Free Republic

There’s more than one way to harass women. A raft of men in recent weeks have paid for accusations of sexual harassment with their companies, their jobs, their plum political posts. But one point has been overlooked in the scandals: Men can be belittling, cruel and deeply damaging without demanding sex. (Try sloughing off heaps of contempt with your self-esteem intact.) We have no consensus — and hardly any discussion — about how we should treat behaviors that are misogynist and bullying but fall short of breaking the law. Twenty years ago, when I was a Moscow correspondent for the...

        GIVING There is a story of two young men who were working their way through Stanford University. The day came when they were broke, and something had to be done. One of them had an idea. They would engage the great Paderewski for a piano recital and put their profits toward their board and tuition. All they had to do was guarantee two thousand dollars. The recital was held but only sixteen hundred dollars was raised. Following the performance, the two young men went to Paderewski, offered him the $1600 and added a promissory note...

**SNIP** The Secret Service “knowingly allowed Chinese generals, disguised in civilian clothing, to meet administration personnel at the White House and logged them as ‘business guests’ at the administration’s request so as to avoid transparency,” Byrne wrote. The agency also didn’t check the contents of the paper bags that were brought into those meetings. In his previous book, “Crisis of Character,” Byrne claimed that the former Secretary of State was so demanding that many agents turned to drugs and alcohol.

The far-right Freedom Party has secured the key posts of foreign, interior and defense in Austria's new coalition government for its nominees. Governing with the conservative People's Party, the move makes Austria the only country in Western Europe to have a far-right party in power. Austria's president approved the new coalition on Saturday, two months after inconclusive elections. People's Party leader Sebastian Kurz, 31. will be Austria's new chancellor. He will become the world's youngest head of government...... Although it is the junior coalition partner, the anti-immigration Freedom Party has secured several key posts in the new cabinet. Party leader...

Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a weekly columnist for Arutz Sheva and senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University. He served in IDF Military Intelligence for 25 years, specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic groups and the Syrian domestic arena. Thoroughly familiar with Arab media in real time, he is frequently interviewed on the various news programs in Israel and gives lecture tours in the USA. It is not the first time he has appeared on Al Jazeera, but the Qatari channel got more than it bargained for...

A rocket fired from Gaza on Friday evening towards southern Israel missed its mark and fell on the Beit Hanoun home of a Gaza terrorist. The terrorist is the brother of Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri. On Friday, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Major General Yoav Mordechai wrote on his Facebook page, "A rocket fired a short time ago from Gaza towards Israel harmed a residential building in Beit Hanoun. Once again, the terrorist organizations launch rockets at the residents of Gaza themselves." "The terror operatives in Gaza are proving in an unambiguous fashion what we continuously stress:...

Former House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, Saturday called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be removed from office, saying that may be a cure for the "deep systemic problems" in the Department of Justice. "It pains me to say this a little bit [but] I don't think the attorney general is up to the job he's doing," Chaffetz, now a contributor for Fox News, told the "Fox and Friends Saturday" program. Sessions "had to remove himself from everything" involving President Donald Trump and that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special investigator in the investigation into Russian...

Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo) told KQED Newsroom on Friday that she believes Republicans are trying to shut down the House Intelligence Committee’s probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Speier also said, “The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week. And on Dec. 22nd, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller.” If this were to happen, Speier said, it would cause a constitutional crisis. “That is Saturday massacre 2.0,” she said. “Without a...

McCabe has spent the past year popping up in the news for all the wrong reasons. In February 2016 he was promoted to deputy director and assumed oversight of the Hillary Emailgate investigation — after his wife had received nearly $700,000 from Democratic groups for a failed run for Virginia state senate. This past February he got caught talking to then-chief of staff Reince Priebus about an allegedly bogus Russiagate story in the NYT, a no-no since DOJ investigations are supposed to be independent of politics. His latest news cameo was (apparently) in the infamous text in August 2016 from...

Updated at 3:15 p.m. ET A grand jury tasked with investigating broad issues of hazing at Penn State has issued a blistering report asserting that leaders at the university were well aware of pervasive misbehavior in the Greek system and failed to take action. Penn State, responding in court, said that the university has "shown an unwavering commitment to promoting safety and accountability" and that alcohol abuse at college is a "national problem," not a university-specific one. The report, made public by the Centre County, Pa., District Attorney's Office, was released after the death of 19-year-old fraternity pledge Timothy Piazza...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin headed to the United Nations in New York Thursday to ask for help fighting violence in Chicago. "I'm hoping to appeal the UN to actually come to Chicago and meet with victims of violence and maybe even possibly help out in terms of peace keeping efforts," Boykin said. Boykin boarded a plane to New York City for a meeting with an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. It's a meeting that's been planned for more than a month and stems from disconcerting violence numbers seen this year in Chicago. Violence which...

Count commuters among the losers in the Republican tax bill that the House and Senate are expected to vote on next week. The final bill agreed to by Republican negotiators and released late Friday eliminates the tax incentive for private employers that subsidize their employees' transit, parking and bicycle commuting expenses. Currently, companies can provide parking or transit passes worth up to $255 a month to employees as a benefit to help pay for their commuting expenses, and then deduct the costs from their corporate taxes. That amount was set to increase to $260 a month on Jan. 1. (snip)"It's...

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Americans are getting a little less religious in their Christmas observance, though the vast majority still celebrate the holiday that marks the birth of Jesus Christ, according to the Pew Center on Religion and Public Life. Pew regularly polls Americans on religious beliefs and observance, asking the same questions over time in order to follow trends in American religion. Here are some of the results of their poll of 1,503 Americans: In the 2017 poll, 66 percent believe Jesus was born to a virgin, compared to 73 percent in the 2014 poll. This year, 51 percent of Americans plan to...

I've spent my career as an advocate for economic justice, fighting for basic fairness for working families. It wasn't until this past year that I began fighting for my own life. It's that fight that led me to get arrested protesting the Republican tax plan in Washington, and that led me into debating it with Sen. Jeff Flake at 30,000 feet in the air on my way home. I never thought I'd be in this position. A year ago, I was healthy, taking morning runs on the California coast and looking forward to a new life with my newborn son,...

An Arizona jury has refused to award damages against former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio at a civil trial for bringing a since-dismissed criminal case against one of Sen. Jeff Flake's sons in the heat-exhaustion deaths of 21 dogs. Jurors deliberated nearly an hour before ruling late Thursday against Austin Flake and his then-wife Logan Brown in their malicious-prosecution lawsuit stemming from Arpaio's investigation into the heat-exhaustion deaths of 21 dogs at a kennel operated by Flake's in-laws. Flake and Brown, who were in college at the time, were caring for the dogs while the in-laws were out of town.

The Trump administration will reverse course from previous Obama administration policy, eliminating climate change from a list of national security threats. The National Security Strategy to be released on Monday will emphasize the importance of balancing energy security with economic development and environmental protection, according to a source who has seen the document and shared excerpts of a late draft. “Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” a draft of the National Security Strategy slated to be released on Monday said. “U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic...

His 13-year jail term was deemed to be excessiveA former mosque teacher convicted of sexually and indecently assaulting children during Koran studies at a Cardiff mosque has had his jail term cut. Mohammed Sadiq, 81, of Cyncoed, was jailed in July for 13 years after being found guilty of six counts of indecent assault and eight counts of sexual assault on a child under 13. The charges involved four victims and related to the period between 1996 and 2006. He was found not guilty of one count of indecent assault, following a trial at Cardiff Crown Court. During the sentencing...

President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to scale back the scope of federal regulations to the level it stood in 1960, suggesting that he could get there "fairly quickly" by pushing ahead with a deregulatory effort that has wiped dozens of rules off the books since he took office. "We're here today for one single reason: to cut the red tape of regulation," Trump said of his tenure, adding that "the never-ending growth of red tape in America has come to a sudden, screeching and beautiful halt" under his administration. **SNIP** The administration eliminated 67 regulations between the time Trump took...

Finland will leave the European Union and position itself as the Switzerland of the north to protect its independence if Laura Huhtasaari, the presidential candidate of the eurosceptic Finns Party has her way. Finns Party deputy chairman and presidential candidate Laura Huhtasaari poses for a picture at the Finland's Parliament in Helsinki, Finland December 13, 2017. REUTERS/Tuomas Forsell She also told Reuters in an interview she wants to tighten immigration rules. Huhtasaari -- dubbed “Finland’s Marine Le Pen” after France’s National Front leader -- is a long-shot. But she believes she has a real chance in the January election as...