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Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has become the second and most-senior Republican senator to say she will not vote for GOP nominee Donald Trump for president. In an op-ed published online Monday night in The Washington Post, Ms. Collins said it was “not a decision I make lightly, for I am a lifelong Republican.” The column outlined a series of common criticisms of Mr. Trump’s conduct and temperament — mocking a reporter with disabilities, feuding wioth a Muslim Gold Star family, suggesting a Mexican-American judge might not be impartial.

Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim U.S. soldier who was killed in Iraq, kept up his attacks on Donald Trump on Sunday, saying the world is seeing the "blackness" of the Republican presidential nominee's soul. The world is receiving us like we’ve never seen,” Khan said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” "They have seen the blackness of his character, of his soul.”

Apparently this never got posted here because of the limitations of probation, so here you go: So...here we are...18 years. Mostly good. Clintons a Liar, Dr Raouls costumes, AppyPappy's daughter singing the National Anthem, Kristinns wonderful reporting. The repugnant lies of Classy Green Eyed Blonde and DeepInTheHurtgenForest. The surreal cryptic posts of quidam. The lib trolls like Eschoir. The March for Justice? Heady times. They really were. Fighting against a President who had the gall to look us in the eye and lie to us. But the last 9 months? Absolutely unrecognizable. A lot of great FReepers run off. And...

Before he died May 4 from complications stemming from pancreatic cancer and a stroke, former GOP Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah asked his wife, Joyce, and son, Jim, if there were any Muslims in his hospital. If so, he wanted to "go up to every single one of them to thank them for being in this country, and apologize to them on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump." Joyce and Jim Bennett shared this story with The Daily Beast, as well as other tales involving his disgust with "Donald Trump's xenophobia" and proposal to ban Muslims from...

I’ve always thought highly of General David Petraeus. He’s a smart man who was an extremely competent US Army general officer; perhaps even a mini MacArthur without the gigantic ego and the propensity for hunkering down in dugouts. Petraeus was the man who led the surge, who took command of US forces in Afghanistan, who later became the Director of the CIA. In an era searching for real military leadership, Petraeus seemed just what the doctor ordered. Or, was he? His reputation was tarnished by an affair with his biographer and his carelessness which allowed her access to his Top...

Leonardo DiCaprio praised China’s work to combat climate change on a trip to Beijing on Sunday, and said he believes the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases could be “the hero of the environmental movement.” The actor and environmentalist, who called for action to combat climate change during his Oscar acceptance speech last month, praised China’s shift toward renewable forms of energy to lower carbon emissions. […] “I really think that China can be the hero of the environmental movement, they can be the hero of the climate change movement,” he said. “They have an opportunity to change the world...

Kansas City cops are not horsing around. A woman suspected of striking “Dan” the police horse during last week’s Donald Trump protest in Missouri was arrested Friday night. In an attempt to spook a member of the city’s mounted patrol, April Foster, 29, allegedly yelled at the horse as its officer pushed through a crowd of protesters. She then slapped it with an open hand, according to the Kansas City Star.

This from the city of the Boston Marathon jihad bombing. Hugh Fitzgerald over at Jihad Watch explains: Hugh Fitzgerald: Boston Police Commissioner William Evans: “We’re All Muslims Deep Down” “Veterans, troubled by rhetoric, rally support of Muslims” reads the headline to a story in the print edition of today’s Boston Sunday Globe (online yesterday it was “Local veterans hold rally in support of Muslims.”) It described a group, Veterans for Peace, that felt it simply had to stand up on behalf of Muslims in Massachusetts whom, we were told, are feeling terribly put upon because of the “politics of...

Wednesday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) offered his thoughts on President Barack Obama’s speech at the Islamic Society of Baltimore earlier in the day. Bush praised Obama for making speech, despite having not seen it. The former Florida governor called it important and appropriate.

Roughly a year ago, Fr. Bob Betz, pastor of Divine Mercy Parish, South Milwaukee, believed the property of the old St. Adalbert Parish would never be sold. It had been largely empty for about six years and various proposals to sell the 2.5-acre site near 16th and Minnesota avenues fell through. On Monday, Dec. 23, however, Divine Mercy Parish closed a deal and sold the St. Adalbert property for $600,000 to Masjid Al-Huda, a Muslim congregation. The selling of St. Adalbert began with the merger of four South Milwaukee parishes 12 years prior. "They were all viable parishes at one...

As those who follow Syria's seemingly intractable civil war are no doubt aware, Washington is a big part of why the conflict is now going into its sixth year. What began as a plan to destabilize the Alawite government by "playing on Sunni fears of Iranian influence" (to quote a leaked diplomatic cable from then-Deputy Chief of Mission in Syria William Roebuck) gradually metamorphosed into a overt and at times absurd effort to arm and train a series of rebel groups in an attempt to bring about regime change in Damascus. Those efforts have thus far failed, in part because...

She was walking home from school, with traffic rushing all around, when Zion Lourdes Perez tore off her hijab. Feeling like a target at 15 was nothing she'd imagined when she decided, on a lark, to wear the head scarf worn by Muslim women. Perez, raised Catholic, is a co-founder and president of the Muslim Student Association at Franklin High, and while many students tried on the covering for an hour or two during "modesty week," Perez wanted a deeper understanding of what it meant to broadcast religion on one's sleeve - or head, as it were. The experience last...

Turning Bill Clinton into Bill Cosby: Sorry, conservatives, there's a massive difference between their sex abuse allegations Heaven save us all from conservatives who think they have a "gotcha." And boy they sure think they have one with Bill Clinton and the supposed "hypocrisy" of feminists who don't agree that his wife's career should be derailed because of allegations of sexual harassment and assault made against him in the 1990s. At stake is this alleged unfairness that while some men accused of sexual abuse get in actual trouble for it, Clinton walks around free and even gets to campaign for...

Sorry, were you trying to use a tragic world event as an excuse to say something hateful about Muslims? I thought I heard a murmur, but then it was entirely drowned out by the majesty of Republican Muslim Coalition president Saba Ahmed's American flag hijab. (Watch video at link) On yesterday's Kelly File, Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson tried to argue that mosques are hotbeds of terrorist activity, and that's why her boss would consider shutting them down in the wake of the Paris attacks. So Ahmed, blessed with the patience of a million kindergarten teachers, was forced to...

The above photo was apparently taken at a recent demonstration in Washington, D.C. The young lady holding the sign is Jordan Denari, and she works at the anti-Islamophobia Bridge Initiative, which is housed at Georgetown University's Saudi-funded Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. "I'm a Christian and I Love Muslims"? Absolutely. However, love for Muslims represents a far different sentiment than love for the Qur'an. Denari presumably believes that Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, who was crucified and rose from the dead for the salvation of the human race. Yet she...

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Friday that his country won't repay a $3 billion debt owed to Russia by this weekend after Moscow's refusal to accept repayment terms already offered to other international creditors. The "moratorium" on outstanding debt repayments to Russia effectively means that Ukraine is defaulting on a $3 billion debt due Sunday and could jeopardize crucial loans that Ukraine has been receiving from a $17.5 billion bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund.

The main point is, however, that Russia's 'conservative turn' since Putin's return to the Kremlin in March 2012 — widely deplored in the West as a creeping authoritarianism with roots only in the wiles of Putin's mind — may be closer to the world view of Russia's conservative and patriotic majority than most Western governments would care to admit. In foreign and economic policy, Russia's post-Soviet government may never have cleaved as close to the views of the majority as it does now. That's the view of Igor Okunev, a vice-dean at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, whom...

Here is Jesus H. Christ, walking around modern America, right now. Can you imagine him? Here is, in other words, a dark-skinned, bearded, unkempt Middle Eastern Jew, acting all kinds of suspicious, ranting on street corners and hanging around with prostitutes and fanatics, rejecting money, violence and the ruling class, seen by Muslims as the divine precursor to their prophet as he lures the innocent and the seditious into his lawless cult of pacifism and peace.

One day after the Islamic State group killed or injured about 500 people in a series of attacks in Paris, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., linked climate change to the spread of terrorist groups overseas. At the second Democratic presidential debate, held Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa, Sanders was asked whether he stood by his previous claims that climate change was the No. 1 threat to national security. He said he did."Climate change is directly related to the rise of global terrorism," Sanders said, adding that it would cause nations to start "struggling over limited amounts of water, limited amounts...

The American Left is beyond parody. Apparently Salon would have us believe that the Paris jihad massacre happened because “the right wing media” criticized the Black Lives Matter movement. Islamic jihad? Warfare against unbelievers? The Islamic State’s stated imperative to murder French civilians? Only greasy Islamophobes take such things seriously: everyone knows Fox News and Ben Carson are the real culprits!(AP photo snipped)“And so the hate speech begins: Let Paris be the end of the right’s violent language toward activists,” by Chauncey DeVega, Salon, November 13, 2015:In a still developing situation, the city of Paris, France, is under attack by...