Free Republic

This Friday (Earth Day and Lenin’s Birthday) President Obama will sign the Paris Agreement, supposedly to control global climate. Last week, the attorney general of a tax shelter – the US Virgin Islands -- subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This was part of a campaign to intimidate climate realists and to shake down, and possibly shut down, the energy industry. The campaign was launched by a number of Democrat Attorneys General and Al Gore, colluding with trial lawyers and other special interests, under the guise of investigating ExxonMobil. As bizarre as these moves are, they are just an escalation of...

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio (WSYX/WTTE) -- Police were called to a protest at a Planned Parenthood clinic on Lewis Avenue and Court Streets. Anti-abortion demonstrators have been permitted for protesting there for months, but when pro-choice activists showed up last week without a permit, city leaders reminded them of an ordinance that requires a permit. Some anti-abortion protesters put graphic signs near the clinic which offended one mother of a five-year old boy who lives across the street. Angela Shaw-Gellerson said there's no need to get ugly and complained to police about the move from a side-street to in front of her...

The war between Republicans and Democrats on the politically splintered Federal Election Commission flared late Monday when a Republican commissioner and former chairman charged that the panel's Democrats want to regulate the press and end free election media. The moves by Democrats "signal an active regulatory effort within the agency, caution press organizations to look over their shoulders, and chill the free exercise of press activity," said Republican Lee E. Goodman in a statement on a recent FEC split vote.

Judicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest Defending the First Amendment against the Obama IRS Only 3 U.S. Airports Require Employee Security Checks JW Gets Props in The Wall Street JournalJudicial Watch & Allied Educational Foundation to Supreme Court: Protect the Laws that Keep Public Officials Honest With a notorious Democrat in the White House, it bears repeating that there are corrupt politicians in both the Republican and Democrat parties. The “corruption caucus” in the political world is both bipartisan and growing. True to our non-partisan educational mission, we...

Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president By Rick Noack April 15 at 9:30 AM German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cleared the way for the prosecution of German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose poem mocking Turkey's president has become the centerpiece of a clash between Germany's free-speech traditions and the government's efforts to safeguard its important relations with Turkey. In a news conference Friday, Merkel emphasized that it will now be up to German courts to decide whether Böhmermann is guilty of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But critics — including members of her own government —...

<p>BERLIN (AP) -- Berlin police say they've raided 10 residences in the German capital in a crackdown against far-right hate speech on social media.</p>

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...

I was super excited to find out about a bunch of liberal state attorneys general aping the Obama administration’s use of government power to persecute their political enemies. This thrilling development is awesome because it gives us conservatives the opportunity to do the same to liberals. Yeah, if the new rule is that the majority in power uses its authority to persecute its opponents, then shouldn’t we conservatives do it too? Except only harder and more ruthlessly. Right now, you have attorneys general in places like New York and the Virgin Islands going after the heretics who dare dispute the...

One of the most frustrating things about the recent censorious trend among sensitive politicized youth is that it renders useless my last-ditch political metaphor. I always figured if the day came that all other arguments for liberty were failing—if no one wanted to hear about free trade or gun rights or religious liberty—I could always fall back on the concept of free speech. I don’t just mean that if you think speech should be free you logically must think all non-violent human action should be free (though I do). The free speech analogy, while it lasted, was also useful for...

For decades, liberals have forewarned the destruction by conservatives of their Ivory Towers of academia. They whine that conservatives are out to “starve” educational institutions by cutting their bloated, taxpayer-funded budgets; they blame conservative opposition to their precious Common Core scheme as “paranoia,” and they defend teacher unions to the death. However, it is not the Tea Party, Republican governors, or homeschool families that liberals should fear. The single biggest threat to the ivory bastion that is Big Academia is the students whose very minds liberals have spent decades molding with their meticulously-crafted indoctrination. Since the 1960s, when liberal activism...

Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled "The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze." Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex. Stanford students have demanded the renaming of buildings, malls and streets bearing the name of the recently canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest who was often unkind to American Indians. Harvard Law School is getting rid of its seal because it bears...

The relationship between college students and free speech: It’s complicated. A new Gallup survey said 72 percent of college students oppose campus restrictions on “expressing political views that are upsetting or offensive to certain groups.” But asked whether “slurs” and other “intentionally offensive” language should be banned, and they’re all for it. Sixty-nine percent of college students surveyed said they would be in favor of prohibiting “intentionally offensive” speech on campus, and 63 percent also said they would support administrative measures to ban “costumes that stereotype certain racial or ethnic groups.” As the sound and the fury over the “Trump...

The Leftists going nuts over #TheChalkening really need to chillax and remember the benefits of free speech. #TheChalkening is a bunch of college students putting up pro-Donald Trump messages on college campuses because they know it makes the skin crawl of those who don’t support him. It all started after Emory University students started flipping out over the Trump 2016 messages being scrawled on multiple sidewalks and walls on campus. Via The Emory Wheel (emphasis mine): “I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our...

Emory University President James W. Wagner chalked his own free speech message onto a campus sidewalk after students protested over pro-Donald Trump messages that they said threatened their safety. Students had petitioned the administration to denounce the pro-Trump chalkings that began appearing throughout the Atlanta campus last week, saying the possibility that fellow students could support Mr. Trump made them feel unsafe at school. Roughly 40 students carrying signs such as “Stop Trump” and “Stop Hate” protested outside of the Administrative Building last week, chanting “You are not listening! Come speak with us, we are in pain!” Some students went...

Matthew Doyle of London ruined his life when he confronted a Muslim woman in his neighborhood and asked her to "explain Brussels"--a reference to the recent Muslim-perpetrated terrorist attack in the capital of the EU. "Nothing to do with me," the woman replied, a response that failed to satisfy Doyle. The two parted ways, which should have been the end of it. But then Doyle made the fatal mistake of recounting the incident on Twitter. His story was not well received in cyberspace where several people tweeted their disapproval, some of whom called upon his employer, a well-known London talent...

Marquette University professor John McAdams has been suspended from his position. His crime? Writing on a post on his personal blog that criticized the actions of another professor, who had instructed her students not to voice their opinions if they were anti-gay marriage or anti-gay adoption. It’s important to note that McAdams didn’t take a policy position in his post. He simply made the suggestion that – gasp! – students should have the freedom to voice their opinions in an academic setting. Sadly, as McAdams accurately points out in his post, “Of course, only certain groups have the privilege of...

A British man who posted an allegedly anti-Muslim message on Twitter following Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels has been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.

The growing federal emphasis on combating sexual harassment on campus, along with universities’ broadening definitions of inappropriate sexual behavior, has had a chilling effect on academic freedom and speech, especially on female professors in areas like gender studies, a report released Thursday by the American Association of University Professors said. The report says that in the last few years, the government has been regulating not just sexual conduct but also sexual speech, and that the emphasis on complying with federal law has led to some professors being investigated by universities for making statements that some students find offensive but that...

University of California officials are proposing to include "anti-Zionism" as a form of discrimination that is unacceptable on campus, according to a long-awaited draft statement on intolerance released Tuesday. The inclusion immediately drew sharply divergent reactions, with pro-Israel groups hailing it as a needed step to protect Jewish students from hostility and those supporting Palestinian rights criticizing it as a naked attempt to suppress criticism of the Jewish state. Scholars were similarly divided over whether a statement meant to express the UC regents' principles against intolerance should include Zionism -- historically an international movement to establish a Jewish homeland and...

and "Rent boy Marco Rubio."