Free Republic

Attorneys familiar with the judge assigned to a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on gay marriages say she is perfectly suited for the controversial case challenging a constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2008.... Attorney Michael Gongora, the first openly gay member of the Miami Beach City Commission, said six couples challenging the state law on constitutional grounds could do far worse than Zabel on this hot-button issue. "Judge Zabel is a good judge for this case," said Gongora, a partner with Becker & Poliakoff in Coral Gables.

Via Salon today comes one of the most truly bizarre pieces of revisionist history I have ever seen, even within the context of articles appearing at Salon.

As attorney general of Florida, it’s a vital part of Pam Bondi’s job to enforce state laws and defend them in court. She can’t pick and choose only those she likes. But she also has a duty to pay attention to changes in the law, and in the public attitudes that support those laws... ....it should be increasingly clear that Ms. Bondi and officials in Tallahassee are swimming against the legal tide on the issue of gay marriage. Laws similar to Florida’s have been swept away in a wave of decisions around the country, with the rulings upheld by federal...

No ethnic group in the U.S. matches Cuban-Americans in their rejection of the Democratic Party. This might explain why most of you, amigos, have probably never heard of this atrocity against “Hispanics” attempting to enter the U.S. The Democratic Party’s public relations department (i.e. mainstream media) saw no upside to publicizing this “border crisis.” But this week marks the 20th anniversary of the Communist massacre. You know it’s bad (or good, depending on your viewpoint) when a mainstream media luminary himself admits to mainstream media “negligence.” To wit: “In the summer of 1994, something terrible happened out there,” ABC’s Ted...

At some point on Thursday evening, just after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 blew apart over some wheat field in eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin had a chance to take stock of his options. There were essentially two....

Florida is leading the nation in job growth, adding more than 37,000 jobs this month. The Tampa Bay area has added over 25,000 jobs in the last 12 months, third among metro areas in Florida, according to state officials..

As the sun went down over Kabul on Saturday July 13, Afghanistan’s future hung in the balance. Accusations of fraud in the country’s recent presidential election had paralyzed the country’s politics and threatened to trigger a civil war that could destroy the progress America’s costly military and diplomatic efforts had delivered since 2001....

It's time to stop running away from the nation's troubles. Barack Obama should see the Catholic Charities mission in McAllen. He should also have a town meeting with the Tea Party nativists who are so angry and threatened by the rush of refugees–43,933 unaccompanied children alone since October–who began to appear from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. His job, after all, is to rise above the rancor and, well, lead. You don’t do this by making a speech to a favored audience. You do it by taking action, setting a personal example. Obama is currently wandering about the country, trying...

In this video commentary, I discuss how there is a new Leftist bias for teaching Advanced Placement History in our high schools. Tune in!

Wow. Here’s a link to the Gates-subsidized NBCNews.com article. There is no indication that it’s an advertisement or advertorial. It appears to be a bona fide news story written by a bona fide reporter (Nona Willis Aronowitz). Here it is featured along with NBC News’ other articles on its education page:

Dislike of Sarah Palin’s constant media presence is a remarkably non-partisan affair, as more than half of registered voters wish she’d be quiet according to a new poll. 54 percent of people surveyed said they wished to hear less from Palin, the poll from The Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg found. That position was favored by two-thirds of Democrats, a majority of independents, and, most notably – four in 10 Republicans. That’s a sizable group of people from the party that, just a few years ago, supported her nomination for vice president. In this time of increasing political polarization, Americans can...

As we celebrate the Fourth of July, who can argue that our democracy is working the way the Founders intended? And who can deny that most of the blame for dysfunction must fall to the Republican Party? George Washington distrusted all political parties. He warned in his farewell address that, as they alternated power, parties would act in “the spirit of revenge” — rather than, presumably, in the best interests of the nation. The “disorders and miseries” that resulted, Washington feared, would inevitably threaten democracy. Whatever the motivation, Republicans have paralyzed our government in a way that would have shocked...

A surprisingly robust job market is energizing the 5-year-old U.S. recovery and driving the economy closer to full health. "This has now become a textbook jobs expansion," said Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research at the consultancy CohnReznick. "It is both broad and accelerating." Several other signs point to the economy's brightening health. Auto sales rose at the fastest pace in eight years in June. Factory orders picked up last month. And home sales strengthened this spring after having sputtered in the middle of last year when higher mortgage rates and rising prices hurt affordability.

Tel Aviv Here is what bias against Israel looks like. Three Israeli teenagers are abducted by the terrorist group Hamas, and after a desperate weeks-long search for the boys, they are finally found—dead in shallow graves near the site of the abduction. While all this is happening, Hamas instigates a new round of missile attacks from Gaza, firing 56 rockets at southern Israeli communities. The Obama administration's response? Express sympathy but call on Israel to refrain from responding. Moments after the news broke today that the bodies of the teenagers had been found, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the...

Judge Debra Nelson has ruled in favor of NBC in a defamation lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman filed the lawsuit in December 2012, saying NBC aired an edited version of the call he made to 911 right before his confrontation with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin...

Audiences will get more than a dystopian future when they line up to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes next month. The second film in the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise reportedly packs a pro-gun control message, according to a new review of the film in Variety. The story also touches on environmental fear mongering, albeit in a reduced fashion compared to the first installment. The “Apes” franchise has always been a politically loaded one, and this latest entry states its left-wing credo in ways both allegorically implicit and bluntly direct. (You’d have to be pretty obtuse...

Since its birth in the 1920s with the first national radio networks, the modern MSM has always had a cozy relationship with power, and until the creation of Fox News, one channel on your TV dial or satellite guide, that power has almost exclusively meant their fellow Democrats. The media have long voted overwhelmingly Democrat in presidential elections; as Walter Cronkite once said at a Radio & TV Correspondents Dinner in the mid-1990s, in-between feting the Clintons on his yacht in Martha’s Vineyard, “Everybody knows that there’s a liberal, that there’s a heavy liberal persuasion among correspondents.” But in the...

(Reuters) - The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace in the first quarter than previously estimated, turning in one of its worst-ever non-recession performances, but growth already appears to have rebounded strongly. The economy was held back by an unusually cold winter, the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits and cuts to food stamps, which curbed consumer spending. It was also weighed down by a slowdown in the pace of restocking by businesses. All these temporary factors have since faded, lifting growth early in the second quarter.

The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter of the year, and new revisions by the Bureau of Economic Analysis show the decline was even deeper than reported. Gross domestic product contracted at a 2.9% annual. That's the weakest quarter for the U.S. economy since the first quarter of 2009, amid the Great Recession. But economists aren't too worried, for three key reasons. 1) They blame the weather. 2) It's not a final number. 3) Last, but certainly not least, other data show the economy is improving.

We live in a strange time. Historically, reporters and editors have believed that their job is to disseminate news. That is no longer true. Now, most reporters and editors believe that their principal function is to prevent people from learning things they are better off not knowing. Day after day, they run interference for their party, the Democrats. Blockading inconvenient stories from making the news is job number one. Consider Fast and Furious. The Obama administration deliberately encouraged guns to be sold illegally and transferred to Mexican drug lords, for reasons that have never been explained. Hundreds of Mexicans and...