Free Republic

<p>The new movie "Southside With You," which opens Friday, is a feature film about Barack and Michelle Obama's first date in 1989. It's perhaps best described as a "Before Sunrise" for political wonks: The story spans a single day as the future first couple catch a movie, visit an art museum, and talk about their hopes and dreams while meandering through Chicago. On a more meta level, the movie is about the creation of the Obamas' private-life narrative - a shaping of how the public will understand them in the future and an acknowledgment of how it sees them now.</p>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOAifG-mc1I

Timbuktu, located in Mali, is a classic idiom for nowhere. However, the great caravan city the southern Sahara was -- and still is -- a cultural somewhere rich in Arab, Berber and sub-Saharan African historical structures and cultural artifacts. In 2012, the al-Qaida-aligned Islamic terrorist group, Ansar Dine, intentionally attacked Timbuktu's historic trove. Its thugs intentionally destroyed or vandalized 60 tombs. In late June and early July, the thugs severely damaged Timbuktu's acclaimed Sidi Yahia mosque -- yes, radical Islamists damaging a mosque. Several tombs were shrine-mausoleums dating back to the 14th century. Malians, who are overwhelmingly Muslims, treasured the...

From time immemorial, humankind has regarded it as a blessing to be fruitful and multiply. Not Travis Rieder.A philosopher and bioethics instructor at Johns Hopkins University, Rieder was the focus of a recent NPR story, in which he argued that having children is immoral and should be discouraged with government penalties. It's not that Rieder dislikes children — in fact, he has a 2-year-old daughter of whom he's quite fond. But with "dangerous climate change" approaching a tipping point "very, very soon," he says, bringing more children into the world is unethical. After all, every additional baby means additional carbon...

When I invented the burkini in early 2004, it was to give women freedom, not to take it away. My niece wanted to play netball but it was a bit of a struggle to get her in the team – she was wearing a hijab. My sister had to fight for her daughter to play, had to debate the issue and ask, why is this girl prevented from playing netball because of her modesty?

Someone slam the brakes on this plan. In a national first, Uber is poised to put a fleet of self-driving cars on Pittsburgh streets. But there's no way people should be permitted to hail rides from semi-autonomous cars until Uber significantly tweaks its vehicular software. Artificial Intelligence apparently passed its driver's exam, the cars will have emergency backup drivers, and Uber presumably has programmed the vehicles to navigate the streets as safely as possible. Therein lies the problem. Most people seldom drive as safely as possible, particularly in this town. To put it in terms this sports-obsessed city can best...

The internet has been abuzz with headlines declaring, “Almost Everything the Media Tell You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong,” and “Johns Hopkins Shrinks Warn Against Kids Going Transgender.”As reported by Ryan T. Anderson on Monday, “A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.”How significant was this report?“Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific...

Twenty percent of African-American voters in Florida support Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump according to a poll released Wednesday by Florida Atlantic University. The poll hit as Trump is visiting Tampa for a mid-day rally at the State Fairgrounds. The poll shows Trump with a two point lead of rival Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, 43 to 41 percent, within the poll’s 2.7 percent margin of error. Clinton has the support of 68 percent of African-American voters in Florida. 1200 registered Florida voters were surveyed from August 19-22.

Nigel Farage may tonight tell the “Brexit story” to around 10,000 Donald Trump supporters in Jackson, Mississippi. He is rumoured to be speaking about the lessons he learned during his successful campaign to leave the European Union (EU). The outgoing UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader has framed the historic vote as a “victory of ordinary people against big business, big banks and big politics”. His appearance at Mr. Trump’s Jackson rally tonight comes as voters across the West are increasingly rejecting “establishment” politics. The popular Member of the European Parliament is to meet Republican presidential candidate Mr Trump tonight at...

George Soros’s Open Society Foundations spent $650,000 in an effort to influence Pope Francis during his visit to the United States, a leaked document reveals. The document is an agenda for a May 2015 New York meeting of the U.S programs division of the Open Society Foundations. It states that it had allocated $650,000 for a grant related to Pope Francis’ September 2015 visit to the United States. The group DC Leaks has released over 2,000 documents from groups associated with Soros. “In order to seize this moment, we will support PICO’s organizing activities to engage the Pope on economic...

Five states will be down to just one health insurer on the Obamacare marketplace next year, and consumers in 664 counties are projected to face that same situation under a law sold as providing “choice and competition.” The five states that will have no choice are Alabama, Alaska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wyoming. Two more states, North Carolina and Kansas, are close to having only one Obamacare insurer, health policy experts note. Alabama will be down to a single insurance company next year because Humana and UnitedHealthcare announced their departure. Aetna and UnitedHealthcare exited South Carolina. UnitedHealthcare also departed Oklahoma.

In today’s public policy arena, winning ideas rarely are decided by sound logic, accurate facts, or even by the most votes. Instead, content filters and algorithms, meticulously engineered by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, intentionally steer public debate in the direction of their owners’ personal politics; and, not coincidentally, toward the politics of their liberal friends in Washington and Sacramento.For starters, consider Facebook – the Big Daddy of social media. There have been numerous reports of Facebook’s algorithm taking down popular pages of pro-gun organizations. But even this example of the “new censorship” pales when viewed in the...

If you look hard enough, you find there's usually a reason for everything -- even at The New York Times. But whatever the reason -- maybe it was the story about a parasite jeopardizing fly fishing in Montana, or those Russian hackers who attacked the Gray Lady's Moscow bureau -- the latest Clinton Foundation bombshell couldn't be found among "All the News That's Fit to Print." The Associated Press scoop Tuesday found that at least 85 of 154 people who got an audience with Hillary Clinton while she led the State Department had donated to her family charity. Combined, the...

Religious liberty concerns continue to weigh heavily on church-going Americans. In a recent survey from Pew Research, 40 percent of those who reported attending church in the last few months said that clergy spoke about religious liberty. No other issue received more attention from clergy. And not surprisingly so. The aggressive growth of secularism in our nation, along with the natural outgrowth of this, the tendency of secularists to turn to big government to define and implement what they perceive as fair, is on a collision course with religious liberty. Traditional church-going Americans have always taken comfort in the first...

WHO knows the most about you?You might say it’s your partner or perhaps your mum, assuming you’ve had the sort of tame life a parent would find acceptable.But you’d be wrong, because tech companies now have more information about you than almost anyone else.

CHICAGO (CBS) — A Far South Side man accused of shooting at a Chicago Police officer lashed out at a Cook County judge in court Tuesday, saying he should have just “smoked his a ‑ ‑” after being ordered held without bail, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting. “Chicago Police shot at me first,” Kentrell Pledger, a reputed Black Disciple gang member, pleaded with Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. As sheriff’s deputies led Pledger away, his protests grew louder: “He shot at me first. So get your story straight, dog. And for that, I should have smoked his a ‑ ‑.” Pledger...

A Maryland school district is instructing teachers and administrators not to tell parents if their daughters are bunking with male students who identify as girls on overnight field trips. Bob Mosier, chief communications officer for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, says in a training video detailing how to accommodate transgender students that privacy issues regarding the student prevent the district from informing parents about such arrangements.

Donald Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway suggested her candidate was performing better than polls show because "undercover Trump voters" are afraid to publicly express their support for the Republican nominee. "Donald Trump performs consistently better in online polling where a human being is not talking to another human being about what he or she may do in the election," she told the UK's Channel 4. Conway added: "It's because it's become socially desirable, if you're a college-educated person in the United States of America, to say that you're against Donald Trump."

Great Barrier Reef tourist operators found less than 5 percent of the natural wonder has died off from “bleaching,” despite claims from scientists that most of the reef had been killed off by the effects of global warming. “Scientists had written off that entire northern section as a complete white-out,’’ Chris Eade, owner of the diving boat Spirit Of Freedom, told The Courier-Mail in an interview. “We expected the worst,” Eade said. “But it is tremendous condition, most of it is pristine, the rest is in full recovery. It shows the resilience of the reef.” Eade said dire predictions about...

A woman was shot in the shoulder at an Atlanta gas station on Sunday night as two men opened fire at each other with machine guns. The terrifying incident occurred at the Texaco gas station on Lee Street in Jonesboro around 8.30pm.