Free Republic

And we have looooooong memories I hear that Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both Republicans who have decided to oppose the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, take a lot of money from teacher unions. That’s unusual for Republicans, but they’re unusual Republicans. They’re by no means conservative on many issues, and whenever an effort is underway to pass an important conservative legislative priority, these two are usually among the most nervous and hard-to-persuade Republican senators.

Only the left could get away with doing such a thing without being called racists. The College Fix reports: "College pledges to hire professors based on skin color, mandates social-justice workshops. A women’s college is planning to hire new professors based on the color of their skin because of the “demonstrated benefits” of nonwhite faculty. Whether such faculty benefit the college enough to be paid for a full teaching load remains to be seen, however. After a year of deliberation, the Barnard College Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion released a set of draft recommendations last week with the aim...

Shame on Cornel West, his Refuse Fascism fascists, and the academic and liberal elites for failing to preserve and protect freedom of speech on this campus and on most American campuses At Harvard, I had a diverse group of friends and acquaintances. From Ayn Randists, Young Republicans, bleeding heart liberals to radical militant feminists, socialists and further to the left- militant Black Panther- loving Marxists. Cornel was a member of the latter group. After Harvard, Cornel secured a Ph.D from Princeton in Philosophy. He then successfully scored professorships at Harvard, Princeton, Union Theological Seminary and now is returning to be...

When people started tweeting at me about this incident, my first instinct was to question whether they could possibly be characterizing the situation accurately. I don't know why: Between this week's disgrace in Berkeley -- replete with atrocious public statements from various Democratic public officials -- and this mind-bending lowlight from last year's unrest at the University of Missouri, nothing should surprise any of us at this point. Scroll ahead to roughly the ten-minute mark and watch an "adult" NYU professor berate NYPD officers for not using physical violence against Trump supporter and Milo-esque 'alt-right' figure Gavin McInnes. Welcome to...

One Daily Lobo reporter's experience on World Hijab Day I have walked home from campus 92 times since enrolling at UNM. Only once was I so hyper-aware of my appearance that I held tight to the pepper spray on my keychain. Oh, I forgot to mention: It was also the first time I tried on a hijab. In honor of World Hijab Day, a group of Muslim women gathered outside the UNM Bookstore late Wednesday afternoon. The event was organized by Power Through Peace and the UNM Muslim Student Association, with help from local activist Shakir Farid Abdullah. Abdullah also...

BERKELEY (CBS SF) – KPIX 5 reporter Anne Makovec captured the assault of a man wearing a suit and a “Make America Great Again” cap at the edge of the UC Berkeley campus late Thursday morning as tensions remained high in the wake of Wednesday night’s violent protests. The fight broke out at around 11:30 a.m. when the man wearing the suit and cap was walking near the intersection of Bancroft and Telegraph was attacked. The assailant stopped his vehicle, a white SUV, in the middle of the intersection and jumped the man....

Berkeley fascists shut down Milo Yiannopoulos's scheduled anti-sanctuary campus speech Leftist UC Berkeley students and outsiders rioted last night to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a David Horowitz Freedom Center-sponsored speech demanding the end of “sanctuary campuses” that harbor illegal aliens. Milo’s address, which was canceled amid violent mob attacks, fire-setting, and wanton property destruction, had been scheduled to mark the launch of the Freedom Center’s #nosanctuarycampusforcriminals campaign.

And it's Berkeley, so the rioters get their way. We talked about this a little bit yesterday, the whole idea that the left deludes itself into thinking it’s winning with stunts like this. Yay. You destroyed the town and silenced the evil right-wing guest speaker. You won! Except that the rest of the nation saw what you did, and wasn’t too impressed.

At Betsy DeVos’s confirmation hearing to become U.S. secretary of education, Democratic senators repeatedly lectured her on the need to “protect public education.” Notably, ranking member Sen. Patty Murray asked DeVos, “Can you commit that you will not work to privatize public schools or cut a single penny for public education?” The senators, including Murray, framed the issue in constitutional terms, saying public money must not be used to support overtly or implicitly faith-based education. However, many of these same senators then pushed DeVos to commit to expanding federal Head Start and early childhood programs, or to involve the federal...

A federal lawsuit was filed against Kellogg Community College Wednesday alleging students’ free speech and due process rights were violated. The lawsuit comes after an incident in the fall where student activists were arrested and jailed after refusing to stop handing out pocket Constitutions on the campus. On Sept. 20, 2016, KCC students Brandon Withers, Michelle Gregoire and three students from other colleges were passing out pocket-size Constitutions and recruiting students to join the Young Americans for Liberty group at the Battle Creek campus. As they were doing it, school administrators told them they were violating a school solicitation policy....

Last Friday, Yale students, staff and faculty held their first weekly workshop on organized opposition to President Donald Trump’s administration. These Fired Up Fridays sessions provide opportunities for Yale community members to learn how to be effective activists. Organized by participants of the post-election Law School gathering in November, these sessions are part of a continued effort to organize and act in response to the political situation brought about by Trump’s presidency. The series of workshops, the first of which was held in the Dwight Hall common room, will bring together people at Yale with long-standing experience in community organizing...

Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos was at Berkeley to speak against sanctuary campuses Protesters upset over a planned speech today (Feb. 1) by Breitbart tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos are burning down parts of the UC Berkeley campus. The rioting protesters have been ordered to disperse, according to Fox News Channel. Berkeley, ironically, was the home of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.

This is long but worth the read: "Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I (Phillip Haney), was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to "connect dots." Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns." This may be the smoking...

The Mackinac Center typically sends hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests to public offices every year. A FOIA request requires public entities to turn over documents and is an extremely important tool for holding government accountable. These requests have helped us uncover unions skimming money from home health care aides and child care providers, break news of a scandal involving a film studio, expose teachers who couldn’t be fired despite committing criminal acts, find out about millions of public dollars being used for private union employees, discover a pension spiking scandal and more. I’m the one who sends out...

In its coverage of the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on President-elect Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, The New York Times’ headline read: “Betsy DeVos’s Education Hearing Erupts Into Partisan Debate.” To understand how politics took center stage in a hearing about education requires understanding the influence unions have on elections and the interests that Democratic politicians support. State and national public school employee unions have been among the most vocal critics of DeVos’s nomination because of her long history of supporting school choice. In addition to enabling parents to choose their own children’s educational path, choice undercuts the financial...

Michigan philanthropist Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for education secretary, has been under heavy criticism by the media for her work promoting school choice and charter schools in Michigan. In a U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, DeVos was asked about a civil liberties group she had donated to known for exposing First Amendment infringements committed by colleges and universities. “Betsy DeVos is an unabashed supporter of the First Amendment. Period. Regardless if she supports the content of the speech,” Greg McNeilly, a DeVos spokesman said in response to the question of why she has contributed to an organization...

With the confirmation hearing for Betsy DeVos delayed until Jan. 17, the heated conversation has continued surrounding the state of Detroit charter schools and her work as an educational choice advocate. The Manhattan Institute’s Max Eden and I debunked the “Wild West” myth of the Motor City’s educational landscape and clarified DeVos’ mainstream position on school accountability. Further, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru repeatedly has corrected The New York Times’ twisting of the best available research that highlights the benefits of Detroit charters. Ponnuru compared the journalistic malpractice to “a game of telephone being conducted by propagandists.” According to the Times’...

The Biomedical Technology sector, sharing with aircraft manufacture the unique distinction of being one of the last healthy sectors of the export economy, got a stake through the heart from Obama, Pelosi and Reed during the Obamacare debacle. The late Nat Hentoff reported about "An Obama tax that can silently take your life away," the deliberate taxing to death of medical device research, development and marking companies, to pay for Obamacare as the lead-in to UK-style single payer health insurance. My diabetic wife received a minor medical miracle from something called a chorionic villus skin graft. The miracle tissue is...

Who is Jane Jacobs?

There was a great deal of hand-wringing about the dearth of protest art being made over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign, and after the election of Donald Trump. These hand-wringers, however, appear not to have looked very hard at all. Reverend Osagyefo Sekou and Jay-Marie Hill met on the frontlines of a 2015 Movement for Black Lives protest. After being pepper sprayed arbitrarily by police at the demonstration, where activists were demanding the release of an illegally detained 14 year old, Reverend Sekou helped wash the toxins out of Hill’s eyes. Several weeks later, they would title themselves...