Free Republic

<p>Looters in Ferguson, Mo., were met with little police resistance Friday night and store owners say they were forced to protect their businesses with their own guns, Fox2Now.com reported.</p> <p>"I think the first message is to remind all law enforcement that they are hired to serve and protect and if they’re going to sit back and watch looting, they're not serving us; they’re not protecting us," Pastor Robert White told the station.</p>

One of Britain’s biggest hotel chains has removed Bibles from its rooms to avoid upsetting non-Christians. The decision by Travelodge has been condemned as ‘tragic and bizarre’ by the Church of England, which says Bibles in hotel rooms are important to provide hope, comfort and inspiration to travellers. But the chain, which runs 500 hotels, said the country was becoming increasingly multicultural and it had taken the action for ‘diversity reasons’. It said the policy was implemented ‘in order not to discriminate against any religion’ – despite having had no complaints from guests. Bibles were taken away at the same...

A new round of looting and tense standoffs with pOlice ended early Saturday with no major clashes as the number of protesters gradually dwindled and pOlice retreated from the streets in a drizzling rain. “This is wonderful. This is what should have happened a long time ago,” Robert Powell, 42, said as he watched looters during the night hop through the shattered glass door of a meat market. He dismissed the looters as "suburban nerds" likely to get busted. But after years of living in a town in which he said African American men are singled out for harsh treatment...

On another gorgeous Martha’s Vineyard summer day, President Obama, Michelle and daughter Malia behaved like any other vacationing family — the difference being a train of SUVs, reporters and Secret Service agents — and went for a bike ride in the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest. President Obama departed his vacation home in Chilmark at 11:18 am for West Tisbury, according to pool press reports. The motorcade arrived at a bike path in West Tisbury at 11:38 am and the Obamas and their security contingent pedaled away. The traveling press pool traveled by van a few miles to a scenic...

The governor of Iraq's Sunni heartland province of Anbar said he has secured a promise of U.S. support in a battle against the Islamic State, reviving an alliance that helped thwart an earlier Sunni militant threat, from al Qaeda. Ahmed Khalaf al-Dulaimi told Reuters his request, made in meetings with U.S. diplomats and a senior military officer, included air support against the militants who have a tight grip on large parts of his desert province and northwestern Iraq. Dulaimi said the Americans had promised to help.

U.S.-Israeli relations sink to new low. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a “particularly combative” phone call Wednesday over efforts to secure a lasting peace in Gaza, a sign that relations between the two countries have fallen to a new low, according to a Wall Street Journal report from Jerusalem. White House officials are said to think Netanyahu and his national-security team are both reckless and untrustworthy. The U.S. administration was caught off guard when it learned the Israeli military had been quietly securing tank rounds from the Pentagon during the Gaza conflict.

... Across the country over the next year, federal agencies expect to manage about 60,000 minors who entered or will arrive in the United States without an adult guardian. That figure compares with about 7,500 who came in annually before the numbers surged to 13,625 last year and about 25,000 in the current year. Many unaccompanied minors land in Southern California; here they can be cared for by relatives who are part of well-established expatriate communities from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — the impoverished and sometimes violent countries from which most have journeyed. Services for these students could be...

For most people, summer is a treasured time to cool your heels in a cottage by a lake or in a hammock in the backyard. It’s not so simple for politicians. For them, deciding when and where to vacation can be perilous. Repair to a beach on the East Coast and you’re an out-of-touch elitist; stay away too long and you'll be asked who’s minding the store. Take President Barack Obama. How dare he go away while he’s dropping bombs in Iraq, even though he can order them to be dropped from wherever he happens to be? He’s taking the...

After seizing five oil fields and Iraq's biggest dam, Sunni militants bent on creating an Islamic empire in the Middle East now control yet another powerful economic weapon – wheat supplies. Fighters from the Islamic State have overrun large areas in five of Iraq's most fertile provinces, where the United Nations food agency says around 40 percent of its wheat is grown. Now they're helping themselves to grain stored in government silos, milling it and distributing the flour on the local market, an Iraqi official told Reuters. The Islamic State has even tried to sell smuggled wheat back to the...

The agency's needless new ozone standard could cost Americans $270 billion annually. In a town famous for inaction, Washington is gearing up to take action on a major policy issue. But there's a hitch: The outcome could be the most expensive regulation in the nation's history, possibly tanking the economy and costing jobs at a time when businesses, manufacturers and families are making a comeback. Later this year, the Environmental Protection Agency will decide whether it should tighten the air-quality standard for ground-level ozone. There are several things about this possible new standard that are alarming. No single regulation has...

Things are moving very fast in Iraq. Three months ago the country barely got a mention in Cabinet meetings in Whitehall. British forces left in 2011, after 8 troubled years there, and even the Americans had only a very limited presence. Iraq was essentially being left to itself. Today, following the lightning land-grab by the jihadists of Islamic State (IS) who now control roughly a third of Iraq and much of north-east Syria, the West is being drawn reluctantly but inexorably back into the region. Around 500 UK nationals are estimated to have gone to Syria to become jihadists with...

A transgender man in Arizona who gave birth to three children after beginning to change from female to male can continue to pursue a divorce, a state appeals court said Wednesday in reversing a judge who refused to end the marriage. A three-judge panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled that Thomas Beatie's marriage to Nancy Beatie in Hawaii in 2003 is considered valid in Arizona and concluded it wasn't a same-sex union. Last year, a lower court judge denied the divorce request and ruled that Arizona's ban on same-sex marriages prevented the marriage from being recognized as valid.

Administration officials said Wednesday that President Obama is considering using military helicopters and other aircraft to help rescue thousands of refugees trapped on Mt. Sinjar in northwest Iraq. Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that V-22 aircraft, which can land and take off like helicopters, were positioned near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil with a team of 130 Marines and special operations troops who are assessing how to get the refugees out safely. "The purpose of this team is to assess other options" beyond airdrops of food, water and other supplies to the refugees, he said. "There's...

While Congress is on recess and President Obama vacations in Martha's Vineyard, a coalition of free press groups is escalating an already-aggressive campaign against the Obama administration for allegedly freezing out the press and cracking down on reporters. Society of Professional Journalists President David Cuillier, in a statement earlier this week, blasted the administration for what he called "excessive message management and preventing journalists from getting information on behalf of citizens." SPJ is among the groups that's been leading the charge on the issue. Last month, more than three dozen groups, including SPJ, wrote to the White House about what...

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — A senior White House official said on Wednesday that the United States would consider using American ground troops to assist Iraqis in rescuing Yazidi refugees if recommended by military advisers assessing the situation. Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters on Martha’s Vineyard that President Obama would probably receive recommendations in the next several days about how to mount a rescue operation to help the refugees, who are stranded on a mountaintop surrounded by Sunni militants. He said those recommendations could include the use of American ground troops. But he drew a distinction between...

As Obama must understand, the United States has returned to the slipperiest slope on earth. He may seek a limited military involvement, but Baghdadi’s Islamic State gets a vote. It will use suicide bombers against U.S. targets anywhere it can find them. With its allies, it will try to attack the U.S. homeland. What began last weekend as an attempt to rescue Iraqi refugees on a mountaintop will likely have to expand. Obama stepped gingerly into this fight, dropping humanitarian supplies, then bombing Islamic State mortar positions and hitting convoys. If Obama wants to send a signal that he’s serious...

APPLETON, WI - Leaders in the Appleton area say they cannot find room for unaccompanied children who've been crossing into the U.S. at the Mexican border. The federal government was hoping to locate up to 400 children in the Fox Valley, as they escape violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. However, the Appleton Post-Crescent says Outagamie County officials are concerned about funding and education for the youngsters. The U.S. Health and Human Services Department said federal money would pay for the shelter itself. The agency has been looking around the country for large shelter facilities within 100 miles of...

Somewhere over the rainbow, people with AIDS are dying from tuberculosis. The illegal border-crossers from Central America have a high incidence of TB on their side of their rainbow, and are bringing it into the United States. One demographic that is particularly vulnerable to catching TB and should be made aware of this health hazard is members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. A new report published in the Journal of American Medical Associates shows that while the annual diagnosis rate of HIV—the virus that causes AIDS—has declined by one-third in the general population, the rate has...

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - It has yet to make any startling conquests in the Asian nation, but the Indonesian section of the Islamic State (formerly ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) has already started mass recruitment - as recently reported- in over 16 provinces of the archipelago. In particular, Aceh, the westernmost and majority Muslim area, is turning into a sort of haven for Sunni extremists, with the active brainwashing and indoctrination, especially of young people. According to a survey published in the local Serambi newspaper, in at least 21 districts of Aceh there is a massive infiltration of...

Media hype rides on romanticizing revolutions no matter how evil in bloodlust and by creating tantalizing mysteries and myths around their heinous leaders. Pumping the mythical, the mysteries and plain mist around the likes of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), they believe will draw in readers and viewers like flies to spilled honey. “No one knows anything about him. “He can be a Robin Hood. He could be Dr. Evil. It’s very hard to fight a myth,” said Patrick Skinner of the Soufan Group, a security...