Free Republic

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin signed a bill Wednesday that removes the names and titles of county clerks from marriage licenses, giving legal "finality" to the religious accommodation that Rowan County clerk Kim Davis was looking for. Davis, who made headlines when she spent over five days in jail last September for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses with her name and title on them because of her Christian beliefs, had called on the state's then-Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear to create a religious accommodation allowing her to drop her name and title from marriage certificates that her office issued. The accommodation,...

A Republican state lawmaker from Tennessee is under attack from Democrats because he disseminated a video that criticizes Islam. Mt. Juliet Rep. Susan Lynn found herself likened to racists from the 1960s on Tuesday for sharing copies of a DVD, titled "America's Mosques Exposed: Video Evidence They Are War Factories," on behalf of a constituent. Democrats and allied activists denounced Lynn as a hate-monger. "It hit me really personally because I remember the 60s. I remember the discrimination. I remember having to sit in the back of the bus," state Rep. Johnnie Turner, a Democrat from Memphis, said Tuesday during...

Sharon Stone has cancelled filming of an upcoming project in Mississippi as a result of the state’s newly passed anti-LGBT ‘religious freedom on steroids’ bill, HB 1523. The film’s producers informed Mississippi Film Studios president Rick Moore that the law was a deal-breaker for Stone. The unnamed film project reportedly tackles the consequences of cyberbullying. James Cromwell is slated to direct. “Unfortunately, Sharon Stone feels strongly that shooting in Mississippi is not an option while the law exists,” Moore said. “The other producers have chosen to regroup and find another location.” Moore said he has heard of projects on the...

As we have seen from recent events in Paris, Brussels and all across the world, terrorism is not an obscure phenomenon that only impacts the Middle East. And no longer can Americans ignore the threat of terrorism as primarily a European problem. Although attacks in the United States are less frequent due, in part, to our distance from the region, increasingly, leaders associated with terrorist groups are now finding their way onto American soil. Not only must we be concerned about terrorist cells hiding in communities around the United States, but we now also have to worry about domestic Muslim...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's continue to cycle through the latest news developments on all this. This is a couple interesting statistics here. Ted Cruz has won more delegates than Donald Trump since Rubio got out of the race. I'm not talking votes here, although it might be the same thing, but Cruz has won more delegates than Trump since Rubio got out. And of course this was the Cruz strategy. You know, get all of these Republicans that are not going anywhere to drop out and have all of the votes on the Republican side that are not going to...

Having already made a .50-caliber sniper gun the official state rifle, Tennessee lawmakers on Monday gave final approval to making the Holy Bible the state’s official book. The state Senate voted 19-8 in favor of the bill despite arguments by the state attorney general that the measure conflicts with a provision in the Tennessee Constitution stating that “no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.” Opponents argued the Bible would be trivialized by being placed alongside other state symbols such as the official tree, flower, rock or amphibian. But both chambers of...

As our Great Sexual Heresy continues its march onwards and downwards, state governments have forced bakers, wedding planners, florists and other businesses to service faux weddings. This is unprecedented, as never before were Americans governmentally compelled to participate in events they found morally objectionable. Yet when some project out on our cultural trajectory and say churches one day will be subject to the same coercion, they’re met with laughter; this will never, ever happen, they’re told. Yet this is an illogical and inconsistent position. Prefacing a statement in opposition to the hapless bakers at a campaign stop a while back,...

President Obama is so paranoid about linking terrorists to the Muslim faith that when French President François Hollande used the phrase “Islamist terrorism” at a meeting in Washington, White House officials posted their official press video with audio of the words cut out completely. The White House’s transcript of the event shows the French leader declared at the 4:49 minute mark that “the roots of terrorism, Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq.” But rather than include Hollande’s remark in its entirety, the Obama administration posted footage in which his interpreter’s English translation of the words “Islamist terrorism” was...

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has vetoed legislation he said would legalize discrimination of the LGBT community. The Democratic governor made the announcement Wednesday during a radio appearance on WTOP. The measure would prohibit the state from punishing religious groups that refuse services related to gay marriages. Republican supporters said it would protect people from expressing their religious beliefs. …

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...