Free Republic

Protesters in Portland, Oregon, interrupted a town hall meeting where a decorated World War II veteran was receiving a special honor. 100-year-old U.S. Navy vet Dario Raschio was supposed to be presented with medals by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), but soon after the meeting began, more than 100 protesters emerged, shouting "hands-up, don't shoot!" and "I can't breathe!" The protesters did not stop until Rashcio spoke up and said, "Give me a chance. At least let us show a little respect for this occasion."

The 20-odd people chanting “Honk if you want justice,” on a New Bedford, Massachusetts sidewalk Dec. 12 got a lot of attention. They were second graders, rallying against police for the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. While the rest of their class enjoyed 11:30 recess that morning, these 7 and 8-year-old protesters stood by the side of the road in front of the Alma Del Mar Charter School holding signs including one that read, “Please don’t shoot me, Ferguson.”...

Bay Area protests over the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown and scores of others may assuage white liberal guilt and provide a righteous reason to rail against the machine, but it would be nice to actually hear from some black folks. So far, it seems all I’ve seen and heard in three weeks of protest are some pretty vocal white folks screaming to have their way, or dismissing the actions of the wolves inside the flock as the ugly backside of democracy. Assault, vandalism and looting are not protected forms of free speech.

I went down to Al Sharpton March at Freedom Plaza today, which featured the Mothers of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner with a crowd of mostly out of towners that numbered between 8,000 to 10,000 at the height of it all. The march and rally pretty much ended with around 3pm with Sharpton making a very brief appearance and mostly White Leftwingers hijacking the march afterwards as the out of towners headed for their buses. The signage held up by these Leftists radical included environmental messages, the overthrow of the capitalist system. One sign proclaimed that, "Capitalism was the disease...

Tea partiers shouted obscene, racist chants on Wednesday while gathered outside of the White House to protest President Obama's executive actions on immigration. Right Wing Watch reported that among the shouts, captured on video by one of the activists, protestors could be heard calling for the hanging of Obama. VID: http://youtu.be/-X0cAqfYRMA

Thousands of citizens have taken to the streets of Germany and Denmark over the past couple of days to protest the 'Islamisation' of Europe, to oppose Sharia law, and to call for peace with Christian Russia, as the attendance of weekly street rallies snowballs over immigration concerns. The industrial city of Dresden in former Eastern Germany has seen a protest organised by “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of Europe” (PEGIDA) every Monday for nearly two months, with numbers marching growing from just a 'few hundred' in October to over 10,000 today. The German movement has been so successful it has...

On its surface, the recently released music video produced by the PAC Stand with Hillary, not quite a formal part of Hillary Clinton’s not quite announced campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2016, is little more than further evidence of the difficulty Hillary Clinton may encounter turning a sterling resume and impressive intellect into a strong campaign. Frank Bruni, writing in Sunday’s New York Times, suggests that the video “positions [Hillary Clinton] first and foremost as all woman. The references are incessant,” and is part of an effort by Clinton strategists to position their candidate as the woman’s candidate. Leaving...

The biggest mystery that never unraveled in Florida Election 2014 has to be super-uber trial attorney Steve Mostyn. Why would a Houston multimillionaire with no current business in the Sunshine State out-donate billionaire George Soros, giving it to Democrat Charlie Crist's Florida gubernatorial campaign and the Florida Democratic Party? We never did get to the bottom of it. Crist and Mostyn didn't really know each other before the campaign. What did Mostyn want? Soros, founder of the far-left Open Society Institute, who advocates bringing European social democracy to the United States, only gave Crist a smidgen over $1 million. But...

Shurat Hadin (the Israel Law Center) has filed a legal complaint against the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), alleging violations of the US tax code for unlawful political lobbying and contact with Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist organization. […] Shurat Hadin said it provided the IRS with “documentary and video evidence showing PCUSA delegates meeting with the US-designated terrorist group Hezbollah, publishing anti-Semitic materials, enacting a racist policy to divest from American companies doing business with Israel, lobbying the US Congress, and distributing political advocacy materials in violation of its tax-exempt status as a religious organization.” The PCUSA declined to provide an...

There’s a white, rich dude running the black boycott capitalism movement known as United Blackout. His name is Michael Latt and he is the marketing director of United Blackout. “Control how Black money is spent and you win the game,” says United Blackout’s campaign video. And Latt seeks to deliver. ... Latt’s clearly following United Blackout’s advice. He lives the lifestyles of the rich and fabulous on his Facebook page. ... Latt developed the branding and marketing strategy and is the brains behind the website for the BlackOut for Human Rights campaign intended to encourage African Americans to boycott capitalism.

Organizers of a post-Thanksgiving protest on behalf of workers at a Walmart in downtown Washington, D.C. identified only one of the participants as actually working at that store. The admission underscores the fact that few Walmart workers have been involved in the protests. "Thirty striking workers from Washington, D.C., Virginia and Maryland took part in today’s protest, and Melinda Gaino, one of the striking workers, works at the H Street Store," said Julie Anderson, a spokeswoman for the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers union, which organized the event. Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg claimed the number was far...

In a development that may portend extended disruptions, veteran street organizer Lisa Fithian, previously dubbed “Professor Occupy,” recently trained Ferguson protesters how to “simulate chaos.” Fithian is a legendary organizer who once announced she seeks to “create crisis, because crisis is that edge where change is possible.” She was one of the luminaries of the Occupy Wall Street movement and was a lead organizer in the infamous 1999 Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization that descended into violence. The 1999 WTO event in Seattle devolved into widespread rioting in which more than 40,000 protesters, some using violent tactics, descended...

You knew it wouldn’t take long for the Ferguson animals to start bashing Israel too Picture only on link

...The letter, called “An Open Letter From Ferguson Protestors [sic] and Allies,” equates the current situation in Ferguson and the United States with slavery and lynchings. “We are living an American Horror Story,” the letter begins. It continues later (emphasis theirs): “Not one group of us has been spared from the bullet or the beating, too many armed only with our Blackness, left to live this American Horror Story. The story has come alive once again in Ferguson.”The authors then go on to assert that “whites” intentionally disregard the plight of African Americans because they do not want to come...

We are a large social activism organization that advocates on behalf of issues including the environment, human rights, animal welfare, social justice, politics and more. We are seeking part-time interns who are interested in working on these important causes. Interns will improve their writing and research skills, while building a broad portfolio of online writing samples.

DENVER — It’s harvest time in Colorado, and not just for pumpkins. Concerns are running high over door-to-door campaign workers asking voters for their mail-in ballots in what is known as “ballot harvesting.” Now that all-mail voting is the law of the land in Colorado, the challenge for campaigns is to persuade voters to drop off or mail in their ballots — or hand them to the foot soldiers who turn up on their doorsteps offering to do it for them..... [snip] .....“I guarantee you right now if you went to an apartment complex anywhere in Colorado, you would find...

CNN reporter Sarah Sidener’s on air stand up in Ferguson, Missouri was disrupted on Monday night when supporters of Michael Brown surrounded Sidener and her cameraman and demanded that they leave the area. The video at Ferguson, shot by Bassem Masri a local activist, includes Masri and others accusing CNN of lying about the Michael Brown case and supporting “Zionists.”

Men can and do make a difference — just ask former abortion workers. In particular, they’ve noticed that no-shows and cancellations go way up when a it’s a man in a Roman collar who’s joined the vigil. The staff knows right away it’s going to be a bad day for business. We are thankful for all the priests and ministers who have helped make more “bad days” possible! Many members of the clergy have led by example by praying at 40 Days for Life vigil sites these past three weeks. It takes courage … so thank them when you see...

Angelo Carusone is probably one of the most famous people you’ve never heard of. A prolific warrior for disaffected minorities and the underserved liberal masses, Carusone is the founder of Stop Rush. (As in Limbaugh.) He was also a guiding force behind the parallel Stop Beck effort. The recipient of massive financial support from George Soros, Carusone went on to become the Executive Vice President of Media Matters, acting as a tireless champion of both racial minorities and LGBT citizens and fighting the regressive, hateful conservative movement.In light of all this, it may turn out to be rather curious...

Big, busy Morning Jolt to close out the week — an appalling failure of immigration law enforcement, an indictment in that long-forgotten GSA conference scandal, another trip down memory lane for a beloved prematurely-canceled television show, and then this glaring change in our national politics: Funeral Services for the Anti-War Movement Will Be Held Next Week Howard Kurtz writes the obituary of the anti-war movement. Born in 2003, the movement experienced sudden difficulties in January 2009, struggled and limped along for the past few years, and finally collapsed in the street in front of the White House least week: Medea...

Progressives behind the relentless push to recruit U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the anti-Hillary Clinton candidate for 2016 have picked an odd model in their quest for a far-left victory — the hard-right Tea Party. “I think there is a cross-partisan prairie fire exploding across the country,” said Ryan Clayton, a left-leaning strategist who has blasted Clinton in a secret progressive email chain obtained by the Herald. Clayton went on to brand Warren as the left’s version of Tea Party darling Rand Paul. “That’s why you have people like Rand Paul on the Republican side and Elizabeth Warren on the...

Hundreds of environmentalists plan to "shut down" the New York Stock Exchange Monday to protest the relationship between global warming and Big Business. Scores of protesters marched towards the exchange in lower Manhattan bringing traffic to a standstill by midday Monday for an event dubbed #FloodWallStreet. They planned to march a few blocks north to Wall Street and stage a "sit-in" until forced to leave.

Conservative Republican Assemblywoman Michele Fiore of Las Vegas invited a few extra guests Tuesday night to the regular pasta dinners she has for constituents. The meal was the last official stop for a group of young conservatives traveling the country — visiting battleground states such as Nevada first — as part of a $1 million campaign to get the national Republican Party to support gay marriage in its party platform in 2016. The group has been to Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina is the next stop. Nevada already is ahead of the curve, said Tyler Deaton, campaign manager of...

FULL TITLE - Top Obama Bundlers Funded LGBT Attack on San Francisco Archbishop for Traditional Marriage Stance A leftist group funded by top gay activist bundlers for Obama’s 2012 campaign coordinated both a “well planned and financed” attack against San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone for his decision to speak during the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. in June, says Catholic San Francisco. Faithful America is an organization that claims to be “the largest and fastest growing online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice.” According to Valerie Schmalz writing at Catholic San Francisco, there is...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Six kids from the block where Michael Brown was killed tell the truth about race with some humor in video.Six kids from Ferguson, Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot and killed, have something to say about the state of racism in a humorous video called "Hey White People: A Kinda Awkward Note to America by #Ferguson Kids" created by the T-shirt company FCKH8.com. "Sometimes white people are like, 'But is racism still a thing?' Spoiler alert: Duh. Just because Beyoncé is on your playlist and you voted for Obama, doesn't mean that our generation has seen the end of racist...

And who didn't find the last Obama appearance rather "Staged"?Where are they finding these people to cheer&applaud anything Barry throws at them?Are they using "Cheer&Applause" signs like they did in the 50's?Are they rehearing the show before Obama makes his speech?Who in any state of mind would be applauding and going along with anything Obama has to say while innocent children are being killed in Gaza/Israel while refugees are suffering and dying trying to cross our borders?And they are also cheering Obama while World War Three 1.0 is going on in the east,yet the President shows very little concern.And no...

The political arm of the Planned Parenthood abortion business says it will spend as much as $3 million in Texas to elect pro-abortion gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and other pro-abortion candidates. Cecile Richards, the president of America’s biggest abortion corporation was in the Lone State State to push her plan. Cecile Richards, president of the national advocacy group Planned Parenthood Votes, said the effort aims to draw differences between Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Greg Abbott, the state attorney general, in the campaign for governor. wendydavis12“When women have a chance to know the difference between candidates, they won’t vote for...

In the Hobby Lobby decision handed down last month, the Supreme Court was asked to strike a balance between women’s rights and religious freedom. But the major conflict that has erupted in the wake of that decision has been between religious freedom and gay rights. The resulting controversy has split gay-rights and faith groups on the left, with wide-ranging political fallout that some now fear could hurt both causes. One chapter of the controversy is set to close on Monday, when President Obama plans to sign a long-awaited executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against gays and lesbians, according...

Organizers of Netroots Nation, America’s largest annual gathering of progressive activists, took the wraps off of a major and welcome surprise this afternoon with the announcement that Vice President Joe Biden would be coming to Detroit to speak to the convention during a special Thursday afternoon general session. It will also be Biden’s first appearance at Netroots Nation. He was invited to participate in the Presidential Leadership Forum held in Netroots Nation’s second year, in Chicago (back then, the convention was known as YearlyKos), but declined to attend due to his desire to participate in another event. The other contenders...

NOTE: Links to webpages begging for end of quarter contributions have been removed. Which is a shame because the begging was truly pathetic. upchuck -- According to our records, here's what we have down for this exact email address: -- Supporter: upchuck -- High-powered lobbyist: No. -- Currently a Koch brother: No. -- Level of awesome: Dangerously high. -- Suggested action today: Keep on being awesome. OFA is about putting power back in the hands of real people. And corporations and shady interest groups (who aren't real people) are spending big to try to stop that from happening. If you...

After supposed RINO Thad Cochran relied in part on African-American voters to defeat Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel and win the Mississippi GOP’s nomination to the Senate, FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe was very upset. Kibbe was so angry, in fact, that he was moved to petulantly declare, “If the only way the K Street wing of the GOP establishment can win is by courting Democrats to vote in GOP primaries then we’ve already won.” This Black Knight-like declaration of victory following conspicuous defeat was widely mocked as yet another example of the Tea Party’s preference to curate reality.

Suburban Albany is not known for its rip-roaring weekend scene, but this most recent Saturday night, it was the momentary center of the political universe, as an underfunded political party was using its quadrennial convention to try to force America’s most powerful and best-financed governor to submit to its demands. Though the Working Families Party’s conventions are typically low-key affairs, this one had drawn 800 activists and operatives and most of the New York press corps—all to see if the party would endorse conservative Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo or run a third-party candidate against him. In the end, when the...

A new documentary makes the controversial case that a political cocktail of big corporate money and racially charged sentiments has helped fuel the rise of the tea party. And squarely behind that movement, the film argues, are the Koch brothers. Co-Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin sat down with “Top Line” to discuss their film, “Citizen Koch,” and why they say the GOP’s deep-pocketed donors, the Koch brothers, are such figures in American politics today. “Money – $100 billion now,” Deal said in explaining the Kochs’ influence. “When we started out making this film, their net worth was about $68...

What’s an “Islamophobia”-promoting academic to do when there simply aren’t enough hate crimes to sustain the mythical narrative that Muslim-Americans are persecuted for their religion? The Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP) at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Race & Gender came up with a brilliant idea for this spring’s Fifth Annual International Islamophobia Conference: they invented a thought crime called “latent Islamophobia.” According to the conference description and “inspired by [the late Columbia professor] Edward Said’s work on Orientalism,” “Islamophobia” can be broken into two categories: latent and manifest: Latent Islamophobia is founded upon an unquestionable certitude...

The Catholics United Education Fund, a Democrat-leaning advocacy group which began criticizing Church opposition to same-sex “marriage” in 2012, received most of its operational budget that year from a gay activist foundation run by influential multi-millionaire Tim Gill. “I would say it is very obvious that Mr. Gill does not agree with the Catholic Church and Her teachings on the issues of homosexuality and marriage,” Jennifer Kraska, executive director of the Colorado Catholic Conference, told CNA May 29. “His attitude toward the Church on these issues is definitely one of extreme disagreement.” Tax forms show the Colorado-based Gill Foundation made...

A retired United States Army colonel expects as many as 30 million like-minded individuals will descend on Washington, DC this week and demand that President Barack Obama and other members of his administration be booted from office. Those are just some of the demands that Col. Harry Riley, founder of “Operation American Spring,” said he’ll ask the Obama administration to adhere to when militia members and patriots of all sorts arrive in the nation’s capital on Friday and begin demonstrating against a government the group considers to be in violation of the principles established by the founders of the country....

Surprise action outside Denver's Brown Palace Hotel this morning, as a press release from a coalition of groups including Together Colorado and the Colorado Immigration Reform Coalition (CIRC) explains: Outside a fundraiser headlined by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) today, local leaders staged a rally to protest the fact that these three House Republicans are key obstacles standing in the way of immigration reform that would keep Colorado immigrant families together. It has been 322 days since the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill, but Speaker Boehner and House...

More Republicans are pushing for an immigration overhaul.House Republican leaders are mum on a timetable for advancing immigration overhaul legislation and have so far been noncommittal on moving on the issue before the end of the 113th Congress. But a group of mayors and business leaders from across the political spectrum is determined to prove that momentum is growing for a rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws — even among conservatives. The coalition, Partnership for a New American Economy, on Wednesday held the first in a series of monthly conference calls moderated by Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist...

The fast-food worker strikes are expanding to more U.S. cities and going global. Workers in up to 150 cities across the country are planning to strike on May 15, according to labor organizers. The movement is also headed overseas, with plans for workers to join protests in 33 countries. On Wednesday, the workers announced the protests outside a McDonald's in New York City, and delivered a letter that called on the fast food giant to raise wages and respect workers' rights worldwide. However, security guards didn't allow the workers to bring the letter inside the restaurant. So, they posted the...

Democrat Who Wanted to Hand Out KKK Hoods to GOP Gets Absolutely Schooled By Black Conservative Woman By Emily Hulsey Days after announcing his plan to hand out KKK hoods at Wisconsin’s GOP convention, State Representative and Democrat candidate for Governor Brett Hulsey (no relation to author) took to the streets once again. Dressed in a (homemade and inaccurate) Confederate uniform, he flagged down conservative attendees to speak about what he says is the GOP’s racist agenda. However, I don’t think he intended for it to go like this…

It's generally a waste of space to reference Sarah Palin, which is why she so rarely appears here. She long ago devolved into a cartoon, and her clout (such as it was) continues to wane. She's like the incoherently choleric aunt you see once a year at Thanksgiving. She's like the real-life version of Kristin Wiig's brain-addled Aunt Linda. But... (You knew there'd be a But.) But every great once in a while, John McCain's Hail Mary gift to America says something so scintillating that we'd be remiss to ignore it. Her remark earlier this week about the religious virtues...

Shane Osborn is done in Nebraska. He cannot get the momentum to win the race. At this point, Osborn is taking the position that if he can’t win the Senate race, neither should Ben Sasse. Osborn, who thought the race was his, is desperately upset. Joined with a Mitch McConnell Super PAC, Osborn is now throwing everything he has at Ben Sasse. Waiting in the wings, with Osborn fully understanding what is happening, is Sid Dinsdale. Dinsdale is extremely rich, has a lot of money to burn at the end of the race, has benefited from sitting on the sidelines...

The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday about a big setback for the Wendy Davis campaign for Texas governor.  The Democratic Governors Association (DGA) did not include her campaign as a top target which means it won't be prioritized for heavy spending. The reaction from the Davis campaign could best be described as an angry hissy fit which bitterly attacked the DGA. Pretty big political news from Texas to the extent it was covered by the Wall Street Journal. Therefore you would expect the Texas Tribune which is supposed to cover the nuts and bolts details of Texas politics to...

When Michael Bloomberg announced he would spend $50 million on gun control this year, he said he hoped to make the National Rifle Association “afraid.” This weekend, the Bloomberg-backed group Everytown for Gun Safety will help pay to send hundreds of anti-gun violence supporters to the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis. Cleopatra and Nathaniel Pendleton, parents of Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old girl shot and killed in Chicago in 2013, are part of a group of survivors traveling to Indianapolis this weekend for the NRA convention with Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety. Ten days after Michael Bloomberg announced a $50 million...

A verified @Faith4Hillary Twitter account purporting to be the "Faith and Value Voters for Hillary Clinton 2016" appears to have purchased a large percentage of its 42.6k followers. The website Twitter Audit determined that more than half of the account's followers were obtained by "inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means," and the similar website StatusPeople calculated that only 18 percent of the account's followers were "good." Per StatusPeople, the rest of the followers were either fake accounts or accounts that are inactive. Additionally, the account has a comparatively small amount of interaction via retweets and favorites compared to the amount of...

The journalists at ABC's World News on Sunday enthusiastically touted a fawning question from a Democratic activist to Hillary Clinton. After anchor David Muir insisted that "it didn't take long for a student there to ask a pointed question," college student Vrinda Agrawal wondered, "If you don't represent women in politics in America as a future president, who will?" [MP3 audio here.] This is a tough question? The event was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and held at Yale Law School. Agrawal followed-up by enthusing, "I will proudly run your campaign." At no time did Muir or reporter Susan Saulny inform...

Ten city blocks of Manhattan became a river of black Sunday as 50,000 dark-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews took to the streets to protest Israel's proposal to force their young boys into its army. The gathering took up a stretch of Water Street, with demonstrators standing behind police barricades amid tight security as they prayed in solidarity with their brethren in Israel. 'These kids, a lot of them don't know how to hold a gun. They don't know what physical warfare is,' said Long Island rabbinical student Shmuel Gruis.

Paramedics and emergency medical technicians made it clear that they do not want to form a union at Huron Valley Ambulance. According to information obtained from the National Labor Relations Board in a Freedom of Information Act request, votes tallied by the NLRB showed that 221 EMS workers voted against forming a union while just 138 voted in favor of the petition to unionize. There were about 430 eligible voters, but only 359 votes counted and 10 others were listed as “changed ballots” and not counted in the total vote. In January, workers from HVA Workers – with the help...

EyeOn College Basketball Missouri students block Westboro Baptist protest of Michael Sam By Chip Patterson | College Writer February 15, 2014 4:46 pm ET The Missouri community has shown overwhelming support for Michael Sam since the Tigers' football star announced that he was gay earlier this month. On Saturday a group of students united to drown out the protest efforts of the Westboro Baptist Church. The group was in town for the Tigers' home basketball game against Tennessee, protesting Missouri's support of Sam outside Mizzou Arena. Students blocked the Westboro Baptist protesters from view with a human wall, turned their...

The tech-bus protest isn’t just a San Francisco thing anymore. This week, the anti-gentrification act of blocking a private shuttle full of high-paid tech workers spread to Seattle, where a handful of buses carrying Microsoft employees were stopped by demonstrators. The protest was chronicled by local Tweeps and community websites.