Free Republic

... She's among several Muslin teens voicing concerns over anti-Muslim sentiments they believe are rising as controversies surrounding Islam capture national attention. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga freshman Yasmeen Abdulazeez, 17, was told by a professor that he would lower her grade when she asked to miss class for a religious holiday. She dropped the class instead. Abdulazeez, who has worn the head covering since she was a child, said she has experienced many problems as a result. A referee during a volleyball tournament refused to allow her to play because of her headscarf. Chattanooga's Muslim teens said they feel...

Evidence pools beneath rows of pay phones, between parked cars, outside bars where last call has come and gone. The culprits can be found in any neighborhood of New York City. As city leaders wrestle with how to adapt police tactics to a lower-crime era, the Police Department in recent months has suggested it would loosen its approach to public urination, a quintessential quality-of-life crime whose effects have a tendency to linger — both on the street and for the person cited. Public urination has emerged as an especially thorny test case, scrambling traditional political allegiances among even left-leaning lawmakers...

What is the best lie that Hillary Clinton has ever told? Can you pick just one? She's the inevitable Democratic presidential candidate even though 60 percent of Americans consider her a liar. So her pants suits are always on fire, and only a Hillary Meat Puppet would say otherwise. Yet rather than criticize her — like those other men who just don't get it — I'd like to celebrate her amazing truth-bending superpowers. We've had males in high office who were great liars, like her husband. So why can't we have an awesome female liar, say a shrewd Mistress of...

Nothing from her campaign, nothing on Facebook, nothing on Twitter, and no response to media queries to Hillary Clinton about the expose’ video showing the Planned Parenthood abortion business selling the body parts of aborted babies. Apparently Hillary Clinton doesn’t remember when she received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger award with pride, even calling Margaret Sanger someone she “admired enormously.” During the event, Clinton said that emphasizing and promoting abortion is a key issue and she also defended taxpayer funded abortions for poor women.

The IRS wants to know more about the income of one half of hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse. In a court filing, the government asked a judge Wednesday to enforce a summons against Joseph Utsler, better known by his stage name, Shaggy 2 Dope. Utsler's partner in Insane Clown Posse is Joseph Bruce, known as Violent J. Separately, they have been challenging the U.S. Justice Department over a 2011 report that described their fans, the Juggalos, as a "hybrid gang."

A lawsuit brought by environmentalists and federal regulators has forced a major utility to phase out coal use at six power plants in Iowa. Activists claim these retirements bring the total number of U.S. coal plants shut down to 200 — or 40 percent of the U.S. coal plant fleet. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department of Justice announced an Iowa subsidiary of Alliant Energy agreed to pay $7.1 million in civil penalties to environmental projects for violating the Clean Air Act. The settlement also requires the company to stop burning coal or shut down six power...

Eleven fictitious people created as part of an undercover watchdog effort were able to automatically re-enroll in ObamaCare coverage, a new report finds. The report, from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, follows up on a GAO report last year. That report found that 11 of 12 fictitious people, with fake documents, were able to successfully enroll in ObamaCare coverage through the federal HealthCare.gov marketplace. The follow-up report, released by congressional Republicans on Wednesday, finds that those 11 fictitious people were able to maintain their coverage through the end of 2014 and then were automatically re-enrolled for 2015. Some were re-enrolled...

The Navy is implementing a plan to cut fried foods out of its chow halls, and some sailors aren’t pleased with it, taking aim at Michelle Obama. But it turns out there’s no reason for them to be busting out the #ThanksObama on social media. While the first lady has worked to get healthier food on the school lunch menu, she has nothing to do with setting the Navy’s nutrition policy. In addition to the elimination of fried foods, whole milk will be replaced with skim, while fruits and vegetables will be pushed more.

Fox News television host Bill O’Reilly sent an anonymous reporter to San Francisco on Tuesday to approach local politicians about the tragic murder of Kathryn Steinle at Pier 14. A segment on last night’s “O’Reilly Factor” shows two supervisors immediately brushing off the television network, while one delivered a terse response. Fox approached Supervisor Wiener at City Hall saying,” I don’t want to be a pest it’s just literally a minute…” Wiener quickly cut off the interviewer saying, “Fox News is not real news and you’re not a reporter.” Wiener told SFGate that “tea party” members are flooding him with...

Anti-austerity protesters in Athens have clashed with police as MPs prepare to vote on a series of painful reforms aimed at saving their economy from collapse. Demonstrators threw petrol bombs at riot officers outside the Greek parliament as politicians discussed a key bill that has to pass in order to start negotiations with creditors on a third bailout. Police fired tear gas to try to push back groups of youths hurling Molotov cocktails from within the crowd. Thousands of anti-austerity demonstrators have marched through the centre of the city and civil servants also protested with a 24-hour strike that disrupted...

St. Louis County prosecutors will soon decide whether to bring trespassing charges against two journalists arrested while covering demonstrations last summer in Ferguson, Missouri. The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly and The Washington Post’s Wesley Lowery recently learned that there are open investigations related to their Aug. 13, 2014, arrests. The Police Department filed incident reports in late April of this year describing the reporters as trespassing when they were seized at a McDonald's restaurant. A conviction on trespassing in St. Louis County can result in a jail sentence of up to one year, a fine up to $1,000, or both....

At least 12 people were wounded in shootings across Chicago on Tuesday. The latest shooting happened about 9:50 p.m. in West Englewood, where a 19-year-old man was walking in the 1700 block of West 61st Place when he heard gunshots and realized he’d been struck in the leg. A couple hours earlier, a 19-year-old man was shot in the shoulder in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Three people were shot in the Brighton Park neighborhood less than 20 minutes earlier. About 7:35 p.m., the three males — ages 17, 18 and 19 — were outside. About 6:45 p.m., a 17-year-old boy...

It appears to be the obvious answer to the global-warming problem. We suck carbon dioxide out of the air and either recycle it into low-carbon fuel or stick it underground. As solutions go, it's simple, logical, even elegant. Also necessary. "Scientists are increasingly convinced that we are going to need large-scale removal systems to fight climate change," says Noah Deich, founder of the nonprofit Center for Carbon Removal. The key problem apparently isn't technological. Three startups are making significant strides in their efforts to create processes that could "harvest" millions of tons of CO2 from the air around us. The...

LINK ONLY per copywright rules.

The conflict in Iraq has taken a terrible toll on civilians with nearly 15,000 killed and 30,000 wounded during a 16-month period ending on April 30, by the Islamic State group, Iraqi security forces and others, according to a U.N. report released Monday. The U.N. mission in Iraq and the U.N. human rights office said in the report that violations of international humanitarian law and gross human rights abuses by the Islamic State group, which controls large swaths of Iraq's north and west, may in some cases amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. Iraq is going...

A Wal-Mart employee sued the retailer on Tuesday, saying its prior policy of denying health insurance to the spouses of gay employees violated gender discrimination laws. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, seeks nationwide class-action status. Jackie Cote, who has worked at Walmart stores in Maine and Massachusetts since 1999, said in the lawsuit that her wife, Diana Smithson, developed cancer in 2012 and the denial of insurance led to more than $150,000 in medical debt. Cote and Smithson were married in Massachusetts in 2004, days after a court ruling made the state the first to allow...

She was only 15 minutes late. That's amazing! After all, she is the First Lady of the United States. She has a busy schedule. She was scheduled to speak to the Girl Up Leadership Summit at 11:15 a.m. And by 11:27ish she was in the house. "You all look amazing," Michelle Obama told the 200-plus activists who represent some of the world's 1,000 Girl Up clubs. They'd come to Washington, D.C., to bond, to learn about girls' issues and to lobby Congress. But she also made two subtle and important points about activism. Point No. 1: Activism should be personal....

IM Global and producers State Street Pictures have launched production in Chicago on “Southside With You,” the romantic dramedy inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. The film is focused on the 1989 date when a young Obama — portrayed by Parker Sawyers — was trying to woo lawyer Michelle Robinson (played by Tika Sumpter) on a summer afternoon and evening. The date took place at the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and their first kiss outside of an ice cream parlor.

Large numbers of unaccompanied minors and incomplete families once again cross the Texas border. The numbers are not as great as last summer’s surge but Border Patrol agents tell Breitbart Texas that significant crossings have again resumed. “This is starting to resemble the surge of 2014,” Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera told Breitbart Texas Managing Director Brandon Darby in an interview in June. “We are not nearly at the numbers we were last year, but it looks like we are in the opening stages” “We had two groups equal a little over 70 in one hour…. These were women and...

<p>Long-haul flights are getting longer due to stronger winds caused by global warming, according to a study.</p> <p>Scientists linked a small increase in return-journey times of long-haul flights with an increase in the variation of the jet stream, the high altitude air that flows from west to east.</p>