Free Republic

mayor of San Francisco has banned all publicly-funded city employees from traveling to North Carolina. The NFL is threatening to block Atlanta, Georgia from hosting a future Super Bowl. The NBA is threatening to relocate next year’s All Star game from Charlotte, North Carolina to another city. Corporate giants like American Airlines and Hollywood giants like Disney are threatening action against Georgia and North Carolina. Why? It is because North Carolina has passed a bill requiring people to use the public bathroom or locker room that corresponds to their birth certificate gender and because Georgia has enacted legislation (yet to...

Candidates for public office in Ohio can lie and get away with it under a recent federal court ruling that struck down a state law banning false statements in campaigns, an attorney says. Attorney Donald Brey, who has represented Republicans in cases before the Ohio Elections Commission, told The Columbus Dispatch his clients mostly tell the truth, but can legally lie as long as they don’t defame anyone.In past elections, the commission ruled on false-advertising complaints. That changed when the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals a few weeks ago upheld the 2014 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy...

Ride-sharing company Lyft says it has fired a Salt Lake City driver who’s seen on video disparaging Muslims in profanity-laced remarks. […] Samuel Grenny says he and his girlfriend used Lyft on Wednesday to attend a rally for Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders. […] In a video Grenny posted on his Facebook page, both he and the driver are heard cursing at each other before the driver makes a derogatory comment about Muslims. …

California Attorney General Kamala Harris is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, and in all likelihood will win the Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Boxer this November. Articular, telegenic, and complimented by no less than Barack Obama for her beauty, she is ready to take her place on the bench of future presidential hopefuls. Unfortunately, she is displaying the worst instincts of a government bully. Ignoring post-Watergate reforms to the Internal Revenue Code designed to protect confidential federal tax return information, Kamala Harris is defending against three lawsuits filed by conservative organizations to protect the privacy of...

This is the kind of case the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia liked to sink his judicial teeth into -- whether the federal government can compel a religious entity like the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious beliefs and acquiesce to the ObamaCare contraceptive coverage mandate. As LifeSite News reported on Wednesday’s hearing: This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a 175-year-old religious order of women who have vowed their lives to care for the elderly poor.

Georgia is the latest to enter the national mayhem surrounding a state-sponsored religious freedom bill.  Its also the latest group to be the target of media obfuscation.  Several versions of #HB757, The Religious Freedom Act have been debated by the legislature of Georgia.  The most memorable was the February version that allowed businesses to cite their faith as a reason not to conduct business with lifestyles that conflict with their values..  The was a far-right version that conflated our for-profit roles in commerce with projecting our religious beliefs on our customers and clients.  If sinners are banned from commerce, then...

Two Muslim truck drivers who sued their former employer for religious discrimination after being fired for refusing to make beer deliveries have been awarded $240,000 by a jury. And the Obama administration represented them in the case.Fox News host Megyn Kelly was flabbergasted: “The Obama administration actually represented the two Muslims in this case. But has sometimes taken a very different position in the case of Christians trying to assert their religious beliefs.” She then said to Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano: “So in the case of the Muslim truck drivers, the Obama administration through the EEOC is...

Donald Trump, who denies that his provocative and sometimes profane rhetoric (particularly against Muslims_ has anything to do with violence and protests at his University of Illinois-Chicago rally, once blamed conservative activist Pamela Geller for provoking an attempted armed assault by – wait for it – unnecessarily provoking Muslims. As Gideon Resnick noted last December in the Daily Beast, pre-candidate Trump was not as passionately concerned with Pamela Geller’s First Amendment free speech rights as he now is about his own:

Violence broke out over the weekend at several Donald Trump campaign rallies. Leftwing thugs battled with police in Chicago and St. Louis. One unhinged lunatic tried to storm the stage at a rally in Dayton, Ohio. He was stopped by Secret Service agents. Heaven only knows what he would’ve done had he gotten a hold of Mr. Trump. To be clear – what happened over the weekend was not just an attack on Mr. Trump. It was an attack on the First Amendment. But instead of condemning the professional hooligans -- the political chattering class condemned Mr. Trump. A despondent...

The Praise and Worship Club at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, has been told that it cannot use the word "Jesus" in meeting announcements placed in the JSC Today email newsletter, because it violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution's First Amendment. The warning given to the club by the JSC Today legal team in May 2015 has recently picked up national attention, with the Liberty Institute attorneys sending a demand letter to NASA threatening a lawsuit on Feb. 8 and the CitizenGo website launching a petition drive on Feb....

Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to change libel laws in the United States so that he can have an easier time suing news organizations. During a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, Trump began his usual tirade against newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying they're "losing money" and are "dishonest." The Republican presidential candidate then took a different turn, suggesting that when he's president they'll "have problems." "One of the things I'm going to do if I win, and I hope we do and we're certainly leading. I'm going to open up our...

Chelsea Handler said political correctness isn't working for Americans. In a op-ed written for The Daily Beast, the 40-year-old comedian said she sat down with representatives from the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, American Indians in Film & Television and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We had an honest discussion about whether or not it's funny, appropriate, helpful, or hurtful to traffic in ethnic, racial, and religious stereotypes," Handler said. Handler said they all "ended up smiling and laughing about examples of politically incorrect humor because they could see...

Has John Kasich blown his Christian cred? Kasich has built some of his following on his reputation as a sincere (if somewhat offbeat) Christian conservative. In November, for example, he called for a new government agency to promote "Judeo-Christian values." But tonight, when presented with a question about religious liberty, Kasich seemed to advance a rather different set of priorities. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO ... While Kasich defended the right of religious institutions to practice their faiths however they please, he seemed to argue that people "in the business of commerce" should "conduct commerce, and if you don’t...

It takes more faith to depend on the government than it does to trust in God's provision, but you'd never know it watching Progressives worship at their government golden calf that owns nothing at all unless it takes it from you. Thanks to capitalism, Bernie Sanders went from being an unemployed middle aged socialist hippie living in a shack with dirt floors to living the D.C. dream while giving Hillary a run for her money in the race to the White House. Both Democrat Party presidential candidates overlook the fact that thanks to God's grace and good old American capitalism,...

DEBRA J. SAUNDERS -- Clinton Should Free The Chicago 2 Debra J. Saunders 1996-08-28 Chicago -- ON THE SECOND DAY of the Democratic convention, as Democrats were celebrating the fact that most of the Chicago 8 had been co-opted into the party, Patricia and Glenn Mendoza went to court, where they faced charges for their protest against President Clinton. The more things change, the more they stay the same. While Patricia, outfitted with a white dress, white purse and white pumps, nervously appeared before Judge Robert Lopes, Tom Hayden, a former Chicago 8 member who now serves in California's state...

On the first floor of NRA headquarters, a large glass and steel building that looms over I-66 in the ambivalent suburbs of Fairfax, Virginia, exists the National Firearms Museum. It is free and open to the public. After a brief visit, I highly recommend that instead of ever going to the museum, you do what roughly 19,000 responsible gun owners do each year and shoot yourself. It’d be far less painful. The museum was initially built in 1935 and moved to Fairfax in 1998. Allegedly, it "details and examines the nearly 700-year history of firearms with a special emphasis on...

Ken Ham, a biologist and supporter of young Earth creationism, said evolution is a "belief," not a "theory" -- a "fairy tale" for people who "try to explain life without God" -- and he added that the secular State has established a church, the "Church of Evolution, with Darwin as the High Priest," and teachers and professors as "priests" who push the Darwin religion in the schools. In an interview on VCY America on Feb. 10, two days before the international Darwin Day, host Jim Schneider said to Ken Ham, "I was disturbed in my spirit to hear we have...

"It's illegal to offend people," said the UT-Austin police officer to a Christian evangelist. The officer then proceeded to write the evangelist a citation. Yes, that actually happened in America. Thankfully, the citation was later voided and the officer received re-training. The event occurred just off campus where two evangelists were preaching against homosexuality. According to the police officer, a student complained that he was being "verbally harassed" which in fact he was not. The whiney student, if he exists at all, was simply being exposed to words and ideas that offended him. The accusation of "verbal harassment" is the...

Four remaining Presidential Candidates Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush have pledged to push for passing the First Amendment Defense Act within their first 100 days in office, while others still in the race have not. The pledge, a joint effort of the American Principles Project, Heritage Action for America and Family Research Council Action, reads "If elected, I pledge to push for the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) and sign it into law during the first 100 days of my term as President." "Our future President, whoever he or she may be,...

US Congressional House Resolution 569 - Condemning violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United StatesThis bill was introduced (12/17/2015) Sponsored by Rep. Beyer, Donald S., Jr. [D-VA-8] Beyer is on the House - Judiciary Committee. Adding insult to injury....There are 123 traitorous cosponsors of this grossly offensively unconstitutional assault against the freedom of expression ! Latest Action: 01/15/2016 Referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.