Free Republic

You’ve seen them. Peeking out from sidebars, jiggling and wiggling for your attention, popping up where you most expect them: those “One Weird Trick” ads ... [Snip]

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker is seeking a redefinition of "violent crimes." As a co-sponsor of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 (SRCA), Booker is urging "a candid conversation about how we determine whether crimes are violent or not." "For too long a racist mindset has dominated how we look at crime," Booker charged. "In white society stabbing or shooting someone is considered abnormal and violent. This unfairly stigmatizes Black culture. Sentencing a minority offender based on white standards disproportionately impacts a vibrant segment of society." Booker urged that "we recognize the longer term history of racial...

Mr. Beck. You found Zuck and Company cordial--they just find you useful In the wake of reports that Facebook censors conservative voices, media figure Glenn Beck met with company chairman Mark Zuckerberg and emerged from the meeting, as he put it, “convinced that Facebook is behaving appropriately and trying to do the right thing.” Nothing to see here, move along. Unfortunately, this is nonsense. Beck admits in his article on this subject, “I am not an expert on data or AI or algorithms.” Neither am I. But the Facebook censorship in the news isn’t about artificial intelligence but human intelligence—and...

Show trial against officer ends in acquittal A white Baltimore police officer accused of wrongdoing in the highly politicized death of black career criminal Freddie Gray last year that sparked days of rioting has been completely exonerated by the courts. No matter what Baltimore’s corrupt Democrat-controlled political machine tries, it can’t manage to convict anyone in the unusual April 19, 2015 death of Gray, a 25-year-old man with a long arrest record. Gray passed away a week after his arrest after apparently suffering ultimately fatal injuries during transport in a police paddy wagon.

Until we recapture the true meaning of elected officials as representative servants, and use our tongues to reinstate that fact, we will suffer the consequences of our own folly Deeper than PC mania that has skewed culture, government role titles have been reconfigured to instill reverence over familiarity. The repetitive wrongful identification of officials has produced a mindset far different from the original intent of government. All this to say that we’ve inadvertently changed our relationship to government by allowing changes in address to occur. At the top of the list is how we refer to elected officeholders – we’ve...

This is a battle to the death for the soul of America The transgendered bathroom issue has typically elicited a tepid response from many on the Republican side of the aisle and among the more libertarian and economic types of conservatives, with the battle cry “this is not the hill to die on!” being echoed through the conservative camps, carried in Paul Revere fashion by many of the elites and the Sons of Libertine, who never seem to find any piece of real estate worthy of spilled blood. Still the question that must be asked is why isn’t this the...

Calling on Biden: Rumour has it that the Dems have been stampeded into a panic Hillary supplants Barney Frank as ‘Banking Queen’ Move over ‘Banking Queen’ Barney ‘Fwank’ of Rush Limbaugh parody fame, Hillary Clinton is here. And a meaner, more money-crazed Banking Queen you’ll never get. Special: Say Goodbye To Snoring, Say Hello To Sleep Hillary doesn’t have Barney’s signature lisp, in either the Banking Queen parody or in real life, but she can bark like a dog.

When Pope Francis met with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb on Monday, he told him that “our meeting is the message“. So precisely what kind of “message” was Pope Francis attempting to convey? Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb is the Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, and some have described him as “the highest figure in Sunni Islam“. The Daily Mail said that the meeting between these two men was a “historic bid to reopen dialogue between the two churches”, and as you will see below this is yet another in a long series of attempts by Pope Francis to build bridges between Catholicism...

Islam is not just a religion, or a form of government. It is a complete system, encompassing religious, legal, political, economic and military components, with each being utilized as required. “Muslims” are those that follow the Islamic doctrine. Islamic domination occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called “religious rights.” When politically correct and culturally diverse societies, such as ours, agree to seemingly reasonable Muslim demands for their religious liberties, they are subsequently enforced on the remainder of the population through the use of their political and military components. Dr. Peter Hammond, in his...

While kinda sorta stumbling into an understanding of why Trump won the nomination. I am sure every Donald Trump supporter in this nation lies awake at night wondering, “What does Jeb Bush think of me? He doesn’t think I’m an idiot, does he? Because I don’t think I could handle that!” Rest easy, sweet pups. I have wonderful news for you. No, Jeb does not think you’re a bunch of idiots. In his classic low-energy way, Jeb! has given you all absolution for any hint of idiocy:

Cautionary tale: When socialism is instituted democratically, it’s a good indication that your days of making decisions democratically may be numbered With Venezuela spinning out of control, it’s said that U.S. officials fear a military coup. We ought to ask “Why?” Democracy on the brain can be a dangerous condition. George W. Bush pursued his unwise “nation-building” policies under the assumption that, as he put it, “democracies don’t go to war with each other.” (Note: technically we’re speaking of “republics,” not democracies.) So WWI was the “war to end all wars,” and now there’s the political system to end all...

Part II: The Flight from Romania to Paris “A year later I went back to the country and stole my wife. Nobody knew I was coming.” Albani had no idea what happened to the unassembled submarine he had abandoned when he escaped to France and never returned. He had sent drawings to each factory to manufacture the parts. The authorities had no idea what he was going to make with all these separate sections; some of them were conical, like a piece of pipe, with flanges and bolts; they looked like something designed by an idiot who did not know...

Reporting the news in 2016 has not only come a long way, it’s gone down a long way--all the way down to the bottom of the cess pool My first dreaded errand as a rookie reporter back in my long ago days as a print journalist was to fetch a photograph from the relatives of of a high school youngster who had been found face down in a creek one month before his never-to-be graduation day. This was one of the editor-imposed duties for new reporters working the weekend shift. Special: [ALERT] Your Public Data Is Posted Online For All...

I'm praying that Venezuela can find a way back from this. And that the United States isn't dumb enough to go down the same road In case you haven’t heard, Venezuela went all in on feeling the Bern more than a decade ago. Socialism has been about as complete a disaster there as it’s possible for a thing to be. Just to give you one example: How does a country with more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia end up with a gas crisis? I’ll tell you how: A corrupt central-planning government mismanages its resources while making it impossible for anyone...

Much of this is intended simply to anger us and break our will to resist. We need to understand that fact. The whole transgendered bathroom nonsense is a classic example A thought occurred to me the other day, which does actually happen to me now and then; the whole of modern culture, the political correctness, the way the left approaches the rest of us, is very much a kind of boot camp for communism. The purpose of military boot camp is to break down the individual, to wed him to the group, to get him to believe things and do...

Writing for the National Review in 2014, Kevin Williamson had the gall to claim that the transgender star Laverne Cox was “not a woman.” Not only so, but Williamson continued to refer to Cox as “he” throughout his article.Then, referring to Katie Couric’s interview with Cox in which she infamously “asked him about whether he had undergone surgical alteration,” Williamson wrote, “and God help her if she had misdeployed a pronoun, which is now considered practically a hate crime.” Again, that was in 2014. Today, in some states, it is a crime to “misdeploy” a pronoun, which would mean referring to Laverne...

Before the NRA meeting, it was well known that open carry would not be discouraged.  I entered Freedom Hall at the Louisville Kentucky Expo center this morning, as people were registering.  Within a minute, I had spotted three open carriers, and managed to get pictures.  From nraam.org: Firearms Carry Policy During the 2016 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, lawfully carried firearms will be permitted at Annual Meeting venues including the Kentucky Exposition Center (KEC), KFC Yum! Center Arena, and Kentucky International Convention Center (KICC) in accordance with Kentucky law. Firearms and knives will be prohibited in any areas temporarily...

Bad things happens when good people stay silent. Dr David Berger is speaking out.Above is a photo of my grandmother, Margot von Bentheim, taken with my mother in the Spring of 1925. She would have been 60 when I was born, but she died at the age of 35.A Jewish refugee from the Nazis, she committed suicide, alone, despairing and destitute in Chile in 1941, leaving a six-year-old girl with no Spanish – my aunt – to be brought up in an orphanage.The girl was not found again by the family for nine years, by which time she could no longer...

Speaking from the White House Oval Office on Friday to press Congress to approve his request for $1.9 billion to fight the Zika virus, President Barack Obama said it is not as easy as building a wall to keep all mosquitoes out of the United States. “And understand that this is not something where we can build a wall to prevent — mosquitoes don’t go through Customs,” Obama said. “To the extent that we’re not handling this thing on the front end, we’re going to have bigger problems on the back end.” …

Ten Islamic words and concepts -- well understood by Islamic jihadists and others who strive to impose Sharia law on us  -- define and articulate the Islamic quest for world domination. However, few charged with "countering violent extremism" understand their meanings and none are permitted to consider such "islamophobic" Islamic concepts when doing their jobs. Thank you, Obama, CAIR and related Muslim Brotherhood - linked Quislings.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9MS964XWzc Imagine that while learning to "counter violent extremism" on behalf of the Obama-CAIR collective, you encounter a ravenous lion intent upon eating you for dinner. You have been assured, repeatedly, that it, like adherents...