Free Republic

A New Jersey girl had a once in a lifetime thrill this week when she went to the White House to meet President Barack Obama and even had a chance to sit in his chair in the Oval Office. "I'm trying to be a community organizer," Sparkle Prevard, of Atlantic City, told Obama. Prevard visited Washington D.C. with several other young women who were all named Youth of the Year winners. The South Jersey teen, who graduated from Atlantic City High School, plans to attend Richard Stockton State College in the fall, according to the Boys & Girls Club in...

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson declared Monday that “reading the Quran” reminds him of “quintessential American values.” The Muslim Brotherhood-aligned influence operation he addressed was pleased. The rest of us should be alarmed. There are, of course, passages of the Koran that are peaceable and encourage tolerance. Presumably, those are the ones to which Mr. Johnson was referring. Unfortunately, according to the authorities of Islam and their supremacist doctrine of shariah, such passages have been explicitly replaced by others that are virulently hateful and intolerant. They demand adherents engage in holy war, not practice true American values. Mr. Johnson is...

More and more, posts and commentaries on the Internet in Russia and even abroad are generated by professional trolls, many of whom receive a higher-than-average salary for perpetuating a pro-Kremlin dialogue online. There are thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte, all increasingly focused on the war in Ukraine. Many emanate from Russia's most famous "troll factory," the Internet Research center, an unassuming building on St. Petersburg's Savushkina Street, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. In recent weeks, former employees have come forward to talk to RFE/RL about life inside the factory, where hundreds of people work...

An American blogger turned down the offer of a lifetime this past weekend: getting paid to do nothing. The slight catch was that he had to publish articles written by someone else on his blog and claim them as his own—no big deal, right? According to the blogger, David Swanson, after giving a talk at an anti-war event in Washington DC on March 20, he was approached by a young man with a thick Russian accent who introduced himself as Alexsei G. Padalko. This man showed Swanson his business card, which identified him as an air attaché assistant for the...

Pharrell Williams spoke to the UN General Assembly on International Day of Happiness according to the Daily Mail. At least, that is what the headline of the article is supposed to make you think.

You’ve probably heard the old statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters that they'd eventually pound out the complete works of Shakespeare. Now we know, thanks to the Internet, that this isn't true. The evidence can be seen by anyone who spends any time on Facebook, where sentient intelligence seems to have been replaced by boring insipid images. Facebook has gradually risen to a level of stature that’s taken on a dimension that’s even bigger than a posted photo of Kim Kardashian’s rear end. This premiere social media platform has evolved into an online political playground that...

The Ukrainian government needs to find a “fine line” that would allow it to both protect free speech and fight Kremlin propaganda, a top official of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. There has been a debate in Ukraine on whether pro-Kremlin media, which are inciting Russia’s war against Ukraine and fabricating lies, should be banned. While some argue that they are a threat to national security, others condemn such measures as an attack on free speech. “The Ukrainian government needs to find a very fine line with the help...

ST. PETERSBURG -- Last May, Tatiana N decided she wanted a higher salary than the average journalist can expect. After responding to an advertisement in the popular HeadHunter job-search website, she became a Kremlin-paid Internet troll. Tatiana -- who, like others interviewed for this story, asked that her last name not be used -- worked out of a 2,500-square-meter warehouse in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. The job paid 40,000 rubles a month, significantly more than the 25,000-30,000 most journalists make. But it came, she said, "with pain." Tatiana joined a round-the-clock operation in which an army of trolls disseminated...

3. “The social contract” A valid contract must be presented honestly and agreed to voluntarily, without duress or fraud. The social contract does not meet this standard because the state will initiate the use of force against anyone who does not voluntarily enter into the social contract. The state is also not automatically dissolved when it fails to uphold its obligations under the social contract, so the presentation is dishonest if it even occurs at all. Therefore, the social contract cannot be considered a legitimate contract.

Liberal philanthropist George Soros and the Ford Foundation have lavished groups supporting the administration’s “net neutrality” agenda, donating $196 million and landing proponents on the White House staff, according to a new report. And now, as the Federal Communications Commission nears approving a type of government control over the Internet, the groups are poised to declare victory in the years-long fight, according to the report from MRC Business, an arm of the conservative media watchdog, the Media Research Center. “These left-wing groups not only impacted the public debate and funded top liberal think tanks from the Center for American Progress...

We hear a lot about the United States' Judeo-Christian heritage, but according to President Obama, "Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding." That's what the president told a White House conference on "countering violent extremism" on Wednesday. Obama has said similar things in the past: "I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” Obama said in a June 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt. "Islam has always been part of America," he said in a 2010 statement marking the start of Ramadan. And in a 2014 statement marking Eid, Obama...

Everyone wants to know whether Jeb Bush can survive his support for Common Core and comprehensive immigration reform in today's Republican Party. One deal-breaker that might surprise people, though: His opposition to gay marriage. NBC News and Marist College are out with a batch of new 2016 primary polls. And as you might expect, Common Core, immigration reform, belief in man-made climate change and support for raising taxes on the wealthy are among those with the potential to alienate lots of conservatives. But according to the polls, so does opposition to gay marriage--an issue on which Bush agrees with basically...

Contestant: "Who is Barrack Hussein Obama?" Trebek: "I'm sooooo sorry. Who..." All of a sudden, Trebek's legs start to shake, uncontrollably. The huge bulge in his tight pants starts to vibrate violently. Trebek stops; reaches down; he answers his i-phone1.

RIGA/VILNIUS — Responding to what they see as a wave of Kremlin propaganda over Ukraine, the governments of the three Baltic states are keeping a wary eye on pro-Moscow television channels and stepping up their own broadcasts in Russian. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all part of the Soviet Union until 1991, are nervous of a newly assertive Russia and fret that their large Russian-speaking minorities could be susceptible to Moscow's message. But at a time of dramatic developments in eastern Ukraine, with fierce battles followed by a new cease-fire deal this week, the Baltic efforts to fight back over the...

"Historically, Catholics have argued that the papacy was a divinely-given institution papacy (Matt 16:17-19) etc., and they have relied on the notion that there have been bishops of Rome extending all the way back to the time of Peter. This notion of bishops extending all the way back was thought to be actual history. In fact, as Shotwell and Loomis pointed out, in the General Introduction to their 1927 work "The See of Peter": With reference to the Petrine doctrine, however, the Catholic attitude is much more than a "pre-disposition to believe." That doctrine is the fundamental basis of the...

For the full list of slogans, as translated by BBC Monitoring, read on: Let us all turn out in the general offensive to hasten final victory in the revolutionary spirit of Paektu! Let us greet the 70th anniversaries of national liberation and Party founding with high political enthusiasm and brilliant labour feats! Let us glorify the 70th anniversaries of national liberation and Party founding as revolutionary, auspicious events noteworthy in the history of Kim Il Sung's nation and Kim Jong Il's Korea! The great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are the eternal leaders of our revolution, the...

Kayla Mueller protested Israel for ISM. PalSolidarity reported: Today, 10th February, Kayla Mueller’s family confirmed she has been killed. Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of the popular committee in the village of Bil’in where Kayla joined the protests, told ISM: “Kayla came to Palestine to stand in solidarity with us. She marched with us and faced the military that occupies our land side by side with us. For this, Kayla will always live in our hearts. We send all our support to her family and will continue, like Kayla, to work against injustice wherever it is.” Kayla Mueller volunteered with the...

“And more than 1 in 4 women has experienced some form of domestic violence.” Wow, just wow. Gone are the days that the president makes false claims that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college. Now 20 percent of all women in America have been raped or nearly raped. And 25 percent of American women — not just college women — have experienced domestic violence. Let’s just think about that for a minute. The current population of the U.S. is 316.1 million, with women comprising about half. That means there are about 158 million women and...

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson says the government is growing increasingly savvy at evading reporters through the use of social media and other avenues to push “their propaganda and spin.” Speaking at a Hillsdale College conference on American journalism, the Emmy Award-winning journalist and Daily Signal senior independent contributor called out the press for going soft in pursuit of the truth.Attkisson said that “unless something pretty drastic happens, it stands to continue and get worse no matter who is president next.”The author of “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington” said it’s...

As a senior archivist for the KGB’s foreign-intelligence directorate, Vasili Mitrokhin had access to a treasure trove of information. He unveiled those secrets after defecting to Britain in 1992. One such secret concerned the “active measures” — the lies – the KGB had used against the West during the Cold War. In the 1980s, for example, the KGB spread a couple of particularly pernicious rumors. It claimed the United States had manufactured the AIDS virus and that rich Americans were murdering children in the Third World for organ-harvesting purposes. Framed by faux science and ideologically screened “experts,” and harnessing anti-American...