Free Republic

The leader of a national Latino political organization wasn't happy with the results of the June 25 Thursday's immigration policy meeting at the White House between the president and congressional leaders. "They have to move from statements and meetings to doing something concrete," Arturo Vargas, director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials told the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion, which is published in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina lamented that "we have a lot of Democrats who don't want to support a plan for amnesty, for necessary changes, and who just want to apply...

The “God Not Guns” coalition is predictably upset about the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning the Washington, D.C., handgun ban. “It will embolden adherents of GUNdamentalism in their belief in the inerrancy of the 2nd Amendment,” intoned the Rev. Nancy Smith, coalition founder and chief. “Gundamentalism is a religious movement without spiritual grounding. Rather, it is rooted in the sale and promotion of violence.”

The ACLU has announced a major fundraising drive to expand its operations in traditionally conservative states -- and the head of a conservative law firm in one of those states responds: Bring it on! The American Civil Liberties Union is has already raised $258 million through what the Associated Press calls "behind the scenes" solicitations, including $12 million from liberal billionaire political activist George Soros. The liberal legal group wants to expand operations in Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and other traditionally conservative states. *snip* One little-known detail about the ACLU surfaced in the Associated Press reporting on the campaign: the organization...

St. Sabina's website continues to go after political opponents: Criminalizing gun ownership encouraged, State Reps. and Senators who support Second Amendment are targeted 6/2/2008 12:00:00 PM -CCI In spite of the so-called "agreement" between Cardinal George and Rev. Pfleger, stating that the embattled pastor of St. Sabina's would refrain from all political activism, the web site for St. Sabina's continues to be engaged in politics. A long time opponent of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, Rev. Pfleger attracted national attention last year (which was his goal) when he and Jesse Jackson were arrested after invading a gun shop and...

A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday. "The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release. The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day,"...

Everyone knows the potent force of the Christian right in American politics. But since the mid-1990s, an increasingly influential religious movement has arisen on the left, mostly escaping the national press's notice. This new religious left does not expend its political energies on the cultural concerns that primarily motivate conservative evangelicals. Instead, working mostly at the state and local level, and often in lockstep with unions, its ministers, priests, rabbis, and laity exert a major, sometimes decisive, influence in campaigns to enforce a "living wage," to help unions organize, and to block the expansion of nonunionized businesses like Wal-Mart. The...

August 6, 2007 -- Activists with ties to the principal of the city's controversial new Arabic-themed school are hawking T- shirts that glorify Palestinian terror, The Post has learned.

Florida evangelist Bill Keller says he was making a spiritual -- not political -- statement when he warned the 2.4 million subscribers to his Internet prayer ministry that ``if you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!'' But the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should revoke the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status of Bill Keller Ministries, nonetheless.

There’s a foul wind blowing off Cape Cod. The clean-energy project known as Cape Wind makes more sense than ever, what with the mess in the Middle East and the earth getting warmer by the minute. But resistance to the proposed wind-farm — which would place 130 windmills in Nantucket Sound and provide up to 75 percent of the Cape’s energy at any given time — proves that it really isn’t easy being green. Since Cape Wind was first proposed in 2001, the project has made plenty of powerful enemies (see the sidebar “Enemies in High Places”), including Ted Kennedy,...

...According to a complaint filed in the United States District Court in Missouri, Emily Brooker, a student at Missouri State University, was required by her professor in a social-work class to participate in writing a letter supporting gay adoption. The letter was to be signed by every student and forwarded to the state legislature. (It was never sent.) Ms. Brooker declined to sign, saying that the position taken in the letter conflicted with her religious beliefs. A month later she was called before a faculty-student committee to respond to questions about her academic performance and her fitness for social work....

OTTAWA (CP) - The federal Conservative government says it will no longer fund women's groups that do advocacy, lobbying or general research, leaving some to wonder what's left. The drastic change to the mandate and operation of Status of Women Canada also drops the word "equality" when listing the agency's goals. Previous objectives such as helping women's organizations participate in the public policy process and increasing the public's understanding of women's equality issues have been eliminated from government literature. Organizations that receive funding from the Trudeau-era agency were stunned. "When you look at this Conservative government's policy it's like, 'Be...

A couple of days before the 2004 presidential election, an Episcopal clergyman named George Regas delivered a sermon to congregants in Pasadena in the form of a mock debate among Jesus, President Bush and Democratic candidate John Kerry over the Iraq war. Regas left no doubt about his anti-war sentiments, saying that Jesus would have told Bush that the war "has led to disaster," but did not specifically endorse anyone in the election. Eight months later, however, All Saints Episcopal Church received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service declaring "a reasonable belief ... that you may not be a...

Giving Congress up to September 21 to stop the invasion of Iraq, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus of Washington D.C., and Church of God and Christ minister, plans to lead a press conference in front of the White House to protest the war in Iraq on Thursday (Sept. 21). Yearwood, citing a moral obligation, says that he, along with 270 cities and 350 organizations nationwide, will no longer be passive observers of Bush's War on Terror. "We are in a time of peril in which people of morals have to stand up. We are willing to...

Getting the picture on gay marriage Ellen Goodman, Washington Post Writers Group BOSTON - Now I got it. After hours spent poring over Washington state's Supreme Court decision upholding the ban on same-sex marriage, I've finally figured it out. The court wasn't just ruling against same-sex marriage. It was ruling in favor of "procreationist marriage." This is the heart of the opinion written by Justice Barbara Madsen: "Limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's...

Last week marked the final set of hearings on academic freedom by members of the Pennsylvania state house. The Select Committee on Academic Freedom met at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) on May 31st and June 1st to hear administrators, union officials, professors and students. Dr. Peter H. Garland and Dr. James D. Moran came representing the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) and said that it is their goal “to ensure that the more than 107,000 students attending the 14 PASSHE Universities receive the very best education possible” and said that each school already has policies in place...

The Montgomery County schools' decision to grant students community service credit for attending Monday's immigration rights protest is raising concern among some parents as well as activists who say officials should focus on education, not political advocacy. Montgomery is the only Washington area school system offering students credit for taking part in the event, to be held on the Mall -- a decision Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said is consistent with how the system has operated. "This is nothing new,'' schools spokesman Brian K. Edwards said about the decision. "Advocacy is allowed." But in the superheated atmosphere surrounding the immigration...

About FreedomWorks Our Founding Fathers risked everything in the battle for independence. They created a new form of government and a Constitution to safeguard our freedoms. Over subsequent years, ground was lost to those with a different vision. Advocates for bigger government and less freedom successfully enacted ideas that have extended government's reach into more and more aspects of our daily lives. Some individuals responded to that challenge by establishing academic centers and think tanks that have done much to shape the debate. FreedomWorks moves beyond the policy community to educate and mobilize volunteers across America on issues of economic...

Not only were neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq mentioned in a film about the Iraq-Kuwait war, but the Manchurian corporation's technicians rewire the brains of the abducted U.S. soldiers with false memories of al-Qaida-type jihadists so that they will lay the blame for their terrorist acts on an innocent Muslim jihadist. Why don't the movies have plausible, real-world villains anymore? One reason is that a plethora of stereotype-sensitive advocacy groups, representing everyone from hyphenated ethnic minorities and the physically handicapped to Army and CIA veterans, now maintain liaisons in Hollywood to protect their images. The studios themselves often have "outreach...

(LifeSiteNews.com) A long-time news columnist has joined forces with other like-minded conservative Jews to defend Christians against anti-Christian bias in media and politics. The group, Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation (JAACD), is led by president Don Feder, an author and 19-year veteran columnist with the Boston Herald. "What I consider an epidemic of anti-Christian bigotry and persecution is something that has concerned me for a long time," Feder said, according to a WorldNetDaily report. "By maintaining their loyalty to the eternal values revealed at Sinai, Christians have become pariahs in the eyes of the establishment, but heroes in our eyes." "Members...

The New York Times has run a story on how CNN is trying to battle Fox News in the cable television news ratings wars. The paper says that one new attempt to boost CNN's overall ratings is for Larry King, the network's most popular host, to more frequently mention the host, Aaron Brown, who comes after him. CNN figures that King's popularity will rub off on Brown, and that Brown's ratings will increase. But a more effective way to boost ratings is to get hosts more in tune with the beliefs and attitudes of the public. As Howard Kurtz of...