Free Republic

When New York City's strikingly successful police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, arrived to address students at Brown University, he was harassed, booed and heckled for 30 long minutes. "Racism is not for debate," they shouted. A university official pleaded with the goons, er, students to permit Kelly to speak, reminding them that they would be free to express disagreement during the Q-and-A session afterwards. "Shout him down!" responded a man in the audience, and the crowd did. Episodes like this are tolerated in America because college faculties, administrators and the press almost uniformly share the students' prejudices and haven't the spine...

The latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education includes a special supplement on “Diversity in Academe” that is only missing one thing. Diversity in Academe features articles on: “A special orientation for White Students;” “Welcoming Gay Students to HBCUs [historically black colleges and universities, an official designation];” “‘I wish I were black’ and Other Tales of Privilege;” “What My Students Have Taught Me About Race;” “Why So Few Asians Are College Presidents;” “Sharing Math’s Appeal With First-Generation Students;” “For Remedial Students, Where the Hallway Leads;” “First-Generation Students” who “Find Crucial Support;” and “Adding Diversity to Curricula, Starting in the...

(CNN) -- A Boston-area man, who was planning to kidnap children, lock them in a basement dungeon, rape and eat them, should be imprisoned for at least 27 years, federal authorities said in court documents filed this week. . . . Online chats, seized by police, showed Portway call his basement a "dungeon" where he intended to "keep kidnapped children while he sexually abused them and as a place to eventually murder and cannibalize the children."

San Diego has a long reputation as a mecca of political conservatism, but that image could crumble after the resignation Friday of its mayor, Bob Filner, in the face of allegations of sexual harassment. His replacement will be a gay man, making San Diego the nation's second-largest city to be led by an openly gay person. The City Council voted 7-0 Friday to approve a deal to accept Filner's resignation in exchange for covering some of his legal expenses related to the harassment allegations involving city employees. A spokesman for California Attorney General Kamala Harris said Friday that Harris has...

Muslim doctors and nurses are to be allowed to opt out of strict hygiene rules introduced by the NHS to restrict the spread of hospital superbugs.Female staff who follow the Islamic faith will be allowed to cover their arms to preserve their modesty despite earlier guidance that all staff should be "bare below the elbow". The Department of Health has also relaxed rules prohibiting jewellery so that Sikh members of staff can wear bangles linked with their faith, providing they are pushed up the arm while the medic treats a patient. The Mail on Sunday reported the change had been...

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In May we reported that ABC News editor Don Ennis walked into his New York City office wearing a small black dress and a brunette wig and told his coworkers that he is legally changing his name to Dawn Stacey Ennis. Several months later, it turns out, Ennis has decided he no longer wants to be a woman. Back then, Ennis, 49, wrote to his colleagues: “This is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my...

The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy shouldn't be surprised that director Neil Blokamp's "latest politically tinged sci-fi feature" falls apart during the third act. So did Blokamp's first politically tinged sci-fi feature, the overrated but promising "District 9." According to McCarthy's astute review, though, "Elysium" goes a step further into the arena of wild left-wing, Hollywood hypocrisy. Here is how McCarthy describes the world and plot of what is likely another box-office bomb from star Matt Damon: Blomkamp sets the dystopian juices flowing with images of future sprawling slums and urban ruin that one might initially take to be Mexico City...

If you’re a physician who sees children and adolescents on a regular basis, there is a lot you can do to encourage young patients and their families to view homosexuality as normal and healthy, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The AAP recently issued an updated policy statement concerning homosexuality to its 60,000 members. The new guidelines say pediatricians should strive to “provide the context that being LGBTQ is normal, just different.” According to the AAP, homosexuality “should not be considered abnormal.” While the organization acknowledges that “LGBTQ” teens as a whole engage in riskier behaviors and report higher...

SEATTLE - An internal memo at Seattle City Hall is causing quite a stir. It suggests government workers no longer use the terms "citizen," or "brown bag."  According to the Office for Civil Rights, the terms are potentially offensive and other words should be used. "Luckily, we've got options," Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights wrote in the memo. "For 'citizens,' how about 'residents?'" Bronstein wrote. The Office of Civil Rights says Seattle serves all residents, whether they're United States citizens or not. And while city leaders publicize "brown bag" lunch meetings as a way to designate...

The family rescued by George Zimmerman when they were trapped in an overturned SUV canceled a scheduled news conference today and is pleading for privacy.

I knew going into my 30-day experiment of living with a gun that I was putting my family and myself at risk. Only two days into my experiment I went to breakfast with my two kids and some friends. After eating and shopping, my gun with me the entire time, I was anxious to get home to enjoy the warm weather. I put my purse on the counter and then spent the next hour out on the back deck. Walking into the kitchen to refresh our drinks, I noticed my purse with the 9mm Glock still inside it. I’d forgotten...

In an emotional, fiery post on his blog, The Audacity of Despair, Simon denounced the verdict, saying he was "ashamed to call himself an American."

The system failed him when everyone in the courtroom raised racial bias in roundabout ways, but almost never directly — for example, when the defense held up a picture of a shirtless Martin and told the jurors that this was the person Zimmerman encountered the night he shot him. But in fact it was not the way Zimmerman had seen Martin. Consciously or subconsciously, the defense played on an old racial trope: asking the all-female jury — mostly white — to fear the image of the glistening black buck, as Zimmerman had.

BERLIN — IN May 2010, I received a brown envelope. In it was a CD with an encrypted file containing six months of my life. Six months of metadata, stored by my cellphone provider, T-Mobile. This list of metadata contained 35,830 records. That’s 35,830 times my phone company knew if, where and when I was surfing the Web, calling or texting. The truth is that phone companies have this data on every customer. I got mine because, in 2009, I filed a suit against T-Mobile for the release of all the data on me that had been gathered and stored....

What if McCain/Palin won, then McCain died -- and a terror attack followed. Apocalyptic fiction from a nightmare It is obvious in retrospect that only an external attack like that on 7/22 could have saved the Palin presidency. Without it, would any of what followed have happened? I doubt it. The Democrats would have recaptured both the White House and Senate that fall. The culture wars would have simmered on, but the evangelical movement’s momentum on the path toward political power would have been lost. I would be installed in my corner office downtown, practicing law. I would probably have...

I just want you to know: I am so proud of you. In you I see a fierce resistance that reminds me of ancestors past. Each time you open your mouth, look down, clench your cheeks in a fresh wave of pain, I see Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Fannie Lou Hamer joining their spirits and bonding their strength to yours. I see a survivor, a woman who has miraculously kept her mind and nurtured her sanity enough that she can sit, for hours, and recount such horror. You have a brilliance that flares out, only to be quickly veiled...

On Wednesday, Great Britain’s Girl Guides (their equivalent of U.S. Girl Scouts) and Brownies removed God from their 103-year-old oath. Instead of the passage where they used to promise to “love God,” they will now vow to be true to "myself" and develop "my beliefs." The organization said the move is intended to attract girls from secular families. Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Concern, condemned the move, saying, "These values have their roots in a Christian outlook. Taking ‘God’ out of the promise denies the history and foundations of the movement without offering anything in its place, with the...

Danielle Sheridan, age 8, was born a boy. Before she was 3, she began telling her parents she was a girl. It wasn't a phase. She was insistent. She identified with Cinderella. She wanted to grow up and marry a prince. She began dressing like a girl at home. “We kept it in our home only because of our fear of society. We wanted her to be happy, but we wanted her to be safe,” said her mom, Leah Sheridan, 35. Finally, her daughter said she didn’t want to live if she had to live as a boy. “She said...

Obama promised to “reset” the U.S. relationship with Russia, and he succeeded: Russia went from disliking, but respecting, America and President Bush, to loathing, and looking down upon, America and, especially, her president. The photograph of Obama and Russian President Putin sitting side-by-side radiating hatred spells it all out. One of the reasons given for Putin’s hostility, in addition to Obama’s decision to aid Syria’s Al Qaeda rebels, while Russia is aiding Bashar al Assad’s Iranian and Hezbollah fighters, is Edward Snowden’s revelation that the US is spying on Russia. That, of course, is ridiculous. The US has been spying...