Free Republic

Parents in Conroe, Texas were recently shocked to discover that a drag queen had been brought in to teach the Willis High School cosmetology students how to apply makeup. According to one teacher, however, these parents have no right to be outraged, and what’s more, he believes that parents “don’t know what’s best for their children.” And they wonder why families are flocking to homeschool? SMH! Community Impact Newspaper reported that the school administration was fully aware that the drag queen, known as Lynn Adonis-Deveaux, had a history of performing in drag shows but believed he would not be showing...

The Rev. Patrick Conroy, chaplain of the House of Representatives, said in a letter on Thursday that he was rescinding his resignation amid his high-profile ousting by House Speaker Paul Ryan. The Associated Press reported that Conroy wrote in a two-page letter to Ryan, the retiring Wisconsin Republican, that he has never "heard a complaint about my ministry" as House chaplain. Democrats have expressed outrage over Ryan’s decision to push Conroy out of the job. Ryan has told fellow Republicans that he fired the House chaplain, a Roman Catholic priest from the Jesuit order, after complaints from members that he...

House Speaker Paul Ryan has forced out the House chaplain, Reverend Patrick Conroy. Conroy had served as the chamber’s chaplain since 2011 but offered his resignation last week at Ryan’s urging. Conroy’s resignation letter said he was offering to step down at Ryan’s request, calling his seven years of House service “one of the great privileges of my life.” Ryan spokeswoman Ashlee Strong would not reveal the speaker’s reasons for forcing Conroy out. A top Democrat, Rep. Joe Crowley of New York, said he believes it was because of a prayer Conroy gave during last fall’s tax debate urging that...

Pat Conroy’s family eased him from this life into the next by reading poems, playing country music and singing to him. “We did sing the Marine Corps Hymn,” his sister Kathy Harvey said. “It was the only way to send him out.” This was an appropriate choice. The man whose Marine Corps father had so brutalized his childhood still maintained the utmost respect for the Marines. Marine Corps families, Conroy used to say, eat other families for breakfast. The same dynamic held in Conroy’s relationship with The Citadel, the military college in Charleston whose savage traditions he fictionalized in “The...

A wounded British photographer who had been trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Homs was spirited safely into Lebanon on Tuesday in a risky journey that killed 13 rebels who helped him escape the relentless shelling and gunfire. -excerpt- Conroy crossed the border into neighboring Lebanon after leaving Homs on Sunday evening, according to the global activist group Avaaz, which said it organized the evacuation with local activists. The group said 35 Syrians volunteered to help get the journalists out and 13 were killed in the operation.

ANIMAL rights activists face trial on terrorism charges in America next month for their campaign against a British research centre. The seven members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac) are all from America, but at least one trained as an activist in Britain. They were arrested in FBI raids across four states over their alleged activities against Huntingdon Life Sciences. The company’s headquarters are in Cambridgeshire, but it has a laboratory in New Jersey. The seven, who face trial in New Jersey, are charged with conspiring to commit animal enterprise terrorism. If convicted they face heavy fines and up to...

<p>Here's a bit of advice for high school administrators everywhere: If a drug-sniffing police dog somehow misses the pot you planted in a troublemaker's locker, just let it go. Patrick Conroy, however, felt the need to tell Michigan cops about his harebrained attempt to frame a student he believed was selling drugs at L.C. Mohr High School. Conroy, who resigned his assistant principal's post Friday when the Herald-Palladium reported on his scheme, last month laughingly told a K-9 cop about planting the pot, according to the below South Haven Police Department reports.</p>