Free Republic

Seattle taxpayers are footing the bill in the latest left-wing indoctrination efforts regarding so-called “white privilege.” In this particular circumstance, the focus is actually on “white fragility,” and it is part of a set of “racial equity” workshops that Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture is hosting in August and September. According to Seattle's city website, white fragility is defined as the “inability for white people to tolerate racial stress.” The scheduled workshops, organizers say, will help to address and correct that inability, as they will provide “the perspectives and skills needed for white people to have more constructive cross-racial...

TUKWILA, Wash. -- Tukwila police are investigating after a fight at a mosque escalated into a stabbing late Sunday night. It happened at the Abu Bakr Islamic Center at 14101 Tukwila International Boulevard just after 8:30 p.m. Police said a 26-year-old Somali man was trespassing on the mosque's basketball courts. The security guard asked him to leave, but he refused.

ASKED by an out-of-stater where the nearest shooting range is, Patrick Leavitt, an affable gunsmith at Riverman Gun Works in Coeur d’Alene, says: “This is Idaho—you can shoot pretty much anywhere away from buildings.” That is one reason why the sparsely populated state is attracting a growing number of “political refugees” keen to slip free from bureaucrats in America’s liberal states, says James Wesley, Rawles (yes, with a comma), an author of bestselling survivalist novels. In a widely read manifesto posted in 2011 on his survivalblog.com, Mr Rawles, a former army intelligence officer, urged libertarian-leaning Christians and Jews to move...

On paper, it looks like a big win for environmentalists: a ballot initiative in Washington state to make it the first in the nation to impose a tax on all carbon emissions. Yet green groups are united almost in lockstep against the proposal – all because it includes tax cuts, to offset the tax hike. Yoram Bauman, who authored Initiative 732 and generally sides with environmental groups that have claimed for years that greenhouse gasses are responsible for climate change, now says he’s shocked at the pushback he’s facing from these same organizations. “Putting a price on carbon is the...

Wildfires were burning Monday in seven Western U.S. states, from California's famed Big Sur region to tribal towns and hamlets near Reno, Nevada. Evacuations were ordered in Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Wyoming and firefighters were trying to stop a Washington blaze from reaching a thickly forested security zone at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Raise the minimum wage in Seattle they said. It will help workers they said. Well, the city did increase the minimum wage from the previous rate of $9.47 to $15, which is to be phased in by 2018. It’s now at $11, and lo and behold it has hurt workers. A study found that workers would’ve already seen an increase in wages without the hike because of the increased economic activity and more would’ve been employed. Instead, hours were cut, fewer people worked, and all of this was [predictable]: The average hourly wage for workers affected by the increase jumped...

A 49-year-old Iraqi refugee who came to the U.S. in 2003 has fled the country 48 hours before he was to stand trial in Kennewick, Washington, for allegedly raping a grade-school girl. Khalid Fathey reportedly boarded a flight for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Authorities issued a nationwide arrest warrant this week after he failed to show at his Benton County Superior Court trial, a local newspaper reported. The U.S. Marshals Service then discovered that Fathey left Seattle on July 23 on a plane bound for Dubai, Anita Petra, deputy county prosecutor, told the Tri-Cities Herald. She did not...

When local artist Natasha Marin spoke with Seattle Weekly last week about Reparations.me, her then-7-day-old website and Facebook page, she was clearly fraying around the edges—underfed, overworked, and ragged as hell.“I’ve had about 12 hours of sleep since Friday,” she said over the phone with a hoarse laugh, as a second phone buzzed and buzzed in the background. She responded to one last frantic message and attempted to close the “99 windows I have open” in order to pull together her thoughts. “I maybe have eaten, like, one real meal. I’m at that point of exhaustion now, if I see...

In the America I grew up in, the “liberals” were content to use government coercion to confiscate people’s money so they could spend it on their panoply of social engineering and vote-buying projects. They got to compel people to “join” Social Security, subsidize National Public Radio, pay for legions of needless bureaucrats in offices not authorized under the Constitution, bail out political cronies who cried “We’re too big to fail!” and so on. That kind of “liberalism” was bad enough, but the disease has of late developed new and far more vicious strains. Those involve attacks on Americans for not...

PROTECTION ISLAND — Jim Hayward slips on a hard hat and pops open an umbrella before stepping into a storm of angry gulls. Hayward, a seabird biologist based on Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, is making his evening rounds through the largest gull nesting colony in the Puget Sound region. He's been monitoring this site since 1987, so he's used to the shrieking, the divebombing, the frequent splatterings of gull poop, and the pecking at his head, hands and feet. What he's not accustomed to is the cannibalism.

A Transportation Security Administration agent in Seattle was arrested after allegedly being spotted using a phone to take video up a woman's skirt at the city's airport, according to authorities. Nicholas Fernandez, 29, was arrested on a charge of voyeurism Tuesday, Seattle police said in an arrest report. The incident occurred on an escalator, and not in a security line. "TSA does not tolerate illegal, unethical or immoral conduct," a spokesperson for the TSA said in a statement. "When such conduct is alleged, TSA investigates it thoroughly. When appropriate, TSA requests that it be investigated by a law enforcement authority....

Israa Ali was restless. The 19-month-old toddler, dressed in pink to match her mother Amani’s pink hijab, whined and tugged at a box of sterile gloves on the medical exam table, demanding attention. Her father, Kareem Ali, shushed Israa as he watched over her sleeping infant sister, Sarah. Amani Ali was one of 15 patients who had come to the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, or MAPS, mosque in Redmond on Sunday for the launch of a new health clinic. Amani, who is originally from Palestine, does not have health insurance. The Community Clinic is hosted by MAPS and the...

"SEDRO-WOOLLEY, Wash. – The sheriff of a county about 70 miles north of Seattle says a restaurant owner has asked that law enforcement no longer dine there. Skagit County Sheriff Will Reichardt said on Facebook that after four deputies finished lunch at Lucky's Teriyaki in Sedro-Woolley Thursday, the owner asked them not to eat there anymore. Reichardt says the deputies were told that customers didn't like law enforcement there. The sheriff says his chief deputy called the owner later Thursday and says the request was confirmed along with a request to spread the word among other law enforcement agencies."

Were you in Olympia, Washington, and wanted to buy an abortifacient drug, there would be a multitude of places ready to sell you one. Ralph's Thriftway, a local family-owned grocery store and pharmacy, would not be one of them. "Petitioners are Christians who believe that life is sacred from the moment of conception," lawyers representing Stormans, Inc. (the family corporation that owns Ralph's) and two individual pharmacists (who do not work at Ralph's) wrote in a January petition to the Supreme Court. "Because of their religious beliefs," said the petition (co-authored by attorneys from the Beckett Fund and the Alliance...

VANCOUVER, Washington -- A 2-year-old girl is in critical condition and fighting for her life after deputies say her own father nearly beat her to death. But one man is being credited with giving her the chance to survive. Don Gilbert is still in shock after he intervened when the girl's father, 32-year-old Kyle Holder, started attacking his daughter at a motel in Vancouver, Washington, authorities say. Deputies say Holder and his girlfriend were in their motel room and their 2-year-old daughter was sleeping when suddenly, Holder grabbed the girl and threw her out the window onto the concrete. Law...

The United States Forest Service severely damaged a forest road and trail in Northwestern Idaho earlier this month, raising serious questions about the agency’s ability to care for federally-managed lands. During the first weekend in June, several members of Northwestern Gold Prospectors Association (NWGPA) planned to attend a gathering to prospect private claims in the Bedrock Gulch and Eagle Creek areas. When the prospectors arrived, Forest Road 152 was blocked with cement barricades and hundreds of felled trees. ... Photographs from that day show large logs laid crosswise and laterally on the trail, covered with hundreds of large pine branches...

You might remember that Andy Johnson, the rancher from Wyoming, just won his case this week against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). That battle concerned their environmentally friendly stock pond on their private property. The EPA demanded that he remove the pond and threatened him with fines of $37,500 per day if he did not comply. The case was settled this week and the Johnson Family are happy. However… He is not the only citizen that the EPA has targeted. More cases are coming to light on the extreme overreach of this organization. Disabled Navy veteran Joseph Robertson, 77, of...

Nurses with convictions for crimes of violence, sexual offenses and drug thefts are able to evade detection in six states, which have far fewer protections in place than most states when it comes to licensing healthcare workers ... While candidates for jobs such as massage therapists or private investigators are required to submit a fingerprint for checks against state and FBI conviction records, the nurse licensing systems in Colorado, Wisconsin, New York, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii rely on self-disclosure and complaints. The porous process allows nurses disqualified from obtaining licensure in other states to obtain a license in one of...

The US Supreme Court today denied to hear a case involving pharmacists in Washington state who, for religious reasons, declined to dispense RU-486Plan B, the “morning-after pill,” which causes abortion. Effectively this means that Christian pharmacists who refuse to sell drugs that intend to exterminate life in the womb cannot work in the new society. More: The Supreme Court will not review Washington state’s requirement that pharmacies dispense emergency contraceptives to women, prompting a complaint from conservative justices that it was an “ominous sign” for religious liberty. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. issued a sharp dissent Tuesday to the court’s...

The King County Council, just like the Thurston County Commission is considering a septic tax program to be imposed on all properties who have a septic system in King County. Local residents are calling it the “turd tax” or the “toilet tax.” In Thurston County they are calling it the “Crap Tax.” In effect, this will turn septic systems into a utility tax for the local county government, and will serve as a type of cash windfall for the county government to squander. The taxed residents get little in return for the taxes they waste on this program.