Free Republic

10 former American Idol contestants have filed a lawsuit against the show, and are seeking damages of $25 million dollars each. The lawsuit stems from a letter submitted in January by New York City lawyer James H. Freeman on behalf the 10 contestants to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The letter cited ”cruel and inhumane” treatment, claiming that Idol‘s producers have only publicly disqualified 10 contestants in the show’s history, all of whom were black. Freeman also claimed that the show illegally dredged up arrest records to make the black contestants appear to be “violent criminals, liars and sexual...

A New York state high school English teacher who asked students to imagine they were Nazis and give reasons why Jews were evil could be reprimanded or dismissed, a school district superintendent said on Friday. City School District of Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard apologized at a news conference and pledged officials would personally express regret to Albany High School students who were given the assignment and their families. Vanden Wyngaard declined to name the teacher but said the teacher was removed from class and faced disciplinary action.

A protester denounces President Obama during a march near Cairo's Tahrir Square on July 7. Bitter rivals in Egypt tend to be united in opposition to the U.S. government, which has been a leading aid donor to the country for decades.Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images To figure out which countries dislike the U.S., one quick way is to simply look at which ones are getting the largest dollops of U.S. aid.This wasn't the focus of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. But it did emerge when Pew spoke to people in 39 countries about the U.S. and China, asking...

WASHINGTON — The long wait is finally over for visitors who have been yearning for a whiff of a giant flower that smells oddly like rotting flesh.

Unnerved by an unspoken mix of political bias and racial queasiness, the major media have chosen to know as little about Trayvon Martin as they know about Barack Obama. As a case in point, consider this boy vs. man fable spun by the New York Times' Charles Blow: A boy's blood had been spilled on a rain-soaked patch of grass behind a row of mustard-colored condominiums by a man who had pursued him against the advice of 911 dispatchers. That man carried a 9-millimeter handgun. The boy carried a bag of candy. Blow was writing seven weeks after Trayvon's death....

The Fahrenheit 9/11 director and political activist filed a complaint against his producer partner, Kathleen Glynn, on June 21. According US news site MLive, Michael, 59, and Kathleen, 55, no longer live together and court papers have say there is 'no reasonable likelihood that the marriage can be preserved'.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul mocked Liz Cheney’s newly announced Senate campaign Tuesday, questioning her Wyoming residency in a barbed statement. “When I heard Liz Cheney was running for Senate I wondered if she was running in her home state of Virginia,” Paul said. Cheney declared this afternoon that she would run in Wyoming’s GOP primary against incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi. Asked last week about the brewing matchup, Paul told POLITICO he viewed Enzi as a solid conservative. Paul and Cheney stand at opposite poles of the conservative national security debate, with Cheney supporting a hawkish foreign policy and Paul openly...

Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has said that the United States should consider a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia if Moscow decides to grant asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Sen. Graham told The Hill Tuesday that the Russians' recent actions involving Snowden were “outrageous” and agreed that a boycott should be a possibility when asked. “I would. I would just send the Russians the most unequivocal signal I could send them,” Graham said. “We certainly haven't reset our relationship with Russia in a positive way. At the end of the day, if they grant this guy...

Bill Of Rights: A Nevada family files a lawsuit after police literally seize their house to use as a command post after entering without a warrant and assaulting family members. Isn't this what helped start the American Revolution? For those who snoozed through civics class, recent news events have provided an education on the U.S. Constitution, the bedrock of American democracy, assaulted by an administration that views it as obstructionist and irrelevant and by courts that view it as a "living document" — which is to say it means whatever they say it means on any given day. The contraceptive...

George Zimmerman was found not guilty Saturday of the second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., — and many are not happy about it. Protests are taking place in cities across the U.S., and one of the larger protests is happening in New York City's Times Square. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest the verdict, shouting "No justice" and "Trayvon." There's a large police presence to ensure the protests remain peaceful, and so far they have been. The protests, which began in Union Square, morphed into a march headed towards Times Square. From Reuters: About 1,000 to...

After George Zimmerman was found not guilty of all charges on Saturday evening, New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz sent a threatening tweet that has since been deleted from his account. He tweeted, "Thoroughly confused. Zimmerman doesn't last a year before the hood catches up to him."

The Web is burning up with this comment that CNN's Rick Sanchez made on a radio show, which seems like he's saying CNN and the networks are run by Jews: I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart. And to imply that somehow they -- the people in this country who are Jewish -- are an oppressed minority? Yeah. If Sanchez meant that everybody who runs the networks is a lot like Stewart in that they're Jewish, that's obviously...

One of the prosecution's key witnesses in the George Zimmerman murder trial began her testimony today and recounted how she spoke with Trayvon Martin by phone as he tried to evade the man he described as a "creepy ass cracker" who had begun following him. At one point, when he was near the house of his father's girlfriend, Trayvon apparently thought he had eluded Zimmerman. Rachel Jeantel said she told him to keep running, but "he said, nah, he'd just walk faster." Then Jeantel heard Travyon curse, and he told her that his follower was behind him, reports the Orlando...

Pro-Life Priest Calls on Pelosi to Renounce Catholic Faith By Melanie Batley A Catholic priest active in the pro-life movement said if Nancy Pelosi continues her refusal to condemn abortion, she should renounce her Catholic faith. The Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, sent the House minority leader a strongly worded letter demanding she explain her position on late-term abortion. His letter followed Pelosi's June 13 news conference at which Pavone contends she sidestepped the issue. "We simply want to express frustration that has been long-standing about Pelosi: You can't say you're a Catholic and then betray...

When bikini-clad Chelsea Chaney posed next to a cutout of Snoop Dogg during a family vacation, she had no idea that the photo would be shown to hundreds of strangers at a Fayette County Schools district seminar. An administrator used the photo to demonstrate the dangers of posting to social media. You never know who’s creeping through your Facebook profile. To prove that point, a high school administrator in Fayette County, Ga., grabbed a revealing photo from a student’s Facebook page and showed it to hundreds of students and teachers at a districtwide seminar. The student in the photo, 17-year-old...

The feds have charged nine owners of 7-Eleven franchises with hiring illegal immigrants to work long hours in their eastern Long Island stores and cheating them out of hourly wages under threat of deportation, officials said Monday. The probe is being expanded to examine 40 franchises nationwide, including 25 in New York City and Long Island. The feds have charged nine owners of 7-Eleven franchises with hiring illegal immigrants to work long hours in their eastern Long Island stores and cheating them out of hourly wages under threat of deportation, officials said Monday. Some employees worked 100 hours a week,...

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) - Erika Harold is a Harvard educated lawyer, a former Miss America, and a conservative Republican who's now running for Congress. Her beauty queen credentials have gotten her lots of attention, but an email that surfaced today could get her a lot more. Harold is running against incumbent Rodney Davis in a primary next March. Since she is bi-racial, GOP activist Doug Ibendahl wrote that she'd be good for the party. "Just be a great face for the Republican party," Ibendahl wrote. "We could actually do, in Illinois, we could do more than talk about diversity....

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was booed onstage Saturday when she said former government contractor Edward Snowden broke the law by leaking classified documents on National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs. Speaking at the NetRoots Nation conference in San Jose, Calif., Pelosi told the audience to reject comparisons between President Barack Obama and his predecessor, President George W. Bush, on their oversight of surveillance programs. The top House Democrat said Obama is poised to reveal "in another few days, a few more proceedings" of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Pelosi received the loudest boos and heckles from the...

Clare Daly presents a red headed Irish girl's thoughts on Obama!The rainbows and unicorns don't seem to be working!

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst and Bush-era NSA whistleblower, claimed Wednesday that the intelligence community has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.