Free Republic

Friday, Sept. 30, is deadline for Protecting Internet Freedom Act - SB3031 and HR5418 THAT IS FOUR DAYS!! Talked to Cruz and Duffy offices 9/26. McConnell's tech person was supposed to call back...in meetings 2 hours ago...Cornyn went to voicemail. Cruz office: Suggested call McConnell! Senate needs to include language form both SB3031 and HR5418 in Continuing Resolution (CR). We need to light a fire~McConnell needs to make this a priority. Senator Cornyn is the Whip and has influence over what is brought to floor. They felt it was ok to contact Ryan too. Make this a priority!!! Duffy office:...

Too many people are confused. Let's cut through the lies and make this as simple as 'ABC'. Lie Number 1: "ICANN's just a 'phone book'." No, ICANN is the chained up guard dog in the back yard. [More on that later.] The closest thing to a phonebook is a Top Level Domain like .COM or .MIL. But calling them 'libraries' would be closer to the truth. So who is the TLD's librarian? That would be the 'Registrar' who manages the TLD's registry. ~ ~ Simple as ABC: A ... ICANN .. the chained up watchdog. B ... TLD ... Top...

Members of 4chan’s “politically incorrect” board /pol/ have begun “Operation Google,” which aims to circumnavigate the search engine’s new AI program to remove bigoted and racist posts and comments from the internet by filling the search engine with more bigotry and racism. Operation Google was outlined by 4chan members as an effort to replace the “n-word” with the word “Google,” in order to “make it so Google would have to censor their own company by making them a racial slur towards blacks.” The Operation Google “manifesto” can be read below:

Please brace for just one thick sentence: ICANN's power is mainly legal, and a contract with ICANN could trigger a violent dispute over international law. ~ ~ ~ Bluntly stated: giving away ICANN could ultimately trigger a cyber war or worse. ~ ~ ~ Raw Power and International Law When you face a super power like the USA it helps to have raw power. China probably assumes it will not come to that, but just like nuclear deterence, they need the war-making capability. And the Chinese already enjoy raw power. Their encryption is superior, their nuclear capability suffices, and they...

<p>Seattle Mariners catcher Steve Clevenger has been suspended for criticizing Black Lives Matter and President Obama.</p> <p>“BLM is pathetic once again! Obama you are pathetic once again! Everyone involved should be locked behind bars like animals!” the backup catcher tweeted out about the riots in Charlotte.</p>

In response to questions from AARP Bulletin, Hillary Clinton made clear her position that to be successful, policies for ending terrorism must include gun control for all Americans. AARP Bulletin asked, “What would you do to address terrorism?” Clinton responded: Well, these are legitimate fears. I believe that people are rightly concerned about violence. Terrorism is part of that violence, and we have to do the best job we can to keep America safe. So I’ve laid out a very comprehensive plan about taking on the terrorists, going after them where they operate, doing everything we can to take away...

Well, you've no doubt heard the arguments made by socialists against private property, against corporations and the profit motive. We are taught that profit is a form of theft from the workers rather than being positive influx of cash resources payment of wages, dividends and investments in expansion. The concept of owning property is also in of itself theft to socialists, for the earth belongs to us and everything belongs to everybody. Profit and property has another meaning, it is what sends signals to our economy on where resources and assets must be placed in order to achieve further productivity...

More from the article - interview mp4 available at link. On Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton predicted that the impending transfer of Internet domain control from American supervision to an international body will mean the end of the Internet “as we know it.” Speaking to Breitbart Editor-in-Chief and SiriusXM host Alex Marlow, Bolton explained that we should be “very concerned” about the transfer from “a national-security perspective.” “What we’ve gotten out of the Internet, under the shelter of a private American organization that contracts with the Commerce Department, [is] one of the few cases...

US film director Oliver Stone on Thursday accused President Barack Obama's administration of implementing a surveillance system worse than that of the feared Stasi secret police in East Germany. Speaking at the San Sebastian film festival in northern Spain, where he presented his film "Snowden," Stone said many in the US had grown disillusioned with a president they once saw as "a man of great integrity." "On the contrary, Obama has doubled down on the (George W.) Bush administration policies," said Stone, whose latest movie is a biographical political thriller about Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor who revealed a...

As the Paris climate agreement edged closer to entering into force – which many advocates hope will occur before the possibility of a Trump presidency – Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday thanked what he called “warriors for the planet” as the second-to-last hurdle on the path to that achievement was cleared. Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Kerry said he was “absolutely confident” that the most ambitious climate deal yet negotiated will enter into force before the next U.N. climate megaconference, which starts in Marrakech, Morocco on November 7 – one day before the U.S. election....

"No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." -- Fifth Amendment to the U.S. ConstitutionThe clash in American history between liberty and safety is as old as the republic itself. As far back as 1798, notwithstanding the lofty goals and individualistic values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the same generation -- in some cases the same human beings -- that wrote in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts, which punished speech critical of the...

President Obama advocated that nations will have to give up some of their autonomous freedoms for international cooperation to achieve security on Tuesday during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. Obama told the audience how he believes global security can be achieved with the help of international institutions like the U.N. In his remarks, Obama said “powerful nations” like the United States will have to accept constraints and give up some of their freedoms. The president acknowledged that he has been criticized by his own citizens for this belief but he remains convinced he is right. Obama also...

Brace yourselves from now til Jan 2017! -> "To be sure, there are 1,500 proposed rules and regulations in the pipeline, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. That includes over 700 dubbed “economically significant” in the key final stage, and Katz said those are the ones to watch." <- GOP Mostly Powerless in Stopping Obama 'Midnight' Regulations http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/gop-mostly-powerless-stopping-obama-midnight-regulations John T. Bennett @John T. Bennett Posted Sep 19, 2016 3:33 PM Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chairman Richard Shelby is watching banking and consumer finance regulations that come under his panel's purview. “We don’t know what...

The best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for...

Nearly 225 years after the ratification of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the cause of conscience protected by the principles of “no establishment” and “free exercise” may be losing support in the minds and hearts of the American people. Appeals by religious individuals and groups for exemption from government laws and regulations that substantially burden religious practice are increasingly unpopular and controversial. So much so that many in the media have taken to using scare quotes, transforming religious freedom into “religious freedom.” Now the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights appears to be recommending that we make it official:...

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...

Two Polish Second World War heroes who fought the Germans but were killed later by the communists in Poland for pro-independence activity have received a state burial. The relatives of 17-year-old Home Army nurse Danuta Siedzikowna and 42-year-old officer Feliks Selmanowicz attended the ceremonies on Sunday along with government officials. The burials were held in the northern city of Gdansk where the two were captured....

Open your Facebook feed. What do you see? A photo of a close friend’s child. An automatically generated slide show commemorating six years of friendship between two acquaintances. An eerily on-target ad for something you’ve been meaning to buy. A funny video. A sad video. A recently live video. Lots of video; more video than you remember from before. A somewhat less-on-target ad. Someone you saw yesterday feeling blessed. Someone you haven’t seen in 10 years feeling worried.

Health Reform: This week Illinois' insurance regulator said ObamaCare premiums in the state will jump as high as 55%. The Obama administration's response to this and other news of massive rate hikes: Don't worry. Be happy. Anyone shopping for ObamaCare coverage in Illinois this fall is in for a big shock. The average increase for cheap Bronze plans is likely 44%. It's 45% for the lowest-cost Silver plan, and 55% for the cheapest Gold plan.

If we had only learned from the mistakes of others Chaos is the mother of tyranny. Chaos reigns when people operate in confusion and disorder. It is a state in which behavior and events are not controlled by reason. Today we are faced with a government and an elite controlled media that lie to the people and then lie about lying. They operate as if the country is theirs to run and ruin for their own personal enrichment. Chaos is a time like today when life makes little sense and we are force-fed such gobbledygook as the economy is booming,...

The internet has been abuzz with headlines declaring, “Almost Everything the Media Tell You About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Is Wrong,” and “Johns Hopkins Shrinks Warn Against Kids Going Transgender.”As reported by Ryan T. Anderson on Monday, “A major new report, published today in the journal The New Atlantis, challenges the leading narratives that the media has pushed regarding sexual orientation and gender identity.”How significant was this report?“Co-authored by two of the nation’s leading scholars on mental health and sexuality, the 143-page report discusses over 200 peer-reviewed studies in the biological, psychological, and social sciences, painstakingly documenting what scientific...

In today’s public policy arena, winning ideas rarely are decided by sound logic, accurate facts, or even by the most votes. Instead, content filters and algorithms, meticulously engineered by social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, intentionally steer public debate in the direction of their owners’ personal politics; and, not coincidentally, toward the politics of their liberal friends in Washington and Sacramento.For starters, consider Facebook – the Big Daddy of social media. There have been numerous reports of Facebook’s algorithm taking down popular pages of pro-gun organizations. But even this example of the “new censorship” pales when viewed in the...

The Obama administration is withholding from Congress details about how $1.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds was delivered to Iran, according to conversations with lawmakers, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the administration is now stonewalling an official inquiry into the matter. The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice have all rebuffed a congressional probe into the circumstances surrounding the $1.3 billion payment to Iran, which is part of an additional $400 million cash payout that occurred just prior to the release of several U.S. hostages and led to accusations that the administration had paid Iran a ransom. The...

It's looking like a lot of people are going to have little Obamacare choice next year.One-third of the United States may have just a single insurer to pick from on Obamacare marketplaces in 2017, an analysis released Friday suggests. Seven entire states are projected to have just one carrier in 2017: Alaska, Alabama, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wyoming, according to research by the Avalere consultancy. And more than half of the country, 55 percent, may end up having two or fewer insurers to choose from on those government-run exchanges, Avalere said. "And there may be some sub-region...

Under the guise of providing increased “security” for “critical infrastructure,” the Obama administration is plotting to insert itself and the federal government into the American elections process. While voting is constitutionally the responsibility of state and local officials, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, Jeh Johnson, pointed to the alleged threat of cyberattacks to justify the latest proposed usurpation of power. The controversial scheme was floated amid growing national concerns, fueled in part by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's warnings of a “rigged” election, that America's electoral system might be vulnerable to major manipulation. Critics and experts, though, warned that the White...

I have spent my life as a Democrat which probably isn’t that surprising considering that I am African-American. One of the things that always attracted me to the party were the ideals of equality, fighting for the little guy and our openness to differing opinions, but lately I have seen my party take a turn that makes me uncomfortable. Somewhere along the way we stopped fighting for the little guy and became the party of the smug, educated elites who look down on those with less education and deem them unable or unworthy of being able to make personal decisions...

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign has sent out a fundraising email arguing the website Breitbart News has no “right to exist,” and suggests that if elected, the website will be shut down entirely. “We’ve had a conservative media in this country for a while,” says the email, sent Thursday and signed by deputy communications director Christina Reynolds. “I don’t always like what they have to say, but I respect their role and their right to exist Reynolds’ acknowledgment that the regular conservative media has a “right to exist,” though, is used to contrast it with Breitbart, which apparently has no...

There is an interesting disconnect with some people when discussing the concept of global centralization. Naturally, the mind reels in horror at the very idea, because many of us know, deep down at our core, that centralization is the root of tyranny. We know that when absolute power is granted into the hands of an elite few over the lives of the masses, very bad things happen. No small group of people has ever shown itself trustworthy, rational, empathic or wise enough to handle such a responsibility. They ALWAYS screw it up, or, they deliberately take advantage of their extreme...

Dems Pouring Millions Into Black Lives Matter It’s a full-fledged political and terrorist machine. Trey Sanchez Chants of “black lives matter” have filled the streets since the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson. But what once was a grassroots movement has swelled to a full-on political machine and its increasing terrorism has the full financial blessing of several liberal foundations. TruthRevolt previously reported on George Soros’s hefty donation of $33 million to ensure the Ferguson protests stayed in the spotlight for as long as possible. This funding helped bring in protesters by the busloads to Missouri and allowed them...

The Department of Commerce is set to hand off the final vestiges of American control over the Internet to international authorities in less than two months, officials have confirmed. The department will finalize the transition effective Oct. 1, Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling wrote on Tuesday, barring what he called "any significant impediment." The move means the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which is responsible for interpreting numerical addresses on the Web to a readable language, will move from U.S. control to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a multistakeholder body based in Los Angeles that includes countries such as...

An ATF spokesman who was intimately involved in the Fast and Furious cover up has been promoting a national gun registry on CBS.  On Sunday, 31 July, Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon appeared on Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. Brandon was the ATF official who oversaw the discipline or more accurately the lack thereof, in the Fast and Furious operation. His role has been detailed in the americanthinker.com: According to outgoing Director Jones's sworn testimony of April 2, 2014 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Brandon was the person who determined disciplinary punishments for all of...