Free Republic

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York (CUNY) has announced a two-day conference which serves no purpose, except to condemn Israel, reflecting a simple double standard. In Gaza, Kuwait & Lebanon, homosexuality is illegal and the guilty (if lucky) face 3-10 years in jail. In the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, homosexual acts are punishable by death. After Qatar was awarded the 2022 Football World Cup, the President of the sport’s governing body in the country, said that gays should “refrain from sexual activity”. The Arab world, to put...

The elderly woman gunned down in an an execution-style murder in Chinatown last month is trying to help police find her killer from beyond the grave, her daughter said at an emotional funeral Thursday. The daughter of Xiao Ling Li, 70, who police believe was an innocent bystander caught up in a gangland-style killing meant to take down the woman she worked for, said she believes her mother is doing everything possible to get justice. "[I] believe my mother will help from the grave," said Xu Yin, 40, who flew from China to be present at her mother's funeral at...

Two weeks ago, in an unofficial inauguration ceremony at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi took off his mask of moderation. Before a crowd of scores of thousands, Morsi pledge to work for the release from US federal prison of Sheikh Omar al Rahman. According to the New York Times' account of his speech, Morsi said, "I see signs [being held by members of the crowd] for Omar Abdel Rahman and detainees' pictures. It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel Rahman." Otherwise known as the...

If there were any doubt that Eliot “Client 9” Spitzer has spiraled down into further delusion and irrelevance, it was erased Friday afternoon in an embarrassing and bizarre shootout between the disgraced former NY Attorney General and CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. At issue were allegations that a trove of private emails may exist showing the former purchaser of high-priced prostitutes launched a personally motivated prosecution against former AIG chief Hank Greenberg. Of the eight charges Spitzer brought against Greenberg, six have been dropped, with the last two in the process of being dismissed, according to Greenberg’s lawyer. Still, throughout the interview...

Well, now at least the debate is in the open and we can see just how questionable are the talking points of those who claim the United States has nothing to fear from Islamists. The New York Times publishes an article with the promising title of “Fast-Changing Arab World is Upending U.S. Assumptions,” yet sadly, the article shows that certain assumptions are not changing at all. Indeed, are not even discussed. To summarize the article’s thesis: before Obama’s election, the United States thought that pro-American regimes were good and radical Islamists were bad — but now we know better. For...

Bloomberg is currently accepting proposals for the apartments, which will be located on E 27th Street and First Avenue in Kips Bay. The apartments would help young professionals find appropriate housing in the city while they start their careers. The craziest thing about these 300-square-foot apartments (which are about the size of half a subway car) is that they will cost around $2,000 a month to rent. Under current zoning laws, all apartments must be at least 400 square feet, but Bloomberg said he plans to change the zoning laws to make the new micro-units legal.

The city’s first known Trayvon Martin mural is going up on a wall of an East New York laundromat - adding to a brewing campaign to make sure history doesn’t snub the slain teen’s image. Teenage boys will start painting the 100-foot picture July 16 on New Lots Laundromat’s wall underneath the elevated tracks of the IRT No. 3 train. The East New York mural will join a growing list of similar street art popping up in black neighborhoods across the country. “We want him to become a martyr, and it’s sad that we even have to say that,” said...

An MTA cop was clinging to life Wednesday after a violent confrontation with a man outside a Long Island Railroad station in Queens, sources said.

It’s heating up out there. The number of people shot in the city last week jumped nearly 50 percent compared with the same period last year — and a deadly mix of hotter temperatures and fewer stop-and-frisks is to blame, cops said yesterday. Sixty people were shot in the five boroughs last week — a 46 percent increase over last year’s 41 victims, police said. And that could just be the beginning, warned one law-enforcement source.

Self-righteous nag Michael Bloomberg is spending taxpayer money to protect New Yorkers from their lunch yet again... no problem tho with an appalling victory mosque to be built right on the ashes of Ground Zero -funded by terrorists- and named after the Muslim capitol of conquered Spain... makes sense!But in the name of fiscal discipline, he's only blowing $130K of city money on Operation Chicken Noodle... we'll be picking up the tab for the rest: New York Post: Mayor Bloomberg's latest health campaign -- cutting salt intake -- has targeted soup as one of the big sodium offenders to be...

CNSNews.com) - At a White House reception held Friday evening in honor of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Pride month, President Barack Obama celebrated a 1969 anti-police riot that started in what the New York Times reports was an illegal Mafia-owned bar for transvestites. “Now, each June since I took office, we have gathered to pay tribute to the generations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans who devoted their lives to our most basic of ideals--equality not just for some, but for all,” Obama said. “Together we’ve marked major milestones like the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, when...

The 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia has emerged as the world's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe, and it further has become entrenched in Australia, Canada and the United States with surprisingly little push back from law enforcement in those countries. Indeed, Nicola Gratteri, a top anti-Mafia prosecutor in Italy warns that "this mafia is quickly spreading in the United States, particularly in Florida and New York" as reported by Beatrice Borromeo for The Daily Beast: Gratteri's latest operations have led to the sentencing of 34 'Ndrangheta members and have uncovered a...

In an effort to combat obesity and all the health problems that are associated with it, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced a plan to ban the sale of sugar-sweetened drinks to 16 ounces or less. It also includes a $200 fine to vendors who violate it. If passed, the ban could take place as early as next March. The ban would not include diet drinks, juice-based drinks, or alcoholic beverages. It would also not include drinks sold at convenience or grocery stores.So, my first reaction was, “Um, what’s the point? If I can’t get a large soda at...

The Obama’s Star-Studded New York Night Tonight is the Obama campaign’s “New York Night” of star-studded fundraisers, with a much-advertised event at actress Sarah Jessica Parker’s home and a ritzy gala-concert at The Plaza Hotel featuring a performance by Mariah Carey. Both President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama will attend. The Parker event, which is co-hosted by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, will raise an estimated $2 million for the Obama Victory Fund from ticket sales — plus millions more from an online grassroots sweepstakes, campaign officials said. The contest was pushed heavily online, through social media and in the...

Watch out, moviegoers -- Nanny York City is taking aim at yet another of life's gluttonous pleasures. On the heels of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's call for a ban on jumbo-sized sodas and other sugary drinks, city officials are now considering restrictions on treats ranging from popcorn to milkshakes. At a meeting Tuesday, members of the New York City Board of Health expressed support for Bloomberg's proposal. They then started brainstorming other ways to cut the fat, according to MyFoxNY.com. Member Bruce Vladeck proposed limiting movie-theater popcorn containers. "The popcorn isn't a whole lot better than the soda," he said. Another...

While life expectancy in many parts of the United States is dropping, it has increased by 10 years in Manhattan since 1987. Researchers largely attribute that rise — the fastest in the nation — to a crackdown by the New York City health department on unhealthy behaviors. Manhattanites can now expect to live to the ripe old age of 82, and the average life expectancy across all five New York City boroughs is 80.6 years. That's three years beyond the national average, and a striking turnaround since the city's low point in 1990, when life expectancy there trailed the U.S....

The San Francisco Examiner calls it a “dirty secret:” Groups of black people targeting Asians for violence, robbery and even murder. “In 85 percent of (300) physical assault crimes, the victims were Asian and the perpetrators were African American,” the newspaper said recently, citing a police study. In Philadelphia, secrets may be even more violent and widespread. Over the last three years, the Philadelphia Daily News found “at least 15 home invasions or other attacks on Asian business owners outside their businesses in Philadelphia, Delaware and Montgomery counties in 2008, followed by another spike of at least 19 actual or...

Both can’t be telling the truth. One is lying. The New York Times says that the national-security leaks that exposed our cyber-war against Iran and how our drone strikes against terrorists operate came from “aides” to the president and “members of the president’s national security team who were in the [White House Situation Room]” during key discussions, as well as current American officials involved with the program who spoke anonymously because “the effort remains highly classified.” The author of one of the Times stories, David Sanger, writes that some of his sources would be fired for divulging classified material to...

The quotation of the week last week had to be that of Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman in an opinion piece for the New York Times. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology, was among those who publicly defended New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to ban the sale of sugared soft drinks in cups larger than 16 ounces. And he did so using, of all things, evolution. Now, we all know that humans have always needed — or evolved to need — carbohydrates for energy. So how could evolution argue for Mayor Bloomberg's ban on sugar, a pure...

A Coney Island [Brooklyn, New York] principal has pulled Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” from a kindergarten “moving up” ceremony, out of concern that Greenwood’s patriotic song was age-inappropriate and potentially offensive. “We don’t want to offend other cultures,” teachers quoted Greta Hawkins, the principal of the Edna Cohen School, as saying to defend her decision to nix “God Bless the USA” from the ceremony, the New York Post reports. Greenwood’s song had been sung at previous school functions, and students in five classes reportedly spent months rehearsing for the moving up ceremony. Department of Education spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti...