Free Republic

Students at a public high school have demonstrated their support for a Christian teacher fired from his position because he refused to refer to a trans-identified student by their preferred pronoun. Less than 24 hours after the West Point, Virginia school board unanimously voted to terminate high school French instructor Peter Vlaming, a large group of students walked out of their classes to protest the decision. “He's an amazing man,” student Wyatt Pedersen told WWBT News. “I think he really was going with what he believed was right and it's really unfair that he’s being punished for that, especially in...

The former San Antonio mayor and secretary of housing and urban development (Hud) under Barack Obama has already held events with prospective donors for a 2020 campaign. He told Rolling Stone in October that he is “likely” to run. Among all of the speculated contenders in the 2020 presidential race, Castro will probably be the only prominent Latino Democrat. The 44-year-old has been a rising star in the Democratic party since he became mayor of one of the country’s largest cities in 2009. Three years later, he was the first Latino to give a keynote speech at the Democratic national...

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On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to consider cases involving states' ability to decide whether certain health providers are eligible for Medicaid reimbursements. Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch rebuked their colleagues for refusing to take up the issue due to a tenuous connection with Planned Parenthood. "Some tenuous connection to a politically fraught issue does not justify abdicating our judicial duty," Thomas wrote in a scathing dissent joined by Alito and Gorsuch. "If anything, neutrally applying the law is all the more important when political issues are in the background." The Supreme Court refused to consider...

The "independent fact checkers" at PolitiFact displayed their liberal stripes again this week by hailing the liberal student activists of Parkland High School as the victimized heroes of their 2018 "Lie of the Year." The "online smear machine" that tried to "take down Parkland students" was singled out as the very worst. The PolitiFact online ballot for their liberal audience consisted of five Trump statements, one by Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, the Parkland "smear machine"....and then one each by socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1072836035514634240

The Supreme Court of the United States plans to hear a rather unique case. The plaintiffs in the case, Kisor v. Wilkie, wants the Court to overrule prior precedent in Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co. Under those two cases, the courts are directed "to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation," SCOTUS Blog reported. The case was brought about by Marine James Kiso who served in the Vietnam War. He sought benefits for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006 agreed that Kiso did, in fact,...

The Trump administration on Tuesday formally asked the Supreme Court to block a nationwide ban on the administration's new asylum policy that was unilaterally instituted by a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge last month. In a November news conference days before the midterm elections, Trump had vowed to turn away all asylum seekers who attempt to cross the border illegally instead of properly presenting themselves at ports of entry. The president, who has long said the asylum process is rife with fraud, said the emergency policy was necessary as the leading Central American migrant caravan approached the U.S. border...

It all started when California farmer John Duarte plowed a wheat field in Tehama County, about two hours north of Sacramento, and wound up paying a $1.1 million fine to the federal government for his efforts. On Tuesday, Duarte, who was embraced by conservatives nationwide as a victim of government over-reach, got vindication of sorts. In a victory for farmers and land developers throughout the West, the Trump administration announced a broad rollback of rules designed to protect wetlands and other small bodies of water. The decision means regulations put in place in 2015 by the Obama administration will fall...

<p>KATOWICE/POLAND - The world of sports must join the effort to tame global warming, and the International Olympic Committee intends to lead the way, it said on Tuesday at UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland.</p> <p>At the 195-nation negotiations, the IOC and UN launched an initiative aimed to line up verifiable commitments from sports federations and clubs to cut carbon pollution in line with the Paris Agreement.</p>

Nairobi – Mountain regions occupy about one-quarter of the earth’s land surface and are home to 15% of the world’s population. Their influence extends far beyond their ranges: they provide goods and services, most notably water, to over half the global population – making them not only crucial for people living in mountains, but also for those living downstream. But while the world is becoming increasingly aware of the impact of climate change on different ecosystems, current policies offer a very limited focus on the importance of climate change adaptation in mountainous regions. Mountain societies are experiencing a disproportionately high...

Former US vice president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore on Tuesday slammed the world's top oil producers -- his own country, Saudi Arabia and Russia -- for "insulting" a key and alarming report on climate change. A bloc of 44 small island nations -- many facing an existential threat from storm surges engorged by rising seas -- had called on the UN climate body to "welcome" a UN report on limiting global warming. But the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia blocked the critical word change in the negotiating text of the COP24 summit in Poland. The text...

President Donald Trump had a surreal, explosive clash with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at the White House over border wall funding for their first meeting together since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

President Trump is sitting down with top Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to discuss his immigration plans on Tuesday. His top priority is to obtain funding for his border wall, not least of which is necessary, he argues, because of the migrant caravan headed to the U.S.'s southern border. It was clearly on his mind this morning.

Some Democrats who will take the House majority in January are willing to say that President Donald Trump may have committed impeachable offenses. But that doesn’t mean they will try to impeach him — at least not yet. For several reasons, Democrats have been extremely cautious about the “I” word. They know it could backfire politically, and many of them were in office during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment 20 years ago. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and the panel’s likely incoming chairman, has called impeachment a “trauma.” Nadler told CNN on Sunday...

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The Trump administration is poised to withdraw federal protections for countless waterways and wetlands across the country, making good on President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to weaken landmark water rules long resented by some developers, farmers and oil, gas and mining executives. Environmental groups said the Trump administration proposal would have a sweeping impact on how the country safeguards the nation’s waterways, scaling back not just a 2015 Obama administration interpretation of federal jurisdiction over the nation’s waters, but also how federal agencies enforce the 1972 Clean Water Act. […] The changes would affect what waterways and wetlands fall under...

A tribute to those who have fallen and those who honor them. http://www.espn.com/core/video/iframe?id=25231107&endcard=false

Armed citizens and police officers are natural allies, and teammates in the fight against crime. There is no segment of the community more supportive of law enforcement than their fellow citizens who are lawfully armed. So why are they accidentally killed by police with such distressing frequency? 2018 has been a tough year This has been a tough year for police and armed citizens alike. In 2018, we’ve seen a number of tragic mistakes made by police officers who shot and killed lawfully armed citizens in error, including a homeowner in Aurora, Colorado, a security guard in Chicago, Illinois, and...

Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker said Monday he still plans to raise the minimum wage within his first six months in office — but he stopped short of saying just how much it should increase.