Free Republic

New posters featuring Hillary Clinton seem to be trying to make her "high flying, adored" with voters. The new images appeared at a campaign stop in San Antonio, Texas, where Clinton wooed Latino voters on Thursday. But according to NPR's Tamara Keith, the campaign says they don't know where the likeness came from. Banners were plastered all over the venue along with smaller signs and t-shirts. The image of the black-clad Clinton profile may seem familiar to those who love either Argentinean history or musical theater — specifically Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Evita." The 1978 musical told the story of Eva...

The city of Durango and La Plata County, Colorado, have declared a state of emergency after a federal cleanup crew accidentally released mine waste into the water. An estimated 1 million gallons of waste water spilled out of an abandoned mine area in the southern part of the state last week, turning the Animas River orange and prompting the Environmental Protection Agency to tell locals to avoid it. According to the EPA, the spill occurred when one of its teams was using heavy equipment to enter the Gold King Mine, a suspended mine near Durango. Instead of entering the mine...

Here's what we know: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for selling U.S. nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union after one of the most sensational Cold War-era espionage trials. They were convicted in 1951 owing, largely, to the testimony of David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother. Here's what we don't know: How credible Greenglass' testimony was in court. Greenglass himself spent nearly a decade in prison for his role in the conspiracy. The Army sergeant stole nuclear intelligence from Los Alamos, N.M., and said he passed it on to the Rosenbergs. At the trial, he said Ethel Rosenberg typed...

Some great news for the taxpayers of California. A man convicted of murder and currently serving time in state prison has managed to convince a judge that the state will pay costs of at least $100k for gender reassignment surgery since he’s suffering from gender dysphoria. A federal judge on Thursday ordered California’s corrections department to provide a transgender inmate with sex change surgery, the first time such an operation has been ordered in the state.U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco ruled that denying sex reassignment surgery to 51-year-old Michelle-Lael Norsworthy violates his/her constitutional rights. Her/His birth...

An epidemic of federal employees watching pornography on government computers during work hours has gotten so out of control that legislation has been introduced in Congress to contain the embarrassing crisis. Porn has for years been part of the job at some government agencies and in fact a number of federal audits have long documented the enraging details of how our tax dollars are being wasted. Judicial Watch has also reported on this for years, especially the porn crisis at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency charged with policing the nation’s financial industry. While the economy crumbled, the...

Foreign service officer, who will be named soon, to help promote awareness of LGBT issues across the world The United States will appoint an openly gay official as a special envoy to promote the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people overseas, the US State Department said Friday. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said US Secretary of State John Kerry would “soon” make the appointment. “It will be an openly gay foreign service officer. We don’t have a finalized name yet. But we will announce soon,” Harf said. Harf said the appointment reflected Kerry’s “commitment and the administration’s commitment...

FULL TITLE: Clarke D Forsythe describes at length why legal abortion deaths do not make it into CDC and other statistics Clarke D Forsythe, in his excellent book Abuse of Discretion: the inside Story of Roe Versus Wade (buy the book on Amazon here) explains at length why legal abortion deaths and injuries do not make it into the published statistics. “Abortion injuries and deaths are washed out of the US public health system through a series of filters. The first filter is the clinics. Clinics do not take responsibility for injuries if they can avoid it. Standard procedure for...

CNN announced this week that their policy is not to show images of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, that may potentially be offensive. The editorial decision followed the outlets decision not to show the now-famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons. However, as of Tuesday morning CNN’s website still displayed pictures of crucified Jesus in a jar of human urine.

Over the last several years, numerous colleges throughout the United States have offered courses that require the textbook "My Gender Workbook," which claims that people can be literally any gender, so long as they have an imagination. These colleges include the UTexas, Vanderbilt, and Keene State College. The book, written by Kate Bornstein, claims that genders are entirely up to you and are limited only by how you feel. At the beginning of the book you are greeted by a character named "Blu." Here is the excerpt: In the book, Bornstein claims that sometimes she decides that she has a...

SAN FRANCISCO — As a Mexican-American woman who started her own consulting firm in Los Angeles, accountant Sonia Luna has taken advantage of programs aimed at helping minority- and female-owned businesses compete for government and corporate contracts. But increasingly, the fact that Luna is a lesbian entrepreneur hasn't hurt, either. Federal agencies, organizations such as the National Football League and more than one-third of Fortune 500 companies are trying to expand their vendor pools by explicitly encouraging bids from gay, lesbian and transgender contractors. The little-known outreach efforts mirror longstanding “supplier diversity” initiatives aimed at developing economic opportunities for businesses...

HICAGO — Denee Mallon marveled at the view of Lake Michigan from her hospital bed in the Windy City, where she had just made history: the then 74-year-old transgender woman underwent a milestone sex reassignment surgery she'd sought for decades. "Here I am, finally, after all these years," she said. "It happened." Her operation will be one of the first paid for by Medicare after she won a challenge in May to end the government insurance program's ban on covering such procedures for transgender individuals. Mallon's victory opened the door for other seniors to access this care and may influence...

Coal miners and gay activists — two groups that, in 1980s England at least, you might have figured would steer clear of each other — partner surprisingly effectively in the real-life story that's affectionately fictionalized in Pride.....

Consider this warning that recently greeted viewers of ABC's political soap opera, Scandal: "The following drama contains adult content. Viewer discretion is advised." That label was slapped on the episode because of scenes like the moment when trained torturer Huck prepared to ply his trade on colleague (and soon-to-be girlfriend) Quinn Perkins. "Normally, I'd start with the drill or a scalpel," he told Perkins, who was bound and gagged, looking on in terror. "Peeling off the skin can be beautiful. Or removing fingers, toes; I like the feeling of a toe being separated from a foot. ... I'm so sorry,...

More than a dozen members of Congress were defeated on Tuesday night. But taxpayers will still have to keep sending most of them checks. Members of Congress are eligible for a pension after just five years in office, so that means senators qualify for one after a single six-year term. But most can't start drawing full payments until age 62. North Carolina's Kay Hagan, for instance, lost her first bid for reelection. For senators and representatives with only six years in office, the annual pension is about 10% of annual pay -- in Hagan's case, that's $17,400 a year based...

When President Barack Obama takes Air Force One on a fundraising swing, he is required under the law to reimburse taxpayers for certain travel expenses. But as Mark Knoller of CBS News reports, the White House has made it a practice of not publicly releasing specific reimbursement figures, making it impossible for the public to see exactly how much they pay every time the president goes on a political trip. Knoller says it’s not about national security reasons, but rather about saving face. “Very simply, the White House doesn’t want to disclose the material because it might be embarrassing and...

The U.S. Forest Service has tightened restrictions on media coverage in vast swaths of the country's wild lands, requiring reporters to pay for a permit and get permission before shooting a photo or video in federally designated wilderness areas. Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in any of the nation's 100 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone. Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don't get a permit could...

IMPORTANT: This information should not be downloaded using government equipment, read during duty time, sent to others using government equipment, or sent to anyone while in a government building because it involves election related activity. Today is National Voter Registration Day and while volunteers around the country will be on street corners, outside of groceries stores, at bus and subway stops and elsewhere to help people register, you can get started right now, right here with just one click.If we’re going to beat back the attack on working families by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Scott Walker, the Koch brothers and other...

A new policy put in place by Cal State University could cost InterVarsity and other Christian groups up to $460,000 to meet on campus because they cannot change their leadership requirements to include any student. "No campus shall recognize any fraternity, sorority, living group, honor society, or other student organization unless its membership and leadership are open to all currently enrolled students at that campus," the policy states. The rule requires leadership positions to be open to any student, regardless of whether they hold the same beliefs as the Club. The policy went into effect in 2012 but up until...

PBS, who operates partly on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, just ran a one-hour special on the terror-sponsoring dictator who shrieked that “war with the U.S. is my true destiny!” and who came within a hair of nuking millions of PBS’ involuntary donors during the gravest military threat against the United States in modern history.PBS, who bills itself as America’s “most-trusted source for news and public affairs programs,” aimed their documentary on the “turbulent life” of the “controversial Cuban leader” at a U.S. audience and titled it, The Fidel Castro Tapes. But PBS pulled off its documentary without mentioningthe...

On Monday, PBS aired the controversial documentary “After Tiller,” a film that sympathizes with the four remaining late-term abortionists in the country. Pro-life groups immediately filed petitions urging the station to remove the film from its lineup, to no avail. Today, the documentary’s filmmakers and Dr. Susan Robinson, one of the abortionists featured in the film, participated in a Google Chat to field viewers’ questions. Their “answers” were misleading, accusatory, and, at times, outright lies.“What is the hardest part of your job?,” one Google participant asked Dr. Robinson: “Listening to the desperate, sad stories and not taking it on as...