Free Republic

One of the stories Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton relies on to demonstrate her ability to work with Republicans for the sake of the children is almost entirely inaccurate, an investigation by the liberal outlet Mother Jones finds. Clinton often tells the story on the stump of how she reached across the aisle as first lady to work with Republican Tom DeLay — a famously partisan political opponent of her husband — on an adoption bill that became law in 1997. DeLay was House majority whip at the time and later tried to impeach Bill. Hillary uses the story as...

A chilling new video from ISIS shows a British boy and four other children executing prisoners in cold blood in Syria. The grotesque nine-minute video is believed to have been recorded recently in the ISIS capital of Raqqa, in Syria, and shows the organisation is becoming even more brutal as it retreats into its heartland. The video shows five boys - believed to be from Britain, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, wielding handguns and wearing the desert camouflage.

The problem with environmentalists isn't merely that they have destructive ideas about the economy, but that so many of them embrace repulsive ideas about human beings. Take a recent NPR piece that asks, "Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?" If you want to learn about how environmentalism has already affected people in society, read about the couple pondering "the ethics of procreation" and its impact on the climate before starting a family, or the group of women in a prosperous New Hampshire town swapping stories about how the "the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis."...

A recent New York Times article noted that celebrity parents are favoring "post-gender" or "gender agnostic" names for their newborns. The piece cites examples like Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, who named their son "Journey," and Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, who named their second daughter "Delta" (their first daughter? "Lincoln"). "Gender-blurring baby names are on the rise among American parents," the article notes. “The old ‘Boy Named Sue’ idea of a boy being shamed by having a girl’s name is passing away,” Pamela Redmond Satran, a founder of the baby-naming website Nameberry, told the Times. Last December,...

PORT ST. JOHN, Fla. - A Central Florida woman has been charged after authorities say she kept her two children and 24 Chihuahuas in a home filled with dog feces, trash and bugs. Officials said the Port St. John home had dried, caked feces and urine, roaches and trash inside it, describing that the environment was in "no way safe for the animals, let alone the children who also were in the residence." Investigators said two children, who weren't enrolled in school, had dog feces "caked" to the bottom of their bare feet. The Department of Children and Families removed...

A Maryland school district is instructing teachers and administrators not to tell parents if their daughters are bunking with male transgender students on overnight field trips. Bob Mosier, chief communications officer for the Anne Arundel County public school system, says in a training video on how to accommodate transgender students that privacy issues prevent the district from informing parents about such arrangements. “So, many of you might be asking yourselves, ‘So I’m at an overnight field trip, and I have student who’s biologically a male, identifies as a female, and we’ve worked with that student and her family, and that...

HOT SPRINGS, AR (WCMH/AP) — Police have arrested a Hot Springs, Arkansas, couple on battery and abuse charges for allegedly zip-tying a 4-year-old girl to her bed as punishment. Clarence Reed, 47, and the child’s mother, Jennifer Denen, 30, both of Hot Springs, Ark., are now charged with domestic battery, permitting abuse of a minor and endangering welfare of a minor. A police report says officers were summoned to the Cooper-Anthony Mercy Child Advocacy Center after workers there determined the child had been abused.

If parliamentarian Elvira Savino has her way, Italian parents who insist on a vegan diet for their children will risk up to four years in jail. Savino, from the conservative Forza Italia party, has put forward a law that would hold parents legally responsible for feeding their children on "a diet devoid of elements essential for healthy and balanced growth," according to its text. "I have nothing against vegans or veganism as long as it is a free choice by adults," she told Reuters on Wednesday, days after she presented the proposed law in the lower house Chamber of Deputies.

Girl is dressed in full Burkha.

CARROLLTON, Ga. (August 5, 2016)- A father was charged with manslaughter Friday in the deaths of his 15-month-old twin girls, who were left in a hot car in their west Georgia town, police said. Witnesses heard screams and saw Asa North running from the parking lot in front of his home, carrying the toddlers to an inflatable kiddie pool out back. He and his neighbors tried to revive them with water and ice packs, but they were too far gone.

Over the last several months—and especially the last few weeks—much has been made of the “Ferguson effect.” The phenomenon is now so widely discussed that it has its own Wikipedia page (though I wouldn’t suggest visiting it for an explanation). St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson coined the phrase in November of 2014, but Heather MacDonald popularized it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2015... Again, out-of-wedlock births in the U.S. are at historic highs, and the vast majority of black children in America are born to single mothers. And just as criminal gangs and other undesirables fill the...

Maclean’s spoke with Eric Walters, author of national bestselling children’s books, to find out how Canadian parents and teachers can explain America’s rowdiest politician to kids. Q: How can adults explain Trump to kids? A: How do you explain a sociopath to an eight-year-old? That’s a hard one. A mean man. A non-Canadian. Darth Vader. Actually, can’t you picture Darth Vader with that hair? But in the end, good does prevail. Show them there are good parts of life. Show them Michelle Obama’s speech. You need to say, “but here is what good people do. Here in Canada, we’re different.”...

Everyone is abuzz over Michelle Obama’s passionate speech at the convention Monday night. The most profound part of her speech came towards the end. “This November,” she said, “when we go to the polls, that is what we are deciding. Not Democrat or Republican, not left or right. In this election and every election, it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives.” That statement should send chills up your spine. Even if you knowledgeably agree with everything the Obama administration has done over the last eight...

A gunman shouting 'Allahu Akbar' opened fire at children in McDonald's before rampaging through a shopping mall, killing at least eight people. Munich is in lockdown tonight, as a major police operation is ongoing around the city's Olympic Park, with the force warning people to stay in their homes and avoid public spaces. A ninth body has been found tonight and investigators are looking into the possibility of it being the attacker. Terrified shoppers were seen running for their lives from the Munich Olympia Shopping Centre, in the district of Moosach, after hearing gunshots. Witnesses said that the gunman screamed...

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said authorities were initially called to reports of an active shooter and bomb threat. Miami-Dade Police Detective Daniel Ferrin said the hospital has been evacuated as a precaution because of the reported threats. Officers are going floor to floor to ensure that the campus is safe.

HELBY COUNTY, Tenn. -- Four children were killed at a Shelby County Apartment complex early Friday afternoon. The Shelby County Sheriff's Office confirms they took the mother of the children is in custody around 1 p.m. All of the children are under the age of six and were deceased when deputies arrived. Sheriff Bill Oldham said, "Our community has suffered an egregious act of evil and tremendous loss today." Oldham went on to say, "One of the most difficult questions in any investigation always is 'why?'"

The German Defense Ministry is taking flak after pictures emerged of soldiers letting very small people play with some very big weapons. It all started at an open-house event in Stetten, Baden-Württemberg at the weekend, where civilians were invited in to learn about the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr. But on Monday, the advocacy group German Peace Society/United Opponents of Military Service posted pictures on Facebook showing small, preschool-aged children being offered the chance to handle some powerful guns on their own. The guns in the pictures included a G36 assault rifle, a USP pistol, and a MP7 submachine gun,...

Antidepressants in young people may do more harm than good, warn scientists. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/06/08/antidepressants-in-young-people-may-do-more-harm-than-good-warn/ *"researchers at Oxford University who carried out the review said effectiveness and safety of antidepressants taken by children and teenagers remained unclear because of the poor design and selective reporting of trials, which were mostly funded by drug companies."

The star’s much-lauded effort to help girls in the African nation of Malawi just imploded. In this week’s Newsweek, Wayne Barrett asks: Is Kabbalah to blame?Late last month, it was reported that Madonna’s Raising Malawi foundation, one of the most visible celebrity-driven charity efforts in the Third World, one that pulled in major donations from around Hollywood and elsewhere, was abandoning its planned mission: to build a $15 million girls’ academy in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. A report by the Global Philanthropy Group, which Madonna brought in to represent her as trouble developed in the...

South Sudan’s Child Soldiers and Hillary Clinton’s Complicity Published 10 June 2016 The former Secretary of State’s department allowed military aid to the region, despite laws against this. Rebel forces in South Sudan used child soldiers and the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton sent arms there despite passing a law that banned providing military assistance to nations that used child soldiers, The Intercept reported Friday. Waivers were issued by the White House that kept aid flowing there and U.S. President Barack Obama said in 2012 the waivers were in “the national interest of the United States.” The move was...