Free Republic

A public school in California ordered a 7-year-old boy to stop handing out Bible verses during lunch – and they dispatched a deputy sheriff to the child’s home to enforce the directive. “This is a clear, gross violation of the rights of a child,” said Horatio Mihet, a Liberty Counsel attorney representing the first-grader who attends Desert Rose Elementary School in Palmdale. They are also representing his parents, Christina and Jaime Zavala.

Well, it happened again. Except this time, it was even worse. Last night our old friend Milo Yiannopoulos had his speech at DePaul University disrupted by a couple delicate flowers. I myself spoke at DePaul back around 2007, and even then there was a threat of protest, after a leftist professor (who had zero publications of significance, you’ll be astonished to learn) wrote a column in the student newspaper accusing me of being a “white supremacist” — which in non-hysterical language simply meant I was to the right of Bob Dole. I was ready for them, believe me, but none...

A Dallas-based LGBT resource center is calling on Dallas leaders to cut ties with a controversial North Texas pastor who compared gay-friendly business advocates to ISIS. First Baptist Church of Dallas' Senior Pastor Robert Jeffress made the remarks on a radio program last week when he was discussing president Obama's transgender directive to public schools. "I've said often the greatest thread to freedom of religion in America is not ISIS, it's the chamber of commerce," the pastor said on the radio. "I mean, it's the businesses that say to our representatives, 'Oh, don't pass laws like that. Don't pass these...

TRANSIT RIDERS UNION: SUBSIDIZING SLOW INEFFECTIVE TRANSPORTATION AND LAZY ANGRY BUS DRIVERS THAT DON'T GIVE A &#*^@!! In episode six and beyond, we'll take a look at SHARE WHEEL's allies. In this episode we'll discuss one of their biggest backers, the Transit Riders union. According to liberals, TRU is about low income riders joining together with bus drivers to demand cheap effective transporation that works. Transportation for poor working citizens that is cheap, routes that will take them anywhere at anytime and to demand safer transportation. It is anything but. TRU is in truth more of a union for...

Maroon 5 are the latest band to cancel shows in North Carolina because of the state's anti-LGBT bill. "We have announced that we will be canceling our upcoming shows in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina because of the recent passage of the HB2 legislation," the band said in a statement on their website. "This was a difficult decision for us to make as a band. We don't want to penalize our fans in North Carolina by not performing for them, but in the end it comes down to what we feel is morally right."

When given the choice of standing alongside a decorated military hero or a bunch of militant LGBT activists – choose wisely. The leadership of Hampden-Sydney College learned that lesson the hard way. On May 19 I reported to you that the Virginia all-male college had chosen not to renew retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin’s contract – ending his stellar, nine-year career teaching leadership and ethics. Less than six hours later, the college reversed its decision and offered the retired general a one-year contract. “Hampden-Sydney College is a fine school with a proud history of young men who have led our...

The left used to congratulate itself on being the "Free Speech Movement." It used to celebrate the rebellious anarchists who used obscene words and forced sexually graphic images and conversations into the public sphere. Conservatives were the ones who insisted on decency in the public discourse and demanded regulation, both within the private sector and from the federal government, to protect the public from that obscenity. But now, as the world turns upside down on sexuality and gender, leftists are becoming the ones who censor and fine. Instead of a Hays Code for decency, there's a Gays Code. Breaking the...

The Arizona law increases penalties against protesters who block access to a political rally. Is blocking access to a political event a political statement in itself? In a Phoenix suburb in March, protesters parked about two-dozen cars in the middle of the highway to stop drivers on their way to an outdoor rally for Donald Trump and Joe Arpaio, the controversial Arizona sheriff. With posters that read "Dump Trump" and "Must Stop Trump," the protesters, in one sense, acted on their right to demonstrate against the Republican frontrunner and the sheriff who was sanctioned for refusing a judge's order to...

But the documents show that the company relies heavily on the intervention of a small editorial team to determine what makes its "trending module" headlines -- the list of news topics that shows up on the side of the browser window on Facebook's desktop version. The company backed away from a pure-algorithm approach in 2014 after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users' feeds. The guidelines show human intervention -- and therefore editorial decisions -- at almost every stage of Facebook's trending news operation, a team that at one time was as...

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has suspended all city-sponsored travel to North Carolina and Mississippi due to the states’ new transgender laws. Rawlings-Blake made the announcement Tuesday in a letter to city officials, saying she hopes the city’s efforts combined with those of other governments and companies “will push North Carolina and Mississippi” to change. …

By adding to an already challenging legal environment in North Carolina, HB2 could cost the state almost $5 billion a year, according to a new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. "The repeal of HB2 would not only reverse the threat to over $5 billion in economic activity for the state, but would also begin to bring North Carolina some of the economic advantages that come when a state embraces diversity and its LGBT citizens," said Christy Mallory, Senior Counsel at the Williams Institute and co-author of the new report. While prior reports have focused on...

The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are. "And what we must not do, what we must never do, is turn on our neighbors, our family members, our fellow Americans for something that they cannot control and deny what makes them human," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Monday. "[N]one of us can stand by when a state enters the business of...

Regulators in Washington are showing increasing interest in tightening rules on political speech on the web, arguing that the dissonant voices enabled by "new media" have become too influential. If that effort is successful, experts wonder whether it could impact more traditional media as well, especially in how it relates to conservatives. "The best example we can give is going back a few years to when the [Federal Communications Commission] was looking at trying to silence talk radio, which was obviously a realm of conservatism," said Drew Johnson, executive director of the nonprofit group "Protect Internet Freedom." He was referring...

Facebook workers routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential “trending” news section, according to a former journalist who worked on the project. This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were organically trending among the site’s users. Several former Facebook “news curators,” as they were known internally, also told Gizmodo that they were instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant...

The Rev. Franklin Graham has strongly condemned Mayor Bill de Blasio's call for a boycott of popular fast-food chain Chick-fil-A, which is opening a new location in the New York City borough of Queens, just because its Christian owners believe in the biblical definition of marriage. "Can you imagine a city where a popular, successful business is singled out and attacked by the mayor who calls for a boycott — all because the business owners let it be known that they operate by Christian principles and believe in God's definition of marriage?" Graham, the president of Samaritan's Purse and Billy...

In 2005, the Fort Trumbull area of New London Connecticut was a growing middle class neighborhood. The people there were hard working and spent much of their lives building their homes and living out prosperous lives. That came to an end in 2000 when Liberal Fascist Democrats in City hall and in the state capitol of Hartford made a deal with Pfizer corporation to allow them to build a research laboratory and upscale housing in Fort Trumbull. According to estimates by the same lying fascists, over 5000 new jobs would be created. Connecticut was one of the states hardest hit...

For the second time in his career, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore faces charges before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and potential removal from office. Until that court hears and rules on those charges, Moore will be suspended with pay from his position atop the state's highest court. On Friday, the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission forwarded charges to the commission, accusing the chief justice of violating judicial ethics in his opposition to same-sex marriage.

MONTGOMERY,Ala.-The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission has filed ethics charges against Chief Justice Roy Moore over his effort to keep gays and lesbians from marrying in the state. In April, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed complaints accusing Moore of violating judicial ethics when he told Alabama probate judges to refuse issuing same-sex marriage licenses despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling making gay marriage legal across the country. "Moore has disgraced his office far too long," SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a statement released Friday night. "He's such a religious zealot, such an egomanaiac, that he thinks he doesn't have...

Animal rights activists circulated photos of the husband and wife team behind Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre eating a burger and keeping freezer full of beefThe California-based husband and wife founders of celebrity-endorsed vegan restaurant group Cafe Gratitude say they have received death threats after it was revealed last week that they are raising, slaughtering and eating animals on their farm north of San Francisco. Matthew and Terces Engelhart, both in their sixties, who opened the first Cafe Gratitude in 2004 and whose celebrity followers have included Gwyneth Paltrow, Beyoncé and Sacha Baron Cohen, countered the firestorm of criticism with...

The FBI is reportedly coordinating with Hillary Clinton’s campaign schedule in order to find a time to interview the presidential candidate about her private email server, CNN reports. Investigators have already interviewed several of Clinton’s top State Department aides, including Huma Abedin, the network reported on Thursday. Some of those aides have been interviewed several times. The next step in the investigation — which is looking into whether any classified information was mishandled on Clinton’s server — will be to interview Clinton herself. But that poses a problem because she is in the heat of a presidential campaign. And with...