Free Republic

Christians in the U.S. military are being told they must forfeit their First Amendment rights. Bible verses are being erased from cadets’ personal dorm-room white boards, and military lawyers claim that legal protections for religion only pertain to matters such as clothing and growing beards but do not extend to any religious expression such as talking about one's faith or posting a Bible verse. Last year Breitbart News broke the story of a campaign by anti-Christian extremists to suppress traditional Christian expression within the U.S. military. There were conflicting stories regarding the possible court martial of service members who share...

Be careful when you Google yourself, Bay Area authorities are warning. In the case of Christopher Viatafa, who Googled himself and found his photo on Northern California’s Most Wanted website, he turned himself in to police. Viatafa – who has a pretty unique last name – was wanted by the San Leandro Police Department for his involvement in a shooting. On August 8, 2013, Vaitafa attended a private party at the San Leandro Senior Center located at 13909 East 14th Street. Police said he started arguing with some people at the party, pulled out a semi-automatic handgun and fired a...

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was an ‘obsessive’ supporter of Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim. And hours before the doomed flight left Kuala Lumpur, Shah attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim was jailed for five years. It was against this background that, seven hours later, he took control of a Boeing 777-200 bound for Beijing and carrying 238 passengers and crew. But this newspaper can reveal that investigators had already spent much of last week examining two laptops removed from Shah’s home. One laptop taken away is thought to contain data from the flight simulator while a second contained little...

We’ve always said that a restraining order is just a piece of paper. Usually we’re referring to defensive gun uses when we say that. However, in this case we have the government violating a restraining order issued by… the government. As we reported earlier this week, the ATF has demanded that Ares Armor, along with some other vendors, turn over their customer records in relation to an 80% lower that may have actually been a firearm under law. Ares agreed to stop selling the product in question as well as turn over their stock to the ATF, however they refused...

Oakland Residents Upset Over Lockpicking Workshop OAKLAND, Calif. -- City leaders in Oakland have been getting some angry e-mails lately from some of the people they serve. Mayor Jean Quan is the major target after her newsletter appears to promote a class designed to teach people how to pick a lock. In a city with a crime problem, it's easy to see why they're not happy. The name of the class appears among 40 others in the catalog for the upcoming "Workshop Weekend" in Oakland, right alongside things like "robot building." It's a 3-hour class called "Introduction to Lockpicking" and...

"The zombies are coming!" the Homeland Security Department says. Tongue firmly in cheek, the government urged citizens Thursday to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, part of a public health campaign to encourage better preparation for genuine disasters and emergencies. The theory: If you're prepared for a zombie attack, the same preparations will help during a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake or terrorist attack.

Democrat Mary Gonzalez was the first lesbian to openly serve in the Texas House of Representatives, and now she’s becoming the first “pansexual,” too. “During the campaign if I had identified as pansexual, I would have overwhelmed everyone…Now that I’m out of the campaign, I’m completely much more able to define it,” she explained So what, exactly, is a “pansexual”? And how is it different from “bisexual”?

[check link for the video] These are the people the mainstream media are rooting for. The man reading the Bible, I am sure, relates to Dan Cathy. Via Ann Sorock at Legal Insurrection A good question for these times, are these homosexuals racist? Speaking truth to power? Note the "accusation" written in chalk on the sidewalk telling us he's really gay; are they saying that there's something wrong with that? If I were into conspiracy theories I would suspect that Chick-fil-A hired a bunch of actors to stage this little play as a way of discrediting the same sex marriage...

Picture this: an eleven-year-old child attends a public school. One day at school, her teacher overhears her talking to a friend. The child is telling her friend that her mom believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. Because of laws now in place, the teacher must get the principal, and the child is taken to the office. The mother is tracked down at her job and arrested. The child’s father is away on business and cannot get back immediately; there is no one around to take care of the young girl, so the child is put in...

Professors from the the University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) have launched an online university exclusively for the use of illegal aliens.The school, dubbed “National Dream University (NDU),” will feature a faculty of illegal immigrants and will cater to students who qualify for an education under California’s DREAM Act. “This is the first national program specifically geared toward DREAM Act students,” Kent Wong, director of UCLA’s Labor College, told LA Weekly on Wednesday. “It’s not easy for DREAM Act students to attend college.”

LONDON – A gay man carrying the Olympic torch today on the streets of London was cheered by spectators when he kissed his boyfriend during his stretch of carrying the device that will light the giant Olympic Flame tonight during the opening ceremony that will be telecast by NBC in the U.S. on a tape-delay basis. Chris Basiurski, who chairs Gay Football Supporters Network in Great Britain, was one of thousands of Britons who were chosen to carry the Olympic torch over the past 70 days as part of the Olympic Torch relay that leads up to the lighting ceremony....

A rural Oregon man was sentenced Wednesday to 30 days in jail and over $1,500 in fines because he had three reservoirs on his property to collect and use rainwater. Gary Harrington of Eagle Point, Ore., says he plans to appeal his conviction in Jackson County (Ore.) Circuit Court on nine misdemeanor charges under a 1925 law for having what state water managers called “three illegal reservoirs” on his property – and for filling the reservoirs with rainwater and snow runoff.

Appearing as a guest on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recommended that America's police officers should go on strike and refuse to protect people until gun control legislation which would allegedly make them safer is enacted. Bloomberg: (Video can be found here.) Well, I would take it one step further. I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say we're gonna go on strike, we're not gonna protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what's required to keep us safe.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is not a fan of a big part of the 287(g) program, which allows state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws — but until Thursday her department’s website didn’t get that message. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the part of her agency that handles the 287(g) agreements with states and localities, had a Web page dedicated to success stories from the program, pointing to many of the dangerous criminal aliens who had been taken off the streets after local authorities nabbed them for another offense. But after Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, pointed...

Tech. Sgt. Erwynn Umali, 34, and civilian Will Behrens, 35, held their wedding at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in N.J. in June When Tech. Sgt. Erwynn Umali and civilian Will Behrens wanted to seal their commitment in a civil union in New Jersey, they chose a venue that nine months ago would have been unthinkable: a military base. The grooms said their vows on June 23 before 150 guests at the chapel at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst — the first time a civil union or gay wedding has been held in such a facility in the United States. While the...

Brook Village Retirement Home in North Providence has banned a small group of residents from praying the Rosary in the common area after one resident complained. Residents tell WPRO’S John DePetro that a group would gather every Monday in the community room at 11:30 a.m. and watch “The Holy Rosary with Mother Angelica and the Nuns of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery,” on the Catholic television network. During the program the group would pray aloud. According to the residents, property manager Carol Conti told the group they could no longer pray aloud in the common space after a resident...

An Australian Olympic married couple claims they have been prohibited from sharing a room in the London Olympic Village, even though gay couples are reportedly allowed to do so. Olympic shooters Russell and Lauryn Mark told news.com.au that they are being discriminated against by officials. “The stupid part of this, which I have argued to them, is that there are tons of gay couples on the Olympic team who will be rooming together, so we are being discriminated against because we are heterosexual,” Russell Mark told news.com.au.

Half a million Californians now live in bankrupt cities, as San Bernardino joins Stockton in declaring insolvency thanks to a $46 million deficit (a smaller city also declared bankruptcy this month). Lest anyone think this was a result solely of the 2008 housing bubble and financial crisis, Reuters reports that: the city attorney general James Penman said San Bernardino’s city officials had been submitting false accounting documents for 13 of the last 16 years in an effort to hide the real financial situation of the city. San Bernardino’s mayor since 2006, Patrick Morris, said he had never heard of allegations...

When the woman called 911 a deputy wasn’t sent because the compliance officer is a county employee. A Georgia homeowner allegedly awoke to an unusual scene on July 2 — a county code compliance officer yelling at her over the state of her lawn from the doorway of her bedroom. “I woke up, I didn’t have my glasses on or my contacts in and all I see is this big burly figure standing in my doorway,” Erica Masters explained. “A big huge guy with a grey shirt. It scared the mess out of me.” She elaborated: “[He] yelled at me...

Beloved of spiritualists and bored teenagers on a dare, the Ouija board has long been a source of entertainment, mystery and sometimes downright spookiness. Now it could shine a light on the secrets of the unconscious mind. The Ouija, also known as a talking board, is a wooden plaque marked with the words, "yes", "no" and the letters of the alphabet. Typically a group of users place their hands on a movable pointer , or "planchette", and ask questions out loud. Sometimes the planchette signals an answer, even when no one admits to moving it deliberately. Believers think the answer...