Free Republic

A vote December 2 by the Washington, D.C., City Council could compel private religious schools and universities in the nation’s capital to allow groups that oppose the schools’ moral values access to their campuses, programs, and funds. The council voted to eliminate faith-based schools’ 25-year-old legal protections from discrimination lawsuits as part of a “human rights amendment.” Barring an act of Congress, D.C.’s religious schools will likely have to go against their religious values when it comes to permitting use to their campuses or programs. The city’s rules hold that it’s “unlawful discriminatory practice” to limit any use of facilities,...

The Jackie Robinson West sluggers from Chicago’s struggling South Side became national celebrities this summer when they hit and pitched their way to the Little League World Series and took home the U.S title. But now the adults who put together the team — parents, coaches and league administrators — face allegations they violated Little League residency rules by stacking the lineup with All-Star ringers from the suburbs to create a “super team” that became champs. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20141216/morgan-park/jackie-robinson-west-broke-residency-rules-suburban-league-claims

Bill de Blasio kept more than 100 people waiting for a commercial flight from JFK Airport to Puerto Rico because he was running late. The revelation will do nothing to alleviate New York's mayor of his reputation for tardiness. Passengers including city officials and holidaygoers had no idea why the boarding gate remained closed for 20 minutes after it was due to open on November 6. Finally, de Blasio arrived with an entourage of security, and the JetBlue flight was deemed ready for boarding. The mayor and his security were seated first before others were allowed to board. It has...

Grayson Matthews, above, has bad luck.  He has had to defend the family convenience store twice.  Once, back in 2011, he shot a robber who was pretending to have a shotgun.  That guy was wearing a plastic bag over his head with eye holes cut in it.  It must have been hard to see out of.   From journal-news.com: Matthews told the suspect he kept more money in his front right pocket of his pants. He showed Wright the money, switched it from his right to his left hand, and when Wright’s eyes followed, Matthews told him he kept...

ONE of our greatest handicaps in overcoming the pernicious threat of Islamic extremism is the emergence of Islamist denialism — a stubborn refusal to confront the reality of our dilemma. Even in the wake of this week’s death and trauma, there are deliberate attempts in public debate to ignore the jihadist flag, terrorist modus operandi, video demands on behalf of Islamic State and anti-West grievances. The ABC managed to run an online profile piece entitled “Who was Man Haron Monis, the man behind the Sydney siege?” without including the words Muslim or Islam and mentioning terrorism only in a quote...

. We recently noted the rise of counterparty risks in the financial system due to oil prices dropping (and leveraged derivative exposures) but as the Russia situation has deteriorated so dramatically this week, a renewed focus on bank exposures has sent stocks reeling (and credit risk soaring) among many European (and US) banks. As Bloomberg reports, Raiffeisen Bank International and Societe Generale, the European banks with most at stake in Russia, led European lenders lower. Raiffeisen fell as much as 10.3% to 11.40 euros in Vienna, the lowest level since it went public in 2005. Societe Generale dropped as much...

Bradley Stone, the man prosecutors say is responsible for killing his ex-wife and five of her family members and shooting one other before going on the run, has been found dead in the woods near his home, law enforcement sources tell NBC10. His body was discovered near W. 4th Street and Schoolhouse Road in Pennsburg. The location is just yards from the former Marine's home where SWAT teams have been methodically searching for the man for the past two days. Sources said it appears Stone killed himself.

One in five young adults—ages 18 to 34 years old—live in poverty, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. “More millennials are living in poverty today, and they have lower rates of employment, compared with their counterparts in 1980,” the Census states. “One in five young adults lives in poverty (13.5 million people), up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.” …

WASHINGTON — President Obama has decided to sign legislation imposing further sanctions on Russia and authorizing additional aid to Ukraine, despite concerns that it will complicate his efforts to maintain a unified front with European allies, the White House said on Tuesday. The legislation calls for a raft of new measures penalizing Russia’s military and energy sectors and authorizes $350 million in military assistance to Ukraine, including antitank weapons, tactical surveillance drones and counter-artillery radar. The bill was approved unanimously by Congress, but Mr. Obama hedged for days on whether he would sign it. Continue reading the main story Related...

“WINDOW two, hostage down.” In four chilling words, the nation’s worst fears had come true inside the Lindt cafe. ..... About 1.50am Seven Network news reporter Chris Reason, who was watching the cafe from the network’s studio with a police sniper, said the gunman appeared to become disturbed. He began shuffling hostages from one end of the cafe to the other. “The gunman appeared agitated, he didn’t know what to do with them," Reason said. “He was sort of corralling them down one end and then down the other and moving around sort of randomly." ..... It may have been...

MAN Haron Monis couldn’t have done more to make the deaf hear that the terror he unleashed in Sydney was in the name of Islam. As he walked into the Lindt coffee shop with his shotgun on Monday he wore a headband bearing the war cry: “We are ready to sacrifice for you, O Muhammad.” The Iranian-born cleric had already fought for Islam by sending jeering letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. On his Facebook page he’d posted jihadist porn and pledged his allegiance to the bloody caliphate of the Islamic State. And in that coffee...

A federal appeals court has overturned a ruling ordering Massachusetts prison officials to provide taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for an inmate convicted of murder. Michelle Kosilek, born Robert Kosilek, has waged a protracted legal battle for the surgery she says is needed to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder. In 2012, a federal judge ruled that prison officials must provide the surgery. That decision was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but prison officials appealed and won a rehearing before the full appeals court.

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... The Compact for a Balanced Budget is a well-conceived idea that would give the nation a new amendment putting a limit on the amount the federal government can borrow, a maximum of 105 percent of the current debt. Nick Dranias, who is spearheading the compact, argues in this Freeman interview, “Using an interstate compact to coordinate the amending of the Constitution from the states, which represents perhaps the ultimate problem of collective action in politics, is just a natural solution.” I suspect that it’s the only solution. What makes the state compact approach both appealing and practical is that...

the top 14 “movers and shakers” in health care in 2014 because his legal analysis led to the upcoming Supreme Court case on Obamacare’s state subsidies that may blow the ACA sky high. Anyway, Jon flags a U.S. District Court opinion out this morning that finds Obama’s immigration executive action exceeds the proper understanding of “prosecutorial discretion”: According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights...

The Connecticut Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the acquittal of a former Army medic who was sentenced to 15 months in prison for transporting a knife and police baton in his vehicle during a move out of state. Justices issued a 7-0 decision in the appeal of former Clinton resident Jason DeCiccio. The court said part of the state law on illegal possession of weapons in a motor vehicle violates the Second Amendment because it bans people from transporting weapons between residences when they have the right to possess those weapons in their homes. Justice Richard Palmer wrote in the...

Brian Casey told Nova Scotia Supreme Court that the provincial regulator overstepped its bounds when it decided in April it would ban graduates from Trinity Western University from the province's bar admission program unless the school dropped a requirement that students abstain from sex outside heterosexual marriage. The requirement, spelled out in a pledge that all students sign, has been criticized as discriminatory against gays and lesbians. Casey said the court should overturn the law society's regulation on the grounds that it infringes on the future students' charter rights of freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom of association...

In the most shocking development yet, the Sony attackers have threatened a 9/11-like attack on movie theaters that screen Seth Rogen and James Franco’s North Korean comedy “The Interview.” They also released the promised “Christmas gift” of files. The contents of the files are unknown but it’s called “Michael Lynton,” who is the CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “The world will be full of fear,” the message reads. “Remember the 11th of September 2001. We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time. (If your house is nearby, you’d better leave.) Whatever comes in the coming...

A federal judge has found parts of President Obama’s new deportation amnesty to be unconstitutional, issuing a scathing memo Tuesday accusing him of usurping Congress’s power to make laws, and dismantling most of the White House’s legal reasoning for circumventing Congress. Judge Arthur J. Schwab, sitting in the western district of Pennsylvania, said presidents do have powers to use discretion in deciding how to enforce the law, but said Mr. Obama’s new policy goes well beyond that, setting up a full system for granting legal protections to broad groups of individuals. He said Mr. Obama writing laws — a power...

A county legislator from downstate New York is charged with sexual abuse for allegedly touching two teen-age boys in the Cranberry Lake area last summer. Michael Kelsey, 36, of Pleasant Valley, NY, was arrested by state police in Wappingers Falls Monday night.