Free Republic

From Avis Facebook, new statement. Guess they Varsity team took over. (much better statement) We have investigated the denial of a rental that recently occurred in Manhattan. We have found that we have been inconsistent in applying our policies with respect to documentation requirements with this customer, who has rented from us in the past without providing a second form of identification. We are committed to providing an outstanding car rental experience to our customers and believe that we should have done better here. We have spoken with the customer and apologized for the misunderstanding that occurred as a result...

A Bainbridge Island teacher is giving a lesson that has parents on edge. The lesson plan: Boys can't play with Legos. The Bainbridge Island Review reports that Karen Keller, a kindergarten teacher at Blakely Elementary, is tackling the issue of gender equity by not allowing the boys in her class to play with Legos. The Lego-restricted lesson plan doesn't make a whole lot of sense for KIRO Radio's Dori Monson. "If I was a parent of a boy in that class, I'd get them out of there ... we've gone insane in our public schools," he said. "This Bainbridge Island...

Following reports that a Red Crescent ambulance passed by the site of Friday's deadly terrorist attack and ignored the victims as they lay dying, the Israeli government will be launching an international campaign against the organization, which in principle does not treat Jews - despite being bound to treat all casualties regardless off their identity. Israel's Magen David Adom (MDA) emergency service, by contrast, regularly treats Palestinians. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered the foreign ministry to lodge a stern complaint with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, under whose auspices the Red Crescent operates, demanding an...

Yesterday the president of the University of Missouri resigned because student pressure and a hunger striker and some faculty in the football team all asked for the president's resignation. The University of Missouri has a long-standing history of racism. Over five years ago one of the students from UM held an open mic in Columbia, Missouri that our organization hosted. Her poem was about racism. Similarly, in our community, the University of Colorado has a long history of discrimination against people with lived experience of recovery from mental health labels. One Colorado advocate has made attempts for over 20 years...

Colorado Springs residents had a lot to say after hearing that Colorado Springs police officers will no longer have to take physical fitness tests this year. "I think it’s a mistake," Mary Jo Piccin told CBS4’s Tom Mustin. "I think the police need to be able to chase down them criminals." Last Friday the Colorado Springs Police Department agreed to the demands of 12 female officers who filed a civil suit claiming the fitness tests are discriminatory. All the officers were over the age of 40.

Last Thursday night, more than 100 community members gathered at the Waterloo Center for the Arts for a panel discussion of Racial Justice. The forum engaged the philosophy behind the Black Lives Matter movement and discussed the system of racial injustice here in the Cedar Valley and in the nation. Panel members included the Reverend Abraham Funchess, the Reverend Belinda Creighton-Smith, the Reverend Mary E. Robinson, Public Defender Aaron Hawbaker, and Chief Dan Trelka. As panelists eloquently explained, the Black Lives Matter movement is about reasserting the inherent dignity and respect of a group of people who have been diminished...

Two daycare workers have been fired for refusing to go along with the center’s transgender agenda. Madeline Kirksey, one of the workers who is an author of a Christian book, says her religious liberty rights have been violated. The two were fired after refusing to call a little girl a boy. The two male parents of a six-year-old little girl told employees at the school to refer to their daughter as a boy, and to call her by a new masculine name. The little girl’s hair had also been cut like a boy’s. Kirksey told Breitbart Texas in an interview,...

For the Left, however, "discrimination training" is a rather one-sided affair. Christians have certain beliefs with regard to same-sex marriage, yet when it comes to an accommodation for those beliefs Christians must accommodate homosexuals. Thus when Sweet Cakes bakery shop refused to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, a ceremony owners Aaron and Melissa Klein insisted was a violation of their religious convictions, the Oregon commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries ordered the couple to pay $135,000 in damages for emotional and mental suffering arising from the denial of service. By contrast, Azucar Bakery, a homosexual-run business...

In this era of racial unrest, academic efforts to achieve understanding are welcome. Unfortunately, opportunities to misinterpret abound in academe. “Younger generations have made great strides,” Liam Farrell of the University of Maryland writes in the alumni magazine, Terp. “A cross-country study of 3,000 people 14 to 24 years old by MTV and David Binder Research in 2014 found that more than 90 percent believe everyone should be treated the same regardless of race.” “But that belief is a veneer on more unsettling results: 48 percent of white respondents also believe discrimination against white people is as big a problem...

MEXICO, N.Y. – Mexico High School quarterback Dante Turo believes it’s God who gives him the strength and abilities to be successful on the football field. The junior team leader often points skyward after big plays as a tribute to the Almighty, and his 73-yard run for a touchdown against Vernon-Verona-Sherrill Oct. 17 was no exception, Syracuse.com reports. The solemn celebration, however, apparently didn’t sit well with one referee, who flagged the teen for unsportsmanlike conduct and assessed a 15-yard penalty that ultimately cost his team the game. “I was just trying to give glory to God,” Turo told the...

Shirley Sherrod sued Andrew Breitbart, Larry O’Connor and others over a video of Sherrod giving a speech before an NAACP group, in which she recounted how in the distant past when she worked for a state agency, she had discriminated against a white farmer. Breitbart’s widow was substituted as a defendant after his death. Sherrod was fired by the US Dept. of Agriculture as a result of their (over)reaction, and despite her clarifications and denials, indicating she had given some help to the farmer, and had learned from the experience to treat people fairly. We have analyzed that original tape,...

Fifth Third Bank will pay $18 million to settle federal allegations that it discriminated against thousands of black and Hispanic borrowers by charging them a higher interest rate for auto loans than white customers, federal regulators said Monday. The Cincinnati-based bank agreed to pay $3 million to credit card customers, as well as a $500,000 penalty, to resolve a separate case over debt protection coverage that regulators said was deceptively marketed. Fifth Third spokesman Larry Magnesen said the bank, which has 17 branches in Pittsburgh, was “pleased to put both of these matters behind us” and maintained that it treated...

My oldest daughter and I were walking around San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood on a clear autumn day in search of a mattress store called Keetsa back in 2008. I remember turning a corner and almost bumping into an enormous naked man riding his bicycle on the sidewalk.

Moldova. Orthodox Christians are protesting against the law prohibiting all forms of discrimination    The passage of Moldova’s anti-discrimination law was one of the requirements laid down by the European Union for the visa liberalization with the EU (visa-free travel of Moldovan citizens within the EU). From the outset, the discussion of this law in the Moldovan Parliament was marked by members of the public expressing mass, stormy protest, as they associated it with the legalization of same-sex “marriage” and the adoption of children by homosexuals. Nevertheless, on May 25, 2012, the law was passed and on December 26...

A Rolling Meadows woman has accused Office Depot of discriminating against her Roman Catholic faith after employees told her running copies of an anti-abortion prayer violated company policy. Karen Denning, a spokeswoman for Office Depot, said company policy prohibits "the copying of any type of material that advocates any form of racial or religious discrimination or the persecution of certain groups of people. It also prohibits copying any type of copyrighted material." "The flier contained material that advocates the persecution of people who support abortion rights," Denning said.

Stephanie Burns came up with the idea for Chic CEO, a free online platform for female entrepreneurs, in 2008, when she was getting her MBA. Many of her friends had lost jobs in the recession and were asking her for tips on how to start their own businesses. After hosting about 15 friends at her San Diego home to exchange advice, Burns realized there was a market for offering entrepreneurial guidance to women. A year later, she launched her company. Up until 2014, the focus of her work involved providing practical business advice to women in the form of free,...

Muslim Flight Attendant Says She Was Suspended For Refusing To Serve Alcohol By Emanuella Grinberg and Carma Hassan September 5, 2015 (CNN)A Muslim flight attendant says she was suspended by ExpressJet for refusing to serve alcohol in accordance with her Islamic faith. In a bid to get her job back, Charee Stanley filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday for the revocation of a reasonable religious accommodation. She wants to do her job without serving alcohol in accordance with her Islamic faith -- just as she was doing before her suspension, her lawyer said. "What...

  Muslim Apartheid housing in Canada is apparently not only legal, but even government subsidized. As one wheelchair bound young man found out. According to a letter that arrived at his mother’s house last week, Austin Lewis, 21, was removed from the waiting list at the Ahmadiyya Abode of Peace building on Finch Ave. W in North York because he is not a member of their faith. “It was mostly confusing, more than anything else,” he said. “Why would a government segregate its own building?” Because they don't want to be accused of Islamophobia? Lewis, who has used a...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) WATCH ABOVE: At 21, Austin Lewis of Toronto lives his life in a wheelchair. Now, as Sean O’Shea reports he’s also dealing with another obstacle when it comes to getting a subsidized apartment: he has the wrong religion. TORONTO — A disabled Toronto man had his name removed from the waiting list of a subsidized city apartment because he does not meet the main criteria for living there: being Muslim. “It doesn’t make any sense; I lived in Texas, that doesn’t make sense even there,” said Austin Lewis, 21, who is paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Lewis is...

A newly released batch of emails from Lois Lerner, former IRS official in charge of denying conservative groups the same tax-free status as left-leaning groups, is said to have largely exonerated her of charges of unwarranted discrimination. Attorney General Loretta Lynch cited email content in which Lerner referred to conservative groups as “evil and dishonest” as “fundamentally exculpatory. As a public servant, Ms. Lerner was certainly within her rights and duties to block the misuse of tax-exempt status to groups that in her mind posed a genuine danger to the government. While conservatives might be expected to disagree with her...