Free Republic

Optimism is good and can often preserve sanity. However, excessive optimism led to disappointment in 2013 and worse seems likely in 2014.There are plenty of clowns, many of them in Washington. They are funny in weird ways but the giggles they produce suggest derision rather than pleasure.Political correctness = ideologically mandated conformityA&E's recent spasm of sanity was most likely due to its recognition of an impending reduction in its all-important bottom line. Accordingly, it decreed a temporary halt to that effort to mandate political correctness. It was only one battle and many more continue. What other forces of political correctness have decreed comparable...

Somehow Christmas seemed darker last year, bereft of its usual radiance. Like a heroic soldier, it was left alone to fend off a platoon of barrages against it. Shots came from many quarters – all contesting the placement of Christmas symbols in public areas. No protests came, however, from Orthodox Jews, nor those who, while not Orthodox, remain traditionally-valued. And that is because this group understands and appreciates the ameliorating influence that religion provides civic life, so long as the religion does not call for, as in the case of radical Islam, the oppression of “infidels.” What better use of...

Motel guest says bedbugs put him in hospital. HAMPTON, Va. - A bedbug infestation at a Peninsula motel is so bad, it put a man in the hospital. Health department officials told WAVY.com it isn't a new problem. The Hampton Manor Motel sign claims to be host to the distinguished traveler, but they also appear to be host to bedbugs -- and not just one or two. "You don't see them, but you feel them," said Hampton resident Robert Malcolm. "You lay in bed and you might feel something. You wake up and there are about five or six on...

An elementary school in Frisco, Texas is believed to be the first in the state to violate “The Merry Christmas Law” after they banned Christmas trees and the colors red & green from an upcoming “winter” party. Boys and girls who attend the Nichols Elementary School “Winter Party” will not be able to make any reference to Christmas or any other religious holiday. Christmas trees are also banned—along with the colors red and green. … Ironically, the school is located in the district of state Rep. Pat Fallon, the author of a bill signed into law in June that codifies...

A senior Somali government official wants Canadians to pay closer attention to youths to make sure they are not being influenced by radical preachers trying to lure them into taking up arms in his country. Abdurahman Adan Ibrahim, a Member of Parliament and former Deputy Prime Minister, flew to Toronto last week to accompany a fellow MP who was badly wounded in an Al-Shabab suicide bombing in Mogadishu. In an interview, Mr. Ibrahim, a member of his government’s foreign relations committee, said several Somali-Canadians had joined Al-Shabab and that someone had radicalized them and financed their travel... the Canadians should...

PAGE Hall in Sheffield is a monument to the failure of the state's experiment in multiculturalism. Due to official dogma, this area is rapidly turning into a cauldron of suspicion and squalor. A never-ending influx of Roma people from eastern Europe is fuelling combustible tensions with local residents, many of whom are immigrants from Asia. As complaints about feckless, intimidating behaviour by the Roma intensify, the air is now thick with warnings about ethnic conflict. The sense of deepening social chaos in Page Hall was vividly illustrated last week by this paper's reports of two attempts by Roma immigrants to...

Richard Lamm on Multiculturalism We know Richard Lamm as the former Democratic Governor of Colorado from 1975-1987. In that context his thoughts are particularly poignant. In 2004 there was an immigration overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of American's finest minds and leaders. A brilliant college professor by the name of Victor Davis Hansen talked about his latest book, Mexifornia, explaining how immigration - both legal and illegal was destroying the entire state of California. He said it would march across the country until it destroyed all vestiges of The American Dream. Moments later, former Colorado...

"Forced marriage is probably the last form of slavery in the UK." — Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Northwest England. More than a dozen Muslim clerics at some of the biggest mosques in Britain have been caught on camera agreeing to marry off girls as young as 14. Undercover reporters filming a documentary about the prevalence of forced and underage marriage in Britain for the television program ITV Exposure secretly recorded 18 Muslim imams agreeing to perform an Islamic marriage, known as a nikah, between a 14-year-old girl and an older man. Campaigners against forced marriage -- which is...

If this is not the essence of colonialism I don't know what is. A bunch of non-British pontificating on what the core values of Britain are or should be. We have here, on a BBC programme, one of the endless series of debates on "what is Britishness" that have been part of the UK public discourse only since the arrival on these shores of vast numbers of people belonging to the ethnic, religious and geographic groups represented by most debaters in this video (that you can see by clicking on the "Enza Ferreri Blog" link). Can you imagine 60, 100,...

Jason Morgan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a Ph.D. student who is objecting to his school’s mandatory diversity training. The first lesson he ever attended included a lecture by the teacher who stated that he and the entire class were all racists. The next session he was scheduled to take was a lesson on transgender issues, which he does not support due to his religious beliefs. On September 22nd, he sent a letter to his administrators and the press telling them why he wouldn’t be attending anymore indoctrination courses on campus. Dear Graduate Director Prof. Kantrowitz, Please forgive this...

The man who pulled the trigger on 13-year-old Tamrah Leonard on a summer day in 2009, fatally wounding the young girl with one bullet, pleaded guilty yesterday and is expected to receive a 39-year prison sentence. Lamar Warren, a member of the Sex Money Murder gang, had plotted the drive-by shooting with fellow gangsters as an attempt at retaliation against the Gangster Killer Bloods for shooting at a Sex Money Murder member the day before, Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Doris Galuchie said. James James, the leader of this group of Sex Money Murder, admitted to ordering Warren and Baines to...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A 22-year-old father of six was brutally murdered in broad daylight Saturday while standing in a restaurant parking lot in downtown San Jose and a nearby surveillance camera captured the entire scene. Witnesses too scared to go on camera told KTVU that the shooting stemmed from a fight, saying someone struck the victim, 22-year-old Ramon Garcia with axe-like weapon before he was shot and killed. Later that night, a woman dropped by the scene and lit candles near the spot where Garcia was found. She would not identify herself but she told KTVU that she had...

"The next thing could be that Danish nurses are forced to go under cover as Muslim women in order to please Muslim patients." — Martin Henriksen, Spokesman, Danish People's Party [DF] One of the largest hospitals in Denmark has admitted to serving only halal beef -- meat that is slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic guidelines -- to all of its patients regardless of whether or not they are Muslim. The revelation that Danes are being forced to eat Islamically slaughtered meat at public institutions has triggered a spirited nationwide debate about how far Denmark should go to accommodate the...

Somali Muslims Samuel Neguse Rezene and Yonatan Ogube came to the US with their families in search of a better life – and teenage girls to take advantage of. Their families settled down in a lower-class suburb of Seattle, and it didn’t take long for the duo to get into trouble. One day in 2008, Rezene and Ogube were driving .. when they saw a 14-year-old caucasian girl walking along the side of the road. Feeling kinda horny and in need of money, they quickly hatched a hideous plan. The two slowed down and pulled up next to her, then...

MULTAN: A 12-year-old girl was killed on Friday allegedly by her father for refusing to marry a man of his choice, police said. They said the girl’s body was found chopped into six pieces. Police said Muhammad Khadim, 46, a resident of Khoja area in Shujabad, had accepted his nephew’s proposal for his daughter six months ago. They said his sister and brother-in-law had been pressing him to arrange the wedding. They said his daughter Haseena, who was studying in grade 6, did not want to marry. Some relatives said that she had requested her father to let her finish...

The number of assaults involving acid throwing and other corrosive substances has tripled in six years in England ... the cases involving acid are linked to Asian communities, with women attacked by their husbands and punished for refusing forced marriages, while men were attacked during disputes over dowries. ... There is a reluctance among women in the Asian community to come forward; these attacks do not usually come from strangers, but from someone close to them in the community – a husband, a father, or their family.

A child prostitution trial has heard that "other Sikh girls" were involved with men who paid a 16-year-old girl for sex. ... Aabidali Mubarak Ali, 39, Rakib Iacub, 20, and Wajid Usman, 22, deny all of the 22 charges. Three other men have already pleaded guilty to related charges. 'Not the only girl' In a police interview played to jurors, the girl said other Sikh people in Leicester had approached her family with concerns their daughters might be "in the same situation".

THE fashionable metropolitan elite constantly tells us that mass immigration makes our country more prosperous and vibrant. But such claims are just hollow ideological propaganda. They bear no relationship to the grim reality we see all around us. In truth, the vast, unceasing influx of foreigners over recent years has done colossal damage to Britain. Our social cohesion has been undermined, our civic infrastructure overloaded, our sense of national identity eroded and our standard of living reduced. Nothing symbolises this wreckage more clearly than the growing number of filthy shanty towns and encampments that have sprung up across Britain because...

BENNINGTON, Vt. — An infestation of bedbugs has forced the temporary closure of a homeless shelter in Bennington, Vt. ... In the meantime, the women and children who would normally stay there are being placed in temporary locations, including motels

The town of Trappes in Yvelines department (county), just outside Paris, was again the scene of street disturbances Sunday night as protesters, thought to be mainly Muslims, faced off with local police and riot police. Trappes and surrounding towns had also witnessed violent protests Friday and Saturday evening after police had attempted to book a Muslim woman for wearing a full face niqab in contravention of France’s so-called burqa ban. ... The violence stemmed from an incident last Thursday when police tried to carry out an identity check and give a ticket to a woman wearing a niqab — a...