Free Republic

Students at an Albuquerque, N.M., school decided that communism should be the theme for their prom — now dubbed "Prom-munism." The decision by seniors at Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School has upset some members of the school. One student who spoke to local CBS affiliate KRQE, but asked to remain anonymous, said "I hope that Cottonwood would realize the seriousness of having a very powerful and destructive idea as the theme for a prom."

Perhaps we can try another once he's in Kiev... or Riga As previously noted here, thinking all at the table are negotiating in good-faith (when dealing with serially-dishonest former KGB agents who want to take things from you) is probably not a very good idea- when what we ought to be doing is arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and putting troops in Poland to exhibit (residual) NATO resolve. The Russians' completely ignoring the latest Minsk accord and continuing to slaughter Ukrainian citizens in the name of 'Novorossiya' without pause should be all the evidence any thinking person would need to...

Ben Lucas was shocked when he found his packages damaged earlier this month. That's when he went to the surveillance videotape and saw the shocking moment the driver urinated on his home. UPS eventually apologized and fired the seasonal deliveryman. This guy puts the pee in UPS. A Houston deliveryman was canned from his job after a customer caught him on camera taking a leak on the side of his house. Ben Lucas went to the tape after items inside a package delivered to his home this month in the Heights neighborhood were broken and busted open. He suspected the...

The White House is proposing to designate the oil-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness permanently off limits to drilling. The proposal sets up a showdown with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who said the White House also intends to put much of the Arctic Ocean off limits to drilling in the new five-year offshore leasing plan to be released this week. SNIP Obama’s proposal to designate 12.3 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness would require Congressional approval, and there is no chance...

I am not Charlie Regarding “Massacre at French paper stuns world” (Jan. 8), the killing of 12 people at the French newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, is appalling. Hopefully, the perpetrators will soon be caught and prosecuted. The fact that 12 people are dead over cartoons by white, male cartoonists is horrible. Free speech is an important part of our society and criticism of Charlie Hebdo cartoons is also speech. But no one should be killed over cartoons. However, the statement “Je Suis Charlie” (I Am Charlie) ignores the magazine’s history of xenophobia, racism, sexism and homophobia. I sympathize with the victims’...

One, and only one, candidate, Barack Obama, caught the X-factor and improbably got himself nominated and elected, and re-elected, president. Another improbable candidate could catch it again.What is that X-factor? How does it upend things?Peace and personal security continued to flourish in 2014 and are likely to continue into 2015 and beyond. This is important news. It also is news the news media can ill afford to report. But voters sense it.Two of our greatest public intellectuals, Steven Pinker and Andrew Mack, provide a defining “state of the world” summation in Slate.com inThe World Is Not Falling Apart. The evidence...

..Turn Them in at School The PSA video above shows a young teen dramatically rifling through his parents’ drawer, only to take out a handgun and put it in his backpack, all while his mother is downstairs reading. The next day, he brings the gun to school, sits through class, and places it on a startled teacher’s desk before asking, “Can you take this away? I don’t feel safe with a gun in my house.” This is independent director Rejina Sincic’s idea of how to end gun violence and keep children safe. The message at the end reads, “Our children...

Tamir Rice's father should be absolutely ashamed of himself for not teaching his son that playing with guns (which have been doctored to look real) in public and not listening to policemen with real weapons will get you killed. I realize that his father, Leonard Warner, has a criminal history, but that should only make him more ashamed that he hadn't taught his son simple survival skills, and what a mistake it is to play chicken with the cops. Someone should do a quick anecdotal study about how many of these kids involved in these high-profile shootings (Trayvon Martin, Michael...

Before the tryptophan in the turkey induces somnolence, give thanks for living in such an entertaining country. This year, for example, we learned that California’s legislature includes 93 persons who seem never to have had sex. They enacted the “affirmative consent” law directing college administrators to tell students that sexual consent cannot be silence but must be “affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement” and “ongoing throughout a sexual activity.” Claremont McKenna College requires “all” — not “both,” which would discriminate against groups — participants in a sexual engagement to understand that withdrawal of consent can be any behavior conveying “that an...

Many children have imaginary friends. But few of those BFFs are called Joe Biden.... ....Earlier this year, Avery's grandmother, Becky Burke, posted a message on Biden's website, informing him of his littlest fan and their regular 'chats', according to KCCI News 8.... Then, last Wednesday night, she answered the phone - and Biden was on the other end. 'He said, "This is Joe Biden" and I said, "Who the hell is this?' said Ms Burke. 'And he said, "This is Joe Biden", and I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I said that to you.”

The Denver Post is wondering if Union Station is itself racist. Columnist Ray Mark Rinaldi wonders, "Did diversity miss the train in Union Station's architecture?" He continues, (emphasis mine) "The urban playground at Union Station isn't drawing people of color and it may be the building's fault." How can an inanimate object be racist? The newly designed Union Station is very popular, says Rinaldi. "If, that is," he warns, "you are white and not paying attention. Or if you think diversity doesn't matter." It's design is an "Architecture of exclusivity," he writes. "The symmetry, arched windows, ornate cornice and stacked,...

Canada’s largest mental health and addiction treatment and research centre is calling for the legalization of marijuana, with strict controls that would govern who could buy weed, from where, and in what quantity. In a policy statement released Thursday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said cannabis should be sold through a government-controlled monopoly and with limited availability and an age limit, possibly through outlets similar to provincially operated liquor stores. “Legalization means that we remove all penalties for cannabis possession and use by adults,” said Jurgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH. “Canada’s...

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen Elementary School officials want students to be quiet during their 20-minute lunch, and have imposed a new set of rules and penalties for talkative youngsters to keep down cafeteria chatter. Many parents, however, are speaking up about the policy, which was outlined in a school newsletter that was recently sent home with students. School administrators reportedly told students they must use a 1-inch rule to speak during their lunch, meaning they can only open their mouths one inch to whisper, according to the Aspen Times.

Marijuana legalization advocates in Oregon have launched a $2 million-plus ad campaign starring a 33-year police veteran. The new ad, embedded below, features Pete Tutmark, a former patrol sergeant and sheriff’s deputy. Tutmark criticizes what he calls a “broken” system that diverts resources from important crime-solving to drug arrests and urges his fellow Oregonians to vote yes on measure 91 this fall, which would legalize and regulate recreational marijuana use. “Last year in Oregon, there were 13,000 citations and arrests for marijuana,” he says in the ad. “That takes time, time better spent solving murders, rape cases, finding missing children....

The Federal Communications Commission is considering whether to punish broadcasters for using the moniker of the Washington NFL team, the Redskins, a word many consider a slur to Native Americans, the agency's chairman indicated on Tuesday.

The Iraq War lies now mostly in the realm of myth. We have forgotten exactly how we got both into and out of the war. The October 2002 joint congressional authorization to go to war was not just about fears of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Other worries prompted broad bipartisan support for the resolution. A majority of Democratic senators (as evidenced by their passionate speeches from the Senate floor) cited many of the resolution’s 23 writs. The latter were mostly concerned with things other than WMD: harboring terrorists, offering bounties for suicide bombers, giving refuge to at least one...

Wow. The Washington Post either has a really weird sense of humor, or they are wildly disconnected from the political atmosphere in America. In an opinion piece (I know, it’s kinda hard to tell nowadays) writer Mark Maske speculated on a possible career option for Eric Holder, now that he has resigned from the position of Attorney General. According to Maske, Holder should lend his credibility and professionalism to the troubled NFL… And no, I don’t think this was satire. According to the WashPo:Here is one bit of unsolicited advice for the NFL: Hire Eric H. Holder Jr. and put him...

We managed to repeal the 18th Amendment, which created Prohibition. It is time to repeal the 17th. What? You have no idea what the 17th Amendment is? Well, it is the one that effectively ended federalism by taking the power to appoint U.S. senators from state legislatures and having the citizens directly elect them, as they had always done with the House of Representatives. We may not get better senators, but it is likely they would not try dictating to the states what they should do — as they did when they set the national speed limit at 55 mph...

Way back in about 1987, I was working as a projects coordinator for a male-dominated branch of a huge corporation. About twice a year the company would fly us down to Los Angeles for two days of meetings. Normally these were grave, serious sessions full of graphs and flowcharts and vocabulary words like “parameter” and “synergy.” But one year, in a move straight out of a Dilbert cartoon, we were required to sit through a motivational seminar on corporate leadership and team building.

It’s official: the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an order declining a request for an en banc hearing in a case involving four students in at a California high school who were sent home for wearing American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. The full slate of Ninth Circuit judges has thus agreed with a lower district court and with a trio of appellate judges that officials at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif. could censor students who wanted to wear flag-emblazoned shirts. The federal appeals court issued its denial of an en banc hearing...