Free Republic

San Francisco (AFP) - Home sharing site Airbnb is suing San Francisco over a new law requiring that anyone who offers their home through the rental site first register the dwelling with the city. Under the new rule, Airbnb would be fined $1,000 a day for each listing on its site that has not been registered in advance.

If you’ve been living under a rock and still question whether we’re seeing a breakdown of the traditional family, you won’t after this. A new Gallup poll released Thursday shows while fewer Americans are getting married – or are waiting much longer to get married – than in past decades, they feel little to no compulsion against having kids in the meantime. But rather than simply stating the numbers -- which are depressing enough -- Gallup felt compelled to throw in its two cents on how businesses – and society as a whole – should respond to the shift in...

Ever since Donald Trump's rise to 2016-contender prominence, the rap on him, and perhaps part of his broad appeal, has been that he's not a conservative. And he's not -- he's a nationalistic populist. Yet there's another way to understand The Donald's professed politics: as that of the first prominent "European-conservative" American presidential candidate. He's not so much America's next Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, but her first Marine Le Pen. A prerequisite for grasping this is first understanding the true natures of liberalism and conservatism. While many have their own definitions of the latter -- and will stubbornly insist...

While the Fascism of Mussolini and Hitler incorporated extreme nationalism, the proponents of the American reincarnation believe that the United States, as founded, is malevolent and should surrender its position as the world’s economic and military superpower by showing deference to America’s enemies and casting aside any semblance of nationalism or uniqueness as penance for both domestic and international “sins” of the past.

It took just a few days after the stunning defeat of Obama's attempt to fast-track the Trans Pacific Partnership bill in the Senate at the hands of his own Democratic party, before everything returned back to normal and the TPP fast-track was promptly passed. Why? The simple answer: money. Or rather, even more money. Because while the actual contents of the TPP may be highly confidential, and their public dissemination may lead to prison time for the "perpetrator" of such illegal transparency .... fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments,...

[Embedded Audio (7:39)] Fascism is an economic system that marries the state to business, where business holds the title but state holds control. Transcript: Some of you, though I trust not all of you, are familiar with what we call “Godwin’s law.” This is a particular law which is born out of empirical study of the Internet and it holds that, given enough time, any and all internet arguments will eventually involve some side of the argument accusing the other side of the argument of either being like Hitler or of being a Nazi. The corollary to that is...

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho is warning that a south-central Idaho school district's dress code is unconstitutional and must be changed. The Cassia County School District is requiring all female students participating in the high school graduation to wear white or pastel dresses. Male graduating students must wear pants and a tie. ACLU Legal Director Richard Eppink says schools that make a distinction between boy and girl dress codes are enforcing gender-stereotyping policies, which violate the state and U.S. Constitution.

Finance Minister Siv Jensen, who also leads the populist Progress party, made her statements in an interview with Aftenposten journalists Trine Eilertsen and Harald Stanghelle. When asked, ”are you Convinced that the climate change that has been documented over the past decade is manmade?”, Jensen responded, “no”. “So you have doubts about it?” the interviewer went on, to which Jensen answered “yes”. The head of Norwegian environmental campaign group Nature and Youth on Tuesday called for Jensen’s resignation. “It’s not possible to have a climate denier as finance minister in the climate year 2015,” Arnstein Vestre said in a statement....

New London — Everything came to a halt on the Connecticut College campus Wednesday afternoon as President Katherine Bergeron canceled all other events and called for a campus-wide forum to address a tenured professor’s Facebook post comparing Gazan Palestinians to “a rabid pit bull chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape.” "Gaza is in the cage because of its repeated efforts to destroy Israel and Jews," Andrew Pessin, a professor in the college's philosophy department, published to his personal Facebook page in August. Editor's note: This corrects an earlier version of the first sentence. "The blockade is...

Even as he battles ISIS and Ebola, President Obama today declared climate change the threat that will “define the contours of this century more than any other.” “Climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it. The alarm bells keep ringing. Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we don’t hear them,” Obama told delegates at the U.N. Climate Summit in New York, referencing the massive demonstrations over the past few days. “We have to tackle this global threat before it’s too late.”

It has been more than three months since my constituents in Bunkerville, Nev., had their lives turned upside down by the standoff at the Bundy ranch. Although Bunkerville (population 1,300) is no longer in the media spotlight, life there has not returned to normal. The militia presence may have dwindled, but a sense of chaos and uncertainty lingers in my state and the broader American West. When news of a rebellious rancher facing off with federal agents broke in April, conservative media and politicians pounced, quickly lionizing Cliven Bundy as a patriot. They handed Bundy a megaphone, and self-proclaimed militia...

PRIMM, Nevada – As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above approach to energy, today Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar “flipped the switch” on the Enbridge Silver State North solar project, the first large-scale solar energy facility on U.S. public lands to deliver power to American consumers. This milestone is in line with the administration’s broad commitment to expanding production of all sources of American made energy, including from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, which has doubled in the President’s first term, as well as domestic production of oil and gas resources, which have increased each year the President...

The federal government threatens a Nevada rancher with the loss of his private property. A Long Island man loses his life to Obamacare while a Virginia woman’s family says, “Obamacare killed my sister." IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner is held in contempt of Congress, having emerged as the key figure in a scheme to deprive conservatives of their rights. With these stories and endless others spilling into the news cycle, F.H. Buckley’s new book — The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America — could not be better timed. Mr. Buckley’s writings are familiar on these pages...

Richard Griffin, the new general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, wants to give unions a veto over a unionized employer's decision to relocate. If Griffin has his way, and he most assuredly will, some unionized businesses will be pinned in place at the discretion of their unions. The change Griffin is contemplating is unnecessary and inconsistent with both the law and the dynamics of our free-enterprise system. It will upset the balance mandated by the Supreme Court and should send a chill up the spine of unionized companies contemplating relocating an operation. Griffin's intent was disclosed in a...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has said that three air force generals have been arrested for plotting an uprising against his government. Mr Maduro said that the authorities had been tipped off by "young officers". The three generals, who have not been named, had links with the opposition, said Mr Maduro. The arrests are the latest development in nearly two months of political unrest, which have cost the lives of at least 32 people.

What will the fascist gay lobby say now? Governor of New Mexico, Susana Martinez, has been told by her gay hairdresser that he will no longer be working on her coif. It seems that her hairdresser, Mr. Antonio Darden, does not appreciate the Governor’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. Because of this he will no longer cut her hair.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — AT&T, under fire for ongoing revelations that it shares and sells customers' communications records to the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence offices, says it isn't required to disclose to shareholders what it does with customers' data. In a letter sent Thursday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, AT&T said it protects customer information and complies with government requests for call records "only to the extent required by law." The telecom giant's letter was a response to a shareholder revolt sparked on Nov. 20 by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the ACLU of...

Monsanto Co. on Monday won another round in a legal battle with U.S. organic growers as an appeals court threw out the growers' efforts to stop the company from suing farmers if traces of its patented biotech genes are found in crops. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a previous ruling that found organic growers had no reason to try to block Monsanto from suing them as the company had pledged it would not take them to court if biotech crops accidentally mix in with organics. Organic farmers and others have worried for years that they...

By Connor Adams Sheets | March 27 2013 4:55 PM Anger is growing against President Barack Obama the day after he signed into law a spending bill that included a provision opponents have dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act." That bill, the HR 933 continuing resolution, was mainly aimed at averting a government shutdown and ensuring that the federal government would continue to be able to pay its bills for the next six months. But food and public safety advocates and independent farmers are furious that Obama signed it despite its inclusion of language that they consider to be a gift...

A great sense of alarm is spreading among ordinary Europeans today, especially in the south and east of the continent. Now even the elitist media are giving us the worst international news since the Cold War. Americans do not want to hear this, either. Well, you may not be interested in evil, but evil may be interested in you. Listen up. This could be important. The Washington Post just told us that a dictatorial strongman has risen to power in Hungary, a man named Viktor Orban. In a two-hour parliamentary session, Orban forced radical changes in the Hungarian constitution to...