Free Republic

11 Dec 2015 Thursday night on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s proposed ban Muslim for entering the Untied States would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution. Giuliani said, “I think we have to be very careful about who we let in. I don’t think we should let any of the refugees in. I think they should be put in a safe zone in Syria, but if you do a ban on all Muslims, I have no question that you violate the first amendment. The reality is if you...

A DOTD project manager has informed a citizen committee that they must limit their discussion to DOTD's selected proposals for the Interstate 49 extension or resign from the committee. The order, issued in an Tuesday email to the Community Working Group, came from Toby Picard, the engineer who is project manager for the proposed connection of Interstate 49 with U.S. 90 south. There currently are 14 versions of the connection, all of which include at least a partially elevated highway through the heart of Lafayette. These are the only options that are acceptable for discussion by the committee, Picard's email...

  Q.  Which came first, the chicken or the egg?                         A.  Does it really matter if you believe believe in gay marriage? The outpost of left wing totalitarianism raised it’s [trigger warning] ugly little head again in NYC. Mayor de Blasio joined Councilman Danny Dromm from Queens in calling for a boycott of Chick-fil-A restaurants in the city. As a rationale Domm issued the following statement: “Chick-fil-A is anti-LGBT.” This group imparts a strong anti-LGBT message by forcing their employees and volunteers to adhere to a policy that prohibits same-sex love,” he said. “It is outrageous that Chick-fil-A is quietly...

Could the next president of the United States be neither Clinton, Trump, Cruz, or Kasich ... but Thomas Perez? It’s far more likely than you might think. Even before any candidate definitively secures either party’s presidential nomination, 2016 is looking more and more like 1912 all over again. In that fateful year, Theodore Roosevelt -- after four years of bored retirement -- decided that he wanted to be president again. However, Roosevelt’s handpicked successor William Howard Taft refused to yield. Because of the split, even though the Democrats’ dour, arrogant Woodrow Wilson won fewer popular votes than perennial failed...

I knew it! Civil Rights do indeed trump (no pun or endorsement intended) religious freedom! So unless your religion also qualifies as a bona fide minority don’t expect much protection from the Bill of Rights any more. In a rare entrance into a politically charged controversy, first lady Michelle Obama used a commencement speech Saturday at Jackson State University in Mississippi to directly target the state’s recently-passed "religious freedom" bill. "We see it right here in Mississippi -- just two weeks ago -– how swiftly progress can hurtle backward," Obama said. "How easy it is to single out a small...

NEW YORK CITY, New York — Billionaire and 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump told Breitbart News that GOP establishment consultant Karl Rove is so “dishonorable” that the Wall Street Journal should stop him from writing future columns for the publication. “This guy is such a dishonorable guy,” Trump said in his latest exclusive phone interview last week with Breitbart News. “He shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal.” Rove, earlier that day, had published a piece in the Wall Street Journal, titled: “Vanity Will Be The Donald’s Undoing.” Throughout it, Rove quotes from various interviews that...

Judicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest Defending the First Amendment against the Obama IRS Only 3 U.S. Airports Require Employee Security Checks JW Gets Props in The Wall Street JournalJudicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest With a notorious Democrat in the White House, it bears repeating that there are corrupt politicians in both the Republican and Democrat parties. The “corruption caucus” in the political world is both bipartisan and growing. True to our non-partisan educational mission, we...

The relationship between college students and free speech: It’s complicated. A new Gallup survey said 72 percent of college students oppose campus restrictions on “expressing political views that are upsetting or offensive to certain groups.” But asked whether “slurs” and other “intentionally offensive” language should be banned, and they’re all for it. Sixty-nine percent of college students surveyed said they would be in favor of prohibiting “intentionally offensive” speech on campus, and 63 percent also said they would support administrative measures to ban “costumes that stereotype certain racial or ethnic groups.” As the sound and the fury over the “Trump...

Treating climate change as an absolute, unassailable fact, instead of what it is— an unproven, controversial scientific theory [1], a group of state attorneys general have announced that they will be targeting any companies that challenge the catastrophic climate change religion. Speaking at a press conference on March 29, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said [2] “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real.” He went on to say that if companies are committing fraud by “lying” about the dangers of climate change, they will “pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.” The coalition [3] of...

President Obama is so paranoid about linking terrorists to the Muslim faith that when French President François Hollande used the phrase “Islamist terrorism” at a meeting in Washington, White House officials posted their official press video with audio of the words cut out completely. The White House’s transcript of the event shows the French leader declared at the 4:49 minute mark that “the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq.” But rather than include Hollande’s remark in its entirety, the Obama administration posted footage in which his interpreter’s English translation of the words “Islamist terrorism” was...

At the March 29th rally in Janesville Wisconsin, outlined several ideas one of which was do away with 501C3 status of churches which he says contributed to the pulpit being silenced in the political world and infringe upon free speech.

Emory University President James W. Wagner chalked his own free speech message onto a campus sidewalk after students protested over pro-Donald Trump messages that they said threatened their safety. Students had petitioned the administration to denounce the pro-Trump chalkings that began appearing throughout the Atlanta campus last week, saying the possibility that fellow students could support Mr. Trump made them feel unsafe at school. Roughly 40 students carrying signs such as “Stop Trump” and “Stop Hate” protested outside of the Administrative Building last week, chanting “You are not listening! Come speak with us, we are in pain!” Some students went...

This is the kind of case the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia liked to sink his judicial teeth into -- whether the federal government can compel a religious entity like the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious beliefs and acquiesce to the ObamaCare contraceptive coverage mandate. As LifeSite News reported on Wednesday’s hearing: This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a 175-year-old religious order of women who have vowed their lives to care for the elderly poor.

If Georgia chooses to turn the “religious liberty” bill into law, be prepared: Atlanta may not get a Super Bowl. That was the suggestion from the NFL on Friday when the league released a statement in response to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s question about whether the league had any position on Georgia House Bill 757. The statement from league spokesman Brian McCarthy reads, “NFL policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard. Whether the laws and regulations of a state and local community are consistent with these policies...

University of California officials are proposing to include "anti-Zionism" as a form of discrimination that is unacceptable on campus, according to a long-awaited draft statement on intolerance released Tuesday. The inclusion immediately drew sharply divergent reactions, with pro-Israel groups hailing it as a needed step to protect Jewish students from hostility and those supporting Palestinian rights criticizing it as a naked attempt to suppress criticism of the Jewish state. Scholars were similarly divided over whether a statement meant to express the UC regents' principles against intolerance should include Zionism -- historically an international movement to establish a Jewish homeland and...

Donald Trump, who denies that his provocative and sometimes profane rhetoric (particularly against Muslims_ has anything to do with violence and protests at his University of Illinois-Chicago rally, once blamed conservative activist Pamela Geller for provoking an attempted armed assault by – wait for it – unnecessarily provoking Muslims. As Gideon Resnick noted last December in the Daily Beast, pre-candidate Trump was not as passionately concerned with Pamela Geller’s First Amendment free speech rights as he now is about his own:

American Freedom Defense Initiative President Pamela Geller took to two morning news programs Monday to defend a cartoon contest and art exhibit held for depictions of the Prophet Muhammad as being held in defense of free speech, but outspoken real estate mogul Donald Trump said it looked to him like "she's just taunting everybody."

..youngest Solicitor General in the entire country and the longest tenure in Texas history(snip) Authored over 80 SCOTUS briefs and presented over 40 oral arguments before The Court * In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of 31 states in defense of the principle that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms * Presented oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit * Defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds, * Defended the recitation of the Pledge...

Forty-seven years ago, the free press became much more free. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that journalists may not be sued successfully by public officials for libel unless their news coverage was false, damaged a reputation and was published with "actual malice." That meant establishing that the defamation was published "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." The Court concluded that such protection was necessary to preserve open debate and discussion about government policy and conduct. Without that protection, the First Amendment guarantee...

Donald Trump wants to “open up” American libel laws to make it easier for politicians such as himself to sue newspapers that write things of which he disapproves. The problem faced by Trump — and by his pal Harry Reid, who wants to use federal law to censor political speech — is that the First Amendment severely limits what men who dream of shutting down newspapers (and little magazines) can actually do. What does “opening up” mean in this context? I spent most of my career as a newspaper editor, and blustering imbeciles like Donald Trump threatened to sue me...