Free Republic

Donald Trump's attacks on broadcaster CNN are an "an outrageous assault" on freedom of speech, according to former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Michael Hayden. “If this is who we are or who we are becoming, I have wasted 40 years of my life,” the former spy chief, who now works as a national security analyst for the broadcaster, said in a Twitter post. General Hayden, who is also a former director of the National Surveillance Agency (NSA), added: "Until now it was not possible for me to conceive of an American President capable of such an outrageous assault on...

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” So begins the First Amendment to our Constitution. Those words have been turned into a “law” that allows courts to demand an impenetrable wall of separation between religion and government. A recent case shows how amazingly far they will go to ensure that. In 1925, a group of citizens in Bladensburg, Maryland wanted to honor 49 men from Prince George’s County who had lost their lives during the First World War. The local chapter of the American Legion and families funded a memorial usually...

SB 1424, as amended, Pan. Commercial law. Internet: social media: false information: strategic plan. Existing law prohibits a person, among others, from making or disseminating in any advertising device, or in any manner or means whatever, including over the Internet, any statement concerning real or personal property or services that is untrue or misleading, as specified. This bill would require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Web site. The bill would require the plan to include,...

Trampling the Constitution because it isn’t ‘woke’ enough has turned into a daily work out for Progressives. I think it’s cute that they profess to believe in the principles of both the First and Second Amendment while spending a great deal of time and effort to violate and destroy them.The assault on the Second Amendment has been so well documented and become so ingrained in the sheeple brain that little towns across America feel empowered to virtue signal their disdain by passing illegal legislative bans: Deerfield residents with assault weapons may sell them, hand them over to police or move...

Fox News host Laura Ingraham has apologized, as has the network, for nothing more serious than her tweet: “David Hogg rejected by four colleges to which he applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA . totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” Hogg actually has a 4.2 grade-point average. The 17-year-old Hogg, a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., is the new face of the anti-gun movement, having achieved overnight victim status, reserved, apparently, only for those on the left, which supposedly insulates him from criticism. Hogg...

The whole point of the First Amendment was to keep government out of crucial aspects of life –religion, speech, the press – that should be left entirely to voluntary action. It is supposed to shield people against governmental mandates and prohibitions. Government cannot keep you from practicing any religion and it cannot make you practice any; it cannot prevent you from speaking your mind and it cannot make you speak if you do not want to. That’s the concept, anyway. A case that the Court recently heard, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra, puts that concept...

An underground conservative newspaper at Taylor University was recently pressured into temporarily suspending publication for striking “fear in some students.” The anonymous paper, called Excalibur, was launched in February by a group of professors as a means to articulate “conservative stances boldy, extensively, and without fear of editorial filter,” according to a copy of the print edition obtained by Campus Reform.

Video has emerged of the principal at New Praque, Minnesota’s New Prague High School allegedly removing a student from a group of walkout participants because the student was holding a pro-gun sign. The student’s sign said, “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People.” New Prague High School student Kenny McDonald put up a Facebook post alleging that the student was not only made to walk away from those participating in the walkout for gun control but was also threatened with being placed in a police car. The post contains a video which shows the student with a pro-gun sign being...

A transgender woman is suing Tinder on behalf of other transgender people living in the Portland area, claiming it rejects all transgender people from the dating service. Ariel Hawkins claims in a new lawsuit, obtained by TMZ, a few days ago she edited her profile to disclose that she was a pre-op trans woman. She says Tinder immediately deleted her account. She says the company sent her email saying she violated its terms of service ... but didn't point her to any term and refused to explain the basis for the rejection.

California students arrested after throwing rocks and damaging vehicles during anti-gun walkout. KCRA's Melinda Meza reports.

Minneapolis police say no arrests have been made after a student carrying a flag with the word “Trump” on it was assaulted outside of Southwest High School. Police say the altercation happened while students were outside of the building during National School Walkout Day Wednesday morning.

Free speech may not mean what most college students think it means. The majority of college students surveyed in a Gallup/Knight Foundation study said they support free speech and believe it is vital to the health of democracy. Yet droves of students also said they favor policies that restrict free speech such as safe spaces, free speech zones, speech codes and bans on offensive Halloween costumes. Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said “the discrepancy between what undergraduate students say they believe and what actions they are willing to take is really breathtaking.” “Students like the ring...

On February 26, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME. The issue in the case is whether public unions can compel workers who have declined to become members to pay them an “agency fee” that supposedly covers the union’s activities other than political action. Mark Janus is a public employee in Illinois and under state law, he must pay “his” union, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees a fee that is 78 percent of the full membership dues. That is the amount that the union says is the “fair share” of workers who decline...

To err is human, or at least that’s what they say. But the question is, how come that Internet behemoths like Google/YouTube, Facebook and Twitter always make ‘mistakes’ when it comes to their right wing users, Donald Trump (whose Twitter account was ‘deleted’ by mistake recently) included? This question has an obvious and not very politically correct answer, but I’ll let you sort it out on your own. Today we learned that Google owned YouTube ‘accidentally’ deleted a number of conservative/right wing channels and/or videos, following the Florida high-school massacre. Obviously, Google claims it was done by mistake, but all...

Senators Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), who top the list of potential Democratic challengers to President Donald Trump in 2020, both announced last week that they would forgo accepting donations from corporate PACs in an effort to cure the corrosive effect they say special interest spending has had on the political system. But neither extended their pledge to labor unions and ideological groups. Gillibrand made her pledge last week. It was quickly followed by Booker, who, echoing Gillibrand, said the "campaign finance system is broken." Neither's pledge to stymie outside spending, however, extended to labor unions and ideological...

Ledyard police said a 17-year-old high school student has been arrested and charged with threatening and breach of peace. According to a letter from the high school principal, that student made a comment stating “I could buy an AR-15”, the same gun used in the Florida shooting. The principal said the student wasn’t threatening to do harm, but rather was talking about buying guns. The principal said the student does not have access to guns at home.

Religion is not hostile to learning; Christianity has been the greatest patron learning has ever had. But Christians know that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" now just as it has been in the past, and they therefore oppose the teaching of guesses that encourage godlessness among the students. Do bad doctrines corrupt the morals of students? We have a case, Mr. Darrow, one of the most distinguished criminal lawyers in our land, was engaged about a year ago in defending two rich men's sons who were on trial for as dastardly a murder as was...

A North Carolina mom started serving a week-long jail sentence for having her daughter baptized, according to reports. The 2016 baptism at St. Peter’s Catholic Church when the girl was 2 years old defied a judge’s order in a custody battle between unmarried couple, Kendra Stocks and Paul Schaaf, who are no longer together.

Democrats on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) have taken their fight against media outlets such as Fox and the Drudge Report “underground,” says Lee Goodman, who is leaving the agency Friday after nearly five years on the panel. “The debate has gone underground, it has not ceased,” said Goodman, who pointed to a campaign by FEC Democrats to remove long-standing media exemptions on fines and criminal charges for not policing whether or not political ads contained the proper disclaimers identifying their source. In a memo about a recent case, for example, Goodman said that Democrats Ellen Weintraub and Steven Walther...

The free speech wars are getting worse, but it seems that none of the warring factions quite grasp the character of the dispute — or precisely what's at stake. At the figurative center of the clash is the norm of near-absolute freedom of speech and expression, which its defenders like to treat as the American default. A number of ideological challenges have arisen in recent years to overturn this norm. On many college campuses, groups of left-leaning students insist that free speech should be conditional on speakers adhering to explicit standards of diversity and avoiding the infliction of emotional harm...