Free Republic

You're invited to join the Tyranny Response Team and other real Tea Party folks at our final FREEP in defense of 2,000 years of real Christian marriage. This will be held in front of the Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday, April 27, 2015 from 9:00am until 12:00 noon. Media inquiries, call 1-202-288-8011 Simple rules of conduct are: no violence, no racism, no profanity, obey the law and treat uniformed law enforcement officials with respect.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit demanding that religious organizations be compelled to provide abortions and contraception to illegal immigrants. “Whether to bear a child or not is a woman’s right under our laws,” said ACLU staff attorney Brigitte Amiri. “No religious organization has the authority to infringe on this right. For Catholic aid organizations to refuse to pay for birth control and abortions is an infringement. Forcing a woman to bear an unwanted child is, as President Obama has said, cruel and unusual punishment. It is unconstitutional and cannot be allowed.” “Rules derived from a mythical being...

Another Illustration That Tolerance Does Not Extend to Faithful Catholics By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn another show of selective tolerance from the cultural radicals, there comes the following story, as related in Crisis Magazine. Here are some excerpts from the article:In their zeal to protect students from any comments or opinions that may hurt their feelings, many professors [in this case at Marquette University] have created “safe spaces” in their classrooms—controlling all conversations in an effort to ensure that no one is ever offended …[Professor Cheryl Abbate]  made it clear that the classroom was not a [place for students doubting] the value of same-sex “marriage.” Such...

All CSUN students registering for the 2015 Fall Semester are being forced to participate in an online, SIMS-style character game about sexual assault before being allowed to claim a seat for any course. The game, titled “Agent of Change” and designed by feminist activists, does not allow students to complete the game until they have given enough “correct” answers as per the designers’ stated philosophical influences, such as “norms challenging,” and “social norms theory.” According to the Agent of Change website, the program helps users “see the connections between these power-based violations, how these problems affect their lives, and what they can do to challenge the cultural...

One of the more contentious ideas to recently emerge from the culture war is that of "safe spaces." We are said to be at risk of social dangers. Sometimes these dangers are labeled denialism (in which someone's identity isn't recognized) or triggering speech (speech that sets off traumatic responses in unwitting listeners). The way some students at elite colleges combat these social dangers is to create, or demand the creation of, safe spaces. And just as often, students demand that their entire campus become a safe space. Hence the wrong kind of speech is re-labeled as violence. The space only...

The NBA developing a relationship with Cuba is not especially big news in 29 of the league’s 30 cities. For all but one franchise.... Heat officials learned of the story via news reports, and were dumbfounded that the league would not have first spoken, at least as a courtesy, to the one franchise actually affected by any NBA/Cuba relationship. .....former NBA commissioner David Stern was extremely active in Democratic politics and a major financial contributor throughout his years in office. New commissioner Adam Silver also was an ardent early supporter of Obama and has donated to the party.....

The NBA opened the first training academy of a professional US basketball league in Cuba on Thursday, made possible by the diplomatic thaw between Washington and Havana, reported dpa.

The Supreme Court will decide Friday whether to grant review on a case relating to the infamous Wisconsin “John Doe” investigation of conservative groups that supported Governor Scott Walker and his reform of public sector union collective bargaining.The case, O’Keefe v. Chisholm, was filed by Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth after they each received John Doe subpoenas in October 2013, demanding that they turn over all Club records and communications–including all emails, financial materials and donor lists–to prosecutors. Consistent with Wisconsin’s John Doe law, the subpoenas gagged O’Keefe and the Club, prohibiting them from speaking to anyone...

I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to my article about Wisconsin prosecutors’ efforts to criminalize conservative activism,complete with terrifying dawn and pre-dawn raids. Without the courage of the raids’ targets who were willing to speak with me–on and off the record–there would have been no story. Ironically enough,on the very weekend that my story hit National Review,the Huffington Post published yet another screed against so-called “dark money” relying on the very existence of the unlawful John Doe investigations to cast a cloud of suspicion on conservative activists. The language is instructive: The Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to take up...

The Obama administration snuck in two new climate change-related programs when it rolled out a major new study on the nation's challenged energy system. The first installment of a major four-part energy analysis, dubbed the Quadrennial Energy Review, was issued Tuesday morning after several months of persistent delays. Included with the 350-page review, which focused on the nation's energy infrastructure hurdles, were two new executive actions: one addressing climate change resilience, and another for clean energy improvements in rural America. The administration hinted that the new initiatives may be part of a speech the president plans to deliver Wednesday in...

John Doe laws dating back to the 19th century in Wisconsin allow DAs to hold secret panels, compel people to give testimony and turn over documents. To take advantage of the loopholes was Prosecutor John Chisholm, a partisan hack who had a vendetta against Scott Walker. The corruption extends to judges, police officers, lawyers and to at least one newspaper, the Journal Sentinel. In a September 9, 2014 article, former Milwaukee police officer Michael Lutz, who for several months served as an unpaid special prosecutor in Chisholm’s office, said that Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm, a Democrat, told him in...

President Obama’s Task Force on New Americans has issued its much-anticipated plan to facilitate life in the U.S. for immigrants and refugees by enhancing pathways to naturalization, building welcoming communities and providing “mobile immigration services in underserved communities.” The government-wide initiative aims to “strengthen federal immigrant and refugee integration infrastructure.” This includes multilingual media campaigns promoting immigrant rights and other free tools to make life easier in the U.S. and up to $10 million for “citizenship preparation” programs. The goal is to “strengthen civic, economic and linguistic integration and to build strong and welcoming communities,” according to the report issued...

...Cuomo speaks at the beginning of a Business Rountable with Cuban and American business leaders held at the Hotel Parque Central in Havana, Cuba....

The successful shutting down (or at least shutting up) of non-groupthink-compliant wedding cake and floral businesses has given gay-marriage agitators and their backers a taste of the vast power of ideological extortion in 2015 America. I’m optimistic that the law will eventually come to its senses and give wide berth to Christians in the wedding trades, or even to non-Christian libertarians who simply don’t want to be told who they have to do business with. Perhaps James O’Keefe will covertly record owners of a black-owned florist shop being asked to create an arrangement for a “KKK” event, or a Muslim-owned...

Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) issues these plates to police departments for officers in unmarked cars involved in sensitive investigations such as narcotics, organized crime or terrorism. Confidential tags cannot be traced back to any specific person or organization if a criminal has a source run the plates through conventional databases. But all three police sources also expressed bewilderment about why the Edmonston Police Department would need any confidential tags. Each pointed out that Edmonston is a very small town, and that any major narcotics, terrorism or organized crime investigation would be outsourced... The Town denies any allegation that this...

The West Memphis NAACP has legitimized and inflamed the war on cops by urging blacks to arm up against them. “Law enforcement has to understand, you cannot do what you please when you see us,” Crittenden County NAACP head Shabaka Afrika said in a news conference. The deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown had really roiled angry black activists and street thugs who make up their army. But the killing of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD and the shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina have pushed them over the edge. Nation of Islam leader Louis...

‘They came with a battering ram.” Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking. She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full...

President Barack Obama said on Friday that the deal he and the leaders of five other major powers are trying to cut with the Iranian regime headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is a “political agreement” and “not a formal treaty.”As such, he said, Congress should not ordinarily have authority to sign off on this kind of deal.Obama made the statement when discussing legislation sponsored by Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and approved unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that would give Congress 60 days to review an Iran nuclear deal made by the administration. During that 60 days,...

The Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation weapon mounted to a handgun. Last summer’s riots in Ferguson, Missouri, prompted much talk by President Obama and certain members of Congress about the need to demilitarize local police forces. Nearly a year later, the opposite is happening. New and more powerful weapons are flowing into local police departments daily, and still others are new to the marketplace. One weapon about to make its debut is the “Z-Ro Retinal Obfuscation” gun. When fired, the gun allows an officer to temporarily blind his targeted subject for up to 15 minutes. The new “compliance weapon” made a...

Yesterday, TalkingPointsMemo reported that Texas Senator Ted Cruz sent an email to supporters urging them to send him money to make him president so that he could, as president, protect their right to violently overthrow the president. As the email read: The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn’t for just protecting hunting rights, and it’s not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty Cruz’s assertion was so absurd...