Free Republic

Newt Gingrich laid it out perfectly on Sunday. The forced ouster of Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich this week was a sign of the "new fascism" of liberalism that's sweeping American life. "People need to realize, if you're a young faculty member, in a lot of places if you're a young member of a news department and you have the wrong views – meaning conservative – you have no career," Gingrich said on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "This is just the most open and blatant example of the new fascism, which says, 'if you don't agree with us...

So last week, Mozilla, the mission-based makers of lagging web browser Firefox, fired its newly appointed CEO Brendan Eich after the dating site OK Cupid publicized Eich's donation to Prop. 8, a California ballot initiative that barred same-sex marriage in the Golden State.As I wrote here and for Time: Now that we’re well past a subsistence economy, we live in a world of largely symbolic exchange, where we don’t simply choose something because we’re hungry or naked but because we want to make a statement about what sort of person we are, what sort of taste we possess, and what...

Are you now or have you ever been against gay marriage? Shoot one Brendan Eich, teach 1,000: Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves. We didn’t act like you’d expect Mozilla to act. We didn’t move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We’re sorry. We must do better. Brendan Eich has chosen to step down from his role as CEO. He’s made this...

Liberals are always spouting that they practice tolerance and that mean old conservatives are all bigots who would round up undesirables into internment camps if given half a chance. We know that such views are nonsense, and that progressive liberals prove themselves on a daily basis to be festering mounds of hate and anger. If there's one thing I despise, it's rank hypocrisy and many of our Jerk of the Week winners are guilty of practicing it. Our winner this week is also guilty of this charge and they're becoming increasingly emboldened. Their actions have hit the internet this week...

The newly elected CEO and co-founder of Mozilla - the maker of the Firefox web browser - was forced into resignation today after activists pressured the company over his donation to a political campaign that opposed same-sex marriage. Brendan Eich was forced into resigning from the company he co-founded just one month into his new role as CEO. In 2008 Eich donated $1000 to the campaign for California Proposition 8 and was widely chastised by the left press and social media. After his recent appointment as CEO his vilification was reawakened and he came under pressure from employees, press, social...

Just a couple of weeks into his tenure as CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich has been ousted by a mob of jackbooted same-sex marriage supporters, for the unforgivable crime of donating $1000 in 2008 to the Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban in California.  Eich co-founded Mozilla and created the indispensable Javascript programming language, but none of that counted for much against his long-ago financial support of traditional marriage.We've had a few nasty culture clashes of late, but this one takes the cake.  Eich was quite literally persecuted for a thoughtcrime.  He didn't say something that the gay marriage crowd found offensive,...

Over 65,000 people have signed a left-wing petition to get the CEO of Mozilla fired because he’s an intolerant bigot… Or something. The self-proclaimed police-of-tolerance have been attacking CEO Brendon Eich for his “unacceptable” views on gay marriage (he’s against it). And with a stunning amount of unaware irony, progressives have decided that they are incapable of tolerating a tech CEO who is an advocate of traditional marriage. That’s right: A petition has been started to toss Mozilla’s CEO out on the street, because gay marriage advocates are too intolerant to allow such “bigotry” in the corporate tech world. On...

The problems with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act may be masking another major change in the way health care is delivered to U.S. consumers, experts believe. At a conference in Washington on Thursday, health care and business professionals said that there’s an increasing trend in the industry toward cutting insurance companies out of the process entirely, as large, regional hospital systems move into the insurance business. Dr. Kenneth L. Davis, CEO and president of Mount Sinai Health System, the largest health care provider in the state of New York, said that starting next year, Mt. Sinai will begin...

WARNING: Graphic language… Joe Newby at The Washington Examiner has found a real doozy of a “comedian.” Her name is Laura Levites – with obviously no connection to the priests of the Old Testament. (She’s an atheist with a fondness for Ricky Gervais.) “I would personally like to castrate every Male Conservative Christian so that they have NO reproductive rights,” she wrote on Twitter, using the hashtag “#HobbyLobby.” She certainly knows how to draw attention to herself. Newby said that’s not all. She also expressed her hatred of Christians in a tweet calling conservative Christians “scumbags,” claiming they are “really...

Gay marriage is not a gay issue, nor is it liberal or conservative. It is an equality issue, since basic rights of Americans, who happen to be gay, are threatened. As more and more people wake up from the slumber of ignorance and see the light in supporting gay marriage, there are still people that refuse to evolve. You can hate anyone you want, and if you hate gay people, that hate is your burden to live with. Quite frankly, gay people do not need your love or approval, although I'm sure it would be appreciated. What they do need...

Rush Limbaugh - radio host, conservative firebrand and... children's book author of the year? The Children’s Book Council and its Every Child a Reader program released on Thursday their author-of-the-year finalists for their annual Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards. Limbaugh is one of the four finalists, and his nomination has prompted outrage on social media, given the host’s often-incendiary nature. Limbaugh's book is titled, "Rush Revere and The Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans" – a time-traveling tale of colonial America and the latest of two books in the "Rush Revere Series" published last year by Simon &...

It never fails. At some point, the mask slips among the “tolerant” members of academia and we are exposed to their real controlling and authoritarian face. Over the past few weeks there have been two good examples of this. At Harvard, we had senior Sandra Korn (“a joint history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality concentrator”, whatever that might be) declare that academic freedom is an outdated concept and that “academic justice” is a much better concept: In its oft-cited Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the American Association of University Professors declares that “Teachers...

Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent? Lawrence Torcello, PHILOSPHY professor thinks so. "The importance of clearly communicating science to the public should not be underestimated. Accurately understanding our natural environment and sharing that information can be a matter of life or death. When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. With such high stakes, an organised campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.

Under new laws it will be against the law to mock a stay-at-home father or a woman in sexy clothes Legal protections will help men but are mainly for women# Generic comments will be allowed but not those aimed at an individual. Mocking a stay-at-home father or insulting a woman for wearing revealing clothes will be illegal in Belgium under sexism laws unveiled yesterday. Sexist comments in the office, on the street or online will be punishable by courts in what is thought to be the first legislation of its type. Equality minister Joelle Milquet said shaming a man for...

An assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology has proposed a bold plan to settle the debate on Global Warming. Lawrence Torcello wrote an essay suggesting that scientists who fail to fall in line with global warming alarmists should be charged with criminal negligence, and possibly even be thrown in jail. Nothing screams academic freedom like a little intellectual Fascism. Right? When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on. Well, Larry (can we call him Larry?), it might surprise you –...

A new report by the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics at National Right to Life warns that one of the Obamacare provisions that ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Americans would discover if Congress passed the bill is that some seniors will not be allowed to spend as much as they wish on their health care. The extreme position was revealed in a special report by the NRLC titled “The Affordable Care Act and Health Care Access in the United States,” which analyzes four fundamental policy areas of Obamacare. It finds several ways that the federal health care law “will...

Facebook and Instagram are "in talks" about gun control with Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA). MAIG and MDA want both social media sites to "prohibit the private selling or trading of guns on its platforms."

Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.” He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.” How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday. Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech. Brad Johnson (@ClimateBrad), the editor of HillHeat.com and a former Think Progress...

In totalitarian regimes, it is best not to be too garrulous. Anything you say — no matter how innocuous — can and might be used against you. An example from the repressive dystopia known as Taxachusetts: The seemingly innocent question posed by a Boston rental agent to Gladys Linder when they were searching for an apartment was “Where are you from?” “Venezuela,” she answered. Gladys and her husband went on to find an apartment a month later without further incident. But she found the question about her national origin insulting and upsetting. This is Massachusetts, and you know what came...

The owners of a Christian bakery who refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after they were found guilty of violating the couple’s civil rights. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries said they found “substantial evidence” that Sweet Cakes by Melissa discriminated against the lesbian couple and violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, a law that protects the rights of the LGBT community. Last year, the bakery’s owners refused to make a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman, of Portland, citing their Christian beliefs....