Free Republic

It’s not often that a U.S. government agency gets caught red-handed abiding by its charter and performing its publicly-avowed and legislatively-approved duties. But last week the AP "broke" a long and breathless story from Havana that nailed the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) for just that. In their own words, "a secret plan aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government," was courageously exposed by the AP’s intrepid Havana bureau. Such is the magnitude of the scandal that a red-faced and snarling Senator Patrick Leahy is now chairing hearings on Capitol Hill where he grills USAID director Rajiv Shah on...

Surprised? Not really. I know what you’re thinking. “There are people who get their daily news from social postings on Facebook?” Sadly, the answer to that is yes. At any given moment there are over 150 million users roaming Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrosity, and you can bet that some percentage of them rarely read anything outside the online utopia. So, while we may not like to admit it, the “trending” section at the upper right of the page has become frighteningly important. Facebook swears that it determines what’s “trending” by analyzing reader preference. If it’s popular on the site - meaning...

10570 SHARES facebook icon FACEBOOK 10537 twitter icon TWITTER email icon EMAIL more icon Facebook Admits to Censoring Conservative Websites… Steven Crowder Wednesday May 4 2016 facebook I mean, censoring conservatives on social media really shouldn’t be shocking. Especially coming from Facebook, who actively works with other countries to censor what citizens can see (read “Zuckerberg Caugh on Live Mic Telling Merkel that Facebook Will Delete Anti-Islamic Migrant Posts” here). But now, we’ve got the SJW leftists at Facebook on the record, They were also told to select articles from a list of preferred media outlets that included sites like...

The Chinese government has banned all depictions of gay people on television, as part of a cultural crackdown on “vulgar, immoral and unhealthy content”. “No television drama shall show abnormal sexual relationships and behaviours, such as incest, same-sex relationships, sexual perversion, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual violence, and so on.” The ban also extends to smoking, drinking, adultery, sexually suggestive clothing, even reincarnation. China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television told television producers it would constantly monitor TV channels to ensure the new rules were strictly adhered to.

An Apple Store in Beijing. Facing a slowdown in sales of iPhones in the United States, Apple is looking to China for growth. Credit Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times For years, there has been a limit to the success of American technology companies in China. Capture too much market share or wield too much influence, and Beijing will push back. Apple has largely been an exception to that trend. Yet the Silicon Valley company is now facing a regulatory push against its services in China that could signal its good relations in the country may be turning. Last...

Facebook employees admit they are willing to manipulate social media to prevent a Donald Trump presidency Last month, Facebook employees used a company poll to ask Zuckerberg whether the company should try “to help prevent President Trump in 2017.” Their believing that Facebook has a responsibility to influence the 2016 election is very concerning. It shows that Facebook employees are willing to censor opinions they don't agree with in the name of "social justice." If you've ever been suspended from Facebook for something extremely mild, this probably explains why. Facebook already proudly censors negative views on refugees In January is...

The totalitarian attitude on campus hit me in a very personal way on March 30 as I was sitting on an airplane at Reagan National Airport on my way to Albany, New York. I was informed that a campus debate I was scheduled to participate in later that day had been cancelled. I was told to get off the plane and go home. I believe this is the first time on a college or university campus that a left-right debate has been cancelled because of objections to one side of the debate. It appears the totalitarian left is so determined...

Several events for Ohio University’s Greek Week, an annual, weeklong event focused on philanthropy, have been canceled after some Sorority and Fraternity Life members painted “Build the Wall” on an area typically designated for graffiti last week. The Greek Week events, set to take place between April 11 and 18, were amended after unnamed members of Sorority and Fraternity Life painted the graffiti wall by Bentley Hall, including the phrase “Build the Wall,” according to a letter sent Sunday to sororities and fraternities. The phrase has been a part of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign to construct a wall...

Time magazine’s cover story this week is about what ubiquitous hardcore pornography is doing to men. I can’t link to it because it’s a subscribers-only piece, but Southern Baptist pastor Denny Burk has a detailed (but not NSFW) rundown of what it reports. The gist of it is that porn is changing the brains of young men, who have been watching it from a young age, such that they are impotent with actual women. Burk, quoting the article: A growing number of young men are convinced that their sexual responses have been sabotaged because their brains were virtually marinated in...

The University of Michigan is one of our nation’s premier institutions of higher learning. Young people from all over the country move to Ann Arbor every year to obtain an education, and to have their ideas challenged by exposure to fellow students from many walks of life. Or maybe not. Last Thursday afternoon a number of anonymous chalk messages appeared on campus. But because these chalk messages read “#Stop Islam” and “Trump 2016,” these innocuous messages elicited 911 calls and apology from the president of the university. Apparently such statements constitute “hate speech.”

The Climate Science Truth & Accountability Act, a bill introduced by California state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) would expand state and local government’s attorneys’ power to crack down on global warming critics. Under the bill, the statute of limitations would be extended to 30 years so that the California attorney general, 58 county district attorneys and the city attorneys of every city with more than 750,000 people would have a bigger window of opportunity to launch investigations, lawsuits, and prosecutions against climate change critics. “We cannot allow the biggest criminals against humanity to escape punishment just because of the...

The war on free speech on campus and beyond I spent part of the week speaking on several college campuses in Texas, and my subject was free speech and the threats against it on campus and beyond. The students were in the main shocked and dismayed at the revitalization of censorship as a political ideal and by the widespread support for censorship among so-called liberals. Most of them were genuinely unaware of just how far and wide the war against free expression currently ranges. This is strange, because the war on free speech starts on campus. In March of 2014,...

President Obama is so paranoid about linking terrorists to the Muslim faith that when French President François Hollande used the phrase “Islamist terrorism” at a meeting in Washington, White House officials posted their official press video with audio of the words cut out completely. The White House’s transcript of the event shows the French leader declared at the 4:49 minute mark that “the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq.” But rather than include Hollande’s remark in its entirety, the Obama administration posted footage in which his interpreter’s English translation of the words “Islamist terrorism” was...

China is consolidating its ability to censor the Internet by drafting new rules requiring businesses that serve domestic Internet users to register their Web addresses inside the country, a move seen as targeting Chinese companies but that has raised concerns among foreign businesses. In its most draconian interpretation, the proposed requirements could also further limit access within the Chinese network, analysts said. That appears to be the latest step by the ruling Communist Party to erect cyber barriers in the name of what some officials call “Internet sovereignty.” […] Under the draft regulations released this week by the Ministry of...

Matthew Doyle of London ruined his life when he confronted a Muslim woman in his neighborhood and asked her to "explain Brussels"--a reference to the recent Muslim-perpetrated terrorist attack in the capital of the EU. "Nothing to do with me," the woman replied, a response that failed to satisfy Doyle. The two parted ways, which should have been the end of it. But then Doyle made the fatal mistake of recounting the incident on Twitter. His story was not well received in cyberspace where several people tweeted their disapproval, some of whom called upon his employer, a well-known London talent...

High School Censors Swastikas, Missing Entire Point of Satirical Anti-Nazi Play, The Producers Administrators have ordered the removal of swastikas from a high school production of The Producers, the famous Mel Brooks film that makes fun of Nazism. The New York school district that oversees Tappan Zee High School considers the inclusion of a swastika to be offensive and, possibly, a hate crime—regardless of the context. “There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate,” South Orangetown Superintendent Bob Pritchard told the local CBS station.

As a counter to poor performance by America's public schools, Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton proposed to set up a Department of Education "SWAT" Team that would be dispatched to crackdown on errant educators. "The problem with our system of public schools is that false doctrines and anti-government attitudes are allowed to exist without consequence," Clinton complained. "An ill-advised autonomy for teachers and local schools has served to shield purveyors of anti-social doctrines from the discipline needed to ensure proper inculcation of collective values. Under my plan the Secretary of Education will be empowered to send a special weapons and...

A major step was taken Thursday in the U.S. government's plan to hand off oversight of the Internet domain name system. A nonprofit international group approved a plan and forwarded it to the Obama administration Thursday for review and approval. The group, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has historically been contracted out to manage the behind-the-scenes workings of the Internet that pair up numerical IP addresses with their familiar Web addresses. A few years ago, the group was tasked with transitioning fully from U.S. government oversight to an international multistakeholder model. The Commerce Department will have...

In his remarks today at a rally in Fort Worth, Tex., Donald Trump knew he’d make news. “I’ve never said this before,” he declared. We’ll await the word of the Washington Post Fact Checker on the integrity of the statement, but Trump did appear to be veering into a new talking point. A media-law talking point, that is: One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me…but one of the things I’m going to do if I win…is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely...

Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an easier time suing news organizations. During a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, Trump began his usual tirade against newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying they're "losing money" and are "dishonest." The Republican presidential candidate then took a different turn, suggesting that when he's president they'll "have problems." "One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our...