Free Republic

A former public school teacher and current Texas lawmaker has introduced a bill that would require a diversity, equity and inclusion officer in all large, urban public school systems. Rep. James Talarico, author of HB 4111, said this action plan might eliminate hate in schools and prevent a tragedy like the one experienced in Atlanta earlier this week... Talarico pointed to statewide statistics as proof of its necessity. According to Texas Education Agency demographics from the 2019-20 school year, approximately 73% of all public school students were non-white. More than 50% were Hispanic. Talarico said failing to recognize this diversity...

The Regal Theater in downtown Santa Cruz will remain open after a new company purchased the theater. The company announced on Instagram the theater will now be called the Santa Cruz theater. The company had announced it would be closing for good in mid-February. Now, Santa Cruz Cinema plans to reopen on March 25.

Texas' environmental regulator on Friday barred most uses of the water at an oilfield camp converted into a holding center for immigrant teenagers, raising alarms about the safety of more than 400 youths detained there... Safety concerns have continued to emerge since President Joe Biden's administration hastily converted what was a "man camp" for oilfield workers into a detention site for teenagers that opened Sunday night. U.S. officials have rushed to open new sites to hold teenagers and children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to try to clear packed Border Patrol facilities currently holding more than 4,500 youths.

A Canadian father has been arrested for “misgendering” his own 14-year-old child by calling her his “daughter,” and referring to her with the pronouns “she” and “her.” Robert Hoogland — the father of a 14-year-old biological female who identifies as transgender and prefers male pronouns — was found in contempt of court and jailed on Tuesday after repeatedly calling his child his “daughter,” despite the court forbidding it, according to a report by the Post Millennial.

Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new statewide ethnic studies curriculum that advocates for the “decolonization” of American society and elevates Aztec religious symbolism—all in the service of a left-wing political ideology. The new program, called the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, seeks to extend the Left’s cultural dominance of California’s public university system, 50 years in the making, to the state’s entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students. In theoretical terms, the new ethnic studies curriculum is based on the “pedagogy of the...

CALLS for Joe Biden's impeachment began trending on Twitter on Friday hours after the president was caught on tape tripping over the stairs while boarding Air Force One. The 78-year-old president was seen slipping on the stairs as he was trying to speedily climb the airstairs to the presidential aircraft. Donald Trump Jr. attacked Biden and Democrats for accusing his father of being unfit to preside but not using the same rhetoric against Biden. His quick recovery did little to save him from becoming an instant online sensation, with memes immediately popping up on social media poking fun of the...

CNA Staff, Mar 15, 2021 / 12:00 pm MT (CNA).- A leading German Catholic bishop responded to the Vatican’s rejection of blessings for same-sex couples on Monday by saying that there were “no easy answers” to the issue. Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German bishops’ conference, made the comment March 15 after the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) clarified that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings of homosexual unions, in a statement approved by Pope Francis. Bätzing said that the CDF’s response to a question about the possibility of...

Lindsey Boylan, the first of six women who has accused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment or misconduct, says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is no longer her personal "hero." In a new interview with the New Yorker published Thursday, Boylan -- a candidate for Manhattan borough president who worked as an adviser to Cuomo from 2015 to 2018 -- details a memory of the governor showing her a cigar box that was a gift from former President Bill Clinton and recalls idolizing her. Boylan described Hillary Clinton as "the great hero" of her life but said...

In F.F. v. State of New York, (App. Div., March 18, 2021), a New York state appellate court rejected parents' constitutional challenges to New York's repeal of the religious exemption from mandatory vaccination for school children. The court upheld the repeal, finding that it was a neutral law of general applicability prompted by the measles outbreak, even though the repeal eliminated a religious exemption. The court said in part: [W]e do not find that the timing of the repeal reveals political or ideological motivation; rather, the record reflects that the repeal simply worked its way through the basic legislative process...

Two more Catholic churches in Boston have been vandalized yet again, an “unsettling” pattern of incidents that police are investigating. Both Dorchester’s St. Teresa of Calcutta Church and Southie’s St. Monica-Saint Augustine Church recently had their locks damaged on the same night, and a statue of the Virgin Mary was toppled at Saint Monica’s. “It’s a sacred house, and it shouldn’t be damaged,” said Rich Gribaudo of Saint Teresa’s, adding, “It’s unsettling.” Boston Police officers on Friday at 6:30 a.m. responded to St.Teresa’s and St. John Paul II Catholic Academy in the area of 800 Columbia Road. An unknown substance...

Putin is laughing with his peeps.

***** Tunes For Our Troops ~ Twice As Nice Vol. 2 ~ *****~ Support The Artists You Hear Throughout The Canteen ! ~ ***** Warning: Not all music may be appropriate for children! Please click with caution. Thank you! Tunes For The Troops This music is provided for the entertainment of our Troops, Veterans, Allies & their families! Enjoy the variety of musical selections that the Canteen DJs provide throughout the thread. Please ping any DJ with your requests for the Troops! All music is removed on Monday.Thanks to all the DJs for their time & effort providing entertainment...

A nursing home admin from Staten Island says that he and other facilities’ executives were “petrified” after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial order that likely accelerated CCP virus outbreaks at their facilities. The administrator of the Silver Lake Specialized Rehabilitation and Care Center, Michael Kraus, told Fox News that he attempted to alert local officials about the infamous March 25 directive after he was cognizant about it, but that his worries were “shot down” by the authorities. “Many facilities vocalized it,” Kraus told Fox. “They were petrified, but they were more petrified of the Department of Health … once...

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines showed 38,444 reports of adverse events since Dec. 14, 2020. On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about how the agency is investigating reports of deaths and injuries after COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions asking the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done, the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a...

The U.S. Military will now focus on what really matters with enemies abroad wanting to take us out — LGBTQ rights. This is as China, Iran, and Russia are making fools of the administration and the so-called President Joe. When we are conquered by our enemies, we can rejoice knowing we will have the most diverse POWs. The Biden Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is certifiable and is now pushing LGBTQ rights around the world. Why doesn’t he mind his own business? That would be a good idea. According to The Daily Caller, the Department of Defense (DOD) was told...

Climate pseudo-scientist Michael Mann is litigious, but his track record is poor. Nearly nine years ago, he sued National Review, Mark Steyn and the Competitive Enterprise Institute over a post that Mark did at The Corner, which read in part: Michael Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus. And, when the East Anglia emails came out, Penn State felt obliged to “investigate” Professor Mann. Graham Spanier, the Penn State president forced to resign over Sandusky, was the same cove who investigated Mann. And, as with Sandusky and Paterno, the college...

A volcano has erupted in Iceland about 40km (25 miles) from the capital Reykjavik, the Icelandic meteorological office has said, as a red cloud lit up the night sky and a no-fly zone was established in the area. “Volcanic eruption has begun in Fagradalsfjall,” it said in a tweet on Friday night, referring to a mountain located about 30km south-west of the capital. Police and coastguard officials raced to the scene late on Friday and the public has been advised to stay away from the area.

Stolen elections have consequences. Biden and Harris traveled to Georgia to talk about the ongoing threats and violence against the Asian-American community in the wake of shootings at massage parlors that left several Asian women dead. Kamala Harris trashed America as a racist and xenophobic country during a speech in Georgia on Friday.

Laila Mickelwait doesn’t disguise her ultimate ambition – to bring down one of the world’s most successful adult entertainment sites, Pornhub, which has more monthly visitors than Netflix and generates annual revenues approaching $500 million. She hasn’t succeeded yet. But, against all odds, it looks like she’s winning. This week, 70 Senators and MPs in Canada – where Pornhub is headquartered – wrote an open letter calling on police to launch a criminal investigation into its parent company, MindGeek. They were responding to evidence presented to a parliamentary committee which heard that MindGeek has “regularly made available content featuring child...

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts within the higher education policy space were projecting that four-year colleges could face a loss of up to 20 percent in fall enrollment. While these predictions never materialized, the political infatuation with college enrollment figures is not a new phenomenon. Barack Obama proclaimed the orthodox view of college in 2009: Sending every young person to college is necessary to both promote equity and maintain US competitiveness in the world. Under this view, more federal investment to push high school graduates into college is a “human capital investment” that leads to higher lifetime...