Free Republic

Thousands attend EID prayer at Toyota Park BY NICK SWEDBERG Correspondent Updated: July 29, 2014 2:08AM Thousands of Muslims filled the field at Bridgeview’s Toyota Park Monday morning for an unusually somber Eid prayer ceremony in the light of heightened hostilities between Israel and Gaza. Volunteers collected signatures for the 5,000 postcards brought to the event. They intend to mail them to President Obama over the latest deaths in recent violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The postcards, which 10 chapters of the American Muslims for Palestine across the country distributed Monday, demand that the White House intervene in the fighting...

President Barack Obama has nominated a new “Religious Freedom Ambassador,� but his nominee opposes protecting the religious freedoms of the owners of Hobby Lobby, who don’t want to be forced to pay for drugs for their employees that cause abortions.Obama announced that he will nominate Rabbi David Nathan Saperstein as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom at the State Department. Saperstein is a longtime pro-abortion advocate whose group has opposed pro-life legislation.“I am grateful that Rabbi Saperstein has chosen to dedicate his talent to serving the American people at this important time for our country. I look forward to...

In the summer, some affluent kids shoot hoops at a $69 two-hour basketball session with the Harlem Globetrotters, ride Arabian horses for $525 a week or visit Costa Rica for a $3,500 two-week study of sea turtles.

'A quiet woman wearing a flowing, black dress and mysteriously strolling along busy highways in parts of the U.S. Southeast and Midwest has the curious wondering who she is and spurred a social media site to document her trek. She has been dubbed the "Woman in Black," by TV stations, police and followers on the Web, including those on a Facebook page where she has been tracked on a nearly 500-mile journey with a black bag and walking stick in hand that has taken her from Ranger, Georgia, to Athens, Ohio, since July 18. "If you meet this woman, please,...

'In July 2010, amid the gargantuan rebuilding effort at the site of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, construction workers halted the backhoes when they uncovered something unexpected just south of where the Twin Towers once stood. At 22 feet (6.7 meters) below today's street level, in a pit that would become an underground security and parking complex, excavators found the mangled skeleton of a long-forgotten wooden ship. Now, a new report finds that tree rings in those waterlogged ribs show the vessel was likely built in 1773, or soon after, in a small shipyard near Philadelphia. What's more,...

The pair were at the Lincoln Center in New York for a live concert dubbed “Cheek To Cheek”. The on stage performance comes after the duo have spent the past two years recording a jazz album which is due to be released this year. Arriving hand-in-hand the pair looked to be good friends. After all this isn’t the first time the two musicians have collaborated, since getting together back in 2011 for The Lady is a Tramp single....

I suppose it's natural that the average American believes that the Crash of 2008 was caused by greedy bankers and that the problem with health insurance is insurance company profits. After all, most Americans work for big companies, and they know that at any moment corporate security could appear at their cubicle to escort them to the exit. Employees know the power their bosses have over them; why shouldn't the bosses have the same power to work their will over politicians? Not only that, but politicians pose as the worker's friend. We'll protect you from the ravishings of your lascivious...

Finally, the change in net worth has made the mainstream media. The statistics, as reported in the NY Times, are horrific, as are the implications for the future of the country. Net worth may be the best single measure of a country's well-being. Median net worth is a reasonable marker for the standard of living. Medians (or averages) are not good measures to capture what is happening at the lowest or highest ends. (More about that below.) In the simplest terms, net worth is the value of a person's assets minus his liabilities. If this measure is growing, a person...

Leading political figures in Kosovo face indictment by a special EU court for crimes against humanity, including killings, abductions, sexual violence and other abuses of Serb and Roma minorities, according to the chief prosecutor leading a three-year special investigation. The threat of indictments comes in a progress report published on Tuesday morning in Brussels by Clint Williamson, an American prosecutor appointed by the EU in 2011 to investigate ethnic cleansing committed in Kosovo since the 1999 Nato intervention ended the conflict there. Williamson describes the suspects as "senior officials of the former Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA), which fought against the...

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the 17-foot cross beam salvaged from the wreckage of Twin Towers will remain in the National 9/11 Museum, despite the very best efforts of American Atheists Inc. In “American Atheists v. Port Authority of New Jersey and New York” the group asserted that the artifact's positioning in the museum towered "over any other symbols in the vicinity, expressing Christian primacy." It charged that the Latin cross's dominance violated the First Amendment Establishment Clause and the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The judges found, however, that the...

Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, "we don't torture people"? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, "this government does not torture people"? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier. Still the US administration denied that torture was torture, preferring to call it "enhanced interrogation" and claiming that it had disrupted so many terrorist plots. Of course, we later found out that the CIA...

Looks like President Obama snuck 760 illegal immigrants into the State of Tennessee. Gov. Bill Haslam and local elected officials are now wondering: ‘what are we supposed to do with them?’ On Friday, these children landed in the Volunteer State. The governor, however, is claiming no one in his office was even told they were coming and that he learned only after seeing a notice on the Health and Human Services website. This came even after Gov. Haslam had asked the White House to alert him prior to sending to his state any of the estimated 90,000 illegal children who...

Liberals are forever struggling to understand the basic tenets of human nature that most other people just take for granted. You’d think they would have picked something up from the death throes of the Soviet Union, Greece, or Detroit, but as Talleyrand might say, “They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” Whether that’s some sort of genetic defect liberals are born with, ignorance, or just willful blindness is hard to say, but the results are the same in any case. Since it’s easier for light to escape a black hole than it is for a liberal to entertain a new...

Project Vigil: D-Day 2014, The saluting boy on Omaha beach

Anti-feminist blogs have been getting a lot of attention recently, as all manner of people take to the internet to explain why they just don’t need it. But right now it’s not people who are leading the debate – it’s cats SNIP Women Against Feminism was set up last summer and has gained a lot of attention in the past few weeks. On the Tumblr site [sample content: “The very name ‘feminism’ is discriminatory … To say that only through women can equal rights be claimed is like saying that only through black people can people have rights”], there are...

A federal appeals court on Monday struck down Virginia’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage, saying that withholding the fundamental right to marry from gay couples is a new form of “segregation” that the Constitution cannot abide.The 2-to-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, upheld a lower court’s decision and extended an extraordinary winning streak in the federal courts for proponents of same-sex marriage. Legal challenges to state bans filed systematically nationwide have prevailed in every test since the Supreme Court in June 2013 struck down part of the federal...

When it comes to finding a job after graduation, business students are throwing their sexual orientation into the mix as well. Reaching Out MBA, an annual conference of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender graduate business students, completes its three-day lineup of speakers and workshops with a job fair—a job fair that is becoming increasingly exclusive. According to Matt Kidd, executive director of Reaching Out MBA, 10 percent of the 1,100 attendees at last year’s conference identified as straight. Because of that, this year's attendees are now required to submit an essay on why they wish to attend the conference or...

Keyla Calix, a 25-year-old Honduran living in downtown Miami, didn’t think her friend’s gift of a Quran would lead her to reject her Catholic upbringing. But two years later, after a serious evaluation of Islam sparked by the holy book, she will head to a mosque Monday morning for Eid al-Fitr, a celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. “My family thought that Islam was just for Arabs,” Calix said, “but Islam is for everyone, not just for Arabs or Pakistani.” Miami’s Islamic community will celebrate the end of Islam’s holy month alongside a series of new beginnings, like Calix’s....

MCALLEN - Rio Grande Valley Emergency Management officials are concerned that the large amount of people here illegally may pose a dangerous situation in the event severe weather like a hurricane threatens the Valley. People who cross the border illegally have long been part of conversation in law enforcement circles. But now, emergency managers in McAllen have questions of their own, in the event of a hurricane. "You have extra sheltering areas and detention centers right here," said Barry Goldsmith, Brownsville National Weather Service Coordinator. "And are they able to withstand the wind, are they able to withstand flood waters...

Germany's biggest newspaper, Bild, was forced to climb down over the weekend after a highly critical and controversial comment piece which attacked Islam as a barrier to integration appeared in its Sunday sister paper. "I don't believe in God, but at the same time Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism don't bother me. Only Islam bothers me more and more," wrote Nicolaus Fest, vice editor-in-chief of the Bild am Sonntag newspaper in the editorial published on Sunday. Fest then laid out why Islam's "criminality," "murderous contempt" and "honour killings" did not belong in Germany, in comments which prompted a raft of hostility...

Why is Vernon Charles Allen Merriweather suing talk show maven Oprah Winfrey and Starbucks for discrimination and harassment to the tune of $15 million? Well, the man claims that the tea bearing Oprah’s name and sold at the famed coffee chain was not only laced with heroin but Ambien and hallucinogens as well, according to TMZ. The Buffalo, New York, resident allegedly filed a federal lawsuit stating that when he applied for a job at Starbucks, he was told in no uncertain terms, “We don’t hire ni****s!” The suit then claims the baristas referred to themselves as members of the...

Does Islam in fact have a “murderous contempt for women and homosexuals? Certainly there are many Muslim clerics and rank-and-file believers who believe that it does, approving of death sentences for gays, the honor killing of women, and the like. But for non-Muslims to point out that such views have a basis within Islamic texts and teachings is “Islamophobic.” Apologies must be issued.“Politicians demand apology from Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper for editorial comment piece criticising Islam and accusing it of ‘murderous contempt for women and homosexuals,’” Daily Mail, July 28, 2014 (thanks to Blazing Cat Fur): Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper has faced...

PARIS -- In the suburbs of Paris, a Jewish family gathers to read the Torah. But soon they will be gone. They're part of a growing number of French Jews and leaving their country because the future simply looks too dangerous.  In January, demonstrators in Paris shouted, "We don't want Jews" and gave the Nazi salute. It was chilling reminder of France's World War II past when Jews were deported to concentration camps.  Before the war, European Jews waited too long to leave and ended up trapped. French Jews don't want to make the same mistake again.'Time to Leave'CBN...

Yep, the United States is so racist that Kanye West was able to become a multi-multi millionaire here. He probably does need to travel more to find out how little racism affects success in the United States compared to most of the rest of the world. This reminds me of when Johnny Depp said he and his family were moving to Paris, France because the United States was too violent. Then the reality of Muslim riots in Paris with many cars being burned each night set in. Remember that? Yeah, after a few years Depp moved back to the States....

Link only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcs1K7Gi9Pg

    ~The FReeper Canteen Presents~ Road Trip: Shaw Air Force Base, Sumter, South CarolinaShaw Air Force Base is the home of the United States Air Force 20th Fighter Wing (20 FW). It is also home to Headquarters, Ninth Air Force (9 AF) and Headquarters, United States Central Command Air Forces (USCENTAF). The mission of the 20 FW is to provide, project, and sustain combat-ready air forces. It is the Air Force's largest combat F-16 wing. Today's 20th Fighter Wing can trace its lineage to 28 July 1947, when the 20th Fighter Wing, began at Shaw Field, South Carolina,...

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Borough Park) joined Neil Cavuto on Your World to discuss the Obama administration's response to the conflict in Israel. Hikind criticized Obama, calling his administration "out of control" and their response that of "amateur hour in America".

An advocacy group has released images which claim to show an NYPD officer putting a seven-months pregnant woman into a chokehold for illegally grilling on the sidewalk in front of her apartment. NYPD officers have been banned from using the chokehold since 1993, but an officer can be seen in the pictures wrapping his arm around 27-year-old Rosan Miller's neck in the Saturday incident. Her young daughter is also in the pictures, watching the arrest unfold. The NYPD told MailOnline that it is currently investigating the incident.

The Obama administration on Tuesday will publish a proposed rule that would give thousands of temporary and seasonal government workers access to the government’s health care program, even though current law would appear to prohibit them from using that program. The rule from the Office of Personnel Management would let these federal workers sign up for coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, and also allow some of them to enjoy a government contribution to their insurance premiums. Both steps would be done through OPM’s proposed regulation, and not through an act of Congress. The proposed rule indicates that...

Comic goes tragic: What jughead decided to make Archie a political tool? By Joe Hotchkiss Deputy Editorial Page Editor Sunday, July 20, 2014 So, Death with Archie? Life Without Archie? You’ve heard about this, right? In the latest edition of the comic book Life with Archie, an adult Archie Andrews is gunned down by an unknown assassin. Archie takes the fatal bullet intended for one of his friends, a gay senator working to strengthen gun-control laws in the fictional town of Riverdale. I’m surprised the writers didn’t work in immigration or a spotted owl in there somewhere. “I THINK RIVERDALE...

Recent polls show a tight contest in the Iowa Senate race to replace retiring liberal Democrat Tom Harkin (D), so leave it to the Daily Beast to hype a video clip it recently unearthed to insist that it is evidence that Republican nominee Joni Ernst as a nut who betrays a "shocking ignorance" [see image below page break] about constitutional law regarding the Tenth Amendment and state nullification of federal law. That's how Ben Jacobs painted the military veteran and Republican state senator, suggesting her answer to a question posed to her at a September 13, 2013 event was an...

Amnesty: With word out about U.S. coddling of Central American illegal immigrants, Haitians and people from much farther abroad are flooding our shores to get their slice. This is what comes when politics trumps law. Some of the strongest voices speaking in favor of amnesty for the latest flood of illegal immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, such as columnist George Will, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the Catholic bishops, have used the hardship and mercy argument to scrap the law and permit the illegals to stay. "The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old 'criminals' with their...

Once again Israel is being forced to defend itself from the terrorists who run Gaza. Once again Israel has had to drop bombs and send tanks and ground troops into Gaza to blow up tunnels and destroy the missile sites Hamas has been using to rain hundreds of rockets down on Israel’s farms and cities. And once again the Jews of Hollywood are silent. Where are Spielberg, Streisand and David Geffen? Why haven’t these famous liberal consciences of Hollywood stood up to show their support for Israel against the terroristic attacks of Hamas? The producers, directors, actors and studio moguls...

Possible new View co-host S.E. Cupp got a tryout on Monday for the token conservative slot on the morning program. Wasting no time, the conservative commentator got in a fight with Whoopi Goldberg over the New York Times's endorsement of federally legalized marijuana. After Goldberg described herself as "very, very, very happy" with the Times, Cupp shot back, "Luckily, it is not up to the New York Times, a New York City liberal paper, to decide what everyone around the country does."

Passengers on a Delta Airlines flight from Beijing to Detroit last week were horrified when a Chinese child squatted on his seat and proceeded to defecate, World News, a U.S.-based, Chinese-language news site, reports. The child’s parents spread newspaper on the seat to catch the waste.

Wish I could take credit for that headline but it’s Aaron Gardner’s. Here’s a nice scoop for Eliana Johnson, who somehow got hold of an early memo prepared by Michelle Nunn’s Senate campaign in Georgia after they stupidly posted it online briefly last winter. Of the many gems within, my second-favorite is the one emphasizing “rural� photo ops to show Georgians that Nunn is one of them. She’s a creature of the Beltway since birth, having grown up in Maryland while her dad Sam served in the Senate, but it’s important when trying to inherit a Senate seat as part...

James B. Sellinger, a former vice president for IBM’s North American operations, will serve as chancellor of education for the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Department of Catholic Schools and Frank Bramble Sr., a member of the Board of Directors for Bank of America Corp., will serve as chairman of the archdiocesan school board, the archdiocese announced July 28. In the newly created position, Sellinger will promote the enrollment and fiscal health of the archdiocese’s nearly 50 Catholic schools. Bramble previously served as interim president of Calvert Hall College High School in Towson and as chairman of the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Blue...

Via White House website: As Muslims throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Eid-al-Fitr, Michelle and I extend our warmest wishes to them and their families. This last month has been a time of fasting, reflection, spiritual renewal, and service to the less fortunate. While Eid marks the completion of Ramadan, it also celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity and reinforces the obligations that people of all faiths have to each other, especially those impacted by poverty, conflict, and disease. In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions...

Stand True recently published a story about a mom telling her children about her past abortion. Today we are sharing that story from one of her daughters about the day she found out. Zoe had been working on this story to e-mail to her mom when her mother walked in and told her to clean her room, that is when Zoe clicked send.–We had just dropped my brother and sisters off at Faith Formation. It was a Wednesday evening: January 8, 2014. I would be 13 in just over two weeks.My mom said, “Zoe, I need to talk to you....

The jury in the defamation lawsuit brought by former Gov. Jesse Ventura informed the judge Monday that they can’t reach a verdict, but the judge instructed them to keep trying. “We have not reached a unanimous decision,” the jury wrote in a note to U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle, who read it aloud at a noon hearing with the jury and attorneys in the courtroom. “We feel we will not come to a unanimous decision,” the note said. But Kyle told the 10 jurors to “give it one more shot” and asked them to resume deliberations, noting that his instructions...

Editor's note: Elizabeth Slattery coauthored this piece. When it comes to defending Obamacare subsidies, the Justice Department appears none too eager to take its case to the Supreme Court. Instead, the administration announced it would appeal Tuesday’s adverse ruling by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to… the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. President Obama, it seems, likes his chances with the full court. And why not? He “hand-packed” it himself. The legal issue at hand is whether the IRS has the authority to subsidize health coverage bought through insurance exchanges run by the feds....

Michelle Obama wants the federal government to tell us what kind of food to eat. I actually wouldn’t object if she merely used a bully pulpit to encourage healthier eating. But the busy-body crowd in Washington has a hard time distinguishing between giving advice and engaging in coercion. So we now have legislation that gives Washington the power to interfere with food in local schools. But not everybody is rolling over, particularly when federal rules are coercing states into banning bake sales. The National Journal reports on growing resistance to this absurd example of nanny statism from Washington. Here are...

WASHINGTON — The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals held Monday that Virginia’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages is unconstitutional. On a 2-1 vote, the appeals court joined the wave of court decisions declaring such bans unconstitutional. The decision, by Judge Henry Floyd acknowledged both the debate over such laws and, in the court’s view, the clear constitutional impediment to laws banning same-sex couples from marrying. “We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable,” he wrote. “However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection of the laws.” The court’s opinion...

There is good and there is evil. Good is the healthy state, functioning optimally according to its design. Evil can be defined as a conscious state of disorder, a parasite that thrives on conquering the good. Humans are creatures of a magnificent design. They start out innocent enough, generally attracted to good. But all people seem to be subject to the attentions of evil, sometimes as a victim and sometimes as a participant. The vast majority of humans are kind and interesting, regardless of their culture, religion, race, or party affiliation. And right about the age of six, they are...

NEW YORK, NY- When is spanking a crime? A New York court just ruled in favor of a Long Island Dad who hit his 8-year-old son for cursing. The court found that spanking was a reasonable use of force. And other states are okaying it too. Spanking is at the center of the New York state court case. The state appellate court dismissed neglect charges against a Long Island father who spanked his 8-year old son for cursing at an adult, saying spanking did not constitute excessive punishment. Criminal defense lawyer Arthur Aidala says the judge says as long as...

For the longest time I have chosen to chalk our President’s stumbles, bumbles, and disasters up to incompetence. He is in over his head. He is inexperienced. He is out of his league. It is hard to accept otherwise. But it is clearer and clearer that is not true. It is clear that President Obama’s disastrous policies are premised not in incompetence, but in maliciousness. Our President — and he is our President — is not a stumbler and a bumbler, but a Nero who when not persecuting Christians, plays golf while the world burns. President Obama has surrounded himself...

Nice try.Economic news tends to be confusing no matter where you get it from, but you really want to avoid getting from the Associated Press – and all the more so from local and regional newspapers who pick up AP stories and then put their own spins on the headlines.You end up, as we did in Atlanta this past week, with stories based on huge deceptions that try to use numbers within the stories to mean what they don’t really mean.The AP ran a story this week headlined: “U.S. economy, though sluggish, may now be sturdier.� That sounds like a...

Israel is not tame. But she is good. If a poacher shoots arrows at a pride of sleeping lions, are the lions to blame for rousing and defending themselves? What does one say of the shooter when he intentionally cowers behind the skirts of his own women and daughters, hoping, indeed praying, that these precious souls will inadvertently perish as a result? One calls him a coward, a fool and a monster. Such are the men of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority – terrorists all. They are purposefully slaughtering their own citizenry. There are but two things to blame...

It’s a picture-perfect summer day, bright sun, sparkling skies. And here I am, stuck waiting for another press conference in another stuffy meeting room. Up front stood a bundle of boys and girls, 25 or so, preschoolers in pigtails, strapping youths sporting football jerseys, assembled at the podium, to pose with the politicians and preachers. What’s wrong with this picture? These kids should be in play lots, parks and backyards. They should not be props at a photo op at a West Side church, waiting for the boring adults to make boring their speeches. Perversely, this is the best place...

This week, the U.S. Army will brief arms manufacturers on the design requirements for a new standard-issue handgun. Several gun makers will compete for the lucrative contract, developing weapons that are more reliable and more powerful than those currently in service. Officials say the upgrade is overdue—it’s been nearly 30 years since the Army adopted the Beretta M9. But the last time the military challenged the industry to make a better handgun, all the innovations intended for the battlefield also ended up in the consumer market, and the severity of civilian shootings soared. Studying gunshot injuries in the D.C. area...