Free Republic

The messages from Sen. Rand Paul seem to get less conservative whenever he speaks to students on liberal college campuses, Boston Herald columnist and radio host Howie Carr says. On Friday, Paul, a Kentucky Republican who is considering a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, tested his libertarian-leaning brand of politics on students at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. . . . Carr told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV on Monday that Paul has that appeal to young voters because he tells them what they want to hear, not necessarily the...

President Barack H. Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20500 April 28, 2014 SUBJECT: Request to Prepare the USA for Dangerous Cold Climate. Dear Mr. President, Good morning. This letter is sent to you as a heartfelt request that you take immediate action to insure that the United States of America is fully prepared for the historic, potentially dangerous, new cold climate that has begun. This request is backed up by research over the past decades into the causes of climate change along with the real status of the Earth’s climate. Key findings of that research...

When Luka Ladan started his freshman year at Vassar College in southeast New York, he started noticing a difference between himself and the majority of his classmates. “We were talking about the upcoming election,” he said. “I was in a class talking about Republicans – Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. Whenever a name was mentioned, one kid would snicker and then five to seven would just laugh at the name.” This is a common experience in this age group: 66 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Obama in 2008 and 60 percent did in 2012 – the largest numbers...

A new study by Albright College finds women can more easily make their voices sound attractive. According to a new study by Albright college, men are incapable of intentionally making their voices sound sexy. 20 women and 20 men tried to make their voices sound sexy. Another 40 people judged whether they achieved that goal. And found that the women easily outperformed the men. Why is it so difficult for men? I mean, even a cartoon, Jessica rabbit, can do it. Researchers know, that to men, an attractive voice is often linked to physical appeal. While men learn that what...

The culture warriors have decided: Disney’s Frozen is queer. Elsa hiding her ice-powers could be read as a metaphor for the closet, the Oscar-winning “Let it Go” plays like a coming-out anthem, and a character in the film evokes the question of whether homosexuality is a choice by inquiring of Elsa’s powers, “born with it or cursed?” Some liberals have praised the film for its subtext; some conservatives have denounced it. More on Frozen Frozen: Too Cynical? In Defense of Prince Charming How Parents Can Turn Frozen's Big Twist Into a Teachable Moment But the most remarkable thing about queer...

For decades we have devoted ample space to the deconstruction of women’s studies only to find that there is something even more inane being taught on American campuses—men’s studies. This year, the American Men’s Studies Association (AMSA) held its annual convention in Tacoma, Washington. AMSA is dedicated to “advancing the critical study of men and masculinities.” “Even though the association has been around for 22 years, and even though men’s studies dates back to at least the 1970s, outsiders still tend to greet it with derision and disbelief,” Tom Bartlett writes in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Imagine. “Men’s studies...

Boys are being put off reading because of the influence women have on children’s literature, says an award-winning children’s author. Jonathan Emmett warned that children’s books were too girly because of the influence of mostly female panels of editors, publishers, reviewers and judges. One publishing company’s research suggested women bought 95 percent of picture books for children, he added. The writer believes boys are being starved of what they enjoy in books, such as swashbuckling pirates, battles, or technical details about spaceships, and so are driven to more action-packed video games instead. …

Just when you think you know a state ... Hours after an outpouring of support for gay basketball player Derrick Gordon had sent a message that tolerance reigns in Massachusetts, John Ashcroft came to Amherst on Wednesday. The former attorney general of President George W. Bush spent his University of Massachusetts visit fending off hecklers who called him a hyprocrite and a war criminal among other things. I am not here to defend Ashcroft. I am here to dispute hypocrisy, a label that becomes attached to university communities such as UMass when freedom of speech and opinion is treated as...

A Pleasant View, Utah high school teacher is now on paid leave after she asked her students to come up with a bunch of slang terms for their genitalia as part of a course called “Adult Roles and Financial Literacy.” The genitalia brainstorm session occurred on Friday at Weber High School. The teacher is Ashley Williams, reports The Salt Lake Tribune. “We had some students who reported to administration that a teacher was having an exercise where they were put into groups, male and female, to come up with names for genitalia,” Weber School District spokesman Nate Taggart told the...

Western Washington University sent a questionnaire to students asking them for advice on how the administration could succeed at making sure that in future years, “we are not as white as we are today.” The question notes that WWU’s racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount indicator of a student-applicant’s worth. The president of WWU has stated that his explicit goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform. “I’ve said before and...

"If all you have is a hammer," the old saying goes, "everything looks like a nail." Left unsaid is the fact that the real problem isn't the possession of a hammer, but the certitude that all you need is the hammer. In other words, it's a failure of the imagination -- which is a kind of arrogance -- that's really to blame. "I've got my hammer, and that's all I need. Besides, have you ever seen a problem that didn't look like a nail?" This is a version of what academics call "confirmation bias" -- the tendency to accept only...

Google wants public high school students, especially girls, to discover the magic of coding. Each eligible female student who completes our computer programming lesson will earn DonorsChoose.org credits for your classroom. [ ... ] You’ll receive a $100 DonorsChoose.org gift code for every female student who completes the course. When 4 or more female students complete it, we’ll email you an additional $500 gift code

If you're poor, the only way you're likely to injure someone is the old traditional way: artisanal violence, we could call it – by hands, by knife, by club, or maybe modern hands-on violence, by gun or by car. But if you're tremendously wealthy, you can practice industrial-scale violence without any manual labor on your own part. You can, say, build a sweatshop factory that will collapse in Bangladesh and kill more people than any hands-on mass murderer ever did, or you can calculate risk and benefit about putting poisons or unsafe machines into the world, as manufacturers do every...

SPARTANBURG COUNTY, S.C. - South Carolina lawmakers are once again looking critically at University of South Carolina Upstate for gay themed programs on campus. Several SC Senators voted against USC Trustees up for re-election last week. USC Upstate has now cancelled the presentation "How to become a lesbian in 10 days or less." It is part of a symposium scheduled for this week on LGBT issues. Administrators said it had become a distraction, mainly because it was misunderstood. "It was a performance art piece that was really all about a message of tolerance," Dr. John Masterson, a vice chancellor, said....

Women make up only 9% of Wikipedia editors. Educators say raising that number is key to improving the online encyclopaedia, and have started campaigns to do just that. At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Depression-era artist Natalie Smith Henry's vivid depiction of a farm family hangs high on the wall. But until recently, Henry didn't exist, at least not according to Wikipedia. Then Chelsea Tufarolo, a student at American University, decided to write her an article about her. It was Tufarolo's first post on the world's largest knowledge-sharing resource. Editors and activists are trying to address the root of what...

[Madison, Wisc...] The city of Madison hosted the 15th annual national White Privilege Conference last week at the Monona Terrace to discuss issues of white supremacy, social justice, education and the Tea Party. The MacIver Institute attended multiple breakout sessions and will be releasing our highlights over the next couple days. Our first account comes from the breakout session titled Stories from the front lines of education: Confessions of a white, high school English teacher. The session was facilitated by Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher in California and Colorado. Radersma is currently working toward her Ph. D....

More details are emerging about what was presented at the "White Privilege Conference" held in Madison, Wisconsin, where tax money was spent to train teachers how to annihilate "white privilege" and "white supremacy" in American schools. One session insisted that whites can never be cured of their permanent racist attitudes. On March 30, Breitbart reported on the conference, now in its fifteenth year. Over these years, teachers have been told that whites have been pushing "white supremacy" on kids since the country was created, and that whites are so infused with racism that they aren't even cognizant of their crimes....

A mother in Arkansas has expressed concern over her daughter’s recent Common Core school assignment that asked her to remove and replace two of the first ten amendments of the Constitution. The team assignment stated that the Bill of Rights is “outdated and may not remain in its current form any longer.” Here is a copy of the assignment:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE PHOTO The mother who spoke up said she was particularly troubled by the fact that her daughter’s Sixth Grade History class had received no prior training in civics or how to amend the Constitution, which may...

Officials with the Olathe School District issued an apology Friday after only black students were invited on a school outing. On Wednesday, a letter was sent to Olathe South High School students by Assistant Principal Candy Birch. In the letter, Birch said in her role as activities director that she wanted to give students an additional opportunity to connect with each other. "So we are planning an outing open to our African-American sophomores and juniors," she wrote. The event on April 5 would include a visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the American Jazz Museum, lunch at Arthur Bryant's...

As parents in Germany have protested a new pro-homosexual “sexual diversity” curriculum in their schools, homosexual activists have attacked them by hurling feces and destroying their property, according to the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians, which documents anti-Christian incidents in Europe. "Protesters were physically attacked and it was felt that the police failed to protect the parents’ basic right of assembly," said a statement from the Observatory describing incidents at recent rallies in Baden-Württemberg and Cologne. According to eyewitnesses, says the Observatory, "Christian parents were shouted at with obscenities.” "They were spit at, eggs were thrown, and little...