Free Republic

- The jury has begun deliberations in the murder trial of accused "Grim Sleeper" serial killer Lonnie Franklin, even as new information was disclosed Wednesday about the defendant's record out of the jury's presence. In a hearing held while the jury was behind closed doors, prosecutor Beth Silverman disclosed that Franklin has a conviction for a sex crime outside the United States on his record - a gang rape in Germany when he was in the Army. Silverman told the court that Franklin and two friends borrowed a car, drove to a nearby village, dragged a woman to the car...

President Obama is poised to declare the first-ever national monument recognizing the struggle for gay rights, singling out a sliver of green space and part of the surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood as the birthplace of America’s modern gay liberation movement... Protests at the site, which lasted for six days, began in the early morning of June 28, 1969 after police raided the Stonewall Inn, which was frequented by gay men. While patrons of the bar, which is still in operation today in half of its original space, had complied in the past with these crackdowns, that time it sparked a...

New York’s iconic Stonewall Inn, where the modern gay-rights movement took root, will become the first national monument honoring the history of gays and lesbians in the U.S. under a proposal President Obama is preparing to approve.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday urged Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders to fight bigotry and to press Congress to update U.S. immigration policy. Obama said America’s tradition is to welcome newcomers because it was founded by immigrants. He said that tradition also makes difficult to understand why some people are blocking efforts to overhaul U.S. immigration laws. “We don’t simply welcome new immigrants. We are born of immigrants,” Obama told hundreds attending the Asian Pacific American Institute of Congressional Studies’ annual awards dinner. The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization promotes Asian-American and Pacific Islander participation and representation in politics. …

Just a few months ago, Mexico looked like the poster country for soda tax advocates.“One of the world’s highest soda taxes appears to be working. After just one year, purchases of sugary drinks in Mexico are down 12 percent, a new study shows,” crowed the Bloomberg editorial board in January. “Public health authorities hailed the findings as the first hard evidence that a nationwide tax could spur behavioral changes that might help to chip away at high obesity rates,” reported The New York Times.But now new data shows a different outcome.While Mexico’s roughly 10 percent tax (or 1 peso per...

Homelessness increased in the last year in the city and county of Los Angeles, leaving nearly 47,000 people in the streets and shelters despite an intensive federal push that slashed the ranks of homeless veterans by nearly a third, according to figures released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Nearly two-thirds of the homeless people tallied countywide, or 28,000, were in the city of Los Angeles, representing an 11% jump in January from a year earlier, a report from the agency stated. The county's homeless population grew 5.7%. The mayor's proposed budget earmarks $138 million for services as...

An Army captain sued President Barack Obama on Wednesday, alleging that he doesn’t have the proper congressional authority to wage war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Capt. Nathan Michael Smith filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Washington as the president is deploying more special operations forces to the region — and a day after a Navy SEAL was killed in combat in Iraq, the third since a U.S.-led coalition launched its campaign against the Islamic State in the summer of 2014. …

Kansas defunded Planned Parenthood this week, and in doing so expanded access to healthcare for poor women. Kansas Senate Bill 436 reallocates money from the abortion provider to full-service healthcare clinics that serve women in need, but the abortion giant is crying foul. Gov. Sam Brownback, who vowed to defund the abortion giant during a State of the State speech in January, made the following statement: “The time has come to finish the job. We must keep working to protect our most innocent Kansans, the unborn. Every year since I became governor we have enacted pro-life legislation. We have come...

UnitedHealthcare’s decision to not offer Affordable Care Act exchange plans next year in “at least 26 of the 34 states where it sold 2016 coverage” may soon be followed by similar announcements from other health care insurers. At least that is one implication that can be drawn from the findings reported in a new paper analyzing the performance of insurers that offered exchange coverage in 2014.

Child migration is surging again. The number of families and unaccompanied children apprehended on the southern border has skyrocketed this year, according to new figures from the Obama administration. The numbers, compiled by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), reveal that child migration is on par with 2014 levels, when a wave of kids –– thousands of them unaccompanied –– arrived at the southern border. The surge of illegal immigration quickly swamped border authorities, immigration courts and health and humanitarian workers, while sparking a political battle on Capitol Hill over the cause and proper response to the crisis. The...

Both Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush will not attend this summer's Republican convention, spokesmen confirmed to The Hill.

The Department of Education, under the leadership of Barack Obama, whose pro-homosexual agenda has been unparalleled, has launched a website critics say is dedicated to the “shaming” of Christian colleges that follow biblical principles rather than a leftist social agenda. “It looks like the Department of Education got a new boss: the Human Rights Campaign,” wrote Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a Washington Update commentary this week. Perkins, referring to the leading “gay”-rights group, was spotlighting what he called a “shame list” posted online by the Department of Education of colleges that have sought exemptions to Title IX...

Ben Carson has a plan for Ted Cruz now that the Texas senator has dropped out of the GOP presidential race: attorney general, then Supreme Court justice under a Trump administration. When Fox News Radio’s John Gibson asked Carson on Wednesday whether it would be “smart” for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump to offer Cruz a position on the Supreme Court, he said yes. “I think he would be terrific on the Supreme Court, or I think he would be a terrific attorney general. Or he could be both,” Carson said. “He could be attorney general first, you know, go...

White House College Reporter Day took an interesting turn last week when President Obama showed up unannounced to deliver a speech to journalism students on the importance of voting Democrat. He didn't actually tell them to vote Democrat, of course -- he just told them to vote, though there's no doubt which party he was hinting they should vote for. The message was about as subtle as a punch in the face. The students were listening to Press Secretary Josh Earnest drone on and on when the president suddenly burst onto the stage. Earnest feigned surprised because, you know, everything...

SANTA MONICA, California — During an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, former Mexican President Vicente Fox apologized Wednesday for the vulgar language he has used regarding GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the southern border and invited the likely Republican nominee to Mexico to see the border from the other side.

The Department of Justice told North Carolina's governor on Wednesday that a new state law limiting restroom access for transgender people violates the U.S. Civil Rights Act. In a letter to Republican Governor Pat McCrory that was seen by Reuters, the Justice Department said the state was "engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees," and it had until Monday to address the issue. McCrory's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

<p>Donald Trump's last Republican foe, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, was ending his quixotic presidential campaign Wednesday, cementing Trump's remarkable triumph as his party's presumptive nominee and launching him to a likely fall battle with Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump's victory spurred some reluctant Republicans to rally around him, though others agonized over their party's future.</p>

If those of us in the Republican party cannot let go of the personal animosity that exists against each other and unite against the Democratic party, then the 2016 election will be the last election in American history. What I mean by this is if Hillary Clinton becomes our next President then America will enter the longest period of uninterrupted Democrat rule since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Meaning, as Daniel Greenfield of Front Page Mag writes, “it will be the single greatest opportunity for the left to transform America since the days of the New Deal”. Furthermore, Greenfield...

The main problem with the notion of self-defense is it imposes on justice, for everyone has the right for a fair trial. Therefore, using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal because if the attacker is killed, he or she is devoid of his or her rights. In addition, one's mental capacity is a major factor in deciding whether a man or woman has the right to have a firearm.

Obama sips water in Flint, tells residents it is safe By Timothy Gardner FLINT, Mich. President Barack Obama sipped filtered water in Flint, Michigan, on Wednesday and assured parents that children over 6 years old could do the same during a visit to a city still reeling from a scandal over lead-poisoned drinking water. Obama made the trip to the mostly African-American community to reassure residents that the water was safe even as he predicted it would take more than two years to replace the city's aging pipes, which leached lead into the drinking water. "The water around this table...