Free Republic

In a landmark decision earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit delivered a scathing rebuke to the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine, declaring its COVID-19 vaccine mandate unconstitutional.The 55-page ruling highlighted that the mandate, which excluded religious exemptions, was tainted by “religious animus” and thus violated the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberties.The court’s decision reversed a prior ruling by a lower court, bringing to an end a contentious legal battle initiated by the Thomas More Society on behalf of 17 faculty members and students. These individuals had faced severe repercussions, including...

I’ve only been around Phil Anschutz a few times. My impressions on those occasions was that he was a run-of-the-mill arrogant billionaire. He was used to people courting him and he addressed them condescendingly from the lofty height of his own wealth. I’ve never met Ryan McKibben, who runs part of Anschutz’s media group. But stories about him have circulated around Washington over the years. The stories suggest that he is an ordinary corporate bureaucrat — with all the petty vanities and the lack of interest in ideas that go with the type. This week, Anschutz and McKibben murdered The...

The nation's largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to blame. Regal Entertainment Group, which operates more than 500 theaters in 38 states, last month rolled back shifts for non-salaried workers to 30 hours per week,putting them under the threshold at which employers are required to provide health insurance. The Nashville-based company said in a letter to managers that the move was a direct result of ObamaCare. “In addition, some managers have requested guidance on what they should tell those employees negatively impacted and, at your...

The plan to build a $1.2-billion NFL stadium in downtown Los Angeles took a big leap forward Tuesday when the City Council approved the overall framework for financing the project. On a 12-0 vote, the council voted for a nonbinding agreement with stadium developer Anschutz Entertainment Group that allows for the demolition and relocation of a section of the Los Angeles Convention Center. That, in turn, would make room for a 72,000-seat stadium just south of Staples Center, which would open in 2016 with the planned name of Farmers Field. “Today, in moving this forward, we don’t lose one bit...

LOS ANGELES – Billionaire Philip Anschutz is prepared to acquire majority ownership in an NFL franchise in order to bring a team to Farmers Field, the downtown stadium proposed by the Anschutz Entertainment Group, AEG president Tim Leiweke told the Orange County Register on Thursday night. Leiweke, in confirming for the first time Anschutz's interest in purchasing a majority share of a team to return the NFL to Southern California after a nearly 16-year absence, Leiweke also said he has spoken with officials from five NFL franchises: Minnesota, San Diego, Oakland, St. Louis and Jacksonville.

A new luxury train service with ties to Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz has stopped operating before taking its first trip. American Railway Explorer ... "operations have ceased," and it told contractors refurbishing its vintage rail cars to stop.

The sale of The Weekly Standard should put paid to any lingering illusion that the neoconservative empire was anything but a Potemkin Village. Whatever happens from this point on, the news of Rupert Murdoch’s repudiation of his ugliest stepchild is as refreshing a pick-me-up as the morning’s second Bloody Mary I am enjoying, anchored off Spetzai on the Bushido with Chronicles’ incomparably hospitable columnist, Taki. The only thing needed to make my happiness complete would be for the boys of National Review to take the hint and sell out for oh, maybe $2 million. Allegedly, Murdoch sold the magazine for...

Washington Paper Hires Right-Leaning Pundits, Reporters to Take on the 'Nanny State' For the first few years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Mark Tapscott was a journalist without a newsroom, shouting from the sidelines about his industry’s swift decline. Tapscott ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and trained reporters in the use technology for research and crunching numbers. When he considered how few conservatives, libertarians, or real skeptics of federal power were working in newsrooms, he saw a problem that was making the growth of government possible. “The [Freedom of Information Act],” wrote Tapscott in a...

Clarity Media Group CEO Ryan McKibben announced today that the company had acquired The Weekly Standard magazine, which he characterized as “one of the most highly respected publications of public policy and political commentary in America.” According to McKibben, Clarity Media Group intends to build on the editorial strengths of The Weekly Standard’s current staff and increase the magazine’s circulation and ad pages. “We have the highest regard for the editors and staff of The Weekly Standard, particularly founder William Kristol and executive editor Fred Barnes. The Weekly Standard’s content deals with the most critical public policy issues of our...

Reporting from Sacramento -- When the owner of Staples Center had nearly completed a two-year project to generate power from the sun on the arena's roof, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up at a ceremony to help lay the final solar panel and heap praise on the Anschutz Entertainment Group for going green. Schwarzenegger returned that same night in late October for a far different, less public event: a fundraiser thrown by the company that raked in half a million dollars for his political endeavors. Guests mingled with the governor and First Lady Maria Shriver over cocktails and dinner on a...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has signed on to lead next June's ballot campaign aimed at revitalizing Candlestick Point and keeping the 49ers in San Francisco. Joining Feinstein as co-chairs of the campaign: former Mayor Willie Brown and Hunters Point-area Supervisor Sophie Maxwell. Word that DiFi will suit up comes a few weeks after Mayor Gavin Newsom tapped former 49ers executive Carmen Policy to act as civic go-between with the team and the National Football League. The 49ers are still intent on moving to Santa Clara, despite objections of Cedar Fair, the company that runs Great America and whose parking lot the...

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor in 2003, he promised to veto any bill that had not gone through the policy committees of the Senate and Assembly. This pledge, he said, was aimed at ending the practice of gut-and-amend bills – bills rewritten in the wee hours of the Legislature to avoid public scrutiny. "Bills are passed in a rush, in the middle of the night," Schwarzenegger said at the time. "There is no such thing as democracy in the dark." Schwarzenegger swept into office in 2003 because of such promises. Ever since, he has selectively gutted and amended...

Likely fourth city for ambitious free newspaper chain By Lisa Snedeker Jun 11, 2007 The Examiner chain of free dailies is nothing if not ambitious, with papers in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore and plans to launch in other major markets. The question has been where next and when? It's looking like Los Angeles, and as early as the end of the year, according to a newspaper industry source familiar with the growth plans of parent Clarity Media Group, owned by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz. The Los Angeles Examiner would directly challenge the foundering Los Angeles Times, owned by...

Attorneys for Philip Anschutz allege as part of a lawsuit going to trial this week that author Clive Cussler duped the Denver industrialist into paying $10 million for film rights to the adventure novel "Sahara" by flagrantly inflating his book sales to more than 100 million copies. "Cussler and his agent had gotten away with these numbers for years," said Alan Rader, Anschutz's lawyer. "It was a lie and it doomed the movie." The claim is "ridiculous," Cussler said this morning outside a Los Angeles Superior Court room. "They wanted the book. They solicited us." The allegations surfaced at the...

L.A. Dem denies work for Anschutz's company improper. Sacramento -- One of the nation's largest owners of professional sports and entertainment properties paid $20,000 in consulting fees to a state senator while the lawmaker pushed legislation aimed at providing more public assistance in financing such venues, records show. Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Los Angeles, said the December payment from Anschutz Entertainment Group was for legal services unrelated to his bill. A spokesman for the company, which owns the Staples Center in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Examiner, said that Murray, who is an attorney, helped prepare a bid on a...

The New King of the Media? (Narnia’s Anschutz, plus Hollywood’s Has-beens) In with the new: PHIL ANSCHUTZ Phil Anschutz’s film-making ambitions started off fairly rocky. It’s not that he didn’t have any hits. Ray grossed $75 million; the low-budget kid’s movies, Holes and Because of Winn-Dixie grossed $67 million and $33 million respectively. But he also had two huge-budget flops, Around the World in 180 Days, and Sahara. Fortunately, Anschutz’s other project, Qwest Communications, a telephone company, has done well of late and Mr. Anschutz had plenty of money to try again. He aimed for the fences with the first...

After coming up dry on such costly movie flops as "Around the World in 80 Days" and "Sahara," Hollywood's highest-rolling wildcatter is looking for his first gusher. And once again, Philip Anschutz is risking big. The Denver-based multibillionaire, who made a fortune in oil, natural gas, railroads, telecommunications and real estate, has spent $90 million — half the film's $180-million budget — to produce the screen adaptation of the children's classic "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." But whether the movie, which opens Friday, will produce the lucrative family-oriented franchise that Anschutz hopes for depends...

Until Mel Gibson delivered "The Passion of the Christ" to the world, Hollywood had no use for religion in movies. "The Ten Commandments" was ancient history, "Ben Hur" a dusty page in movie history. Spirituality was anathema to box office profits. But when Gibson's "Passion" earned $370 million in the United States and $611 million worldwide -- flabbergasting Hollywood, the secular world and the country's growing Christian demographic -- opinion changed. Today, studios are striving to capitalize on the market that "Passion" established -- and a 55-year-old tale from an Oxford theologian is the movie industry's biggest hope. "This is...

HAVING amassed a fortune when still young, many businessmen turn their attention in later life to charitable works for the benefit of society. Few, however, have as ambitious a vision as Philip Anschutz, a religious billionaire whose aim is no less than to uplift American culture. Mr Anschutz has set up a studio to make moral films for families of a kind he says Hollywood neglects. His most expensive effort yet will be released on December 9th: “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, a $150m adaptation of a book by C.S. Lewis. He reckons that making family fare free...

A City Council panel recommended Monday that Los Angeles provide $266 million in subsidies and loans to the developers of a 55-story hotel next to the Convention Center, but opponents threatened a referendum drive to put the matter before the city's voters. The financial deal was endorsed on a 4-0 vote by members of the council's Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention Center Hotel, with Councilman Tom Labonge and others saying that the project would make the center more competitive and breathe new life into downtown. (snip) The project also was endorsed by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and...