Free Republic

The hostility she’s felt from the public recently wasn’t necessarily the last straw in television news photographer Lori Bentley-Law’s decision to quit the business after 24 years, but it was one of them. Bentley-Law’s recent blog post explaining why she was leaving Los Angeles’ KNBC-TV hit home for many colleagues. While President Donald Trump’s attacks on the media are usually centered on national outlets like CNN and The New York Times, the attitudes unleashed have filtered down to journalists on the street covering news in local communities across the country. When a president describes the press as enemies of the...

“No, Mama Steph, go away. I want Mama Sabby to read to me!” These words from my 3-year-old daughter, Marty, level me like the most withering insult. Lately, her extreme favoritism for my spouse, Sabrina, has reached new heights. She even gets mad if I peck Sabrina on the cheek or place my arm around her seat as she drives. I distinctly remember rebuffing my dad’s affections and interfering with his attempts to kiss or hug my mom when I was a kid. It makes me wonder: Am I the dad in this family? At one time, I might have...

The latest report from the world’s climate scientists has made clear the size of the challenge if the world is to stay below the global warming limit hoped for in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, with current trends we are likely to cross this threshold within the next two decades because we are already two-thirds of the way there. But how do we know what is driving these climate trends? It comes down to the same kind of detective work that typifies a crime scene investigation, only here we are dealing with a case that encompasses the whole world. Let...

Anatomy Does Not Determine Gender, Experts Say By Denise Grady Oct. 22, 2018 Defining gender as a condition determined strictly by a person’s genitals is based on a notion that doctors and scientists abandoned long ago as oversimplified and often medically meaningless. Researchers who have studied gender issues and provided health care to people who do not fit the typical M/F pigeonholes said that the Trump administration’s latest plan to define gender goes beyond the limits of scientific knowledge. “The idea that a person’s sex is determined by their anatomy at birth is not true, and we’ve known that it’s...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law. ... the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. The department argued in its memo that key...

Michael Kelly, the legendary journalist who died covering the invasion of Iraq in 2003, once wrote that the “animating impulse” of modern liberalism was to “marginalize itself and then enjoy its own company. And to make itself as unattractive to as many as possible.” “If it were a person,” he added, “it would pierce its tongue.” [snip] t pierced its tongue on CNN this week, when Hillary Clinton told Christiane Amanpour that “you cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” And when former Attorney General Eric Holder said...

DALLAS — After church on a recent Sunday, Emily Mooney smiled as she told her girlfriends about her public act of rebellion. She had slapped a “Beto for Senate’’ sticker on her S.U.V. and driven it to her family’s evangelical church. But then, across the parking lot, deep in conservative, Bible-belt Texas, she spotted a sign of support: the same exact sticker endorsing Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat who is challenging Senator Ted Cruz. “I was like, who is it?” she exclaimed. “Who in this church is doing this?” Listening to Ms. Mooney’s story, the four other evangelical moms standing around...