Free Republic

Purdue University is reviewing the situation surrounding a school staff member who allegedly threatened to rape a group of pro-life students who set up a display on campus that featured information about the disproportionate number of abortions performed on black babies.

AUSTIN, Texas –  A Houston grand jury investigating undercover footage of Planned Parenthood found no wrongdoing Monday by the abortion provider but instead indicted anti-abortion activists involved in making the videos that provoked outrage among Republican leaders nationwide. David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, was indicted on a felony charge of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor count related to purchasing human organs. Another activist, Sandra Merritt, was also indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record.

WASHINGTON - Jewish-American Robert Levinson was not included in a prisoner exchange with Iran that came as the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and the West rolled back sanctions. Iran on Saturday released five Americans it was holding in its prisons or in detention, four of them as part of a prison swap which included the release of Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post journalist detained on espionage charges since 2014. The exchange comes on "implementation day" of the sanctions relief for nuclear restrictions deal Iran concluded last year with the United States and five other...

Why exactly is the Secretary of State trying to dictate who can and can’t pray at a particular place? Does Kerry think that the Temple Mount is a public school? Washington called for Israeli authorities to reopen the Temple Mount to Muslim worshipers Thursday, while also condemning the shooting of a US-born activist who lobbied for Jewish rights on the holy site “It is absolutely critical that all sides exercise restraint, refrain from provocative actions and rhetoric, and preserve the historic status quo on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount – in word and in practice,” Kerry said in a statement. “The...

AURORA, CO – A Planned Parenthood affiliate awarded a local business for increasing the number of abortions it performed over the previous year. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains gave a special commendation to its office in Aurora, Colorado, for "exceeding abortion visits first half of fiscal year 2012 compared to first half of fiscal year 2013.” A former abortion industry worker took a picture of the award and sent it to And Then There Were None, the ministry of former Planned Parenthood manager Abby Johnson to those employed in her former industry. “Ever since I left Planned Parenthood, I...

Wednesday on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show," Al Sharpton offered a curious explanation involving President Barack Obama for the meaning of Easter: "I think that the message is, no matter what the world may do to unfairly, no matter how your crucified, nailed to the cross at home, or in your personal relationships, or on the job that you can rise if you don't lose yourself during the hard times and the challenges. The story of Jesus on the cross. no matter what they humiliated him with. no matter how they mocked him he took it, because he knew he...

Unreal. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) told Face the Nation today Obama cares about the troops – something he didn’t see with President Bush. “I know the president. I know how he feels about these troops and that’s basically what the secretary said so I’m glad he did that. I’m glad he had second thoughts. And, I cannot say that was the situation always with President Bush.” (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Cummings has obviously never seen this.

In Salt Lake City, in the shadow of the Mormon Church headquarters, dozens of same-sex couples married in the wake of Friday’s District Court ruling lifting the state’s ban on gay marriage. Included among the couples getting married was a Utah State Senator and his partner. State Senator and Democratic Party Chairman Jim Dabakis married his partner, Stephen Justeson, Friday afternoon.

SEATTLE (AP) — Students at a Seattle-area Catholic school are gaining national attention for their protest over the forced departure of a gay vice principal. An online petition started by the senior class president of Eastside Catholic was the third fastest growing U.S. petition on change.org Friday, attracting around 15,000 signatures in one day. The petition was launched after Vice Principal Mark Zmuda resigned under pressure from school administrators after they learned he had married his same-sex partner. Bradley Strode said the students want to effect change within the wider Catholic Church, with an ultimate goal of altering the Catholic...

A sterling example of the maxim, no good deed goes unpunished. Former President George W. Bush was booed when he appeared on the video monitor at today’s memorial for Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, South Africa, according to the White House pool report, which cited local press outlets. Meanwhile, when the images President Obama and Michelle popped up, there was a 30-second “deafening roar,” the pooler wrote. How sad. Bush has done an far greater amount for South Africa than Obama. But Obama is much better at crafting his public image and saying the right things. Bush personally saved the lives...

The US and Hezbollah are in secret indirect talks managed by London dealing with the fight against al-Qaida, regional stability and other Lebanese political issues. Senior British diplomatic sources, quoted in a report in Kuwait newspaper al-Rai on Wednesday, said British diplomats are holding discussions with leaders of the Lebanese organization and transferring the information to the Americans. The discussions “are aimed at keeping tabs on the changes in the region and the world, and prepare for the upcoming return of Iran to the international community,” according to diplomatic sources in Washington. Because the US, unlike the UK, recognizes both...

In April 2005, when Democrats were blocking a list of Bush nominees and Republicans were threatening to invoke the “nuclear option,” the newly elected junior senator from Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama, took to the floor and sanctimoniously proclaimed that the nuclear option would not only be a violation of democratic principles, but that it would worsen partisanship. Here are few excerpts from his remarks: Everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster – if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and...

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under Obamacare — if you both belong to the same race. Obamacare’s spectacular flop of a rollout distracts from its crude calculus that encourages the allocation of healthcare resources along racial lines and a doctor-patient system splintered into ethnicities. While the 2010 Patient Protecion and Affordable Care Act’s language on diversity sounds innocuous, a review of the frankly separatist thinking of the law’s ardent supporters indicates Obamacare is aiming for a health care system that puts political correctness above the struggle against illness and death.

Just announced on Fox.

With all the attention focused on Ted Cruz’s attempt to defund Obamacare in the continuing resolution, some of the law’s parade of horribles are momentarily out of view. Come October 1, those horribles will resume their onward march as the law’s impact on subsidizing elective abortion will begin to become clearer. One area that deserves special scrutiny is the feature known as Multi-State Plans (MSPs). This provision of Obamacare represented a partial victory for progressive forces who favored a national, single-payer system. In its place they accepted a category of health-insurance plans managed by the Office of Personnel Management under...

The Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material. In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then...

The National Park Service began enforcing a policy recently that required churches to obtain special use permits in order to baptize in public waters. As part of the same permit process, the NPS also mandated that churches give the Park Service 48 hours advance notice of pending baptisms.

Rep. Darrell Issa has announced that he is expanding his investigation into IRS targeting of conservative groups to deal with alllegations that the tax agency put groups already tax exempt under additional scrutiny. The Hill: The IRS subjected conservative groups already granted tax-exempt status to additional scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) charged on Monday. Issa called on a Treasury watchdog already looking into the IRS to investigate the matter, and signaled he would expand his committee's probe into improper targeting of political groups given the new revelations. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the...

"Most of the guns used to commit violence here in Mexico come from the United States," President Obama said during a speech at Mexico's Anthropology Museum. "I think many of you know that in America, our Constitution guarantees our individual right to bear arms. And as president, I swore an oath to uphold that right, and I always will.""But at the same time, as I’ve said in the United States, I will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. That can save lives here...

This comes as no surprise to Hot Air readers, who learned about the value of the Obama administration’s $150 million subsidy investment of LG Chem last fall. After furloughing its workers at their Grand Rapids plant without having a single one of their batteries installed in a consumer vehicle, the local NBC affiliate produced this report on the way taxpayer money got spent: