landry. “Even if he wants to take us back to the Stone Age.”

More university professors are joining the demonstrations roiling college campuses, both to voice support for Gazans and to defend their students’ right to protest. Faculty, many of whom are in their 60s and 70s and came of age during the era of Vietnam War protests, are pushing back against university presidents, accusing the leaders of heavy-handed and inconsistent crackdowns on free speech, and warning against a wave of authoritarianism some say has been creeping onto campuses for years. Professors in leadership positions are guiding calls for votes of no-confidence, spearheading classroom walkouts and visiting encampments alongside students. Many are facing...

MOUNT HOREB, WI -- The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Saturday provided an update to the incident in Mount Horeb Wednesday. In a statement, the Wisconsin DOJ said around 11:11 a.m., a citizen called 911 after seeing a person moving toward Mount Horeb Middle School with a backpack and what appeared to be a long gun. Officers directed the person to drop the weapon, but the person did not comply. The DOJ said when the suspect pointed the weapon at the officers, the officers fired, hitting the suspect. Despite lifesaving measures, the subject died on scene. The DOJ said the...

Zein El-Amine has long history of supporting Students for Justice in Palestine, which is leading anti-Israel campus protests Georgetown professor accused an African-American congressman of being a "race traitor" and an "Uncle Tom" over his support for Jewish students as they face a tidal wave of anti-Semitism on campus from pro-Palestinian protesters.Professor Zein El-Amine, a Lebanese writer and adjunct lecturer at Georgetown, lashed out at Rep. Byron Donalds (R., Fla.) on Thursday when the lawmaker arrived on campus to show his support for the embattled Jewish and pro-Israel community. El-Amine was caught at a rally at George Washington University on...

John Ford made westerns. He made sure this was known, not least of all in his opening words to a famous 1950 meeting of the Screen Directors Guild where Ford faced down Cecil B. DeMille, who wanted to oust Joseph Mankiewicz as head of the Guild and enforce stricter creative censorship across the industry. DeMille did this under the shadow of the "Red Scare" and the looming threat of television, while theatrically noting the number of foreign names at the meeting (he pronounced one famous director's name as "Villiam Vyler"). Ford's reputation was so unimpeachable creatively and politically that he...

The steamship Matanzas, from New-Orleans April 26, via Havana April 28, arrived at this port yesterday morning. The news had reached New-Orleans of the evacuation of Grand Ecore by Gen. BANKS, and of his retreat upon Alexandria. There was no news of the battle alleged to have taken place on the 24th, news of which comes via Cairo. The New-Orleans papers, being under very strict military censorship, published nothing up to the 26th concerning Gen. BANKS' retreat, and possibly it may not be true, as it is not otherwise confirmed.THE NEWS VIA CAIRO. CAIRO, Tuesday, May 3. By the arrival...

Mohamed Abdou is a pro-Hamas “anarchist interdisciplinary activist-scholar of Indigenous, Black, critical race, and Islamic studies, as well as gender, sexuality, abolition, and decolonization” at Columbia University. Now, I don’t mean to pick on Abdou; it’s just that he happens to teach virtually every trendy pseudo-intellectual identitarian twaddle concocted by modern man. Ultimately, we make Abdou’s job possible. Nearly every student loan taken in the United States is either given by the government or fully guaranteed by taxpayers. This sounds wonderful in the abstract, since it allows every student a chance at higher education. The reality, however, is that we...

Increasing numbers of worried Americans have been wondering over the last few years whether progressive Democrats have succeeded in creating a police state in America. From the Russia Hoax to the revelations of the Twitter Files release, to the coordinated attempts to quash scandalous and true Biden family stories, to the blatant display of dual justice, they’ve seen that the cabal of one political party, with its power bases in the government and the sycophant media, has succeeded in limiting or destroying political opponents while eliminating individual rights. Just how bad is it? Has that cabal suspended our American Constitution...

President Biden on Friday handed out a bunch of Presidential Medals of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. You might remember the liberals' meltdown when President Trump awarded the medal to the late Rush Limbaugh during his State of the Union address.