Free Republic

In 1996, Reginald Dwayne Betts — a 16-year-old honor student with braces — used a pistol to carjack a man who had been sleeping in his vehicle. Shortly thereafter, he was caught, sentenced as an adult and sent to an adult prison, where he served more than eight years, including one year in solitary at a supermax facility. "I was 5 feet, 5 inches and 120 pounds. I went to prison with grown men, and I went into what people readily acknowledge as a treacherous and a wild place," Betts tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "My judge, when he sentenced...

More and more colleges and universities are allowing students to choose their own gender pronouns, meaning instead of just "he" and "she," the options now include pronouns like "ze," which are intended to be gender neutral. Harvard is one of the universities that made the change official this year. Now, undergraduate students have a variety of pronouns to choose from when they register. Van Bailey, the director of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Queer student life at Harvard College talks with NPR's Michel Martin about how Harvard is implementing and reacting to the changes. On what led to the change...

When I arrived in New York City 28 years ago to begin my national radio program, my objective was to have the most-listened-to show in the country. At that time, the national broadcast media included three television networks and CNN. That was it. There were 125 radio stations doing talk radio, and I started on 56 of them. No one had ever succeeded in syndicating a national daytime radio show, and I was predicted to fail, too. But I didn’t. What was different about my show was that I was the only conservative voice in national broadcast media. I was...

Ending homelessness isn't just about finding a home. Sometimes, it's about finding a nice home — a place that's bright, modern and healthy to live in. That's the idea fueling the development of a number of buildings around the country, as communities try to move chronically homeless people off the streets. In downtown Washington, D.C., one of those buildings is currently going up right beside NPR's headquarters. Still under construction, the structure looks a little like four huge blocks, stacked atop each other and slightly askew. At 14 stories high, it will have a striking view of the U.S. Capitol...

Southern pride. In the heated debate surrounding the Confederate Flag, the defense offered by many has been that the symbol isn't representative of a culture built on slavery and racism but is, instead, a banner representing that Southerners are simply proud of their home, their people and their culture. "What other symbol immediately lets the world know you are from the South?" they argue. To tackle the problem, Studio 360, a national public radio program, commissioned a Texas-based design firm to design a new flag to represent the modern South. With a diverse team of designers with ties to both...

Nadia Bolz-Weber was a stand-up-comic with a drinking problem who opened up a church for people who didn't belong. "My job is to ... remind people that they're absolutely loved," she says. Her new memoir is 'Accidental Saints.'

~snip stuff above Finally, a listener named Juana Oner, who said she was from the "Hartford area" of Connecticut, wanted to know why a search of NPR.org turned up no coverage of the protests at more than 300 Planned Parenthood clinics this past weekend. Gerry Holmes, an NPR deputy managing editor who was the editor on duty that day, told me, "The network was notified of the planned events, but that information did not make it to me as duty editor for Saturday. And on the day of the protests, I didn't get notice from any of our member stations...

Ben Carson alleged in an interview with Fox News Wednesday that Planned Parenthood puts most of its clinics in black neighborhoods to "control the population" and that its founder, Margaret Sanger, "was not particularly enamored with black people." Planned Parenthood has been a target on the campaign trail after a series of sting videos was released alleging the organization illegally profits from selling aborted fetal tissue. Carson, a famed neurosurgeon turned Republican presidential candidate, has been a vocal opponent of the group. He was also in the news this week after reports surfaced that he once used aborted fetal tissue...

Every time Republicans have threatened to end funding for the Public Broadcasting System and its radio cousin at National Public Radio, we all knew what to expect. Liberal supporters of the networks would trot out Big Bird, Elmo, Kermit, and the rest of the adorable “Sesame Street” gang of Muppets. Generations of Americans children have grown up with the PBS show. Rather than being forced to defend the indefensible notion of a taxpayer-funded government broadcasting system in the age of cable and the Internet, the argument instead turned into one about mean conservatives trying to pull the plug on a...

Nothing like one publicly funded organization “fact checking” another. Bush is right that Planned Parenthood receives $500 million a year in government funding — or, to be more exact, $528 million last year, according to Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report.That totals more than 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s total $1.3 billion in revenue for the year, which suggests that the organization would be in some heavy financial trouble without that public funding.What programs are funding that money?Those public funds come from two programs: Medicaid, the health care program targeted at lower-income Americans, and Title X, a federal family planning...

Wisconsin public broadcasters lost almost $1.6 million in state funding in the budget signed by Gov. Scott Walker July 12. The cuts affect two organizations, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, which support Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio and provide other services. The ECB was hit hardest by state cuts, losing $1.1 million, while university-based support was reduced by about $460,000. The cut to ECB funds specifically targeted Wisconsin Media Lab, which curates free K-12 multimedia educational content tailored to the state’s academic standards. Lawmakers eliminated state funding for the program, which has a...

Audio for this story from All Things Considered will be available at approximately 7:00 p.m. ET. The 7-state, months-long U.S. military exercise that conspiracy theorists believe is a cover for a military takeover began this week. NPR's Arun Rath speaks with correspondent Wade Goodwyn about the exercise.

As we all remember, the media completely freaked out after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in favor of free speech. Taking aim primarily at the right-leaning Koch Brothers, the media posed as defenders of democracy against the corrupting influence of outside money in politics. As usual, the facts prove that the media are big fat liars. Although legions of left-wing corporations like NBC News, Politico, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, Univision, Comedy Central, MTV, HBO, and ESPN spend billions of dollars pushing a political agenda 24/7, the left-wing media want a...

In May, a fight between two rival motorcycle clubs turned into a bloodbath in Waco, Texas. Nine people were shot dead, and at least 20 were injured. In the end, 177 people were arrested and jailed on charges of engaging in organized crime. But many of them say they had nothing to do with these so-called outlaw motorcycle clubs — and nothing to do with the violence. Among them are Walt and Ester Weaver. Walt says he's stunned by the way authorities handled the situation. "Two months ago if you'd told me this could happen to this many people in...

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees this week approved $445 million in funding for CPB, but both proposals lacked earmarked funding of $40 million for PBS’s planned V6 Interconnection project. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bill Thursday that includes $445 million in advance funding for CPB and $25.7 million for PBS’s Ready to Learn program. The House Appropriations Committee approved its spending bill Wednesday. “The committee’s vote today represents an extraordinary endorsement of public television's work by both the Republican majority and the Democratic minority,” Association of Public Television Stations CEO Patrick Butler said in a prepared statement. “This...

Thank you, jury! In case you had any lingering doubts about the wisdom of these 12 good men and women, consider the scurvy crew that’s frothing at the mouth over the fate of the tousle-haired All-American boy on the cover of Rolling Stone. Moonbats, NPR, The Boston Globe, terrorists — but I repeat myself. A crackpot nun was flown up here from New Orleans five times on the taxpayers’ dime to gaze into Tousle Hair’s dreamy brown eyes and attest to his EBT card-carrying Third World hunkiness. The Joker gives the courthouse camera the finger, and now the jury gives...

Everybody has a particular figure in the news who drives them a little bonkers. You may recall that for some reason, media hosannas for Chelsea Clinton stick in my craw. I’m perfectly happy to see Chelsea Clinton go off and live a happy life as a mom or doing whatever she likes away from the public spotlight. But I’m tired of the media telling us she’s remarkably accomplished in her own right, her keynote addresses to conferences like SXSW, treating her like she’s an A-list celebrity and fascinating figure, the “Woman of the Year” and “Mom of the Year” awards,...

Ben Affleck persuaded the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules. The new Batman star, who supports a number of liberal causes, objected to the ancestry TV show airing how his distant relations were racist, leaked Sony emails reveal. Instead viewers were shown heartwarming stories of how his third grandfather was a mystic in the Civil War and how his sixth grandfather was a patriot who fought in the American Revolution. Daily Mail Online has reviewed a transcript of the show...

President Obama has tried really hard to stay out of the 2016 race for his job, except when it comes to one person: Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker. First, Obama ripped Walker last month for signing into law a right-to-work bill. Then, in an interview with NPR published Tuesday, the president said Walker needed to "bone up on foreign policy" after suggesting he would undo any nuclear pact with Iran were he to win control of the White House. Yet, the White House insists that Obama isn't going out of his way to rip Walker. "It's nothing personal," White House...

The United States should absorb as many as 11 million immigrants each year into its economy, NPR “Planet Money” founder Adam Davidson writes in The New York Times Magazine. “Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders,” he writes.His proposal would double the current U.S. population in only 29 years to over 637 million people.