Free Republic

The official Twitter account of Black Lives Matter and the organization’s Chicago branch have announced that all Confederate groups, flags and statues “should be illegal” in the United States. Government officials should look to Germany’s decision to outlaw “the Nazis, their symbols, salutes” and flags after World War II, the racial activist group says. The Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter issued two tweets on Monday afternoon related to Confederate symbolism.

Actually, white nationalist speech is protected under the First Amendment, as is all “hate speech,” because there’s no such thing as “hate speech” in U.S. constitutional jurisprudence. How many primers on free-speech law need to be posted on the Internet before people absorb this very basic fact? I’m less annoyed at Patrisse Cullors, who’s obviously pushing this lie as part of a political agenda, than I am at Katy Tur, who views her profession through a heroic lens and is ostensibly there to fact-check. If someone’s spouting misinformation about the First Amendment (of all things) right in front of you,...

"No Free Speech for Fascists!" It's a motto you see on pre-printed signs at protests, including at yesterday's rallies in reaction to the violence and death in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend. Paired with a flood of invective against the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for the group's support of Unite the Right's right to stage a rally at the city's statue of Robert E. Lee in the first place, they make for a troubling trend. Support for the ACLU has been on the uptick from the left of late, thanks to Executive Director Anthony Romero's decisive legal maneuvering and online...

Google's firing of software engineer James Damore for daring to express politically incorrect ideas in an internal memo is the latest example of the political left's tyrannical propensity to suppress speech, thought and dissent. Almost as troubling as the left's policing is its apparent obliviousness toward its own hypocrisy and the danger it poses to the liberal exchange of ideas. While constitutional issues may not be involved in the Google case because no state action is involved, moral shaming has become a chilling cudgel in the hands of leftist-dominated institutions. In his memo, Damore notes that Google's political bias silences...

How Google's Jigsaw is fighting the darkest parts of the internet BY KERRY FLYNN JUL 20, 2017 Fake news, terrorist propaganda, hateful comments — the internet is not the nicest place in the world. Jigsaw is trying to change that. Formerly under Google, Jigsaw now is a subsidiary within Alphabet. The company, under the direction of Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas founder Jared Cohen who serves as founder and CEO of Jigsaw, focuses on researching some of the darkest corners of the internet and implementing ways to address them. Yasmin Green, director of research and development at Jigsaw,...

ANN ARBOR, MI – In a settlement agreement, which reads more like an instrument of surrender, Bernards Township (“Township”), New Jersey officials agreed that, in addition to a $3.5 million payment to Islamic Society of Basking Ridge (“ISBR”), residents and citizens of the Township are prohibited from commenting on “Islam” or “Muslims.” at the upcoming public hearing to approve the settlement. Astonishingly, a federal judge approved the prohibition as a fully enforceable Order of the Court. As a result of this suppression of speech, the Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor,...

RUSH: This is fascinating here. The guy that wrote the manifesto’s got all kinds of people coming out and defending everything he said. Scientists at Rutgers are coming out defending the guy as having been right on point with everything. He’s basically said, “Look, don’t blame anybody. Women just aren’t as interested in tech jobs, and so therefore they’re not that well suited.” This is the reason why 25% of the tech workforce in Silicon Valley is female. Nobody’s denying them. It’s just that’s not what they want to do. And you would have thought that hell has been unleashed....

After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the important new details: * Top Pentagon officials declared the assault a terrorist attack on “Day One.” Doing so enabled them to expedite any response to the attack (Yahoo! News). * U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials understood right away that the attacks were planned for the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 (THE WEEKLY STANDARD). * Within 24...

The First Amendment gets in the way of many “progressive” goals and you often hear them say, “Sure I’m in favor of free speech, but…..” There are so many possible “buts” to complete that sentence that the First Amendment would by now just be lifeless words on parchment if it weren’t for vigilant defenders. One of those “progressive” goals is to make politics more fair by taking out private funding as much as possible. Recently the city of Seattle, fresh from curing poverty with its $15 per hour minimum wage, decided to clean up politics with what it terms its...

Let's take a moment to celebrate a religious liberty victory. It doesn't happen often so let's cherish it. In the most unexpected news of the day, the state of Wisconsin cannot legally force Christian photographer Amy Lynn to photograph same-sex weddings, a court has said. Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs said, “The court’s announcement has important implications for everyone in Wisconsin who values artistic freedom. It means that government officials must allow creative professionals without storefronts anywhere in the city and state the freedom to make their own decisions about which ideas they will use their artistic expression...

President Donald Trump has apparently blocked supermodel Chrissy Teigen on Twitter after being on the receiving end of what she described as “9 years of hating” him. “After 9 years of hating Donald J Trump, telling him ‘lol no one likes you’ was the straw,” Teigen tweeted Tuesday with a photo of a screenshot showing her being blocked from President Trump’s account.

“Ads that perpetuate gender stereotypes will be banned in UK, but not in the good ol’ USA!” reads a recent headline at the Web site Jezebel. Yay to the good ol’ USA for continuing to value the fundamental right of free expression, you might say. Or maybe not. Why would a feminist — or anyone, for that matter — celebrate the idea of empowering bureaucrats to decide how we talk about “gender stereotypes”? Because these days, foundational values mean increasingly little to those who believe hearing something disagreeable is the worst thing that could happen to them.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, tech millionaire turned LGBTQ activist Tim Gill said he’s aiming to punish Christians who don’t want to participate in same-sex weddings. For more than two decades, the software programmer has poured an estimated $422 million into various gay rights causes. After the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal in all 50 states in 2015, Gill turned his attention and resources to targeting Christians. The election of Donald Trump, who claims to support gay rights but stocked his administration with anti-LGBTQ extremists, has only emboldened those looking to erase the gains of the...

It’s hard to believe American teenagers could be arrested for delivering a prayer, but that’s the kind of nation we live in – a nation that was fundamentally transformed by the previous presidential administration. In 2011, the class president at Hampton High School in Tennessee wanted to deliver a prayer at graduation. The principal issued an edict that any child who attempted to pray would be stopped, escorted from the building by police and arrested. That incident was one of dozens included in a stunning new Family Research Council report documenting a significant upsurge in government hostility to religion. Since...

When a New Hampshire police chief pulled a homemade Islamic State flag from a wall at a dam this month, it spurred a host of questions about First Amendment rights in the era of terrorism. Pittsfield Police Chief Jeffrey Cain said the black-and-white flag was causing alarm in the community. Chief Cain said he worked with the FBI on the matter but decided there was no crime in posting the flag and there was no evidence of a terrorist plot. “No criminal charges are forthcoming,” he told The Washington Times. Whether the chief was within his rights to pull down...

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that Missouri's decision to prevent a church-operated daycare and preschool from receiving funding from a state program was unconstitutional Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the Supreme Court's 7-2 opinion, which reversed the federal appeals court's ruling and sent the case back to the lower court for additional proceedings. The dispute in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer involved a state program that provided funding to nonprofits to resurface playgrounds, which ran into conflict with a provision of the Missouri Constitution that blocks public funds from directly or indirectly assisting any church, sect or religion.

The Charlotte Observer recently ran an editorial, which seeks to intentionally misinform the public about HB527 – a bill to restore free speech on campuses in the UNC system. Let me be as clear as I possibly can: The editors who wrote this piece are not confused about what HB527 says. They are intentionally misrepresenting what it says because they oppose free speech. That’s a bold statement, which I intend to back by reprinting the worst parts of their editorial followed by my own observations:"…(T)he move by North Carolina and a handful of other states to enact laws that enhance...

What part of “Free Speech” do you not understand? “(The idea that the government may restrict) speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment,” wrote Justice Alito in his opinion. “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.'”“A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an ‘egregious form of content discrimination,’ which is ‘presumptively unconstitutional,'” Justice Kennedy wrote in...

RUSH: Hey, the Supreme Court has handed down a decision that’s gonna have some ramifications. They have ruled for, in favor of an Asian-American rock band that calls themselves The Slants. Snerdley, you’re a big music guy. Have you ever heard of The Slants, Asian-American rock band called The Slants? I never have. You have heard of them? You like their music? Ohhh, but you’ve not heard their music, you never heard of ’em ’til the story hit? All right. Well, get this. In a win for Asian-American rock band The Slants — and this has got possible ramifications, good...

(CNN)House Russia investigators are planning to call on Brad Parscale, the digital director of President Donald Trump's campaign, as the congressional and federal probes dig into any possible connections between the Trump digital operation and Russian operatives, congressional sources said this week. {snip} Parscale told CNN Friday that he had not been contacted by any investigators -- either federal or Congressional. Senate investigators in particular have been interested in looking for a link between the prevalence of fake news that supported Trump and was pinpointed in key areas of Rust Belt states that ultimately flipped from blue to red --...