Free Republic

The U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner claims campus speech codes need to be tightened as college students are still “developing” and cannot yet handle certain information. Speaking during a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) briefing on sexual harassment law in education, Democrat Michael Yaki likened restricting free speech on college campuses to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 decision to ban the death penalty for minors. During the briefing, Yaki said hostile environments on college campuses can occur from fraternities holding “slave auction[s]” or celebrating Latino culture by “making everyone dress as janitors and mop floors.” “Certain factors in how the...

Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating “theology as politics,” and regulate it accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned. According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal...

First Amendment: Government's assault on religious liberty has hit a new low as the IRS settles with atheists by promising to monitor sermons for mentions of the right to life and traditional marriage. A lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) asserted that the Internal Revenue Service ignored complaints about churches' violating their tax-exempt status by routinely promoting political issues, legislation and candidates from the pulpit. The FFRF has temporarily withdrawn its suit in return for the IRS's agreement to monitor sermons and homilies for proscribed speech that the foundation believes includes things like condemnation of gay...

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors. "You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. It was, to put mildly, a significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency...

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission today blasted Democratic colleagues opposed to his effort to protect conservative media after they imposed rules on the publisher of Rep. Paul Ryan's new book, opening the door to future book regulations -- or even a ban. “By failing to affirm this publisher’s constitutional right, statutory right, to disseminate a political book free from FEC conditions and regulations, we have effectively asserted regulatory jurisdiction over a book publisher,” warned Chairman Lee E. Goodman, one of three Republicans on the six-person FEC. “That failure reveals a festering legal uncertainty and chill for the free...

To direct the Federal Trade Commission to prescribe rules prohibiting the marketing of firearms to children, and for other purposes.

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, whose firing brought out nasty attacks and allegations of sexism at the Times, was interviewed by Greta van Susteren On the Record last night. While she played close to the vest about the reasons for her firing, she didn’t hold back on the Obama administration, defending her earlier branding of it as “the most secretive” she has ever deal with since President Carter, and elaborated: “I have never dealt with an administration where more officials—some of whom are actually paid to be the spokesmen for various federal agencies—demand that everything be off...

At a press conference Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said people with religious beliefs who disagree with the Obamacare contraception mandate should be given a choice between living by their faith or being allowed to form a corporation to do business. “You’re born with a religion or you adopt a religion. You have to obey the precepts of that religion and the government gives you a wide penumbra – you don’t have to form a corporation,” Schumer said. In the Hobby Lobby case, decided last month, the Supreme Court ruled that a closely-held family-owned corporation could not be forced by...

Mr. Chairman, this is the single most radical and most dangerous proposal introduced in the 113th congress. If this proposal were adopted, it would repeal the free speech protections of the first amendment. The breadth of this proposal is astonishing. It should lead the evening news on every station. It saddens me that 46 democratic senators have signed their name to a constitutional amendment expressly repealing the free speech provisions of the Bill of Rights. Ted Cruz continues....

At a press conference Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said people with religious beliefs who disagree with the ObamaCare contraception mandate can choose their faith or “you don’t have to form a corporation.” “You’re born with a religion or you adopt a religion. You have to obey the precepts of that religion and the government gives you a wide penumbra—you don’t have to form a corporation,” Schumer said. Schumer claims the Supreme Court’s decision that closely-held firms have a right to deny coverage for certain types of birth control they find objectionable under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was...

Two Broward County assistant public defenders were fired Tuesday for Facebook comments calling Palestinians "cockroaches" and "filthy swine." Bruce Raticoff and Gary Sheres both lost their jobs, as outrage built after the Sun Sentinel published an article including the Facebook comments a week ago, Public Defender Howard Finkelstein said. The remarks from the two mens' personal Facebook accounts last week were posted under an item about Palestinians allegedly celebrating the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teen boys. The killings were blamed on the Islamic militant group Hamas. "They are the filthy swine they don't eat. Their ignorance to the...

Facebook Flags Images of Pro-Life Father Loving Unborn Child as “Violent” by Carole Novielli | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 7/7/2014 A Black pro-life organization has had three Facebook images flagged as “graphic violence!”One of those images depicts a father loving his unborn child.Two of the three images are anything but violent. One is a 4th of July meme and the other says “We will not be silenced!”  LifeNews blogger Ryan Bomberger is an Emmy® Award-winning Creative Professional who founded The Radiance Foundation (TRF), a life-affirming 501(c)(3), along with his wife, Bethany. Working in conjunction with noted national civil rights...

Their unusually strident dissent written by Sotomayor said the Wheaton injunction threatened the credibility of the Hobby Lobby decision. "Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word," Sotomayor wrote. "Not so today." The point of the dissent? "It is not the business of this court to ensnare itself in the government's ministerial handling of its affairs in the manner it does here," Sotomayor wrote.

For all of the non-stop wall-to-wall coverage of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby—in which the Court ruled that the government doesn’t have the authority to force “closely-held corporations” to violate their religious beliefs—a simple fact has been lost. The ruling did not overturn a single word of the “Affordable Care Act,” otherwise known as Obamacare. Nor did the Supreme Court prevent the government from requiring that taxpayers finance abortion-related services. Pro-life activists—and Obamacare opponents—are cheering today. But when they sit down and reflect, they’ll realize that they haven’t won a thing. The Supremes endorsed the White...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has struck down a 35-foot protest-free zone outside abortion clinics in Massachusetts. The justices were unanimous Thursday that extending a buffer zone 35 feet from clinic entrances violates the First Amendment rights of protesters. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Chief Justice John Roberts says authorities have less intrusive ways to deal with problems outside the clinics.

The facts are these. In 1975, before she married Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham defended a child rapist in Arkansas court. She was not a public defender. No one ordered her to take the case. An ambitious young lawyer, she was asked by a friend if she would represent the accused, and she agreed. And her defense was successful. Attacking the credibility of the 12-year-old victim on the one hand, and questioning the chain of evidence on another, Clinton got a plea-bargain for her client. He served ten months in prison, and died in 1992. The victim, now 52, has had...

A Southwest Virginia public school has violated the First Amendment according to the American Civil Liberties Union. On May 22nd the A.C.L.U. sent Superintendent of Lee County Schools Mark Carter a letter saying immediate action needed to be taken after the A.C.L.U. received "a disturbing report of multiple First Amendment violations at Thomas Walker High School". According to the letter sent by the A.C.L.U. it says based on the information they have received "school officials, including teachers and administrators, are actively promoting religious practices during school hours on school grounds as a part of official school activities". (snip) The A.C.L.U....

The owner of a bakery in Lakewood said he will no longer sell wedding cakes after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruled he did discriminate against a gay couple when he refused to sell them a cake. "We would close down the bakery before we would complicate our beliefs," Phillips said after the hearing, according to CBS Denver. Phillips also admitted he had refused service to other same-sex couples. The commission also ordered the baker to submit quarterly reports about the customers he refuses to serve and retrain employees to serve everyone.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told attendees at a Family Research Council pastors retreat that Democrats wanted to limit free speech through amending the Constitution. “When you think it can’t get any worse, it does,” Cruz said at the FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall 2014 event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. “This year, I’m sorry to tell you, the United States Senate is going to be voting on a constitutional amendment to repeal the First Amendment.” Calling these “perilous, perilous times,” Cruz said Senate Democrats have said they are ready to vote on the amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 19—“an amendment to...

A still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the “ramifications” of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The memo suggests that even as the attack was still underway — and before the CIA began the process of compiling talking points on its analysis of what happened — the White House believed it was in retaliation for a controversial video. The subject line of the...