Free Republic

When Powers argued that speech should be protected because by itself it is never dangerous, Kohn countered by saying Powers failed to recognize her white privilege. Speech that seems harmless to middle or upper-class whites, she said, could be deeply threatening to poor and non-white communities. If somebody claims to feel certain speech is unsafe, Kohn said, they should be believed. "Feelings are valid," she said, according to Stroup. "I'm never going to argue with people's feelings." Kohn also said it's a good thing if conservatives feel unable to express their views for fear of encountering hostility from their peers...

Hundreds of thousands of Germans took to the streets Saturday, in protest of pending trade deals with the United States and Canada. The deals in question are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the U.S. and the European Union and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) for the Canadian-EU relationship. Neither free trade agreement has been ratified yet, but popular outcry has been growing for the last few years. The demonstrations took place in seven cities throughout Germany: Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart. Organizers told CNBC that the official estimate is 320,000 demonstrators across...

U.S. Coast Guard crewmembers are scheduled to enforce security zones on the East River near the United Nations Headquarters beginning Friday. The security zones scheduled to begin Sept. 16, and continue until Sept. 25, 2016, include all waters of the East River between East 35th Street and the Queensboro/59th Street Bridge.

"If you want peace, prepare for war." Nearly seventeen hundred years ago, the historian Vegetius gave that advice to the Roman emperor. Good advice, as true today as it was then. Time was when America's overwhelming military and industrial strength kept the peace. But now deliberate American weakness is embroiling us in a multitude of rarely reported hot skirmishes around the globe. Good soldiers are dying, but you almost never hear about them. This, while hard earned combat victories in Iraq and Afghanistan (and earlier in Viet Nam) have evaporated through premature withdrawal. Current intellectual fashion has it that, rather...

Any American who has sought refuge from politics by escaping into the world of sports realizes now that there is no escaping politics. In the last few months, it has become completely impossible to follow sports without being lectured about the oppressive ways of the United States, and its failures to achieve the highest of today's cultural goals: "inclusion." Leave that word in quotation marks because in the guise of "inclusion" people will be most righteously excluded. In the name of "tolerance," those condemned for intolerance will be boycotted and punished, unless they genuflect to ever-evolving "anti-discrimination" dictates. The state...

Fishermen in New England say President Barack Obama needlessly dealt a big blow to their industry when he created the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument and circumvented the existing process for protecting fisheries. The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. The designation will close the area to commercial fishermen, who go there primarily for lobster, red crab, squid, whiting, butterfish, swordfish and tuna. After Thursday’s announcement, fishermen pondered their next move: sue, lobby Congress to change the plan or relocate. It’s...

A Democratic senator sought Justice Department and IRS Criminal prosecutions of conservatives in 2013, newly-released federal documents reveal. The Department of Justice documents reveal email conversations between its officials and the staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, about possible criminal prosecution of tea party groups for alleged violation of IRS rules, says Judicial Watch, a government watchdog which obtained the material. The conversations were in prepara (excerpt)

<p>A Facebook post featuring the many ways in which Oklahoma has fought back against President Barack Obama's tyrannical rulings went viral, and for good reason.</p> <p>The post perfectly captured the way in which Oklahoma legislators used their constitutionally guaranteed state power to crush the president's rulings on religion, illegal immigration and more.</p>

The Environmental Protection Agency has violated the personal privacy of tens of thousands of farmers and ranchers, according to a unanimous ruling issued by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The ruling in American Farm Bureau Federation and National Pork Producers Council vs. EPA concerned the federal agency's 2013 release to three environmental groups of a vast compilation of spreadsheets containing personal information about farmers and ranchers who raise livestock and poultry in 29 states. The case also related to similar personal information from farmers and ranchers in seven additional states that had yet to be...

Washington (AFP) - Facebook, Twitter and news organizations including Agence France-Presse have joined a coalition of media and technology groups seeking to filter out online misinformation and improve news quality on social networks. First Draft News, which is backed by Google, announced Tuesday that some 20 news organizations will be part of its partner network to share information on best practices for journalism in the online age. Jenni Sargent, managing director of First Draft, said the partner network will help advance the organization's goal of improving news online and on social networks. ...

DEVELOPING: New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened an investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation

The U.S. Military Academy is launching an inquiry into a prayer led by coaches following Army’s opening-day victory over Temple last week. Video of the post-game invocation was pulled offline on Monday after West Point officials received a complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Mikey Weinstein, who heads the MRFF, said he received complaints from six members of the football team, two of whom he said identified as Christians, as well as dozens of Army graduates and staff who took exception to the religious expression.

As the October 1 deadline approaches for the us to turn over control of ICANN, the domain name non profit, to the international community, several congressional Republicans are vowing to fight the move because they say it's dangerous and premature. Politico: GOP lawmakers have long warned that the administration's plan to relinquish its authority over ICANN, the global nonprofit that manages the internet's domain name system, could give authoritarian countries like China and Russia an opening to make an online power grab. Now, as the actual date of the transition approaches — Oct. 1 — Republicans are looking at throwing...

On Wednesday, August 17, the Wyoming Supreme Court heard a case that has huge implications for each and every one of us. The case involves Judge Ruth Neely, who has served with distinction for twenty-one years as the municipal judge in Pinedale, Wyoming. Since municipalities have no authority either to issue a license or solemnize a marriage, you would think that she’s unaffected by all the hoopla over same-sex marriage. But you would be mistaken. Because of her beliefs about marriage, the Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics (CJCE) wants to remove her from her job and disqualify her...

Tyrants throughout history have known that beheading their enemies and placing the heads on pikes at the gates of their capitals sends a powerful message to everyone else. Behave yourself as we dictate, and you may survive. Cross the king, and you are a dead man. Something very similar, but updated and taken to a vast financial level, happened to ITT Tech, the privately owned trade school/university. As the Wall Street Journal explains, it crossed the king (in this case, the Obama Department of Education): ITT Technical Institute folded on cue Tuesday after the Obama Administration issued a regulatory death...

Apple, Amazon, Google, Energy companies, and Airlines, and others back Microsoft in battle with government overreach. Link only due to copy right issues: Apple, Google Back Microsoft Over ‘Sneak-and-Peek’

Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor agreed that “tenderness leads to the gas chambers,” and what they were trying to get through our thick heads is that tenderness without truth is tyranny. As Rodney Stark has pointed out in The Rise of Christianity, the Roman Empire was a harsh, unforgiving, cruel, and relentless society in which to live. Women were little better than possessions, children were considered undeveloped human beings. Slavery, violence, bloodshed, and revenge mingled with fire, famine, flood, pestilence, and plague. In the midst of the horror Christians rescued discarded babies, despised abortion, loved their spouses, tended the sick,...

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is investigating possible safety problems with guns manufactured by at least two companies. The Boston Globe reports that Remington Arms Co. and Glock Inc. have filed lawsuits to fight Healey’s efforts. […] Healey says Glock firearms are “prone to accidental discharge” and says in court papers she is concerned the company may have been warned about the problem and failed to act. …

The subject of this book is forgetfulness. By this I do not mean our tendency to misplace valuable objects, or our inability to recall the name of the boss’s dog, but the collective and cultural amnesia the over comes any group of human beings who have long benefited from the blessings of civilization – an amnesia first observed nearly eight hundred years ago by the Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun, contemplating the rise and fall of those great feats of organized life that we call by such terms as societies, states and empires. Forgetfulness occurs when those who have...

The White House on Monday defended President Obama’s decision to enter into the Paris climate accord without Senate ratification but stopped short of confirming a Chinese report that he will do so this week during his trip to China. Still, it would surprise no one if Mr. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping were to announce the ratification of the sweeping climate change agreement before the Sunday opening of the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. White House senior adviser Brian Deese said the president has the legal authority to ratify the accord without the two-thirds Senate vote required...