Free Republic

My friend just called. She live on Amosland Road in Ridley Twp. Pennsylvania. It is a main road and across from a school which is a polling place. Her's is a neighborhood with a lot of senior citizens and a majority republican area. There were several McCain/Palin on people's lawns. When she woke up this morning, for a large 3 block area - they were slashed with box cutters. Her elderly next door neighbor was frightened. She said that someone kicked on her back door at 6AM this morning and yelled "Obama". It has been reported to the police and...

A poster promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace at an AC Transit bus stop in front of UC Berkeley’s Eshelman Hall has been repeatedly vandalized with anti-Semitic slogans and swastikas, authorities said. The poster—part of the “Only in Israel” public awareness campaign launched by San Francisco-based BlueStarPR and sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation and Foundation of the Greater East Bay—has a picture of Israeli Arab soccer star Sowan Abbas calling for coexistence among communities. The poster also gives an example of a soccer team consisting of Jews and Arabs training together in the Arab-Israeli town of Sakhnin. Gabe Weiner, a campus coordinator...

Spokane, Wash. (AP) -- Sherry Jones knew it would be hard to get her first novel published. Getting "The Jewel of Medina" into bookstores was even harder. After overcoming the formidable hurdles any new author faces, Jones was overjoyed to sell the book to Random House. Then Random House canceled its publication at the last minute for fear the historical novel about Aisha, child bride of the prophet Muhammad, would incite riots in the Muslim world.

At a recent writers conference in Southern California, one of my colleagues on a screenwriters panel told the crowd of about 50 people that she hoped Barack Obama would win the presidency. A number of people applauded. When it was my turn to speak, I politely said that I disagreed with her politics and moved on to other topics. There was no applause for me, but several writers approached me afterward. Each dropped his voice to a whisper and, looking around to make sure no one would overhear, said, "Thank you for saying that." Which raises a question for all...

Prior to this year, it had been over 25 years since I last filled out a job application and all the accompanying paperwork. I was quite impressed with my current employer’s requirement for me to provide proof of citizenship prior to being hired in. If only all area employers were so diligent, one of Holland’s favorite sons might still be alive today. For years, I have warned against the consequences of illegal immigrants taking up residency in our community. For years, area employers have violated federal law by hiring illegal aliens. For years, illegal immigrants have stolen wages away from...

White children are much more likely to be bullied than any other ethnic group—reversing racial stereotypes surrounding playground abuse, Government research indicates. Two thirds of children from white families say they had been bullied in the last three years but less than half of children of Indian origin make the same assertion. Anti-bullying campaigners say white children are now in the minority in some areas raising their chances of being bullied.

Pelosi: I Want to Bring Back 'Fairness Doctrine' Photo of Ken Shepherd. By Ken Shepherd | June 25, 2008 - 10:38 ET Over at HumanEvents.com, John Gizzi has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on the record saying that the Democratic caucus, far from being agnostic on the so-called Fairness Doctrine, is actually interested in resurrecting it. What's more, Pelosi herself wants to bring back the policy that could literally silence conservative talk radio. From his June 25 article: At a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, I asked Pelosi if Pence failed to get the required signatures on...

On the second-to-last day of school in Seattle, the fifth-grade class at B.F. Day Elementary School is bustling around the art room, cutting streamers, trying on hats and testing out their twirls. Volunteers from the Fremont Arts Council are also busy, helping students scissor through fabric, glue on streamers and parade their wares around the school......Like many Fremonsters, the kids who attend B.F. Day are excited about next Saturday’s parade.The Fremont Solstice Parade will be held on June 21st at noon- directions can be found on the Fremont Arts Council’s website.

Two controversies involving schools, kids and flags have made recent news in Minnesota. But the cases had radically different outcomes. The first occurred in May at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High. Four eighth-graders refused to stand while the rest of their class recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The kids got one-day, in-school suspensions. But school officials lifted the suspensions immediately after the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota fired off a letter pronouncing that the First Amendment protected the students' conduct. The ACLU's letter warned of dark consequences for school officials who had violated the eighth-graders' free-expression rights....

LONDON, June 4 -- For much of the world, Sen. Barack Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries was a moment to admire the United States, at a time when the nation's image abroad has been seriously damaged. From hundreds of supporters crowded around televisions in rural Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland, to jubilant Britons writing "WE DID IT!" on the "Brits for Barack" site on Facebook, people celebrated what they called an important racial and generational milestone for the United States. "This is close to a miracle. I was certain that some things will not happen in my lifetime," said Sunila...

If someone were to rank the favorite words of contemporary thought, tolerance would be pretty high on the list. We often hear about the importance of respecting others and tolerating those with whom we disagree. In one sense tolerance is a very important virtue—we don’t use an Uzi to end an argument, for instance. Nor is it acceptable to burn down mosques or force dissenters to attend classes with which they disagree. The views of law-abiding people should be tolerated (i.e., they should not be violently suppressed), and their lives and property must be respected. But the catch phrases and...

You can't preach the Bible here, this is a Muslim area(What a community policeman told two Christians)  By Steve Doughty and Andy Dolan Last updated at 1:19 AM on 02nd June 2008  Readings from the Koran: Naeem Naguthney Two Christian preachers were stopped from handing out Bible extracts by police because they were in a Muslim area, it was claimed yesterday. They say they were told by a Muslim police community support officer that they could not preach there and that attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity was a hate crime. The community officer is also said to have...

BOULDER — It wasn't exactly pistols at 30 paces, but police say a security company supervisor and a restaurateur shot each other with Tasers in a confrontation over parking. Officers said neither man needed medical attention after the confrontation Saturday, but Harvey Epstein, a co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant in Boulder, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and using a stun gun. A police report said Epstein and Casey M. Dane, a supervisor for Colorado Security Services Inc., were arguing over a metal boot that one of Dane's guards had clamped on a wheel of a van parked behind Mamacitas....

UN Hatemongers to Investigate U.S. "Racism"   By Joseph KleinFrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, May 19, 2008 The United Nations Special Rapporteur on “contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”, Dr. Doudou Diène, has been invited by the U.S. government for a three week visit this month and next to the cities of Washington, New York, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, and San Juan in Puerto Rico. The stated purpose is for Diène to gather first-hand information on racism in America. He is scheduled to hold meetings with governmental representatives, both at national and local levels,...

Maybe the reason the misperception persists that there are no atheists in foxholes is that nonbelievers must either shut up about their views or be hounded out of the military. Just ask Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, who is making a splash in the news because of the way his atheism was attacked by superiors and fellow soldiers while he was risking his life in service to his country. Hall, 23, served two combat tours in Iraq, winning the Combat Action Badge. But he's now stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., having been returned stateside early because the Army couldn't ensure his...

Lately I've been thinking of four left wing incidents that happened in Maine over the course of two years. I feel I should get them off my chest I think some of them would be interesting and I think others should know about them. The first one involves an incident that took place in the Bangor metro area two years ago. This freind of mine and his family were having trouble. He had difficulty getting by and he worked at Edwards Shop'n'save in Hampden outside Bangor. He was on food stamps and his wife was laid off and couldn't get...

Tolerance is the credo of the age, the great rallying call of modern liberalism. Tolerate and be tolerated, they say. Tolerate to all alike. But what are the limits of tolerance? To tolerate is to accept things that are strange or unpleasant to you. You tolerate things that are different from you in nature and expectation. Without a reasonable amount of tolerance, no society would be able to function for long. But at the same time the flip side of tolerance is that to tolerate a behavior is to perpetuate it.

PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers. Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts." Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim...

Most illegal entrants selected for prosecution under a new zero-tolerance initiative are getting little jail time, but the program still might be producing the deterrent officials desired. The U.S. Border Patrol-led program, which started in January and prosecutes as many as 60 illegal entrants a day, is aimed at increasing the consequences for illegal Mexican border crossers who are used to being dropped off at the border after apprehension. Border Patrol officials say it's working — they've prosecuted 2,317 illegal entrants in the Tucson Sector through March and report that illegal entries and repeat tries have decreased in a 15-mile...

PROVIDENCE — A new initiative borne of a recent incident between a Providence storeowner and two Spanish-speaking customers is asking all Rhode Islanders to help stop hate speech and violence directed at “immigrants and communities of color.” The “We Can Stop the Hate” campaign was announced at the University of Rhode Island’s downtown campus, a week after published reports about a March 1 encounter between two Dominican natives who are also U.S. citizens, and David C. Richardson, owner of Rhode Island Refrigeration. The incident provoked accusations against Richardson of racial profiling and committing a hate crime. The “stop the hate”...

The world's Muslim countries warned Wednesday that an "alarming" rise in anti-Islamic insults and attacks in the West has become a threat to international security. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) called on Europe and America to take stronger measures against 'Islamophobia' in a report prepared for a summit of the group's 57 members in Dakar on Thursday and Friday. The report by a special OIC monitoring group said the organisation was struggling to get the West to understand that Islamophobia "has dangerous implications on global peace and security" and to convince western powers to do more. Islamic leaders...

The FBI believes its agents still aren't sensitive enough to Muslims and their culture, so the bureau has extended by "a few weeks" its Islamic cultural "enrichment" training program, WND has learned. During a recent outreach event at a Washington-area mosque, FBI officials also reassured a large turnout of concerned Muslims that the bureau is not profiling Arabs and Muslims for terrorism, and has made investigating alleged "hate crimes" against them and other minorities "the second-highest priority in the criminal division of the FBI." Among the officials who attended the Feb. 8 "town hall meeting" at the large ADAMS Center...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- An evangelical chaplain who leads Bible studies for California lawmakers says God is disgusted with a rival fellowship group that includes people of all faiths. "Although they are pleasant men in their personal demeanor, their group is more than disgusting to our Lord and Savior," Drollinger wrote on the Capitol Ministries' Web site. The comments drew immediate fire from others in the capital, including the Republican lawmaker who sponsors Drollinger's Bible study group. Drollinger said "progressive religious tolerance" is an offense against God and causes harm to its practitioners. He said the other Bible study group was...

WHEN tolerance becomes a term of abuse in a place such as The Netherlands, you know something has gone seriously wrong. The Dutch always took pride in being the most tolerant people on earth. In less feverish times no one could possibly have taken exception to Queen Beatrix's speech last Christmas when she pleaded for tolerance and respect for minorities. But Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing, anti-Muslim Freedom Party, was so disgusted by the Dutch queen's "multicultural rubbish" that he wanted her to be stripped of her constitutional role in the government. Wilders, a popular rabble-rouser whose party occupies...

US, February 21, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At the same time that news has come out that the Toronto Catholic School board has refused to participate in pro-homosexual activities, homosexual activists are making significant inroads in US schools, as a booklet titled, "Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth," is set to be distributed to all 16,000 school districts in the country. The 24-page booklet by the National Education Association and American Psychological Association, tells students that homosexuality is a "normal expression of human sexuality". "What's so scary and dogmatic about this report is that it communicates that religious-based viewpoints...

Red Alert On Tolerance by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 12, 2008 Look out children: academics are now entranced by something called “Teaching Beyond Tolerance.” Since their emphasis on tolerance netted us about a couple of hundred restrictive speech codes at about as many colleges and universities, who knows what the new fad will yield on American campuses. Shana Agid and Erica Rand give a preview of coming attractions, sort of, in the latest issue of Radical Teacher. “We wanted to imagine another set of possibilities for educators and students alike, grounded in a different set of assumptions: that so-called ‘hate’...

I know that many people are extremely frustrated with politics these days and the current state of the Republican party. Many people are sad that their first-choice candidate dropped out, then their second-choice, and they keep having to compromise more and more until we get to the point where we feel pressured to vote for a liberal, open-borders, unconstitutional insider politician who we ordinarily would never dream of voting for. But have you asked yourself: how is it that we find ourselves in this predicament? And is there anything more to it than meets the eye? I know that anything...

Don't mention Islamic terrorists, says guide By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor Last Updated: 1:43pm GMT 04/02/2008 Whitehall officials have been issued with a guide on how to talk about Islamist terrorists without offending Muslims. One thing they should not do is call them Islamist terrorists but instead ministers and civil servants have been told to refer to them as "criminals". Now the language has been codified into a phrase-book issued to departments. It has been produced by the new Research, Information and Communication Unit, a "hearts and minds" outfit based in the Home Office. The RCU has been set...

Some Asians in the police and in Government jobs have been accused of blocking the crackdown against so-called honour killings. It is alleged they are not only failing to help desperate women trying to flee abuse and arranged marriages but are actively encouraging punishment for those they believe are breaking traditional taboos. Terrified victims who seek official help are even being tracked down by a network of Asian men working in Government departments and social services, according to a study written by the think-tank Social Cohesion. One woman was found by her family after she signed on at a Jobcentre...

Latino group says 'hate speech' infiltrates immigration debate © 2008 The Associated Press WASHINGTON — A national Latino group says it's fighting back against what it considers hate speech in the national immigration debate and elections. National Council of La Raza president Janet Murguia said Thursday her group will pressure candidates and network executives to clamp down on the speech. The group has launched a Web site to counter the speech, http://www.wecanstopthehate.org Some of the phrases the Hispanic group identified include referring to immigrants as invaders and associating them with animals. The group claims immigrants are accused of bringing crime...

Suicide by toleranceLorne Gunter, National Post  Published: Monday, January 28, 2008 Walt Kelly, the cartoonist and satirist once had his famous character Pogo say, "We have met the enemy and he is us."In the clash between the West and Islam, that is increasingly true. We are our own worst enemy.Those of us who care about the survival of Western civilization occasionally rage about the way Muslim organizations feign outrage in the media at the tiniest slight. We grind out teeth when those organizations file human rights complaints against the writings of the likes of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. We...

It's funny. Any time one of our "NewsBusted" episodes gets popular, it inevitably attracts the attention of the liberal fanatics on YouTube who can't stand the idea of anyone making fun of the left. After all, anyone who makes fun of liberals is hate-filled, intolerant and must be stopped at all costs. Take a look at the comments on our most recent episode of the show if you need a good laugh this weekend. Feel free to sign up for YouTube if you want to twist the knife a little as well.

A "trial run" has been launched for a new law in a Maryland county that arguably would allow coed locker rooms in public accommodations, and women aren't pleased with the results. It happened this week when a man, wearing a skirt and makeup, walked into a women's locker room at a health club. "I could see his muscles, I could see his large hands. He was wearing a blue ruffled skirt that came down to above the knee," Mary Ann Andree told WJLA-Television after the incident at the Rio Sport and Health Club in Gaithersburg. It was about 1 p.m.,...

Three killed, 16 wounded in S. Yemen MIL-YEMEN-FESTIVAL-DEATH Three killed, 16 wounded in S. Yemen SANAA, Jan 13 (KUNA) -- At least three people were killed and 16 others were wounded on Sunday in the southern city of Adan when chaos broke out during the "Tolerance and Conciliation Festival" marking the 22nd anniversary of the 1986 massacre by the Socialist Party which ruled the then South Yemen. Security sources told KUNA that "infiltrators" sparked off a sound bomb and, in the commotion, took control over a machine gun and opened fire randomly at those present. The perpetrators were apprehended, the...

New Jersey makes transgender-inclusion unequivocal in its hate crimes and safe schools laws “New Jersey has long been a national leader on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, but today rises to the top with two of the strongest hate crimes and safe schools laws in the country and unequivocal protections for transgender people.” — Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — By a 65-10 vote, the New Jersey Assembly today approved legislation making the state’s anti-bullying and hate crimes laws two of the strongest in the country by making transgender-inclusion...

Anger over plan to broadcast Muslim call to prayer on loudspeaker in Oxford Last updated at 12:46pm on 24th December 2007 Comments (37) Outrage: Proposals for loudspeaker Muslim calls to prayer in central Oxford have been attacked by local residents MORE NEWS Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto". Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times...

GREEN BAY, Wis. -- A Wiccan pentacle has joined a controversial nativity scene at Green Bay's City Hall. The manger scene was put up by City Council President Chad Fradette, who wanted to defy an anti-religious group that was protesting another nativity scene in a nearby town. However, the Wiccans said that was an abuse of power and requested that the Wiccan symbol go up next to the nativity. "I want to see all those other faiths that we don't get an opportunity to see in Green Bay, Wis., because we are sometimes relegated to that," said Wiccan Kelly Winters....

MISSION VIEJO – A high school honors student and his parents filed a First Amendment lawsuit Wednesday against a Capistrano Valley High School history teacher they say repeatedly made disparaging and religiously intolerant remarks about Christians and traditional Christian viewpoints during class. - Snip - Court papers cite statements tape-recorded by Farnan such as "Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies – that's interfering with God's work" and "When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth." -Snip - He railed against Christianity and traditional Christian viewpoints on topics such as birth control, teenage sex, homosexuality and...

Why we stay mute on Islamic sex apartheid The Australian ... US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton last week urged President George W. Bush to call on King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to drop all charges ... against the gender apartheid under which women in large parts of the Islamic world live, as there was against racial apartheid in South Africa. ... http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22882381-7583,00.html

'I 'd like a one-way air fare to New York on the next available flight. I have no luggage. Could you make sure the ticket is refundable … in case I change my mind?" I was standing at the Delta shuttle counter at Washington's Reagan National Airport, dressed in my Saudi burka. "Sure, no problem," the clerk replied brightly. "Do you have Skymiles?" "Uh, no." "I'll need some form of identification." I handed her my driver's licence, which showed the occupant of the black tent to be a blonde, blue-eyed resident of the District of Columbia. "Thanks." Tap, tap, tap...

The Royal Commonwealth Society is at the centre of an embarrassing row after it barred a well-known Roman Catholic commentator from attacking intolerance towards Christians at its annual carol service. Cristina Odone, the former deputy editor of the New Statesman, was to be one of the "celebrity readers" at the service in St Martin in the Fields church in central London next month, which is attended by diplomats and politicians. But she has pulled out of the event, accusing the society of demonstrating exactly the kind of intolerance she had planned to criticise. "I am incandescent," she said. "I was...

PRIOR LAKE, Minnesota, November 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After being fired for promoting abstinence among students at the school where he worked, ex school supervisor Chris Lind has been elected to the Prior Lake-Savage district school board in Minnesota. Lind, who was a hallway and parking lot supervisor at a local high school and a "conservative Christian" was told by District Human Resource Director Tony Massaros that he could not discuss abstinence from sexual activity with any students, during or after school hours, on or off campus, according to a friend who witnessed the meeting.  Lind was told that...

11/09/2007 PAKISTAN Another attack on the giant Buddha of Swat In the valley of Swat, north western Pakistan, Islamic militants have launched a second attack in less than a month on the gigantic sacred statue. The head, shoulders and feet have been destroyed while the militants threaten a third and final attack. Islamabad (AsiaNews) – A group of Islamic militants have attacked for the second time in less than a month the giant Buddha carved in the rocks of Swat Valley, in north western Pakistan. Despite the many requests for greater protection, the government has failed to intervene in any...

It has now been twenty years since the late Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, his bestselling broadside against the ideas and conceptions that animate the contemporary university. The general theme of Bloom’s book is encapsulated in the subtitle: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students. . . .The Closing of the American Mind has been interpreted as one of those influential salvos in the cultural wars of recent decades between reformers and traditionalists on the campus and between conservatives and liberals in the society at large. . . . Bloom...

In a revealing, and nasty, example of the sort of hatemail conservative columnists like myself receive on a regular basis (further examples here and here), I thought I'd share the following missive. It seems that "liberal" tolerance, diversity, and protection of free speech stops at the ideological border, and those of us unlucky enough to fall on the other side had better start packing for the reeducation camps. Something tells me this guy has a future as a speechwriter for the Democrat Party... I hope you rot with your friends Bush and Cheney. Get out of San Francisco you do...

FIRE Press Release NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom...

NEWARK, Del., October 30, 2007—The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The organization cited excerpts from the university's Office of Residence Life Diversity Education Training documents, including the statement: "A RACIST: A racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. 'The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class,...

In the growing list of acceptable bigotries proliferating among those who inhabit the ever-so-progressive Ivory Tower, it seems that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) veterans are fair game. Just ask University of Delaware political science and international relations professor Muqtedar Khan (also a Pentagon consultant and Brookings Institute Fellow), who refused to share an academic panel yesterday at the University of Delaware with Campus Watch Associate Fellow Asaf Romirowsky. My Campus Watch colleague, Director Winfield Myers, references the story at the Campus Watch blog and Michael Rubin has all the details at NRO's The Corner. I've been given permission to post...

These stories turn up so routinely you hardly notice them anymore: Vancouver’s hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemption Thursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver. In giving the bylaw unanimous approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to arguments that hookah lounges provide an important cultural space for the city’s Muslims and granted them a temporary exemption. Can that be right, even in Canada? Infidels can’t smoke but Muslims can? Apparently so. As the Vancouver Sun report continued, Emad Yacoub...

BAGHDAD — If the people in the Adhamiyah District’s Abu Hanifa Market hadn’t already heard about the afternoon’s grenade attack on a U.S. Soldier, they heard about it when Lt. Col. Jeff Broadwater showed up. “Who threw the grenade!?” Broadwater shouted, stalking from shop to shop as an Apache gunship circled overhead. “Where are they? Show me where they are and I will take them out of here!” Not half an hour before, a Soldier from Broadwater’s unit, the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, had been wounded by a grenade thrown at his patrol. Now, in response, Broadwater was bringing...