Free Republic

When New York City's strikingly successful police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, arrived to address students at Brown University, he was harassed, booed and heckled for 30 long minutes. "Racism is not for debate," they shouted. A university official pleaded with the goons, er, students to permit Kelly to speak, reminding them that they would be free to express disagreement during the Q-and-A session afterwards. "Shout him down!" responded a man in the audience, and the crowd did. Episodes like this are tolerated in America because college faculties, administrators and the press almost uniformly share the students' prejudices and haven't the spine...

The chairman of the Democratic Town Committee has asked police to put a halt to Republican campaign signs shaped like stop signs posted along local streets. Ellery Plotkin filed a complaint with the Police Department Monday morning about the octagonal GOP signs that urge voters to "STOP Raising Taxes Vote Republican." Police Sgt. Suzanne Lussier, the department spokeswoman, said six of the GOP signs were removed by officers after their placement was deemed to violate state rules or created a traffic hazard. "From here on out, it will be referred to the (Republican Town Committee) or the (Democratic Town Committee)...

It seems that the rhetoric against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has gone from hateful to downright graphic and violent. The Capitol Police are investigating online threats made by an individual against the Texas senator, a Cruz spokesperson said Friday.The threatening posts were made on Twitter by someone who identifies himself as Troy Gilmore Jr. and uses the Twitter handle @ArmyVet54. He has also listed Cruz’s home address in Houston several times and argued he needs to be “taught a street wise lesson.”“Take down Ted Cruz, at his home,” the person tweeted, listing Cruz’s home address in Houston.“Lets Find Ted...

The House Oversight Committee wants to find out why the Park Service behaved so bizarrely. ... Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a former prosecutor, almost drove National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis into incoherence with his relentless questioning. Gowdy wanted to know why Jarvis had allowed “pot-smoking” Occupy Wall Street protesters to camp overnight illegally in Washington’s McPherson Square park for 100 days, yet put up barricades to keep veterans out of war memorials on the first day of the shutdown. By not issuing a single citation to the Occupy campers, Gowdy argued, the Park Service was treating them...

FOX NEWS ALERT! The barricades are back up!

... and the envelope please for Most Overwrought Hyperbole from Left-Wing Radio Host Rendered Deranged by Government Shutdown ... the winner is .... Thom Hartmann ... and it was the unanimous decision of our judges! (cue applause) Alas, Hartmann will be unable to accept the award in person, seeing how the ceremony conflicted with the next round of his strictly monitored medication schedule ... (Audio after the jump). What exactly did Hartmann say to win such a prestigious honor? Listen here but consider yourself warned, you may want to first ingest iodine as protection from the radiation (h/t for audio,...

U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, R-Austin, reported anti-Tea Party and anti-Republican protestors vandalized the entry to his district office in Cleburne this week. Tea bags were hung from the door, along with signs, which Williams' staff claim are the property of Moveon.org. The signs deliver a variety of messages. Among those are, "It's time for your recall," "You're fired," and "It's time to vote you out." (snip) Other signs call Williams an "anti-American racist" and "D___bag Republican."

The federal government has been blocking people from pulling off the side of the road to view Mt. Rushmore! This is government arrogance at its worst. [The original article is from a source we cannot link to here on FR (Argus Leader).] This was taken from Kristi Noem's page (R-SD).

On Thursday, Democrat tool Chad Henderson claimed to have enrolled in ObamaCare while most others' attempts failed. News organizations eagerly lapped up his story. Apparently, though, the story was "too good to check," because when someone finally did, it fell apart, discrediting Big Media, the Democrats, and ObamaCare. Conservative and libertarian websites now are reporting the corrected story, and even some Big Media outlets reluctantly are reporting it. But almost as devastating to the left is Mr. Henderson's confession that he is being paid to post pro-Democrat propaganda on the internet: Secondly, I work for an organization that pays me...

While the nation’s political class has been fixated on the government shutdown in Washington this week, the National Security Agency (NSA) has continued to spy on all Americans and, by its ambiguity and shrewd silence, seems to be acknowledging slowly that the scope of its spying is truly breathtaking. The Obama administration is of the view that the NSA can spy on anyone, anywhere. The president thinks that federal statutes enable the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to authorize the NSA to capture any information it desires about any persons without identifying the persons and without a showing...

The National Park Service has ordered the closure of a Virginia park that sits on federal land, even though the government provides no resources for its maintenance or operation. The Claude Moore Colonial Farm announced on Wednesday that NPS has ordered it to suspend operations until Congress agrees to a deal to fund the federal government. According to Anna Eberly, managing director of the farm, NPS sent law enforcement agents to the park on Tuesday evening to remove staff and volunteers from the property. “You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they...

An Oregon-based ad agency has been generating national attention for its ads promoting Cover Oregon, The Beaver State’s the version of an Obamacare health insurance marketplace. The generally pointless ads cost taxpayers $3 million, reports Fox News. They feature ostensibly catchy musical numbers and have sort of a hipster, granola, outdoorsy vibe. They offer no clue what they are about until the very end, when the words “Cover Oregon” appear on the screen along with a website. One version of the ad also bothers to list a phone number. Now, North, the Portland-based agency, wants high school marching bands to...

Snipped title: Fed-Up NY Man Sets Up Hidden Camera to Find Out Who Was Repeatedly Stealing His Pro-Gun Sign – What He Discovered Blew Him Away

A granite monument of the Ten Commandments that sits across the street from the U.S. Supreme Court was toppled by vandals sometime over the weekend. The monument sits in the front yard of 209 Second St. NE, the headquarters of Faith and Action, an evangelical Christian group led by the Rev. Rob Schenck. The 3-foot by 3-foot granite sculpture weighs 850 pounds.

Vince Gill did something on Sunday that not many country singers are willing to do: he courted controversy. Prior to a concert in Kansas City, Missouri, Gill confronted protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, who were picketing outside his concert to protest his divorce and remarriage, which they hold to be nothing more than a form of adultery. The church, which is nonaffiliated, has also protested against gays and Jews and at the funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in combat, in the belief that God is punishing the nation for its immorality. At Kansas City’s Kauffman Center...

  A Seattle restaurant was burned by an arsonist – and that suspect was a hooded man who left graffiti believed to reference to the Trayvon Martin case. The fire was started about 2:15 a.m. at the corner of 23rd Avenue and East Union Street in Seattle's Central District. The first arriving engine company found flames coming from the back of the Med Mix restaurant near a storage area, and light smoke was found inside the restaurant. On the building the arsonist used red spray paint to write, "4 Pratt and Trayv." The owner believes that message refers to Trayvon Martin,...

Another business is facing retribution for declining service to a same-sex couple. Betty and Dick Odgaard, owners of Görtz Haus Gallery in Grimes, Iowa, are catching the ire of gay rights advocates after they declined offering their venue to Lee Stafford and his fiance Jared. Now the owners, who are Christians, are receiving vicious and threatening emails and phone calls — and they fear that their business could shut down because of the fierce reaction. It was less than one week ago that the Lee and Jared entered Görtz Haus looking for additional information about holding their wedding there. After...

“We have to monitor social media and the Internet to see if there are any rallies nearby that pose a specific threat, and we avoid them,” he said, adding that the threats sometimes average 400 per minute. Mr. Zimmerman found himself in a threatening situation in Washington, D.C., when Starbucks employees mistook him for his brother. . . . Someone finally noticed the receipt said Robert instead of George, or R instead of G, and they said ‘Oh, it’s not George Zimmerman‘ and they all calmed down. Someone then said ‘Yeah, but you look like that [expletive], and if you...

LEFTIST PLANT INFILTRATES HOUSTON PRO-ZIMMERMAN RALLY– Liberal Media runs with it A photo from the Houston pro-Zimmerman counter-rally of the NBPP anti-Zimmerman rally picked up by the AP shows a woman holding a sign that read, “Racist & Proud.” That looked incongruent with the other reports from the pro-Zimmerman side. The Houston Chronicle identified her as Renee Vaughan: One woman in the Zimmerman group held a sign that said, “We’re racist & proud.” Austin resident Renee Vaughan echoed the sign’s ugly sentiments by yelling, “We’re racist. We’re proud. We’re better because we’re white,” at the Martin group as they passed,...

Dream Defenders, the main group that has been agitating the protest movement surrounding the Trayvon Martin case, was spawned by activists employed by a who’s who of the race-hijacking radical left. From the socialist-oriented SEIU union to ACORN to Occupy to a litany of George Soros-funded organizations, the deep connections behind Dream Defenders raises questions about the motivation of an organization that claims to be a grassroots effort working to oppose racism. Dream Defenders has been leading Martin protests since the onset and has been credited with agitating for George Zimmerman’s arrest. The group was behind the protests that blockaded...