Free Republic

The "online knitting and fiber arts community," Ravelry, declared Sunday that it is banning all vocal supporters of President Donald Trump from its website, and declared support for the current President akin to "white supremacy." Yes, a knitting website. Ravely describes itself as, "[a] place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, weavers and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools, project and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration. The content here is all user- driven; we as a community make the site what it is. Ravelry is a great place for you to keep notes about...

The 2019 Civil War Days might be the last hosted by the Lake County Forest Preserves after the district president questioned the appropriateness of the annual commemoration that features the Confederate flag. President Angelo Kyle said he would prefer to focus on environmental issues such as climate change. In 2015, the district staged Civil War Days shortly after South Carolina removed the battle flag from its Capitol. At the time, forest preserves officials said Confederate flags were not being displayed inappropriately and were used in a historical context. Kyle, who is African American, said that history is written by the...

YouTube on Wednesday announced that it updated its policies to officially ban videos that promote extremist ideologies such as white supremacy or caste superiority, a move that will likely result thousands of videos being removed. In a blog post on Wednesday, YouTube said it will begin "prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status." The Google-owned company said videos that "glorify Nazi ideology" would fall under that category. It also said it would begin promoting more "authoritative content"...

Almost 100 years after Confederate sympathizers named a major Virginia road after the president of their lost cause, Arlington County won approval from a state transportation board to rename Jefferson Davis Highway. The Commonwealth Transportation Board voted unanimously Wednesday morning to allow Arlington to change the name of the road — commonly known as Route 1 — to Richmond Highway by Oct. 1, after lobbying by the county, legislators, business and residential groups, and Gov. Ralph Northam (D). “What we just heard, through the unanimous vote and the words of the governor, is it’s past time,” said Christian Dorsey (D),...

When the head of Twitter's public policy department told the Senate he'd do more on conservative censorship, making it worse wasn't what most leaders had in mind! Unfortunately, that's exactly what seems to be happening -- to pro-lifers, Trump supporters, and even popular parody accounts. Three weeks ago, Carlos Monje Jr. was apologetic for the mistakes Twitter had made. A month later, he has a lot more to be sorry for. Their stories are different, but several victims of Twitter's bias have one thing in common: no one explained why. Mike Morrisson, who's been running a popular "AOC Press" account...

WATCH: Twitter Suspends Account Created to Track Anti-Trump Violence – @OANN pic.twitter.com/v9toIFVOkq — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) May 7, 2019 Twitter has suspended an account established to document violent attacks on supporters of President Trump. The One America News network, OAN, reported the account, @Magaphobiaconservative, had been set up by one of its reporters, Jack Posobiec. OAN said it’s not clear why the account was suspended and whether or not it will be reinstated. Posobiec explained “Magaphobia” is the “irrational or unfounded fear of President Trump and his supporters.” The Gateway Pundit pointed out there have been hundreds of attacks...

ShareTweetFlip David Horowitz, the 80-year-old conservative writer and founder of the Dave Horrowitz Freedom Center, was banned from Twitter this evening with no explanation from the big tech platform. Twitter has been in the midst of a purge over the past 24 hours, banning multiple parody accounts and an account that chronicled instances of violence against supporters of President Donald J. Trump last night. Tonight they continued their censorship spree by banning Horowitz, who is widely respected as an intellectual on both sides of the aisle. Horowitz is a conservative writer and commentator who has written dozens of books, including...

The Facebook press contact has extensive work with the Clinton family and Obama White HouseWhen Big League Politics contacted Facebook to clarify why Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos were banned by Facebook and Instagram, we discovered the Facebook employee assigned to handle these communications is the former Press Director of Hillary For America. Sarah Pollack is the Policy Communications Manager for Facebook who responded to Big League Politics when we sought comment on why Jones, Watson, Loomer, and Yiannopoulos were banned. She explained that users are no longer allowed to share videos or links including...

Facebook and Instagram took the extraordinary step last week of banning several “far right” commentators and one left-wing anti-Semite (yeah, that was news to The Washington Post) from their platforms entirely. It was the latest in a series of moves over the past several months and years designed to curb what the platforms’ liberal management and ownership see as “dangerous,” albeit not illegal, speech.Before Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and Milo, it was key “alt-right” figures like Jared Taylor, David Duke and Richard Spencer being purged from various platforms. Next, will it be religious groups that oppose gay marriage, anti-illegal immigration...

Students at Hofstra University are demanding the school remove a Thomas Jefferson statue. The group included other demands as well, including "mandated, comprehensive, cultural competency training.” Students at Hofstra University protested a statue of Thomas Jefferson on Friday at the second annual event, titled “Jefferson Has Gotta Go!” The statue has been the center of controversy on the campus and has been defaced with “DECOLONIZE” and “Black Lives Matter” signs and stickers. According to a media advisory sent by the Jefferson Has Gotta Go (JGG) campaign, the protest was held at Hofstra Breslin Hall. Organizers included “students of Hofstra University,...

Facebook announced Thursday afternoon that it had designated some high-profile people, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who's notorious for using anti-Semitic language, and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as "dangerous" and said it will be purging them from its platforms. Jones and his media outlet InfoWars had previously been banned from Facebook (FB) in in August 2018, but had maintained a presence on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. On Thursday, Jones and InfoWars will be barred from Instagram as well. Other people banned Thursday include fringe right-wing media personalities Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson....

When I spoke this March at an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation at the U.N. Convention on the Status of Women, I mentioned to the moderator that it must have seemed odd for Heritage to have invited a liberal feminist to their event as it was for me to be there. I went on to describe how I (and many other women) have been fired, harassed, or no-platformed by the left for disbelieving in gender identity fictions, including the existence of the “female penis.”As odd as everyone surely feels about those we’ve found ourselves agreeing with, we all...

House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) on Sunday offered a sharp rejoinder to President Trump’s lauding of Robert E. Lee as a “great general,” noting that Trump “always said that he hated losers.” “The fact of the matter is, Robert E. Lee was a great tactician,” Clyburn said on ABC News’s “This Week,” then added, “Was not a great person. Robert E. Lee was a slave owner and a brutal slave master. Thankfully, he lost that war. And I find it kind of interesting that the president is now glorifying a loser. He always said that he hated losers....

JUST IN: A Virginia judge in Charlottesville has ruled that the Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson statues in the city are Civil War Memorials and protected by law

Kate Smith, famous for “God Bless America,” has become the latest American to be jammed down the memory hole. The singer, who died in 1986 at age 79, sang the semi-national anthem, most famously at baseball games, especially Yankee Stadium, which began regularly playing the recording during the seventh-inning stretch after 9/11. It invariably elicited tears and a sense of unified purpose. But upon learning that Ms. Smith sang a song called “Pickaninny Heaven” and “That’s Why Darkies Were Born” in the early 1930s, the Yankees announced an end to the tradition, as did the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, which...

Has tech giant Google already made its presidential selection among the crowded field of Democrats? It would seem so, based on a report from a South American news site, of all places. Telesur is reporting that supporters of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders are complaining on social media that Act Blue, the mega-Leftie fundraising organ, purchased the “Bernie 2020” search term for advertisements in a bid to snatch up donations aimed at Sanders’ campaign on Google.

The end of the spring semester marks the 20th anniversary of my professorship at Duke, first as an assistant professor and then as an associate professor of the practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy. During this time, I regularly taught the required ethics class for all undergraduate public policy majors. I won multiple teaching awards, consistently received scores on student teaching evaluations above the school average and, in a Duke Chronicle poll of undergraduates, was ranked as one of the three most popular professors at Duke University for several years. Therefore, I was blindsided last April when informed...

CNN)A year after her 1986 death, the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers erected a statue to honor renowned singer Kate Smith, whose rendition of "God Bless America" was played during home games for decades, including the 2018-2019 season. But on Sunday the Flyers announced they had removed the statue, saying the team had discovered some of her songs contained racist lyrics and sentiments that were "incompatible" with the organization's values.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on Thursday called for the removal of a 50-foot arch at Fort Monroe that honors the former president of the Confederacy - two months after a blackface scandal nearly ended his time in office. The Daily Press reported that Northam's office presented a letter to the Fort Monroe Authority Board of Trustees supporting removal of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Arch, which was built near to where the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia some 400 years ago. The board's eight members voted unanimously for the structure's removal, though this is likely to be a long process...

The country music legend and civil rights leader Daisy Gatson Bates will replace controversial Civil War figures The times are changing, and so is the marble. Arkansas is leaving behind statues of the old guard and sending a few new faces to the U.S. Capitol. Civil rights icon Daisy Gatson Bates and musician Johnny Cash will join the Statuary Hall collection in D.C., replacing 19th-century attorney Uriah Milton Rose and statesman James Paul Clarke. The governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, made the plan official by signing a bill last week. Both Rose and Clarke were political figures during the Civil...