Free Republic

President Obama's weekly remarks Hi, everybody. It’s our job as citizens to make sure we keep pushing this country we love toward our most cherished ideals — that all of us are created equal, and all of us deserve an equal shot. This week, my Administration took new steps to bring us closer to that goal. Almost 50 years ago, Republicans and Democrats in Congress came together to pass the Fair Housing Act. It’s a law that says landlords can’t turn away tenants solely because of their race, religion, sex, national origin or disability. And it made a difference in...

Despite repeatedly losing its cases over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it will continue to force religious organizations to distribute contraceptives – including the “week-after pill” – to their employees. As a news release at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty states, the Obama administration has been handed “multiple losses in contraceptive mandate cases at the Supreme Court,” including the Hobby Lobby decision, and cases involving the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College. Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Obama administration not to...

President Obama announced on Friday that he was designating new national monuments covering more than a million acres in California, Texas and Nevada, his latest use of executive power to preserve public land. The designations, made under the Antiquities Act of 1906, bring to 19 the number of national monuments that Mr. Obama has established or expanded. They cover more than 260 million acres of public lands and waters. Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama, who has turned to that law more than any other president, for his expansive use of his authority to preserve sites of ecological, historical or cultural...

They are either championed as brave voices willing to speak out against the scientific majority or dismissed as cranks who lack the evidence to support their arguments. Now deniers of global warming have been dealt a stinging blow by psychologists who found skeptics of man-made climate change tend to believe in conspiracy theories. They say the conspiracist outlook taken by many climate change skeptics is harming the public debate over global warming. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol who led the work, said: 'These results add to a growing body of research on the nature...

There was a time when members of the European nobility could have a member of the lower classes flogged, incarcerated, tortured and even executed without standing trial before a jury of their peers. There were no repercussions, no penalties and nothing less than disfavor with the monarchy could interfere with their "rights as aristocracy," and they ruled their fiefdoms with fear and cruelty. Under a supposed law – droit du seigneur, also called jus primae noctis – feudal lords had the right to have sex with any subordinate woman they desired, up to and including her wedding night, and it...

As law officials removed the Confederate flag from the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, President Obama praised the event personally on Twitter. “South Carolina taking down the confederate flag – a signal of good will and healing, and a meaningful step towards a better future,” he wrote.

Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin said that “we’ve had a silent coup in this country” with the Obama administration taking over healthcare, targeting the suburbs, and nationalizing the local police. “His government doesn’t have the authority to do any of these things, but he does it,” Levin said on his July 8 broadcast. “Well, if that’s not martial law, what the hell is? We’ve had a silent coup in this country.”Here is a transcript of what Levin said: “So, Obama’s pushing the ‘browning of America,’ not my phrase, theirs, ‘with open amnesty.’ Even if it means murderers,...

A Republican California assemblyman was left stunned Wednesday when the Democratic chair of the Assembly Labor and Employment committee cut off his microphone and then ordered security to physically remove the microphone from the meeting. The incident occurred during debate over legislation that would increase the Golden State’s minimum wage to $11 in 2016 and $13 in 2017. The current minimum wage is $9 an hour and is set to already rise to $10 an hour next year. Republican Matthew Harper said that Democratic chair Rodger Hernández cut off a witness testifying mid-sentence. When Harper, who Hernández had already recognized as...

...The operational plan I propose in the book is reasonably straightforward. The reasons that I think we are driven to that plan speak to some complex realities facing the United States in the second decade of the twenty-first century. First, the operational plan: to make large portions of the Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable. I want to make government into an insurable hazard, like flood, fire, or locusts. The way I want to do it is through massive civil disobedience underwritten by privately funded defense funds. [....] That brings me to the ambitious proposition I want to defend tonight: we...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the government will make federal marriage benefits available to same-sex couples following a Supreme Court decision last month that legalized same-sex marriage. She says the Justice Department will work to make sure that all federal benefits will be available equally to married couples across the country.

Two Christian bakers who refused to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding have been ordered to pay $135,000 in damages by July 13 or else the state of Oregon could place a lien on their home. Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, were punished by the state's Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI) for unlawfully discriminating against a same-sex couple. The Kleins, who are devout evangelical Christians, argued that baking the cake would be a violation of their religious beliefs. The BOLI ruling ordered the mom-and-pop bakers to pay $135,000 to the lesbian couple....

In a move that’s prompting questions about the stockpiling of weapons by the federal government’s nonmilitary agencies, the Bureau of Reclamation wants to buy 52,000 rounds of ammunition for use in law enforcement at Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. After learning about the purchase request, Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei vowed to inquire with the bureau about its operations, number of officers carrying firearms and how much ammunition it uses, according Brian Baluta, a spokesman for Amodei.

A Waco police detective was selected Wednesday to preside over a new McLennan County grand jury that could be the panel that considers the Twin Peaks shootings.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is tightening enforcement of fair housing laws by requiring cities to identify persistent patterns of racial bias in their communities and work to eliminate them, Housing Secretary Julian Castro said Wednesday. "We must give every young person access to a community of opportunity," Castro said. "We can do that by revitalizing struggling communities and by giving people the chance to live in areas where they can thrive; all with local leadership deciding what strategies work best for them and their needs." "Policy makers at the local level now have a stronger tool for...

The Obama administration unveiled new rules Wednesday to rid the country of racially segregated neighborhoods by directing cities and towns to set goals for reducing segregation, and then regularly report their progress to the feds. Communities nationwide will be given a series of questions designed to help them figure out whether racial bias is causing segregated neighborhoods, racial or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, unequal access to opportunity or disproportionate housing needs in their jurisdiction. They will be required to set goals related to that data and publicly report on their progress every three to five years. The Department of...

A federal judge has ordered the Patent and Trademark Office to cancel registration of the Washington Redskins' trademark, ruling that the team name may be disparaging to Native Americans. The ruling Wednesday by Judge Gerald Bruce Lee affirms an earlier finding by an administrative appeal board.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released new Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents that include an official “DOJ Recap” report detailing an October 2010 meeting between Lois Lerner, DOJ officials and the FBI to plan for the possible criminal prosecution of targeted nonprofit organizations for alleged illegal political activity. The newly obtained records also reveal that the Obama DOJ wanted IRS employees who were going to testify to Congress to turn over documents to the DOJ before giving them to Congress. Records also detail how the Obama IRS gave the FBI 21 computer disks, containing...

Bill Gates recently noted that the cost of decarbonization using today’s technology is ‘beyond astronomical.’ On June 30, one day after the Supreme Court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of mercury emissions from power plants, resident Obama committed the United States to the goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. This would nearly triple the amount of wind- and solar-generated electricity on the national grid. The EPA ran afoul of the law by failing to conduct a cost-benefit analysis before it acted to reduce mercury emissions from coal-power plants. There is no objective...

I was watching in horror a series of Mark Dice videos of interviews in which passersby signed petitions to repeal the First Amendment toshut down criticism of Obama because it was all clearly racist. petitioned to repeal the Bill of Rights; revealed they didn’t know when and why we celebrate the Fourth of July; signed up to ban the American flag and replace it with a New World Order one. I wanted to believe the people responding were outliers -- just ignorant San Diego beachgoers. Unfortunately there are too many indications they are not, and that this disregard for the...

TRI-CITIES, WA. -- People are concerned about fireworks this Fourth of July. And not just locally, all over the Northwest. Governor Jay Inslee along with the Department of Natural Resources issued a burn ban for Washington but they wanted to do even more. No matter where you are in the Northwest, fireworks will be especially dangerous this year. Both Washington Governor Jay inslee and Oregon Governor Kate Brown have issued warnings. But regardless, fireworks stands have been open and selling in certain areas all week. So now they're urging extreme caution when using fireworks in cities and counties that legally...