Free Republic

Amid her calls for governments to act on climate change, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has spoken openly about her Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She is not the only environmental campaigner to speak about being neurodivergent (having a neurological condition or disability)—something Thunberg describes as her "superpower." In the UK, naturalists Chris Packham and Dara McAnulty have both discussed their autism. Packham has said that it has been "enormously beneficial" to his career. In my doctoral research, I interviewed 23 youth activists, conservation workers and environmentalists to examine the link between nature experiences and mental health in an era of...

Spiritual guru and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson clarified on Twitter Tuesday that she is not “a cult leader” and claimed she does not question vaccine science. The 66-year-old self-help book author made the statement about a month after she first had to clarify her stance on vaccinations in the US. “I am not a cult leader. I am not anti-science (that one is almost funny, given how much I quote Einstein). And I am not an anti-vaxxer” Williamson wrote in her tweet Tuesday. “Hoping that if I repeat it 3 to 4 times a day I might penetrate...

In 2010, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas published his book American Taliban, which detailed his belief that “fundamentalist Muslims [are] basically hard-right Christians…American [religious conservatives] may be more constrained by American society and laws than their Middle Eastern counterparts, but…their goals are the same.” This past weekend, one current and one former Daily Kos writer carried on the tradition of lumping the two groups. On Sunday, Daily Kos’s Susan Grigsby opined, “It is very difficult to find much space between the coming Christian caliphate, which reveres the Second Amendment as a holy text, and the one set up by [ISIS] in Syria and Iraq.”...

It looks as though President Obama found some time to take the Triple Crown before going on to win the NBA Finals, at least according to his former senior adviser, Dan Pfeiffer. Dan Pfeiffer ‎@danpfeiffer Another accomplishment -- Obama first President to have a Triple Crown winner since Carter Astounding. A nation thanks you. Reality check, please.

If you type in the original page for Rolling Stone’s December 2014 story “A Rape on Campus: The Struggle for Justice at UVA,” you’ll be redirected to "What Went Wrong?,” a report about the article published Sunday by the Columbia Journalism Review. Rolling Stone officially retracted its blockbuster story, which had garnered more than 2.7 million views. The retraction comes on the heels of the Charlottesville Police Department’s announcement that there was not enough evidence to pursue an investigation of the story’s titular rape, which now appears to have been something between a delusion and a hoax. . . snip...

It’s always a bad sign when a US president gets several rounds of heavy applause at the UN General Assembly, as Barack Obama did this morning in New York. Needless to say, the loudest cheers from the gathering of world leaders came when he condemned the actions of a close US ally, Israel, in continuing to build settlements in the West Bank. You can always rely on attacks on the Israelis to generate the biggest roars of approval at any meeting of the United Nations, and Obama dutifully obliged.

THE STAR TREATMENT Actress Janeane Garofalo: Jail all Republicans Activist says GOP 'small-minded,' only Democrats 'decent' The latest "Real Time with Bill Maher" show erupted into a vicious 4-against-1 bashfest of conservative columnist John Fund and Republicans in general, culminating in one left-leaning guest on the panel calling for all Republicans to be "jailed." From the start of the HBO show, Hollywood activist Janeane Garofalo, a Barack Obama supporter, expressed agitation over the overnight national popularity of GOP vice presidential nod Gov. Sarah Palin, who has helped running mate John McCain pull within the statistical margin of error of Obama...

One of the most notable incidents from Tuesday's State of the City address occurred even before the mayor's speech began. After the Pledge of Allegiance, Rene Marie was introduced to sing the national anthem. But that's not what she sang. Martin actually sang the tune of the traditional national anthem with the lyrics to "Lift Every Voice and Sing." It's a song some have called the National Black Anthem, the Negro National Anthem or the Black National Anthem. Once she finished performing, there was a moment of awkward silence and then the crowd gave her mild applause. Marie said she...

I have read both Chrisian & Agnostic.

The feminist takeover of Harvard is imminent. The Harvard Crimson reported yesterday that the university is about to name as its new president Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard’s Corporation, which is likely to recommend Faust to the university’s Board of Overseers for confirmation, could not have more clearly repudiated Lawrence Summers’s all-too-brief reign of meritocracy and academic honesty, or more openly signaled that Harvard will now be the leader in politically correct victimology. Faust runs one of the most powerful incubators of feminist complaint and nonsensical academic theory in the country. You can...

The frustrations of a man whose long-sought goal remains out of reach are vividly on display in the first few minutes of "An Inconvenient Truth," a new documentary about former Vice President Al Gore's quest to spur action against global warming. And the scene has nothing to do with the Supreme Court vote that denied Mr. Gore a chance to win the 2000 presidential election. He is tapping on his laptop, adding yet another tweak to the illustrated climate lecture he has given more than 1,000 times since 1989 in ever more sophisticated ways: first with flip charts, then slides,...

American Friends Service Committee I heard about a Black Hawk helicopter on Cambridge common? I heard Army recruiters were ushering kids into the machine? I thought what is going on? Then I got the answer. I receive an email describing a celebration: a 320th birthday party for the Army with some sort of reenactment of Gen. George Washington and his camp. I could not believe what I was reading. Cambridge is officially opposed to the war in Iraq. Why was it hosting an event like this? I immediately changed my schedule to make it to the birthday bash. As I...

A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with “ETs.” By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the...