Free Republic

UK: Muslim rapist made his victim swear on the Qur’an to keep the attack secret Judge Neil Davey QC said: “When you made her swear on the holy book you knew perfectly well that what you were doing was wrong.” But that is not certain. Neil Davey assumes that the Qur’an forbids this sort of behavior, but he likely hasn’t read it. The Qur’an teaches that Infidel women can be lawfully taken for sexual use (cf. its allowance for a man to take “captives of the right hand,” 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet, tell your...

Facebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed. The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU. The documents include details of...

...Stanley Donen died a week ago, and...was the last surviving major director of the Golden Age, mainly because he was barely out of short pants when he started. His films include On The Town, Singin' In The Rain, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Indiscreet, Charade and Two for the Road. He started out directing Sinatra, Astaire, Gene Kelly, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and hung in there long enough to direct Lionel Richie, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore (topless), and Michael Jackson (for a Jekyll & Hyde adaptation aborted after the child-molestation charges). And, speaking of the Oscars, the last magical moment...

Lively criticism of the Green New Deal also came from a man who now calls himself the “Sensible Environmentalist.” Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, left very little to the imagination when he took to Twitter to excoriate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over her full-throated endorsement of the sweeping plan — one which he says would eventually lead to “mass death.” Despite Patrick Moore having a relatively modest social media following on Twitter, his acerbic words for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez drew nearly 7,000 likes in somewhat short order. As IdeaCity details, Moore is no stranger to public controversy and debate, having departed from the...

Pakistan: Muslim murders wife and daughter because they were sexually assaulted, to restore his honor It is always the woman’s fault. This is the idea behind the hijab, niqab, and other coverings: it is up to women to prevent men from being tempted. If men are tempted anyway, it is the woman’s fault, and the honor of the family must be restored by killing the women involved. Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off...

The late Richard Neuhaus once recalled that in the 1970s it was widely expected among religious cognoscenti that United Methodism would be the first of America’s historically liberal Mainline Protestant denominations to abandon traditional Christian sexual ethics. After all, it was the largest and most Americanized of mainline churches, and it wasn’t protected by strong traditions of liturgy or ecclesiology. Its experiential theology often seemed muddled. When Neuhaus shared that recollection in 2005, the Episcopal Church and United Church of Christ had already surrendered. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)...

The US is often thought of as one of the most progressive countries in the world, but thanks to Donald Trump it’s not a place LGBTQ+ people are lining up to visit. An annual gay travel index has ranked the US is 47th in a list of the friendliest destinations for queer travelers, falling from it’s 2018 ranking of 39. Berlin-based Spartacus International Gay Guide is a handy resource for LGBTQ+ travelers, and releases the Spartacus Gay Travel Index annually, measuring countries’ queer accessibility through a set of 14 criteria including anti-discrimination legislation, marriage equality, adoption rights, transgender rights, and...

It’s the latest euphemism for the radical left. The American public may have finally caught on to the previous euphemism, “progressive.” Justice Democrats aren’t fooling around, and they’re not bothered by many of the considerations that dog their more moderate colleagues. Justice Democrats must feel that the time is right to lay at least a few of their cards on the table and to oppose those party members they call “radical conservatives.”

To see populism as the problem is to see the events upside-down. People wanting to take control of their own destinies is a good thing. The problem lies with the fragility or even nonexistence of lawful institutions — or sufficient forces to defend them — and with the oligarchic, incompetent, or authoritarian rule that provoked populist reactions in the first place. The criticism of "populism" and "nationalism" tends to become a criticism of "democracy" or even a corporatist protection of an institutionalised oligarchy. Thus, mainstream media's reporting that populism and nationalism are a threat is misdirecting the people from the...

wo officers involved in the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California, last year will not be charged, the district attorney announced Saturday. The shooting of Clark, 22, in his grandmother’s backyard on March 18, 2018, sparked protests. The two officers said they believed Clark had a gun and was in a shooting stance before they fired, but only a cell phone was found. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said body cameras and other evidence showed that one of the officers shouted at Clark to show his hands, that they took cover during the incident and that...

<p>HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) - Alabama police say a dispute over crab legs at a dinner buffet ended in a brawl that left two people facing misdemeanor charges.</p> <p>Huntsville police officer Gerald Johnson says he was eating at the Meteor Buffet restaurant when a fight broke out.</p>

President Trump’s website error page features a picture of Hillary Clinton as President of the United States, along with the text, “Oops! This is awkward. You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist…” The error page pops up whenever a user tries to access a page which doesn’t exist on the website, and was spotted by social media users. President Trump isn’t the only 2020 U.S. presidential election contender who has set up a humorous website error page, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) taking a shot at President Trump on his. “We’ve run into a yuuuuge problem,” Sanders’ error page declares....

WASHINGTON (AP) — One by one, the Republican senators floated their ideas. They were trying to find a way out of a seemingly impossible dilemma: how to support President Donald Trump's U.S.-Mexico border wall without approving the national emergency declaration he invoked to build it. And one by one, during a private lunchtime meeting that ran hot at times, they found no easy answers. As a deadline for voting looms, it's increasingly clear that Republican senators are deeply uncomfortable with Trump's use of executive power to build the wall and desperate to devise a way around the vote. Senators know...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is working behind the scenes to boost the prospects of Neomi Rao, one of his former law clerks, to serve on a powerful federal appeals court in Washington — speaking privately with at least two Republican senators as she faces a contentious confirmation fight. Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) who publicly questioned how Rao would rule on issues such as abortion before supporting her in a key vote Thursday, disclosed this week that he had called Thomas. The justice has also phoned Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), a sometimes deciding voice on controversial nominees. “He called me...

A young man who lives in the area of Los Angeles has a message for the Hollywood elites that speaks truth... Within that seven minute speech this young man foretells of a future that is exactly what CTH outlined when we shared the following image...

Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist, provocateur and self-described investigative journalist, reportedly had her media credentials to cover the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) revoked Saturday after harassing several journalists. Ms. Loomer, 25, shared video of her surrendering a laminated CPAC media badge to a security official shortly before President Trump spoke on the final day of the annual event near Washington, D.C. “CPAC banned me from watching @realdonaldtrump’s speech and revoked my media credentials,” Ms. Loomer said on social media. ~snip~ More recently, Ms. Loomer repeatedly caused scenes at CPAC in the conference’s first couple days. She co-hosted a...

CONCORD — A University of New Hampshire student who registered to vote in Durham and cast an absentee ballot in Massachusetts during the 2016 election admitted to committing voter fraud on Thursday. Spencer McKinnon, 21, pleaded guilty in Strafford County Superior Court to a misdemeanor charge of providing a false statement on a voter registration form, the Attorney General’s office announced Friday. His sentence of six months in a house of corrections was suspended on the condition that he complete 200 hours of community service and pay a $2,000 fine. McKinnon also lost the right to vote in New Hampshire....

The Democratic Party seems to be getting more and more divided by the day. House Democrats were celebrating the passage of a new gun control bill, however Republicans attached an amendment to the bill and gained 26 Democrat votes in the House which gave them a 220-206 win on the bill. The House voted Wednesday on H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. The bill would expand background checks to include all gun sales, rather than just sales by licensed gun dealers as under current law. Republicans in the minority countered with an amendment to require that federal...

Several students at Perry High School say they were disrespected by staff and asked to leave campus because they were wearing "Make America Great Again" attire. Friday was the last day of "Spirit Week" at the high school and it was dubbed "Party in the USA Day." "We just wore all of the America stuff we had, obviously Trump is the president so we wore Trump stuff because he's the leader of our country, right?" said sophomore Morgan Dupuis. At least eight students in MAGA gear were brought to the office at the end of the school day. The students...

A dual citizen of Saudi Arabia and the United States had been imprisoned in the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh for about a week when he heard a knock on his door. Guards dragged Walid Fitaihi, a Harvard-trained physician, to another room, according to a friend who took down the prisoner’s detailed account of his treatment. Dr. Fitaihi told the friend he was slapped, blindfolded, stripped to his underwear and bound to a chair. He was shocked with electricity in what appears to have been a single session of torture that lasted about an hour. His tormentors whipped his back so...