Free Republic

Christian leaders – including an 89-year-old bishop – have taken to the streets of eastern China to protest against an “evil” campaign to remove crosses that many see as a coordinated Communist party attack on their faith. Activists say more than 1,200 crosses have been stripped from churches in Zhejiang province since the government initiative began in late 2013. There has been a spike in such actions in recent weeks. On Friday, around 20 Catholic clergy staged a rare public demonstration in Wenzhou – a coastal city known as the “Jerusalem of the East” – including Vincent Zhu Weifang, its...

In a 2013 script for the movie “Pixels,” intergalactic aliens blast a hole in one of China’s national treasures – the Great Wall. That scene is gone from the final version of the sci-fi comedy, starring Adam Sandler and released by Sony Pictures Entertainment this week in the United States. The aliens strike iconic sites elsewhere, smashing the Taj Mahal in India, the Washington Monument and parts of Manhattan. Sony executives spared the Great Wall because they were anxious to get the movie approved for release in China, a review of internal Sony Pictures emails shows. It is just one...

What are the odds that this petition will have any success? The African American Monument on the South Carolina State House grounds was erected in 2001 as part of a bi-partisan compromise reached in 2000 to move the Confederate battle flag from the State House dome and place it at the Confederate Soldier’s Monument. Given the recent outcry to remove the battle flag from the State House grounds completely, the people of South Carolina view this as a reneging of the 2000 compromise. Therefore, the people of South Carolina implore the South Carolina State Legislature to pass legislation calling for...

A top establishment Republican donor reportedly wants Donald Trump banned from the first presidential debate... And that is not sitting well with some of the party’s top donors, many of whom favor pro-amnesty legislation and do want to see their establishment darlings like Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 80% challenged on the issue. According to an Associated Press report, “Republican donor John Jordan said Monday that GOP leaders should take steps to block Trump’s access to the first presidential debate in early August.” “Someone in the party ought to start some sort of petition saying, ‘If Trump’s going...

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service. “This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.” In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for...

Emails among State Department officials show the administration was in contact with Google regarding a blocked YouTube video after President Obama conceded that the Benghazi attack was a preplanned act of terror. On Sept. 27, 2012, Nora Toiv, a special assistant to the counselor of the Department, sent an email to other State Department officials with the subject line “RE: Google and YouTube.” The email referenced a phone conversation with a person named Sue who assured Toiv a block would remain on an unnamed video at least through Oct. 1, 2012. “Sue just called back and the block will stay...

The editorial board of PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. is taking a hardcore stance against those who disagree with the Supreme Court ruling to legalize gay marriage. “As a result of Friday’s ruling, PennLive/The Patriot-News will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage,” they declared. After receiving strong pushback, the newspaper’s editorial board, which is overseen by Editorial Page Editor John Micek, quickly revised its policy. Freedom of speech will be allowed — but only for a “limited” period of time. Micek explained on Twitter: “Clarification: We will not...

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the difficulties Apple would face if it tried to censor the Confederate flag in its online stores. Unfortunately, the company - under Tim Cook's leadership - wasted no time in engaging in reactionary censorship of the Confederate flag in its app store. Touch Arcade and other sites are reporting that Apple has begun a ham-handed purge of the app store. The company has removed games and apps that include the Confederate flag: It's looking like Apple has pulled everything from the App Store that features a Confederate flag, regardless of context. The...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not a fan of anyone who disagrees with him about man-made global warming. And at an event hosted by environmentalists, he made it clear just how much he doesn’t like skeptics. “But, this vast denial apparatus that propagates the false doubt, that props up the phony science, that gets these yahoos who can’t survive … peer-reviewed scrutiny onto Fox News, onto the cable shows, saying that their scientists, they create an artificial conflict about this and that’s why I think there’s doubt,” the Rhode Island Democrat told attendees at a League of Conservation Voters event in...

Dear Ms. Haley: Has it dawned on you that you cannot – repeat - Cannot placate a mob of leftists bent on the destruction of freedom? That should have been obvious to you BEFORE your pandered to the masses. But alas, it should be readily apparent to you NOW. You could have simply waited a few news cycles and the whole thing would have blown over with the media chasing after yet another squirrel. This is what Communists on the Country’s left do all the time – they Stonewall (oops! Can I even use that expression any more?) delay and...

So-called “liberals” are proudly displaying their disdain for Liberty calling for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from our midst. They say that the losers in a war shouldn’t get to fly their flag, and they’ve arbitrarily decided it ‘represents racism’ not to mention it was right there with the Charleston Church shooter…. Okay, let’s apply that rationale to the flag of Mexico – they lost a war with the US and as for racism, we should check with ‘La Raza’ on that score. In addition the Mexican flag represents a clear and present danger to US sovereignty via...

Lately I notice, more and more frequently, conservative themed emails I receive are being classified as "Spam" by my email providers (primarily Yahoo, but also Gmail). Of course these emails contain NONE of the classic "Spam" keywords.....just keywords likely considered offensive by today's Leftist Internet "Moguls"...such as "Scott Walker", "Tea Party", etc. (and of course, I click "Not Spam"). Doesn't seem to happen at all for any other non Spam emails....just Conservative themed emails. Anyone else notice the same thing?

The General Lee - Bo and Luke Duke's vehicle of choice from 'The Dukes of Hazzard' - is a classic and instantly recognizable Hollywood car. But it's about to get a little less recognizable as Warner Bros., the studio that owns the theatrical, DVD and licensing rights to 'The Dukes of Hazzard,' has decided to remove the confederate flag from all future versions of the car. The news has reportedly been floating around the hobby community over the past few days as 'Dukes of Hazzard' collectors became aware of a new regulation. A collector on HobbyTalk.com was told by a...

Calling it a "contemporary symbol of divisiveness and racism," eBay said Tuesday that it will ban the sale of Confederate flags and similarly themed merchandise. "This decision is consistent with our long-standing policy that prohibits items that promote or glorify hatred, violence and racial intolerance," said eBay spokeswoman Johnna Hoff. The e-commerce company is the latest to prohibit the sale of Confederate merchandise following Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp.

WASHINGTON: Following outcry from several groups, a prestigious American university has decided to rescind its suspension order against a student who displayed a Hindu swastika on his residence hall's bulletin board. The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) welcomed the move to rescind the interim suspension order by the George Washington University (GWU). HAF associate director of public policy, Harsh Voruganti, said that the decision reflects the facts of this case and the efforts by Hindu organisations to educate campus officials about the sacredness of the Indian swastika. The small, bronze, swastika was displayed by the student on March 16 on a...

Dutch Government/TV station sabotage Geert Wilders’ planned broadcastShowing that the Netherlands, like most of Europe and Canada, are at least partly under the sharia and moving more that direction and away from our own cultural and constitutionally mandated laws where they conflict with islamic values. Wilders blames sabotage for failure to broadcast Mohammed cartoonsThe national public broadcasting company NPO is investigating why a party political broadcast by the PVV showing anti-Mohammed drawings was not transmitted as planned. PVV leader Geert Wilders pledged to show the drawings during the broadcast but instead an old item was aired instead. Wilders has...

It looks like Spike TV didn’t find Clint Eastwood’s joke about Caitlyn Jenner during the Guys’ Choice Awards taping on Saturday very funny. A rep for the male-centered network said the reference will be cut from the telecast. “We will remove the reference in the version that will air,” David Schwarz, Spike TV senior vice president of communications, said in a statement. During the taping, while presenting “San Andreas” star Dwayne Johnson with a special award, Eastwood compared Johnson to other athletes-turned-actors like “Jim Brown and Caitlyn Somebody.” Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, made her debut as a...

A Nobel Prize-winning British scientist says he was forced to resign after sexist comments drew widespread condemnation. Tim Hunt told The Observer newspaper in a story published Sunday that he had been "hung out to dry" after being forced out of an honorary post at University College London and losing his position with the European Research Council science committee. The university and the research council didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The 72-year-old Hunt said he was never given a chance to explain his position. The trouble started when he told the World Conference of Science Journalists in South...

Kirsten Powers gets it. There is an assault on free speech in this country that is coming from the political left. But the people responsible for it are not liberals. They aren’t worthy of the title of liberal, which presupposes a degree of tolerance for opposing opinions. They are illiberal leftists and they are crushing the free exchange of ideas in this country. To make matters worse, they know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it. In other words, they are not ignorant of, or merely indifferent to, constitutional principles. They are at war with them....

Leftists in Europe have long used the phrase pas d’ennemis à gauche – “no enemies on the left” – as a rallying call to overcome the internal squabbles of the left and to unite themselves against those who would resist the statist agenda. And now evidence has emerged that this rallying cry of European leftists is also the ideological filter through which the Department of Justice seeks to understand violent extremism in the United States. Elizabeth Harrington of the Washington Free Beacon reported on June 1 that the DOJ’s National Institute of Justice has awarded $585,719 to Michigan State University...