Free Republic

I live in the Pacific Northwest and I often visit and comment on https://mynorthwest.com But they recently stopped allowing people to comment on their stories. You get this message now: "MyNorthwest has disabled commenting across its websites. We are no longer able to moderate at a level that's required to maintain civil discourse. Thank you." Have other people experience the same with their local news sites?

When a movement says, “silence is violence,” it is no longer democratic, but a totalitarian movement that opposes the very essence of choice -- the right to be apolitical. Mass movements with ostensible democratic goals start out toward benign change, but their successes only feed a hunger for greater political transformation. Left to the streets, that hunger is attracted to the extremes as the extremists are attracted to it. When the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who has passionately sided with the opponents of police brutality, is heckled out of a demonstration because he refuses to commit to the mob’s...

She’s just a kid trying to help make peoples’ lives a little easier. A little less painful. And now she’s under attack for it – and her family is facing death threats. You’ve probably heard of Megan. Her non-profit is called Blue Line Bears. She, with the help of her family, takes the uniforms of fallen police officers and turns them into teddy bears for the surviving family members. In an episode of Behind the Uniforms from season one, she shared the story of how she started her non-profit to help them. She’s just a kid trying to help make...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. It's casual FRiday here at the Canteen. Pull up a seat and relax. We serve coffee, tea, conversation and music. Our AWESOME military, our AWESOME allies, and their families are welcomed and honored here. No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a cup or a glass, and...

HughesNet Satellite Internet was sold to me as 10 times faster than DSL service. Well ... that's not what I've experienced in the last month since I switched from DSL to Satellite Internet. I tried to watch a HBO movie and it took me three days to finally get the it, and then only in the early morning hours. HughesNet Satellite Service's excuse ... "With so many people at home due to the Covid-19 situation, our system is overloaded." I signed up for a two year contract with both internet and phone service, and in less than a month I've...

OAKLAND, Calif. - Two trustees at Oakland Unified School District are advocating to eliminate police from patrolling school campuses, saying these positions could be turned into "peace and culture keepers" and other less authoritative positions. The context of the resolution comes as many in the nation are questioning the role of police, after a white officer killed a black man, George Floyd, by sitting on his neck in Minneapolis over Memorial Day. Calls to "defund" and reform police departments have been repeated throughout the country. On Wednesday, Oakland Unified School board members Roseann Torres and Shanthi Gonzales will introduce a...

Gordon Klein, professor of accounting, has been suspended for three weeks Non-black students emailed asking for leniency in marking black peers' work Klein replied that he had no idea who was black given the course was online He asked how he should grade people of multiple ethnicities Klein noted MLK's fight for people to not be evaluated based on skin color UCLA's Anderson School of Business described his email as 'disturbing' A petition to see Klein removed now has almost 20,000 signatures Academics have defended Klein for 'treating students on the basis of equality'

WARNING DISTRESSING CONTENT Police have arrested 11 people over a child abuse ring in Germany as investigators found 500 terabytes of sick footage of children in a basement Police have arrested 11 people after uncovering a child abuse ring in Germany. Investigators found footage of two boys, aged 10 and five, being 'brutally' raped by four men during a search of a summer house in Munster, Germany. It is believed the children were drugged before being abused for hours. Evidence of the horrific acts was found in a fake ceiling, with officers also seizing more than 500 terabytes of encrypted...

The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) casts itself as a spontaneous uprising born of inner city frustration, but is, in fact, the latest and most dangerous face of a web of well-funded communist/socialist organizations that have been agitating against America for decades. The Black Lives Matter movement claims that only whites can be racists. And while justifying violence to achieve “social justice,” the movement’s goal is to overthrow our society to replace it with a Marxist one. Many members of the black community would be shocked to learn that the intellectual godfathers of this movement are mostly white Communists, “queers”...

(I'm not too confident it will.) It will be interesting to track.

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) on Thursday criticized the placement of additional barriers outside the White House amid ongoing protests in the city against police brutality and racial inequality. "Keep in mind that that's the people's house," Bowser said during a press conference after workers were seen erecting additional fencing and barriers on the grounds surrounding the White House. Officials placed concrete barriers along Pennsylvania Avenue NW near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and erected tall fencing along 17th Street NW early Thursday morning. The moves came after law enforcement placed additional fencing on Pennsylvania Avenue NW and parts...

Democratic governors in Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware turned down requests from Defense Secretary Mark Esper to offer National Guard troops to help with security in Washington, DC. In some instances, the Defense Department was counting on troop support from those states before the governors intervened. "I can confirm that personnel from the NY National Guard were expected to move to DC last night, but permission was withdrawn by the governor," Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday morning.

President Donald Trump could announce as early as Monday night that he’s invoking a 213-year-old federal law that would allow him to deploy active-duty U.S. troops to respond to protests in cities across the country, according to four people familiar with the decision. The military police forces would come from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and possibly Fort Belvoir in Virginia and could arrive in Washington within hours, these people said. Trump’s decision to invoke the Insurrection Act, adopted in 1807, to deploy troops comes as his frustrations mount over the protests that have followed the death of George Floyd,...

Rage, fury spans U.S. as Minnesota governor warns violence could last days Chaos spread across the country Friday night as thousands of protesters demanded justice after the killing of George Floyd Live Blog / George Floyd death and nationwide protests Portland declares 'State of Emergency' Head of African Union criticizes U.S. for George Floyd death Houston police make 200 arrests, chief thanks 'peaceful' protesters Google postpones Android 11 unveiling amid U.S. protests Ex-officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck charged with third-degree murder Wife of officer charged with murder of George Floyd announces she's divorcing him George Floyd and officer...

A former club owner in south Minneapolis says the now-fired police officer and the black man who died in his custody this week both worked security for her club up to the end of last year. George Floyd and now-former Officer Derek Chauvin both worked security at the El Nuevo Rodeo club on Lake Street, according to Maya Santamaria. Santamaria owned the building for nearly two decades, but sold the venue within the last few months.

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. It's casual FRiday here at the Canteen. Pull up a seat and relax. We serve coffee, tea, conversation and music. Our AWESOME military, our AWESOME allies, and their families are welcomed and honored here. No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a cup or a glass, and start a conversation....

"I’m really sorry," network president Susan Zirinsky said Wednesday on an all-staff Zoom meeting about the cuts. "There is not a person who won’t be missed." CBS News was hit hard by a round of corporate cost-cutting that saw "a single-digit percentage" of the network's news staffers laid off, according to an estimate given by network president Susan Zirinsky during a Wednesday afternoon all-hands conference. Based on the size of the news network — which totals more than 500 staffers — employees did the back-of-the-envelope math and estimated that about 50 staffers were cut, though the network has not said...

Here is the story of its mission and its founder, Konstantin Malofeev--the Russian tycoon who decided to open an Orthodox news channelOn a sunny afternoon in Moscow, the Russian tycoon Konstantin Malofeev is holding court in the studios of his television channel Tsargrad TV, dressed in a designer suit, a blue silk handkerchief peeking from his breast pocket. Above him is a makeshift cathedral cupola weighing in at half a ton. Behind him are 24ft-high windows through which the Kremlin’s red towers are visible, their glass stars glistening. Malofeev is in a buoyant mood. In a sign of his growing...

The father said his son is not vicious, but that he just has mental health issues. And the father then said this, “He said his son called 911 and was taken to a mental health facility in Ann Arbor. Last Wednesday, he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and said he was supposed to be taken to another facility to be quarantined And according to WXYZ Jaydon was moved the hospital last Wednesday. The assault on the elderly man took place LAST FRIDAY! And police did not arrest Jaydon until yesterday — a week later — at that same nursing home! Jaydon...

The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt has come under criticism for a column in which she wrote that she would "vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them" given the importance of ending President Trump's White House tenure. "I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them. He wasn't my candidate, but taking back the White House is that important," Pollitt wrote. Pollitt also write that she would also vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee even if she believed sexual assault allegations leveled against him by former Senate staffer Tara Reade regarding an incident...