Free Republic

Conservatives have long suspected there is discrimination against conservative professors in academia, and now there is evidence to prove it. Sociology professor Neil Gross, a self-described liberal, reveals the results of surveys showing this bias in his new book, Why Professors are Liberal and Why do Conservatives Care? Sociologist George Yancy asked professors if they would be more or less likely to hire someone if they were a Republican, evangelical or fundamentalist. Three-quarters said political affiliation would not affect their hiring decision. But the one-quarter that did say it would influence their decision virtually all said they would favor a...

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Two former coaches have sued Major League Soccer team Chivas USA, claiming they were fired this year because they are not Latino. Daniel Calichman and Theothoros Chronopoulos, who worked in the team's "academy," or player development, program, accused team owner Jorge Vergara Madrigal of Mexico of enacting a Latino-only employment policy, according to a lawsuit filed in a Los Angeles County court. Calichman and Chronopoulos, who are both white, also accused Vergara of implementing a discriminatory practice that was carried over from Chivas de Guadalajara, a pro team in Mexico owned by Vergara that allegedly has...

Testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday, witnesses from Tea Party, pro-life and patriotic educational groups from around the country testified about their experience of intimidation and targeting from the Internal Revenue Service. Witnesses described being sent hundreds of pages from the IRS asking invasive questions about members, books, contents of prayers and the names of anyone attending meetings, including children. "The IRS sought documentation of our meetings, rallies, events, or candidate forums. That included video and audio transcriptions, notes, copies of all handouts; the political party of speakers, and an “issues” list. The IRS sought identifying information on employees; data on...

Meet Karen Kenney, the first in what will undoubtedly be a parade of victims of the intimidation tactics of the IRS aimed at conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. Twitchy captures Kenney’s statement and the immediate Twitter reaction to it. With President Obama attempting to pre-empt the hearing with an odd live statement on judicial nominations — usually a matter left to press releases — coverage of the hearing has been spotty, but this needs to be seen and read in full:

Reinstated despite years of delinquent filings. At the same time the Internal Revenue Service delayed or denied requests for tax-exempt status from hundreds of conservative non-profit groups, it was quietly restoring the tax-exempt status of an Islamist front group accused of collaborating with terrorists. Last year, the politicized agency reinstated the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations’ tax-exempt status despite years of delinquent tax filings. CAIR officials had met with officials inside the White House before the decision was made. Though Democrat-connected CAIR did not officially endorse Obama, many of its staffers helped turn out the Muslim vote for his re-election....

Men In America Aren't Keeping Up With The Economy Blaire Briody, The Fiscal Times Jun. 4, 2013, 11:22 AM Men – once the dominate sex in nearly every sector of society – seem to be falling far and fast. A new Pew report finds that 40 percent of households with children under 18 have mothers who are the primary breadwinners – a dramatic rise from just 11 percent in 1960. Women now earn about 60 percent of university degrees in America and Europe. Single women are increasingly becoming homeowners and a survey by Harris Interactive and Mortgage Marvel this week...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Two former Chivas USA youth coaches have filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Major League Soccer team, claiming they were fired because they aren't Mexican or Latino. The suit was filed Tuesday by Daniel Calichman and Theothoros Chronopoulos in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The suit also claims harassment and retaliation based on ethnicity and race and seeks unspecified damages.

This was the moment traffic wardens swooped outside a church and slapped parking tickets on cars while their owners were at morning mass. Members of the congregation—some of them in wheelchairs—could be seen arguing with the unrepentant wardens for 30 minutes. But the council workers, who had even targeted cars with blue disabled badges, which were allowed to park, refused to back down. The bizarre scene unfolded on Sunday morning outside Our Lady and St. Hubert church in Oldbury, West Midlands. …

IKEA presents itself as the champion of affordable home furnishings. But it appears that the store’s definition of affordable varies dramatically according to the country it is operating in. British families are being charged about 70 percent more for some items of furniture compared with their counterparts on the Continent. … For example, IKEA’s popular Friheten corner sofa bed costs £525 ($796) if bought in its British stores—some 71 percent more than the £307 ($461) charged in Poland, and also considerably more than the £344 ($522) in Spain and Germany. The sofa is also cheaper in IKEA’s home country of...

Carney: White House, Treasury strategized how to tell public By Justin Sink - 05/21/13 02:47 PM ET Officials in the White House discussed how and when the Internal Revenue Service would tell the public that the agency had targeted political groups, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday. Carney said that Mark Childress, the White House deputy chief of staff, twice spoke with officials at the Treasury Department about the strategy for revealing conservative targeting. Childress and the Treasury officials discussed the possibility that Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw the agency's tax-exempt organization, would reveal that an...

May 16, 2013 Column One: Obama and the ‘official truth’ Caroline B. Glick Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has been sitting in a US federal prison in Texas since his photographed midnight arrest by half a dozen deputy sheriffs at his home in California for violating the terms of his parole. As many reporters have noted, the parole violation in question would not generally lead to anything more than a court hearing. But in Nakoula’s case, it led to a year in a federal penitentiary. Because he wasn’t really arrested for violating the terms of his parole. Nakoula was arrested for producing...

Two members of Congress are asking if the Treasury Department disproportionately targeted more Republican or conservative owned auto dealerships during the government-lead restructuring of General Motors in 2009. Breitbart.com reported today that Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Jim Renacci (R-OH) released a letter asking Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to release documents regarding the process and methodology that determined which GM dealerships were closed.

The House Ways and Means Committee holds the first Congressional hearing on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) subjecting applicants for tax-exempt status to higher levels of scrutiny based on political leanings. Witnesses include Acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller who resigned on Wednesday and the Treasury Department’s Inspector General Russell George for Tax Administration. Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) said the IRS' targeting of "American taxpayers based on politics is both astounding and appalling." He stated that the Committee will "get to the bottom of this practice and ensure it never takes place again.” In announcing the hearing, Ranking Member Sander...

It's never comforting to have one's longstanding fears confirmed. Yet, that's exactly what's happened over the last week as Americans have been presented with a stunning array of facts that diminish faith in our government. Whether it's on foreign policy, taxes, or the health-care system our lives depend on, members of the Obama Administration are making it harder to trust them to perform the most very basic functions of public service. *snip* Next, the Department of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has found that conservative and Tea Party groups, after complaining for years of being unfairly targeted by...

A group of Hispanic custodians at the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver are claiming they are victims of discrimination. They’ve filed a complaint against the campus operator that could be reviewed by a federal judge. What started out as a miscommunication over a schedule change for employees working the graveyard shift has become a full investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Too many things have happened to me there that I don’t even know how to explain it,” said Auraria custodian Bertha Ribota. Ribota said she was injured at work because she couldn’t read a warning sign that was...

VIDALIA, Ga. — For years, labor unions and immigrant rights activists have accused large-scale farmers, like those harvesting sweet Vidalia onions here this month, of exploiting Mexican guest workers. Working for hours on end under a punishing sun, the pickers are said to be crowded into squalid camps, driven without a break and even cheated of wages. But as Congress weighs immigration legislation expected to expand the guest worker program, another group is increasingly crying foul — Americans, mostly black, who live near the farms and say they want the field work but cannot get it because it is going...

Oops! A casting call for a new host of a children's program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the taxpayer supported, government-owned television and radio network of Canada, accidentally told the truth, when it specified "any race except Caucasian." See for yourself: Adrain Humphries of the National Post reports: A casting call to hire a new CBC host that specifically said white people need not apply has been withdrawn, with the casting agent offering apologies for the mistake. The original ad for the host of a children's show, posted on the casting agency's website under a CBC logo and on Craigslist,...

When Americans think of the federal government taking on locals to combat racism, they think of Ike sending troops into a Little Rock high school, of JFK sending the National Guard to Ole Miss or LBJ announcing on television the FBI’s arrest of Klansmen for killing a Freedom Rider. Now the Obama administration is arguing that the leafy hamlets of Westchester County are guilty of their own racial discrimination. And the Department of Housing and Urban Development is using all the power it has to bring the locals to heel. The leverage comes from a 2009 consent decree designed to...

Two blind friends have been told they can’t go on holiday to Majorca together just two weeks before they were due to fly because they need a carer. Lauren Wigglesworth, 27, and Stephen Sherwood, 24, were told by Thomson that they must take someone with them because they won’t be able to see the in-flight safety demonstration. Lauren was looking forward to the break at the the luxury C’an Picafort resort as she recovers from a grueling 11-hour operation and prepares for her next stint in hospital. … Lauren and Stephen, from Hereford, were told that they would not know...

The Tim Tebow era is over in New York. The Jets have released Tebow, the New York Post is reporting. Tebow was widely expected to be on the way out for months, and the only surprise is that the Jets waited until now to do it. The arrival of rookie quarterback Geno Smith in the second round of the NFL draft may have been what it took for the Jets to decide that there was simply no room for Tebow on the roster anymor

The N.F.L. will distribute to its teams in the next few weeks an information sheet that will reinforce its antidiscrimination policy and will lay out in detail what constitutes discrimination based on sexual orientation and what team members can do about it. The distribution of the information sheet comes after players said they were asked during the Scouting Combine if they liked girls.

A small group of men who engage in sexual activity with their pets gathered on Berlin's Potsdamer Platz earlier this year to protest a law ratified by the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, that bans bestiality. The lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, passed the legislation late last year as part of a comprehensive animal protection act that brings Germany in line with a European Union directive. German zoophiles now face fines of up to €25,000 for all forms of sex with animals. One of the protesters told the German newsmagazine The Local that a lobby group called ZETA...

If you're like me, your college alumni association floods your inbox with email invitations to contribute, often adding invites to football games and lectures by famous alums or popular professors. Except for the moment when an appeal made directly by an administrator turned out to be a multi-page swoon over Obama, most of these imprecations are politically content-free and were designed to play on my nostalgic memories of a college as it once was, not as it is today. Both my husband and I are very grateful to our university. Without scholarships neither of us would have had an opportunity...

Russia does not discriminate against homosexuals, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters in Amsterdam on Monday where he was greeted by gay rights and other activists critical of Russia's track record. "In the Russian Federation - so that it is clear to everybody - there is no infringement on the rights of sexual minorities," Putin told a press conference. "These people...enjoy all the same rights and freedoms as everyone else."

Companies aren't just singling out overweight employees. Staffers who smoke are under fire too. In small but growing numbers, employers in recent years have been refusing to hire smokers, arguing that coaxing tobacco users to quit with free cessation programs or cash incentives hasn't worked. Some medical experts back the bans, saying the end result of reducing smoking is worth it. But other health-care experts say the policy crosses an ethical line by singling out poorer and less educated groups who, federal data shows, smoke more often.

FORT WORTH -- A 57-year-old Tarrant County College student is gathering signatures supporting the formation of a white student group that would allow people to embrace their heritage while also addressing issues such as affirmative action and the creation of a White History Month. Richard Railey, who is studying information technology at TCC, has been trying to generate support for the White Student Union of Tarrant County. He said white students don't have a group of their own, but groups have been formed around other races, ethnicity or interests.

A French court on Thursday ordered Air France to pay a 10,000 euro ($12,800) fine for having ordered a pro-Palestinian Authority activist off a flight to Tel Aviv because she was not Jewish, AFP reports. According to the report, the court also ordered the French flagship carrier to pay 3,000 euros in damages to the passenger and her legal fees. Horia Ankour, a nursing student, had attempted to fly to Israel from France last April to take part in the “flytilla”, which saw hundreds of pro-Arab activists seeking access to Israel in a bid to travel to Gaza. Israel took...

Has the nation lived down its history of racism and should the law become colorblind? Addressing two pivotal legal issues, one on affirmative action and a second on voting rights, a divided Supreme Court is poised to answer those questions. In one case, the issue is whether race preferences in university admissions undermine equal opportunity more than they promote the benefits of racial diversity. Just this past week, justices signaled their interest in scrutinizing affirmative action very intensely, expanding their review as well to a Michigan law passed by voters that bars ‘‘preferential treatment’’ to students based on race. Separately...

<p>ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- A hike in New York's minimum wage is a big win for Democrats, but a provision buried inside the tentative state budget shows taxpayers will be paying much of the bill.</p> <p>The "minimum wage reimbursement credit" is spelled out at the bottom of a revenue bill in the budget separate from the minimum wage measure. The credit would reimburse employers for part of the difference in wages from the current $7.25 minimum wage as it rises to $9 an hour by 2016.</p>

A transgender high school student who applied to prestigious, private, all-female Smith College has been rejected because the school only accepts women. Smith returned Calliope Wong’s application — and application fee — earlier this month, reports The Advocate. “As you may remember from our previous correspondence, Smith is a women’s college, which means that undergraduate applicants to Smith must be female at the time of admission,” admissions dean Debra Shaver wrote in a letter to Wong, The Advocate says. Wong has identified as female for several years, according to the Keystone Student Voice. However, on the FAFSA (Free Application for...

A Department of Homeland Security program intended to give "trusted traveler" status to low-risk airline passengers soon will be extended to Saudi travelers, opening the program to criticism for accommodating the country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Sources voiced concern about the decision to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which issued a report Wednesday on the under-the-radar announcement -- which was first made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after meeting in January with her Saudi counterpart. According to the IPT, this would be the first time the Saudi government has...

TORONTO, March 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A U.S. company that provides software solutions to nonprofit organizations has refused service to the Canadian pro-life group Campaign Life Coalition, accusing it of supporting “hate, prejudice and bigotry." CLC's Jack Fonseca told LifeSiteNews.com that recently Campaign Life Coalition asked an information technology (IT) consultant to help improve its business processes. "He searched for a database solutions company that specializes in non-profits like ours," Fonseca told LifeSiteNews. The IT specialist found a company called The Databank, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The consultant also found an endorsement from a Jesuit retreat center in Atlanta, Georgia,...

Hey everyone - great news! We are all women now! Today, Obama signed into law the Violence against Women Act of 2013. Our leaders opened up the scope of the law thus: (13) CIVIL RIGHTS.— (A) NONDISCRIMINATION.—No person in the United States shall, on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity (as defined in paragraph 249(c)(4) of title 18, United States Code), sexual orientation, or disability, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity funded in whole or in part with...

With no authority to do so and with flawed factual support, the EEOC has issued an enforcement guideline that would compel employers to discriminate in favor of minority ex-cons. It's past time for Congress to rein in the EEOC and make them withdraw this directive by other name. (a) The EEOC Enforcement Guidance Procedure Over 89 million Americans are presently out of the labor force. The New York Times seems to offer a muddled explanation for the fact that employers have money to hire but aren't doing so even when they need extra help. The Federal Reserve's vision is less...

Why are liberal activists exerting themselves so fervently to attack the points made by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia last week during the oral arguments in the Shelby County v. Holder case? Perhaps the justices’ critics are desperate to retain the unconstitutional preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which have given the Obama administration political and legal leverage in redistricting and other election-law challenges. The chief justice provided some reason last June, in his decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, to believe that such attacks might cause him to change his mind. But the recent attacks are...

Let's work through an example. Suppose 100 yards of fence could be built using one of two techniques. You could hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each, or you could hire one high-skilled worker for $40. Either way, you get the same 100 yards of fence built. If you sought maximum profits, which production technique would you employ? I'm guessing that you'd hire one high-skilled worker and pay him $40 rather than hire three low-skilled workers for $15 each. Your labor costs would be $40 rather than $45. Suppose the high-skilled worker came into your office and demanded $55 a...

The Simpon's Helen Lovejoy iconized the phrase, “Won't somebody think of the children?,” but in an age where every “ism” has a special interest group and being called any sort of “ist” is the ultimate character assault our youth receive very little consideration on the big issues of the day. Social Security, often presented as an investment in your future, is merely a wealth transfer from the young to old. Many youth today see the demographic writing on the wall and understand that, like all ponzi schemes, Social Security can't outrun arithmetic forever. Youth are forced to subsidize the lifestyles...

<p>The Associated Press on Thursday updated its stylebook so that married individuals will be referred to as husband and wife, regardless of whether they are in a same-sex marriage. The change comes a week after the AP received criticism for an internal memo designating the word "partners" for individuals in same-sex marriages.</p>

Wow! As we strive for a truly colorblind society, it's quite apparent that the ones who hold us back are the ones who scream the loudest about equality. Those on the left blast those on the right, because we just want to recognize people for what they do, not what skin color they have. But, just like Barack Obama plays the race card over and over again, we have another example to point to. This time, it's an elementary school in Denver that offers a tutoring program... unless you are white. As reported by Denver's CBS 4, the tutoring program...

A school principal said no white children were allowed at an after-school tutoring program, and now some parents call it discrimination. The principal at Mission Viejo Elementary in Aurora sent a letter telling parents the program is only for students of color. Parents CBS4 talked with said they were shocked to see, in this day and age, what they consider to be segregation. “I was infuriated. I didn’t understand why they would include or exclude certain groups,” said parent Nicole Cox, who is white. Cox’s 10-year-old daughter needs tutoring. After receiving the notice, other parents complained to the school’s principal,...

“Equal share in the burden” of army enlistment is meaningless if it does not include Arab citizens, representatives from the hareidi-religious Yahadut Hatorah (United Torah Judaism) party argued Tuesday evening in a meeting with Likud Beytenu. “If there is ‘equality’ – then let it be true equality. Why is the hareidi population under pressure while the Arabs are outside the debate completely?” challenged MK Moshe Gafni, who was quoted by the hareidi paper Hamevaser. MK Meir Porush argued that the state has not historically been eager to enlist even those hareidi men who were eligible for mandatory service. “According to...

The National Association of Scholars (NAS): @ UT Austin & Texas A&M . “We found that all too often the course readings gave strong emphasis to race, class, or gender (RCG) social history, an emphasis so strong that it diminished the attention given to other subjects in American history (such as military, diplomatic, religious, intellectual history),” the NAS concluded. “The result is that these institutions frequently offered students a less-than-comprehensive picture of U.S. history.” “Despite its denunciation of ‘ideologically partisan approaches,’ the report itself is based on an idiosyncratic and ideologically driven taxonomy of the books, articles, and syllabi of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of smokers could be priced out of health insurance because of tobacco penalties in President Barack Obama's health care law, according to experts who are just now teasing out the potential impact of a little-noted provision in the massive legislation. The Affordable Care Act — "Obamacare" to its detractors — allows health insurers to charge smokers buying individual policies up to 50 percent higher premiums starting next Jan. 1. For a 55-year-old smoker, the penalty could reach nearly $4,250 a year. A 60-year-old could wind up paying nearly $5,100 on top of premiums. Younger smokers could...

A British Airways employee suffered discrimination at work over her Christian beliefs, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. Judges ruled Nadia Eweida's rights had been violated under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. She took her case to the European Court of Human Rights after BA made her stop wearing her white gold cross visibly. Judges ruled that the rights of three other Christians had not been violated by their employers. Continue reading the main story Analysis image of Robert Pigott Robert Pigott Religious affairs correspondent, BBC News Although Nadia Eweida's victory shows that Christians...

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments about the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 guarantees that the debate over marriage will be at the forefront of American public life for the foreseeable future. DOMA defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman for purposes of federal law (it says nothing about what states may or may not define as marriage). Prop 8 was a voter-initiated correction of the California Supreme Court’s interpretation of that state’s constitution as containing a “right” to same-sex marriage. Irrespective of whether the U.S....

Featured Term (selected at random):DISCRIMINATION In philosophy, the power of the mind clearly to distinguish between objects, whether real or conceptual, and between right and wrong in moral matters. Consequently, it is also the distinction between things that the mind recognizes, whether and how they differ. In popular usage, discrimination has come to mean acting toward someone or something with bias or prejudice. (Etym. Latin discriminare, to set apart as different, distinguish.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

22 Stats That Prove That There Is Something Seriously Wrong With Young Men In America By Michael Snyder December 17th, 2012 When are we finally going to admit that we have a very serious problem with this generation of young men in America? We have failed them so dramatically that it is hard to put it into words. We have raised an entire generation of young males that don't know how to be men, and many of them feel completely lost. Sometimes they feel so lost that they "snap" in very destructive ways. Adam Lanza and James Holmes are two...

More left-wing hypocrisy. Emily Bazelon is a Jewish activist involved with AIPAC and other Jewish causes. Yet she says a low birth rates for white people are a “good thing” and that whites should be discriminated against by colleges.

The clock ticked a little impatiently, waiting for an answer. My answer. The interviewer’s question stuck in my mind, “Have you worked with diverse students before?” Looking past her wide set eyes, I focused on the picture of MLK behind her head. He stared down at me with knowing eyes. Brooding. Silent. Without reserve. I paused, finding the answer to her question. “Yes. I have worked with diverse students. I mean, I’ve been an English Language Development teacher for the past two years and all of my students have been Hispanic.” “I wouldn’t call that diverse.” She caught me with...

In a story the New York Times appears not to have touched, Hunter Walker at Observer.com's Politicker ("about" page is here) reported on Tuesday that Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a black Harlem activist, "circulated an email" Monday night "in an attempt to plan a 'private meeting' to 'discuss the potential damage to the political empowerment of the Black and Hispanic community if Mark Levine, a White/Jewish candidate was elected to the 7th Council District in 2013.'" So we see that black Chicagoland establishment officials trying to ensure that the successor to the recently resigned Jesse Jackson Jr. in Illinois' 2nd Congressional District...