Free Republic

In a landmark settlement, the Pentagon has agreed to give full back pay to U.S. service members who were discharged due to their sexual orientation under the military's “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The payouts will be granted to service members dismissed from the military under the now-repealed policy on or after November 2004. “This means so much to those of us who dedicated ourselves to the military, only to be forced out against our will for being who we are,” former Air Force Staff Sgt. Richard Collins said in a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought...

No, you won’t learn what you’re seeking to learn in the request itself. Don’t be ridiculous. That will take months. What you’ll learn is exactly how much effort the people with a legal duty to service the public’s constitutional right to disclosure of public records will put into failing in that duty while concocting an excuse for that failure. Yesterday, we went to court against Butch Speer, the clerk of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and Glenn Koepp, the secretary of the state Senate. Our business there was to secure a writ of mandamus against Speer and Koepp in order...

<p>Some opinions only get attention because they come from people with advanced degrees who make their living on the taxpayer dime. That’s certainly the case for Hugo Schwyzer, a history and gender studies professor at Pasadena City College.</p> <p>He has a history of blaming white men for most of the mass killings that take place in the United States. Friday’s tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut gave him a great opportunity to spout his nonsense once again.</p>

A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea holds water. The concept that current humanity could possibly be living in a computer simulation comes from a 2003 paper published in Philosophical Quarterly by Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at the University of Oxford. In the paper, he argued that at least one of...

The White House is pulling a tactic out of its campaign playbook – and President Obama’s own community organizing past – using the organs of government to enlist average Americans to help Obama advocate for his priorities. In an email sent to people who signed up to receive official updates from the White House, recipients are told to forward the message to their friends, asking them to help promote what is in effect White House propaganda. The White House email list, which government officials began compiling earlier in Obama’s term, is separate from the famed Obama campaign email list, but...

The case of Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash is, as sex scandals sometimes are, poised on the cusp of legally actionable and none of our damn business. (See also Petraeus, David, et al.) Clash, 52, acknowledges having had a relationship with a young man, now 24, while he was over the age of consent. His accuser says it began when he was 16. Clash has taken a leave of absence from Sesame Street while responding to the allegation. If his lover was under the age of consent, that’s a matter for the law. If he was over—whatever you personally think of...

This Saturday, the Midwest Marxist Conference was held at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. The event was teeming with teachers who spoke about the new found bond between the radical socialists and their Teachers Union. The all-day event, which collected money to support Chicago Socialists and featured a communist bookstore, provided students on-campus along with the radical left community to plan the next phase in their activism. After the opening plenary, breakout sessions addressed more specific topics like the history of the Democratic party, education, and case studies in Russia. In these sessions, speakers continued to celebrate the use...

The University of California -- Merced (UCM) spent $80,000 in a self-described attempt to advance ideas of “economic justice.” According to the school’s official website, UCM aims to create a “society in which the distribution of resources is equitable” and promote “cultural awareness.” To bring these goals to term, the university created a special “Social Justice” department which hosts annual events such as the “National Coming Out Awareness” week and a “Multicultural Odyssey in San Francisco.”

A devastated Mayor Thomas M. Menino is vowing to fire Boston Transportation Department Executive Assistant James Mansfield, who was arrested yesterday on a charge of possessing child pornography. Mansfield, 47, of Charlestown, has been working for the city since 1984 and last year made $104,172, according to payroll records. He is on unpaid leave pending a termination hearing next week, Menino said. Police say Mansfield engaged in “graphically sexual chat” and exchanged pictures of boys “in various stages of undress.” A search of his Charlestown home “uncovered evidence on his personal computer,” police said.

Lance Armstrong challenged the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to name names and say what it had on him. On Wednesday, it did. The anti-doping body revealed a group of 11 former Armstrong teammates — some loyal, some estranged — who each provided evidence of drug use on the U.S. Postal Service team. USADA Chief Executive Travis Tygart called it “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.” USADA will deliver its reasoned decision against Armstrong later Wednesday, a summary of the facts it used to hand him a lifetime suspension and erase his titles. The organization...

KEENE, Calif. (AP) — Maria Ybarra's trailer is one of two left on the property that for over two decades was home to Latino labor leader Cesar Chavez and farmworkers like Ybarra who made up his movement. Today, the foothills of the Tehachapi mountains continue to house the United Farm Workers of America headquarters and memorials to Chavez, though farmworkers no longer live there. On Monday, during a campaign swing through California, President Barack Obama will designate 105 acres of the property as a national monument within the National Park system — a move that could help shore up support...

The rigors of teaching apparently got to Michigan State University professor John McCarthy Monday. According to multiple sources, the math teacher stripped naked in the middle of his Calculus 1 class and started shouting obscenities.

The University of California Student Association (UCSA) secretly passed a resolution last month which condemned the nation of Israel of “racism.” The resolution, passed through the student organization with unanimously support, claims there is a “wealth of scholarship and legal opinion” that exists affirming “racism” on behalf of Israel. The resolution was in response to HR 35, a California Assembly resolution condemning anti-Semitism in higher education.

More cheating scandals inevitable, as states can’t ensure test integrityNational education policy built on test scores is undermined By Michael Pell The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Updated: 7:56 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 30, 2012 The stain of cheating spread unchecked across 44 Atlanta schools before the state finally stepped in and cleaned it up. But across the country, oversight remains so haphazard that most states cannot guarantee the integrity of their standardized tests, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has found. Poor oversight means that cheating scandals in other states are inevitable. It also undermines a national education policy built on test scores, which the states...

They won't officially declare the election over, but the experts at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics Thursday declared that President Obama's surge in key battleground state polls has pushed him well over the magic mark of 270 Electoral College votes, meaning his reelection is all but a lock. "We are not calling the race," said the experts, but the polls currently show "a decisive Obama victory." The team of Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley said if the election were held today, Obama would win 290 Electoral Votes, Mitt Romney 204. And the 42 toss-up Electoral Votes...

The controversial “Piss Christ” artwork Sen. Alfonse D’Amato once branded as a “deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity,” is coming to New York, and security is being heavily ramped- up at the gallery that will show the piece. Andres Serrano’s work — a “photograph of the crucifix submerged in the artist’s urine” — first ignited controversy in 1989 when D’Amato complained to the US Senate that it was an “outrage,” an “indignity” and a “piece of trash” that had been funded by taxpayers. Serrano had won a $15,000 prize for his work, backed in part by the National Endowment for the...

California Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters will not be charged with ethics violations. At a meeting Friday, House Ethics Committee members said they found no violations in their investigation of allegations she steered a $12 million federal bailout to a bank where her husband owns stock. Waters is a senior Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. The committee, however, said Waters' chief of staff, Mikael Moore, did take actions in Congress in an attempt to help the bank and violated standards of conduct. Moore likely will receive a letter admonishing him for his conduct. but will not face more severe punishment,...

A college professor has been placed on leave after she allegedly forced her class to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the upcoming elections. Early last week Professor Sharon Sweet at Brevard Community College (BCC) allegedly told students to sign a pledge that reads: “I pledge to vote for President Obama and Democrats up and down the ticket.” The pledge was printed off of GottaVote.org, a website funded by the Obama campaign. University administrators said they learned about the incident late Thursday afternoon and launched an investigation, after they received a phone call from a concerned parent....

(snip) ....... They measured social tolerance by two variables: Gender-orientation tolerance, measured by whether respondents would agree to having gay persons speak in their community or teach in public schools, and whether they would oppose having homosexually themed books in the library. Racial tolerance, measured by responses regarding various racial and ethnic groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. Eighty percent of the study respondents were Caucasian, LeRoux said. The researchers measured altruistic behavior by whether respondents said they had allowed a stranger to go ahead of them in line, carried a stranger's belongings, donated blood, given directions to a...

After the second of two mysterious fires in a Karma sedan, the government-backed electric car-maker Fisker has initiated a voluntary recall of its luxury vehicles. In a statement, Fisker spokesman Roger Ormisher said that Fisker engineers and an independent fire expert had "identified the root cause" of a fire that swept through a Karma parked outside a Woodside, California grocery store on August 10. "The investigation located the ignition source to the left front of the Karma, forward of the wheel, where the low-temperature cooling fan is located," said the statement. "The final conclusion was that this sealed component had...