Free Republic

Lavender Graduation is all the rage in some circles these days, especially at the U. of Maryland where event sponsors at the LGBT Equity Center note that "each LGBTQA+ graduate will receive a rainbow tassel and a certificate of achievement. This event also provides an opportunity for our community to come together and honor those among us who have worked to make College Park a better place for LGBTQ+ people," according to the website. Students and Lavender grads also receive occasional invites to a Queer Lunch from the LGBT Equity Center, which advises guests that "We'll bring the board games,...

Four houses surrounding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's home in Palo Alto will be demolished and replaced by smaller ones, according to an application filed with city planners Tuesday. Zuckerberg bought the homes on Hamilton Avenue and Edgewood Drive in 2013 after he learned of a developer's plan to build a house next door tall enough to have a view of Zuckerberg's master bedroom. Concerned about privacy, Zuckerberg paid more than $30 million total for the properties at 1462 Edgewood Drive and 1451, 1457 and 1459 Hamilton in the Crescent Park neighborhood.

The racial victimhood racket has taken off. Marcus Owens, a black 19-year-old University of Iowa student, posted a picture of his bruised face and chipped tooth, claiming he was violently attacked by a group of whites for no reason. The story went viral. Predictably, black students protested, demanding “justice” and an end to “racism.” They called out the University of Iowa (even though the incident occurred off campus). Law enforcement launched a major investigation. The media descended on Iowa City to get to the bottom of this awful “hate crime.” Everything unraveled when surveillance video of the altercation revealed the...

min David, known for decades as one of the most unapologetic activists for Latinos and other marginalized communities in Orange County, died Saturday night in his Anaheim home after battling lymphoma. He was 83.... David, who moved to California from Chihuahua, Mexico, became a U.S. citizen and in 1978 took leadership in founding the group Los Amigos of Orange County, born out of a struggle between the community and police in Anaheim. With the motto “Nos gusta ayudar,” Spanish for “We like to help,” Los Amigos has continued to tackle issues including education, civil rights, public safety, government transparency and...

General Electric Co. said Monday it has made a series of deals with Saudi Arabia worth over $1.4 billion as part of the kingdom's ambitious plan to wean itself off crude oil. GE said $1 billion worth of projects would be implemented with the Saudi Arabian Industrial Investments Co., which was formed in 2014 by royal order to boost the country's manufacturing industry.

Pro-Palestinian activists turned violent last Wednesday night as they protested a pro-Israel movie screening at University of California, Irvine (UCI), and in the process hunted down a Jewish woman who was forced to hide and call for police rescue. At least 50 anti-Israel protesters from the Muslim Student Union and the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UCI physically blocked the screening of “Beneath The Helmet,” a documentary about the IDF shown in an event hosted by Students Supporting Israel at UCI as part of a series of Peace Week events. The protesters blocked the exits to the...

Bernie Sanders has just contributed a sound bite to the Trump campaign that will be played over and over again as the election approaches. Speaking with John Dickerson on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday, Sanders confirmed Donald Trump’s critique of the corrupt political system that includes both parties. With the release of the movie Clinton Cash, documenting the obscene amounts of money collected by both Clintons from wealthy interests with business before the federal government, the pattern of corruption that would return to the White House with the Clintons is certain to be the major issue of the Trump campaign....

A white man alleges in a lawsuit that a Coolbaugh Township community’s black public safety chief discriminated against him and other white public safety officers while showing favoritism to black and Latino officers. Bryan Rush is suing A Pocono Country Place Public Safety Chief Kurt Cummings and its black human resources director, Cassandra Webster, who Rush claims did nothing to address reverse-discrimination complaints and approved Rush’s termination after Cummings falsely accused him of smoking in a patrol vehicle. Cummings occasionally made “discriminatory comments about protecting his minorities and other insensitive comments about favoring employees based on race,” Rush’s lawsuit states....

While Mark Zuckerberg’s much-publicized meeting with conservative leaders last week has drawn varied responses, from Glenn Beck’s overly fawning account to others who were positive but circumspect, what seems clear is that Zuckerberg genuinely wants Facebook to be viewed as a neutral and fair platform for the entire world.But does Zuckerberg have a massive blind spot in his thinking and worldview? And is he totally unaware of the many times conservatives (especially biblically-based conservatives) have been censored on Facebook while their opponents have not?I have documented this several times in my own experience (see here and here and here), although...

A city employee caught in gang crossfire was among five people killed and 40 more wounded in shootings across Chicago between Friday afternoon and Monday morning. Chicago Police issued a statement Sunday in the middle of one of the first consistently warm weekends of the spring, as intensified city gun violence typically accompanies rising temperatures. “As we look toward the summer months, Superintendent Johnson has made it very clear that the violence will not be tolerated – period,” the statement said. “The cause of the violence traces back decades, and everyone has a role to play in fixing it –...

ISIS commanders who fail in their duties are being fed alive to dogs in a brutal new form of execution, it has been revealed. It has been reported that the terror group has been tying commanders to trees and allowing dogs to maul them to death, if they do not fulfill their chief duties. The new execution method was revealed by Hasan Khala Hasan, a Kurish Peshmerga commander who was been fighting on the Gwer frontline in northern Iraq.

President Obama signed a legislatively passed amendment to the Local Public Works and Capital Development and Investment Act of 1976 that bans the federal government from using the words “Negro” and “Oriental” to describe blacks and Asians. “Many Americans may not be aware that the word ‘Oriental’ is derogatory,” said Rep. Grace Meng on New York, Breitbart reported. “But it is an insulting term that needed to be removed from the books and I am extremely pleased that my legislation to do that is now the law of the land. The term ‘Oriental’ has no place in federal law and...

[A] Pennsylvania high school student barred from attending prom at her Catholic high school because she wore a suit rather than a dress has had her prom night — at a different school. Aniya Wolf, a student at Bishop McDevitt High School in Harrisburg, attended William Penn High School's prom Saturday at a banquet hall in York. Wolf says she learned at the last moment that girls were required to wear dresses to Bishop McDevitt's prom. She went anyway but was thrown out. The school says the dress code was sent to parents three months earlier. William Penn principal Brandon...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wants to prevent information about its creepy biometric database, which contains fingerprint, face, iris, and voice scans of millions of Americans, from getting out to the public. The Department of Justice has come up with a proposal to exempt the biometric database from public disclosure. It states that the Next Generation Identification System (NGI) should not be subject to the Privacy Act, which requires federal agencies to give people access to records that have been collected concerning them, “allowing them to verify and correct them if needed.” The proposal states that allowing individuals to view their...

Why did President Obama use executive authority to insist that the transgendered be allowed to use school bathrooms and shower room facilities of the gender with whom they identify? The GOP does not fully grasp this. Neither does Time magazine, which devotes its May 30, 2016 cover to the topic: “Battle of the Bathroom: From schools to statehouses, what’s really at stake.” Even Michael Scherer, the author, fails to grasp the full significance. Scherer attaches to it this anodyne meaning: As so often happens, the thousands of transgender Americans who struggle daily to find acceptance may soon become figureheads in...

As debates about guns and gun rights in America rage, truly to understand the gun, one needs to look at its history. The story of the gun is a fascinating and riveting look not only at history, but science, business, politics, justice, and morality as well. Throw in a great deal of ingenuity, a good deal of heroism, and a small dose of romance, and the story of the gun is the world’s greatest tale of human invention.

Pope Francis met the grand imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque at the Vatican on Monday in a historic encounter that was sealed with a hugely symbolic hug and exchange of kisses. The first Vatican meeting between the leader of the world's Catholics and the highest authority in Sunni Islam marks the culmination of a significant improvement in relations between the two faiths since Francis took office in 2013. "Our meeting is the message," Francis said in a brief comment to a small pool of reporters present at the start of his meeting with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb.

Immigration – both legal and illegal – is one of the hottest topics in American politics today. Despite the widespread perception that Donald Trump created the current wave of anti-immigration sentiment in this country, it has actually been around for quite a while before him – Trump merely served to catalyze this sentiment's departure from the shadows and into the limelight, an opening of the Overton Window, if you will. However, Americans have become increasingly disenchanted with our broken and anti-American immigration policy for over two decades. Mark Krikorian was writing about the need to restrict immigration back in 2008....

Lucianne Goldberg, one of the pivotal figures in the Monica Lewinsky affair that rocked Bill Clinton’s second term in office, predicts this presidential election season will be a “highly sexed” campaign due to the reemergence of Clinton’s sex accusers. Goldberg, a literary agent at the time of the Lewinsky affair, was in touch with Clinton’s publicly known accusers and alleged mistresses. Regarding those accusers, Goldberg asserted, “I believed every one of these women. … They were telling you the truth.”

They’re coming for your home. Right now. I suggest you save it. I can guide you, but you must do exactly as I say. Except, this isn’t The Matrix. You’re no actor, like Keanu Reeves, playing a distraught programmer-hacker named “Neo.” Nor am I an actor, like Laurence Fishburne, playing your guide “Morpheus.” This is real life, baby. Your home or apartment—and the neighborhood in which you live—is under siege. “Agents”—sans black glasses and black business suits—who work for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have written a new regulation called “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (AFFH) that...