Free Republic

19-year-old Alecia Faith Pennington has spent her life so sheltered by her Christian fundamentalist parents that now, as a young adult, she is finding it almost impossible to prove to the government that she actually exists. In a video uploaded to YouTube and quickly going viral, Pennington documents the various ways her parents have managed to prevent leaving even a single speck of evidence to help her gain an official identity or to prove that she is a United States citizen. For starters, they gave birth to her at home, and declined to get a birth certificate or social security...

I’m a Southern girl. Born in the South, raised in the South, and have rarely lived anywhere BUT the South. I actually love the South. I’ll die in the South. Being a Southern girl, I have more than my share of right-wing friends, neighbors, and family members — and some of you have in recent years crossed the line into nut-jobbery. The fact is — I love you guys and that will never change. I’ll admit that I’m disappointed and disturbed to see intelligent and/or educated people who are willfully ignorant. But while it does change my opinion about you...

ulture: An unlikely issue has entered the infant 2016 presidential campaign: Vaccines and required vaccinations. Let's hope the fact there's no scientific link to autism or anything else isn't lost in the political fray. Candidates will often look for an edge over their opponents. Thus, both New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently suggested that, while vaccinations are good, forcing parents to vaccinate their children might be too much. We believe vaccines are safe and should be routine, but concern about parents' rights is not unreasonable. What really gripes us, however, is listening to the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: It's unbelievable. It is happening again! It's happening all over again. You remember during the Republican -- it was a primary debate in January, two years ago, Mitt Romney, out of the blue, was asked by George Stephanopoulos, "So what do you think about contraception?" And Romney's going, "What? Contraception? George, what are you talking about?" Stephanopoulos kept pushing and kept pushing, and it wasn't an issue anywhere. So Romney finally answered it, and that gave birth to the War on Women. There was no War on Women, and now this vaccination thing has popped up. It's...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters Tuesday that the vaccination issue "is largely silliness stirred up by the media. Nobody reasonably thinks Chris Christie is opposed to vaccinating kids other than a bunch of reporters who want to write headlines." CBS News' John Nolen reports that Cruz went on to say, "This question has historically been decided at the state level. And most states choose to do what the state of Texas does which is to mandate vaccines for children to prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases." A statement he released noted that most states make exceptions for good-faith religious...

The Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors’ former ties to Hollywood’s unions are coming into question in light of its recent decision to stand by its award to ultra-conservative presidential hopeful Senator Ted Cruz. The decision to give the Texas Republican its American Spirit Award had polarized the caucus’ membership, with internal objections leading to an emergency meeting of the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors executive committee Monday, which upheld the decision to honor Cruz. The caucus traditionally hands out American Spirit Awards to a Republican and a Democrat (California Governor Jerry Brown appears to be the choice on...

I am sure that my fellow freepers can provide a list of Obama SOTU phrases that he will surely use tonight in his speech to the masses...

President Obama’s aides have drafted a team of Internet-savvy staff members to produce a series of videos, digital op-eds, Facebook and Twitter posts, and six-second animated GIFs to capture a larger audience than the mainstream media’s shrinking number of viewers and readers. They are essential tools in selling the president’s message during his last two years in office, White House officials say. In recent announcements on college affordability, immigration and net neutrality, the president has relied on social media platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Medium, Vine, LinkedIn and Twitter. Last Tuesday, Mr. Obama previewed his plan for broadband access in a...

"I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish—in their pews, homes and hearts." So says an influential New York Times journalist. In other words, "Keep your religion in the closet." In his Jan. 10 Times editorial, "Your God and My Dignity: Religious Liberty, Bigotry, and Gays," Frank Bruni writes, "I've been called many unpleasant things in my life, and I've deserved no small number of them. But I chafe at this latest label: A threat to your religious liberty." He finds it "absurd" that the simple act of two men or two...

Three new studies offer new proof of how bad the earth's fever has gotten. It’s not often that the climate change deniers get clobbered three times in just two days. But that’s what happened with the release of a trio of new studies that ought to serve as solid body blows to the fading but persistent fiction that human-mediated warming is somehow a hoax. Good news for the forces of reason, however, is bad news for the planet—especially the oceans. “Today’s news is a clear and undeniable warning for all of us that we need to cut climate pollution and...

Complete Headline: EXCLUSIVE: The beginning of the end for Rosie and Whoopi as ABC considers abandoning The View and extending Good Morning America as infighting grows and ratings plunge The View is dimming at the show that Barbara Walters built. Network insiders tell Daily Mail Online that the long-running talk show could end after this season, amid struggling ratings and infighting among the talk show hosts. Currently in its eighteenth season, the show created by retired TV journalist Barbara Walters is suffering some of its lowest ratings ever with its new team of Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie O'Donnell, Nicolle Wallace and...

In case you missed it, during last night’s opening bit, Golden Globes hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler took the opportunity to make a few funnies about the rape allegations against Bill Cosby: VIDEO ON LINK Lena Dunham, for one, thought it was hilarious: TWITTER IMAGE ON LINK

Ask anyone under 40 to identify Paul McCartney or "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and the odds are you'll get a blank look in return. Ask someone under 30 to describe the Soviet menace and you may well get the same response. The first one is harmless ignorance, and some might argue the second one is as well. After all, it's over and we won, right? What's not harmless is a never-ending effort to glorify communist conspirators in Hollywood, like the forthcoming movie "Trumbo," starring "Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston as blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Entertainment Weekly magazine spewed...

For the most part, the gay marriage debate now falls along partisan lines: Democrats support it, But within the crowded field of likely 2016 presidential contenders, there’s a lot of room for nuance. The would-be candidates have made much different arguments and have varying records on the issue. Meantime, the issue continues to change. On Jan. 6, Florida became the second-largest state to recognize gay marriage, bringing the total to 36. And on Friday, the Supreme Court will meet privately to decide whether to consider cases that could lead to a more definitive ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Here’s...

Hollywood relishes making anti-American movies, but, maybe even more, loves to lavish fulsome tributes on full-blown Communists, you know, those fellows who swooned at Joe Stalin’s feet, teamed up with Hitler as he bombed the hell out of London in World War II and worked overtime to inflict deadly harm on America. Tinseltown is at it again, celebrating Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast, in a brand new picture directed by Jay Roach and featuring Bryan Cranston, the star of the hit television series, Breaking Bad. The publicity for Trumbo says that Dalton bravely took...

My daughter asked me my opinion on an article she read in Vanity Fair attempting to debunk the presidential record of Ronald Reagan. I happily responded. The writer of the piece is veteran liberal commentator Michael Kinsley, who used to be a regular on William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" and CNN's "Crossfire." It's not as though he appeared out of nowhere, studied the evidence anew and shared a novel theory. He's been dissing Reaganomics for decades along with other Democrats and liberals, whose only recourse is to distort the Gipper's phenomenal record. Why is this even relevant, you ask?...

MICHAEL BROWN SR. AND THE AGONY OF THE BLACK FATHER IN AMERICA Thanksgiving at the Brown house, with family, friends, ham hocks, a little football, and an empty chair.

It is difficult to compare presidents outside of a narrow context of time. It is like trying to compare baseball players, like Ruth and Aaron, or football players, like Johnny Unitas and Peyton Manning. For athletes, the games they play were different then; and for presidents, not only the country, but the world is different. There is no way of knowing how a president today would have fared when faced with the prospect of the First or Second World War, or how they would have handled the advent of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. These are answers we...

In the mid-term elections, the GOP’s not-so-secret weapon was fear. Fear of Ebola, fear of ISIS, and fear of immigrants all played a significant role in shaping the pre-election political climate, and Democrats for the most part, responded by hunkering down into a defensive crouch. Once again, as in 2010, they largely abandoned any pro-active agenda setting of their own, any talk of breaking new ground, exploring new possibilities—even despite the greater-than-hoped-for success of Obamacare—and they certainly lacked the patience, maturity and self-confidence to stand back and criticize the childish, self-defeating fearfulness at the heart of the GOP’s campaign strategy....

In a survey of the “Craziest Politicians of 2014,” GQ had difficulty locating any Democrats. Seventeen out of 20 on the list were Republicans, with the only liberals being Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson and America’s reigning nabob of nuttiness, Joe Biden. In a note appended to the story, GQ defensively said it wasn’t guilty of “standard liberal-media bias,” it just couldn’t find any loony Democrats to speak of. Let’s give GQ a little help, shall we? Here are 16 more Democrats to the list of the most cra-cra political figures.