Free Republic

Big websites like Facebook, Drudge Report, Breitbart News, Google and the New York Times would face substantial punishment if they don't make "reasonable efforts" to block foreigners from posting political ads under new election legislation pushed by Sen. John McCain and two Democrats.The "Honest Ads Act," co-sponsored by Democrats Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, would put new legal requirements and punishments on websites with 50 million unique monthly readers that take a tiny $500 or more in political ads from one advertiser.The act, which already has a House companion bill, is aimed at forcing websites to...

A College Republicans meeting at the University of California, Santa Cruz was taken over by protesters screaming that the group’s existence is a threat to the safety of students. Shortly after the CR meeting convened, one student entered the ground floor room of McHenry Library to ask attendees which group was assembling. After being informed that the meeting was a gathering of College Republicans, the student returned about 15-20 minutes later with company.

An Indiana Representative is forcing the establishment media to look in the mirror and face their hypocrisy.He is proposing the First Amendment in Indiana be treated the same as the Second Amendment. His proposal is that journalists be required to apply for a license before they are allowed to publish.If they have felony convictions, they might not be allowed to publish.From fox59.com: Lucas, from Seymour, has been critical of the media’s coverage of his efforts to repeal a state law that requires a permit to carry a handgun.He has stated reporters, columnists and editorial boards mischaracterize his idea, which...

Last week at Columbia University, conservative pundit Tommy Robinson attempted to give a speech on mass immigration in Europe. Instead, the event devolved into chaos. Students consistently shouted down Robinson, effectively preventing him from speaking as he Skyped into the campus auditorium from the United Kingdom. He gave up on trying to speak and instead fielded questions from protesters.“This is our free speech, this is our First Amendment right,” repeated some of the protesters as they shouted over Robinson.It was clear that many students had a warped understanding of the First Amendment.To be fair, an argument could be made that, because...

Biden on campus left wing politics: “liberals have a short memory … we hurt ourselves badly when we don’t allow speech to take place” . . Biden: “You should be able to listen to another point of view, as virulent as it may be, and reject it or expose it.” . . Kasich said if he were a university president he wouldn’t “let one of these hate speech speakers come”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with a lower court that ordered a New Mexico city to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the lawn outside City Hall. Civil liberties advocates behind the case called the decision involving the city of Bloomfield a victory for the separation of church and state. ACLU of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson said it sends a “strong message that the government should not be in the business of picking and choosing which sets of religious beliefs enjoy special favor in the community.” However, David Cortman, a senior counsel and vice president of...

Free Speech For People, a non-profit progressive organization, sent an open letter to Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Thursday, asking him to reprimand Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch for giving a speech at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. last month, saying it violated the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges.

The whole idea of a free society is based on a very simple idea that is very hard to live by: People have the right to be wrong. This idea has ancient roots, but it was always and everywhere a minority opinion, unpopular with both the masses and the rulers, until relatively recently. In the "modern" era, its status as one of the defining ideas of Western civilization can be traced to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. After a century of bloody religious wars between Catholics and Protestants -- with Jews often getting caught in the crossfire -- the...

Author’s Note: All proceeds from the following column will be spent on me.Some college students know nothing about the First Amendment. I mean that literally. For example, a student recently complained to me that the police had violated his First Amendment rights by pulling him over without a warrant. First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, whatever! As annoying as the complete constitutional illiterate can be, I am perhaps more annoyed by those who have some familiarity with the First Amendment and therefore conclude that they are constitutional scholars. These semi-literate clowns email me pretty often. Just last week, one of them wrote...

Researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) surveyed over 1,000 American adults, finding a shocking lack of knowledge as it pertains to U.S. politics among the general populace.... “Protecting the rights guaranteed by the Constitution presupposes that we know what they are. The fact that many don’t is worrisome,” says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania, in a press release. “These results emphasize the need for high-quality civics education in the schools and for press reporting that underscores the existence of constitutional protections.”

At Berkeley, there are both unequivocal voices championing the importance of free speech, no matter how inflammatory, and professors who say lines need to be drawn on campuses. These professors argue that the First Amendment needs to be reassessed for reasons that include the rise of internet trolling and cyberbullying and that some scientific research now shows that hateful speech can cause physical pain.

Last week, I visited the University of California, Berkeley. The preparations for the visit were patently insane. First, the school charged the sponsor group, Young America's Foundation, a $15,000 security fee. Then, the school blocked off the upper level of the auditorium, fearful that radicals from the violent far-left-leaning group Antifa would infiltrate the speech and begin hurling objects from the balcony onto the crowd below. Finally, the school ended up spending some $600,000 on additional policing, including the creation of cement barriers and hiring of hundreds of armed police officers for a prospective riot. All this so that I...

Over the past few weeks a number of things have been revealed about Antifa groups, people that use fascist methods to suppress any opinion or speech that does not conform to their own ideology, yet call themselves “anti-fascist.” After the tragic events in Charlottesville, VA, Antifa massively overplayed their hand in a subsequent event in Berkeley California, where viral images finally exposed what the MSM had been trying to hide, that so-called Antifa groups were inciting violence with planned events, then dressing up in black, with masks, carrying sticks, clubs and mace, and proceeded to instigate violence against peaceful rally...

If you feel like your First Amendment rights as an American are being trampled on, it might be because a staggering number of people don’t know what they are. According to a recent survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, a mind-boggling 37 percent of respondents either didn’t know or couldn’t name any of the five First Amendment rights guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution: speech, religion, press, assembly and petition. The survey was conducted August 9-13 among a group of 1,013 U.S. adults who were 18 years old and older. Respondents were from...

Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown reportedly plans to introduce a bill that would require universities and colleges to define “acceptable speech” on campus. The Maryland congressman announced the plans during a speech last week, according to The Diamondback, the University of Maryland’s student newspaper. Brown reportedly said he wants colleges to demonstrate they have initiatives that define to students "what is acceptable speech and what is not acceptable speech.” Further, the bill reportedly would offer grant money to create these programs while pushing universities to report hate crimes. The proposal comes as campuses across the country have been accused of curbing...

Back in January of 2016, I sent a letter to UNC-Wilmington President Jose Sartarelli, which was copied to all 16 members of the Board of Trustees. I later published the same letter on Townhall.com. In my letter, which you can read here, I accused the university of having at least two policies that clearly violated the First Amendment. I then asked the administration to work with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) to do an audit of our policies and then revise them towards the goal of attaining a coveted green light rating from FIRE. For those not...

“Help me get my B.S. in the voters pamphlet,” read the subject-line of Tim Eyman’s email.Eyman is a practitioner of the art of the voter initiative, foremost in his state, Washington, and one of the most effective nationwide. In fact, he was once dubbed “America’s No. 1 Freedom Fighter” . . . in this very column. His 16 statewide initiatives beginning in 1998 — 10 of which voters approved — have cut taxes, blocked tax increases, directed the state auditor to conduct performance audits and ended racial and gender preferences in state education and employment. Washington state citizens have saved $35.65...

Michigan resident Robert Ritchie—known to fans as that Cicero of shitty country-rap, Kid Rock—has fired back at watchdog groups suggesting that his near-constant comments about running for office might actually make him subject to the U.S.A.’s electioneering laws. Faced with accusations that selling signs with slogans like “Kid Rock For Senate ’18" makes him a candidate—and thus beholden to the Federal Election Campaign Act, which requires candidates to track and report donations and campaign contributions—Ritchie fired back with the same sort of measured response that the Michigan electorate can probably hope to see from him if they get blazed out...

The U.N. issued an “early warning” Wednesday for the United States, urging that the government take immediate action to confront white supremacy following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. But the warning and call for the U.S. government to act contained a little-noticed last paragraph, urging the U.S. to make sure that the “rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly” are not exercised to deny rights or freedom to others and pressing the U.S. government to “ensure that such rights are not misused to promote racist hate speech and racist crimes.”

Most of the United States’ special envoys will be abolished and their responsibilities reassigned as part of the State Department overhaul, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress on Monday, including envoys for climate change and the Iran deal. Special envoys for Afghanistan-Pakistan, disability rights and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center will be eliminated under the plan. But President Donald Trump’s administration plans to keep envoys for religious freedom, fighting anti-Semitism and LGBT rights, despite speculation from critics that it would seek to downgrade those priorities. Lawmakers of both parties, think tanks and even the diplomats’ association have long...