Free Republic

ATCs must necessarily be among the most skilled and competent federal government employees. In accordance with an Obama administration plan to “transform” the Federal Aviation Administration into a “more diverse workplace” however, the FAA has abandoned its merit-based hiring program for ATCs, as it implements a plan to hire 1,000 ATCs a year to replace a generation of retiring controllers. Congress can and should intervene in this unfortunate plan to restore sanity and safety to the skies, because it endangers people’s lives. ... It is expensive and time-consuming to train ATCs, and many candidates who believe they have what it...

Wrong victims. Wrong perpetrators. Wrong skin color. Wrong ideological facilitators. Karl Marx is the superstar lead in the blockbuster movie of anti-Western productions. Marxists focus their critique on economics. They insist that capitalism is both cruel and doomed by ineluctable historical forces. Marx has many supporting players, many totally unaware that they are extras in the anti-Western project. Many of these supporting players wear gauzy fabrics in pastel hues, shop at stores lulled by piped-in windchime music, and smell like patchouli. They believe themselves to be apolitical, peace-and-love flower children. They insist that their ideology, unlike that of the big,...

Police said they were dealing with fires in Gothenburg, Malmo and Helsingborg Around 60 vehicles were reportedly vandalised with stones thrown at police Emergency services were tackling the fires with no reports yet of any injuries Dozens of cars were set alight and stones thrown at police as gangs of masked youths went rampaging across Sweden on Monday evening.

Police in Melbourne have been slammed for making no arrests after residents of the city’s north-west suburbs were terrorised by gangs of African youths who bragged “police can’t touch us” and branded frightened families “racist”. Despite its sending dozens of armed officers in riot gear to Taylors Hill as more than 100 teenagers gathered “for war”, and telling residents to “stay inside and lock their doors” as rival gangs ran amok, police claimed there had been “no threat to community safety”. According to The Age, there was a heavy police presence at the scene for several hours, including cavalry officers...

Youth”, “Asian”, “immigrant” “immigrant youth” — all sharia-compliant media euphemisms for Muslim. MAN DEFENDING HIS WIFE ‘LYNCHED’ BY SIX YOUTHS IN FRANCE A TRIO OF SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD YOUTHS IN THE FRENCH DEPARTMENT OF VAL-D’OISE WERE ARRESTED EARLY TUESDAY MORNING AFTER THEY “LYNCHED” A MAN COMING TO THE AID OF HIS WIFE, WHO WAS ALSO ATTACKED BY THE GROUP. Police arrived on the scene a short time later and arrested three members of the group of youths while the man and his wife, both believed to be in their thirties, were taken to nearby Eaubonne hospital. The wife of the victim confront...

The Federal Aviation Administration has become consumed by diversity and inclusion. Prior to becoming so, the FAA worked with about 36 colleges to create the Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative. The colleges offered nonengineering aviation degrees requiring basic courses in air traffic control and aviation administration. Graduates became qualified candidates for training as air traffic control specialists. The FAA gave hiring preferences to veterans, those with AT-CTI program degrees, references from administrators and high test scores. In 2013, resident Obama-appointed FAA Administrator Michael Huerta deemed that these hiring standards had not produced a pleasing mix of air traffic controllers when...

Many of the nation's colleges have become a force for evil and a focal point for the destruction of traditional American values. The threat to our future lies in the fact that today's college students are tomorrow's teachers, professors, judges, attorneys, legislators and policymakers. A recent Brookings Institution poll suggests that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Of course, it is. Fifty-one percent of students think that it's acceptable to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. About 20 percent of students hold that it's acceptable to use...

Priceless Swedish crown jewels were stolen from the Strängnäs Cathedral in Sweden, the Swedish Police Authority said Tuesday. The thieves took two crowns and royal orb from the cathedral, which is located west of Stockholm, and took off in a motor boat that was moored just below the church. Police immediately pursued the suspects by boat and helicopters.

Denver Health officials announced Sunday afternoon they have a patient in isolation who could possibly have Ebola. They say the man recently traveled to the Congo and returned to the United States a couple of days ago. He became very sick Sunday morning, according to health officials. Then he was brought to the hospital from his hom They say the patient is in fair condition, and Ebola is being considered as a potential, but unlikely diagnosis. Officials say the region where the patient visited hasn’t had an Ebola case for more than 45 days. “The symptoms can mimic a lot...

- Passengers on flights from Newark Liberty International Airport to India are complaining about bed bug infested seats. In one case this week a family complained their infant was covered in bites and bleeding by the time the 17-hour flight landed in Mumbia. Pravin Tonsekar tweeted Air India photos of his seat with apparent bed bugs on them. Air India replied with a comment that it is: "sorry to hear this. Sharing the details with our maintenance team for corrective measures in this regard." Another passenger tweeted to the airline that his family few out of Newark on July 18...

Australia will consider adding a “values test” for those considering permanent residency in order to protect its “extraordinarily successful” multicultural society, Malcolm Turnbull said. The prime minister confirmed what his citizenship and multicultural minister Alan Tudge told the Australia/UK Leadership Forum overnight, where he floated the idea of a “values” test to fend off “segregation”. Tudge told his London audience “our ship is slightly veering towards a European separatist multicultural model and we want to pull it back to be firmly on the Australian integrated path”. “Some of the challenges to social cohesion that we are facing today are similar...

Terror as curiosity: countless sufferings without the realization of such... In 1983, Robert Irwin wrote a fantasy novel titled ‘The Arabian Nightmare’ about a young Englishman who was dragged into a whirlwind of sinister events in Cairo. The Arabian nightmare he learned was like a disease or a curse. It was terrible and obscene, monotonous, but yet fearful. It brought countless sufferings without the realization of such… The Arabian nightmare has come to the West. It has come invisibly and struck it like an evil curse. It subdued Western people gradually - through arsons, sexual violence, “Salafi” vice squad and...

A brave woman has revealed how she was brutally raped and abused by more than 70 men - but most are still walking the streets today. Kate Elysia, who was 18 when she was first raped, says she believed she was an inhuman "sex thing" after being repeatedly attacked. A victim of grooming gangs, she says she was trafficked "all over England" and given to many men - sometimes up to 10 in one night. “They degraded me to the point where I’d become this sex thing, this thing that wasn’t human, but just an object,” she says in a...

The NYPD has released footage showing a large pack of young men believed to be gang members beating and stabbing a 14-year-old in The Bronx – two days before another local teenager was slashed to death in the borough. The attack took place at 5.30pm on June 18 in the median of the Bronx River Parkway, not far from the East Gun Hill Road exit. Police officers responded to the scene to find the 14-year-old victim lying unconscious and unresponsive, and suffering from multiple stab wounds all over his body.

anonymous email came in over the transom this morning: Hi, Stacy. During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of two...

The bar keeps dropping on state math exams — and critics are saying it’s because officials are desperate for high graduation rates. Kids only need to score a measly 30 percent on this month’s Algebra 1 Regents test to pass, according to new state guidelines. Students who manage just 26 out of 86 total points will get a heavily weighted score of 65 — the minimum required for passage. That’s the lowest standard since the state introduced the test four years ago.

I always knew that my alma mater, Harvard University, discriminates against Asians.  But I was surprised to learn how the university does it.  A lawsuit filed has shed some light on the matter. (By the way, although I am not a racist, I despise the word "Asians" – it can mean anything from Chinese to Pakistanis.  Although I will play along and continue to use the word "Asians," we are mostly talking about Chinese heritage here, with a smattering of Korean heritage, Japanese heritage, Filipino heritage, and a few other groups of applicants.) Harvard is being sued by a group claiming that Asians were...

Michigan .. Justin Lee killed in hit-and-run crash. A mother grieved the loss of her teenage son, who was killed while riding a bicycle in Wixom, as the man accused of hitting him learned about his charges Thursday. Miguel A. Ibarra Cerda is accused of fatally striking Justin Lee, 14, with a minivan and driving away. Lee was riding a bicycle Monday on Potter Road; police said Cerda ditched the minivan in Commerce Township and fled. "My little boy was my everything. He was the reason why I got up every day," said Justin's mother, Pattie Lee. Cerda is charged...

Today Ben Weingarten launched a new podcast, Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten, of likely interest. Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten features compelling long-form conversations with exceptional thinkers and doers -- primarily though not exclusively of a conservative/libertarian bent -- on the most critical ideas and issues of our time, and all time. The podcast aims to inject a counter-narrative to the prevailing progressive orthodoxy, and elicit deep insights on fundamental questions ranging from national security to economics, and philosophy to culture – fostering timeless discussions on what really matters, rather than chasing the news cycle. Here are the inaugural episodes:...

As a small-plane pilot, I keep up on aviation news, subscribing to multiple magazines, websites and podcasts devoted to flying. So it is a measure of just how hard the Obama admin worked to hide this outrageous story from the public that I had never heard about it until Tucker Carlson brought it to light this evening. Turns out, diversity activists during the Obama era decided that there wasn’t enough diversity among air traffic controllers. So, without a vote, the Obama FAA scrapped its merit-based rules and replaced them with a system contrived to benefit “diverse” applicants. As Tucker explained...