Free Republic

The Federal Election Commission deadlocked in a crucial Internet campaign speech vote announced late last week, leaving online political blogging and videos free of many of the reporting requirements attached to broadcast ads — for now. All three Republican-backed members voted against restrictions, but they were opposed by the three Democrat-backed panel members, including Vice Chairwoman Ann M. Ravel, who said she will lead a push next year to come up with rules for government political speech on the Internet. It would mark a major reversal for the commission, which for nearly a decade has protected the

In a surprise move late Friday, a key Democrat on the Federal Election Commission called for burdensome new rules on internet-based campaigning, prompting the Republican chairman to warn that the left wants to regulate conservative political sites and even news outlets like the Drudge Report. Democratic FEC Vice Chair Ann M. Ravel announced plans to begin the process to win regulations on internet-based campaigns and videos, currently free from most of the FEC’s rules. “A reexamination of the commission’s approach to the internet and other emerging technologies is long over due,” she said. The powerplay followed a deadlocked 3-3 vote...

Where are all the atheist freedom lovers we always hear about? It's time for them to start standing up for religious liberty. The left and militant gay movement are getting bolder and bolder, and too many Christians are stewing in their apathy. It seems that with each passing month, this senseless tyranny advances. The latest is that two Christian ministers in Idaho, Donald and Evelyn Knapp, have allegedly been ordered to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies at their chapel or face fines or jail sentences. This nightmare began Oct. 7, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated Idaho's marriage...

It all started in September, when Houston Mayor Annise Parker and City Attorney David Feldman issued an "overly broad" subpoena for the sermons of select ministers who opposed the city's equal rights ordinance. Because of intense national opposition from even Texas' attorney general, this past Wednesday, Parker and Feldman appeared to recant or at least reduce their flagrant overreach and disregard of the ministers' legal protections under the First Amendment. By the weekend, however, the truth came out that they were only using political smoke and mirrors to try to simmer the patriotic fury; they were not changing course to...

AUSTIN, Texas -- The battle over Houston's non-discrimination ordinance has moved from the ballot box to the church pulpit, as a group of pastors fights efforts by the city to subpoena their sermons and private communications with church members. The law, passed last June, was criticized because it could be used to allow men to use women's bathrooms, among other objections. Opponents to the law had collected more than 50,000 signatures to place a repeal measure on the ballot this November, far more than the 17,269 required. However, the City of Houston moved to invalidate the majority of the signatures,...

Twitter allegedly blocked a new online campaign designed to support the Houston pastors who were subpoenaed by the city's lawyers demanding that they turn over their sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity or the city's first openly lesbian mayor, Annise Parker. The #HoustonWeHaveAProblem campaign and petition were created by Faith Driven Consumer, the same organization that supported and helped to reinstate Phil Robertson to "Duck Dynasty" after he was thrown off the show for his comments about homosexuality surfaced from a GQ interview.

Five Christian pastors will no longer have to turn their sermons over to attorneys for the city of Houston. Instead, they will be forced to turn over their speeches related to the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO). I don’t mean to point out the obvious here—but what do those attorneys think a sermon is? It’s a speech. According to an amended motion filed Friday in Harris County, Texas court, the city’s attorneys will no longer demand sermons related to homosexuals, gender identity, or Mayor Annise Parker—Houston’s first openly lesbian mayor. The amended subpoenas do require the pastors to turn over...

Support for legalizing same-sex marriage dropped from 54 percent to 49 percent since February, according to a Pew Research Center poll. Analysts said they had no idea why or if it was just a random blip. I joked on Twitter that my April article “Rise of the Same-Sex Marriage Dissidents” probably was the cause. But in all seriousness, perhaps seeing the totalitarianism of extremist wings of the gay rights movement has soured some people on efforts to change marriage law — or at least given people pause about the tradeoffs involved with redefining marriage or enacting broad legislation around sexual...

Officials and campus cops at Southern Oregon University threatened to call the police on a group of four students who were distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution outside the designated “free speech zone” last week. The Constitution kerfuffle occurred last Tuesday at the obscure public school in the middle of nowhere, Campus Reform reports. The students, all affiliated with Students for Concealed Carry, ironically were also gathering signatures for a petition to end the taxpayer-funded school’s restrictive speech policies. Administrators and school police officers didn’t like it. The four students say they were followed by bureaucrats and cops and threatened...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Houston Mayor Annise Parker has backed down from the subpoenas the City of Houston issued to several area pastors, Breitbart Texas has learned. Breitbart Texas reported earlier about the controversy, stemming from litigation challenging the city's anti-discrimination ordinance and subpoenas asking the pastors for the content of their sermons, speeches and communications with church members. Texas Senator Ted Cruz weighed in, firmly supporting the pastors in their efforts to fight the subpoenas, while Mayor Parker initially remained adamant that the city had the right to request those records. Despite posting comments on Twitter just hours before that...

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/oagnews/release.php?id=4880 AUSTIN -- Attorney General Abbott today asked that the Houston City Attorney to immediately withdraw the subpoenas sent last month to several Houston-area pastors seeking sermons, notes and other information. In his letter to the city attorney, Attorney General Abbott said, “Whether you intend it to be so or not, your action is a direct assault on the religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment. The people of Houston and their religious leaders must be absolutely secure in the knowledge that their religious affairs are beyond the reach of the government.” Mr. David Feldman City Attorney City of Houston...

Officials with the city of Houston, Texas, who are defending a controversial ordinance that would allow men to use women’s restrooms now have demanded to see the sermons preached by several area pastors. The recent move came in a subpoena from the city to pastors for copies of their sermons and other communications in the city’s legal defense of a “non-discrimination” measure that allows “gender-confused” people to use public restrooms designated for the opposite sex. A lawsuit challenging Houston’s move alleges the city violated its own charter in its adoption of the Equal Rights Ordinance, which in May designated homosexuals...

MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Reporter was barred from covering a campaign rally Tuesday in Madison for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke and featuring first lady Michelle Obama. Melissa Baldauff, communications director for the state Democratic Party, informed Wisconsin Reporter on Monday it wasn’t allowed to attend the event at the Overture Center because the online publication isn’t a legitimate news source. This marks the second time in about a week the Burke camp has dictated press coverage of a campaign fundraiser in Wisconsin headlined by the first lady. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Meg Kissinger reported White House and Burke staff tried...

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would have required police to obtain warrants for surveillance by drone, making California the latest state to weigh on an issue that is dividing lawmakers across the country. Mr. Brown's decision comes as the nation grapples with how to balance concerns over privacy and civil liberties with a technology that police departments say can serve as a powerful law-enforcement tool.

Rights: A Ninth Circuit Court ruling that students can't wear American flag T-shirts because they may offend Mexican students celebrating Cinco de Mayo is a ridiculous yet dangerous assault on the First Amendment. On Sept. 17, more than four years after Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., sent students home for wearing American flag t-shirts, an 11-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that it was the right choice, "tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety." The decision upheld the court's three-judge ruling in February that justified the school's actions based on tensions between Mexican...

Pharmaceutical companies say the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) new social media rules would have a "chilling" effect on the industry and leave consumers in the dark.The FDA in June released draft guidelines for how drug firms should use social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But pharmaceutical companies are concerned the FDA would hold them responsible for misinformation about their products posted online by third parties that the companies have little to no control over. They say the rules would discourage them from interacting on social networks, leaving consumers without useful information about their products."Given the extraordinary growth of the...

The right to live, work and worship according to one’s faith is a freedom foundational to the United States. Many of the first settlers, having faced religious persecution in England, sought a place where they could freely worship and live according to their conscience without interference from the government. The Founders were clear, and the Bill of Rights makes it fundamental to our constitutional order that the government should not infringe on the free exercise of religion. In recent years, however, Americans have increasingly faced attempts to water down this robust understanding of religious freedom to a mere “freedom to...

On this past 9/11 in Woodruff, South Carolina, several high school students showed up at school with American flags flying from the beds of the pick up trucks they were driving. The school principal confiscated the flags stating, "It was against district policy to draw too much attention to one's vehicle." Well, I don't claim to be the swiftest horse in the corral, so can somebody tell me just what in the hell the principal is taking about? Does it seem to anybody besides me that what the boys were drawing attention to was not their vehicles, but to the...

Leadership: Say this for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz: He routinely takes principled stands on tough issues, even if it puts him at odds with his own party. Case in point: His comments this week in support of nuns and Israel. With the White House filing a new brief signalling it intends to force Catholic Sisters to violate their religious beliefs, the Texas Republican strongly defended religious liberty. Despite its defeat in the Hobby Lobby case, the White House last Monday was back at it, filing a brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado explaining a rule...

Miguel at Gun Free Zone has a great post about how Moms Demand Action are busy making fudge. Fudge as in fudging the truth into some bastardized “facts” to promote their flawed message. What flavor of fudge are the Mommies making up in the kitchen? They’re trying to claim that most every mass shooting incident has not occurred in a gun-free zone. How are they coming up with that? They aren’t relying on the FBI’s definition of a mass shooting, but instead counting crime scenes in private homes.