Free Republic

Shaquille O’Neal took a break from NBA Finals coverage on Tuesday for a night out with a famous pal. The NBA Hall of Famer, 51, dined at the Beverly Hills Hotel this week with internet personality Brittany Renner, with the outing being described to TMZ as “nothing more than two friends catching up.” Renner, who shares a child with Charlotte Hornets forward PJ Washington, opted for a white dress and a bright purse while O’Neal sported light-wash jeans, a zip-up and sneakers.

Two Rutgers University faculty groups have come out in support of “Professor Crunk,” aka Brittney Cooper, who said in a recent interview that “white people are committed to being villains” and as such “we gotta take these mf's out.” On Friday, the Rutgers branch of the American Association of University Professors said in a statement that after the interview Cooper had been subjected to a “renewed wave of racist attacks for her public scholarship.” “We wish to express our unequivocal solidarity with Dr. Cooper,” the statement reads. “[We] affirm our support of her academic freedom, and […] decry the harassment...

The hunt for a woman seen on video brutally beating another woman inside a Little Caesars restaurant in Augusta, Georgia, last week ended Tuesday with her arrest, authorities said. Brittany Kennedy, 25, was located on the 300 block of Calvary Drive and taken into custody by the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshals, the sheriff’s office said in a press release. . . . Lt. Glen Rahn told Fox News that Kennedy was charged with kidnapping because she dragged the victim against her will through the threshold of the business to continue the assault.

One of the enduring consequences of the era of Phoenician influence -- which had by around 800 BC progressed from trading outposts to full-blown colonies in southern Spain -- was the adoption of alphabetic writing by the native population, first in the south-west. The number of known Tartessian inscriptions on stone is now about 90 and steadily rising with new discoveries. Concentrated densely in southern Portugal (the Algarve and Lower Alentejo), there is a wider scatter of fifteen over south-west Spain. The best exhibition of the inscriptions is on view in the new and innovative Museu da Escrita do Sudoeste,...

A sixth-grade teacher in Arizona accused of having sex with a 13-year-old student performed oral sex on him in a classroom — and told the teen she wanted him “every day with no time limit,” according to court records. Brittany Zamora, a 27-year-old teacher at Las Brisas Academy Elementary School in Goodyear, allegedly had sex with the 13-year-old student three times and also performed oral sex on him in her car during encounters from Feb. 1 through March 8, according to court records obtained by the Arizona Republic. Zamora and the teen also traded naked photos, he told police, saying...

France’s highest court has demanded that a cross overhanging a statue of former Pope John Paul II be removed from a a square in a Breton town, provoking anger among those who believe France’s Catholic heritage is being destroyed. The Conseil d’État (State Council) says that the presence of the cross goes against the 1905 French law which officially separates church and state. The town of Ploërmel in the northwestern region of Brittany now has six months to remove the cross. However the statue of the former pope can remain because, according to the council, the effigy of the pontiff...

Thousands of people gathered in northern Spain on Sunday to demand a referendum vote for the independence of the country’s Basque region. Demonstrators holding long lengths of cloth formed human chains across several Basque cities, including the capital of Vitoria, Bilbao and San Sebastian. Many of the protesters wore the colors of the Basque flag -- red, white and green. The demonstration was organized by the pro-independence Gure Esku Dago ("It's in Our Hands") group, and was backed by several separatist parties and local figures. Spain’s Basque community has long asserted that it should be independent of the country, and...

Can we believe anything we hear or read or even see anymore? Is anything real? Has the truth become as outdated as video cassettes and beepers? We have been on a slippery slope for decades, and the new normal seems to be that anyone can make things up or fake something and there are virtually no consequences. When Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the American people, saying, “I want you to listen to me; I gonna say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, I never told anybody to lie, not a single...

Well, the short-lived honeymoon is over. What did it last … all of a week? It seems as though we didn’t even have an election the way Obama and his party are acting. The voice of the American people has fallen on deaf ears evidently, because nothing has changed on the Democratic side in Washington. The massive takeover by the GOP just seems to be a minor annoyance, and Obama is just going to push through his agenda as though the election were a mere speed bump. The move Obama is making in this political chess game just shows his...

While many religious leaders might condemn 29-year-old Brittany Maynard's decision to end her own life under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, the bishop of the Evangelical Catholic Diocese of the Northwest is "spiritually and personally sure" she was "received into God's loving hands." . . . . The bishop wasn't making a "blanket endorsement" of physician-assisted suicide, said William Morton, a spokesperson for the Evangelical Catholic Church's Northwest region. It doesn't matter if Maynard was a Christian or not, Morton said, because the bishop doesn't think belief in God is a requirement for entry into heaven. "God is not worried...

A 29-year-old terminal cancer sufferer who had previously spoken of her right to die has ended her own life surrounded by her family. According to friends and family of Brittany Maynard, she passed away in her Portland, Oregon, home after her condition worsened and the tumor took over. However she was able to choose to die before she lost her ability to function. People.com said she wrote on Facebook : 'Goodbye to all my dear friends and family that I love. 'Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness,...

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them, to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies–all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is...

Why do a vast majority of the American public continue to fall for the constant lies coming out of Washington?What is it that they just don’t see?Time and time again the rug is pulled out from under them and they still fall for the same old “bait and switch”.Politicians know it and now they have no qualms about continuing the lies even after we know they are lies! I remember a time when at least they tried to cover it up, (Richard Nixon), or they came clean after they were caught, (Bill Clinton).Today however, they fabricate a lie in order...

The French government has decided to suspend an unpopular environmental tax on heavy goods vehicles following a weekend of protests in Brittany. The move is expected to cost the France hundreds of millions of euros in lost revenue. … The unpopular “ecotax”, aimed at encouraging environmentally-friendly commercial transport, was designed to impose new levies on French and foreign vehicles transporting commercial goods weighing over 3.5 tonnes (3.86 tons). Critics in Brittany said the tax would seriously damage the region’s precarious farming and food sectors by increasing transportation costs, driving companies out of business and leading to major job losses. …

They were the royal children; the sons and daughters of the Baby Boomers who adored and spoiled them and promised them that life would be wonderful. They were designer babies with clothing and shoes that sported logos just like their parents. Their parents were on waiting lists to get them into the right pre-school, they were given lavish birthday parties and extravagant gifts. They were trained and brainwashed and made to believe that getting into the “right” college meant success or failure. They were given trophies and awards for playing sports whether they were accomplished or not. It didn’t matter...

Once again, Barak Obama stood before the American people and said…nothing. Well, not exactly “nothing”, he spoke for over an hour but after its conclusion one had to ask, “What was THAT all about?” This speech was touted as one that would announce a great economic plan and lay out details for getting the economy booming again. Instead, it was more of a campaign, political speech with nothing but attacks against his opponents and downright anger over what he calls “phony distractions”. Instead of identifying and providing solutions for the problems facing this nation, he once again blamed the “rich”...

It’s official, the United States has a Ruling Class and it is no longer being hidden or denied.  Obama and the Congress have just decided that they don’t want to play by the same rules as the rest of us. Big surprise that the Office of Personnel Management, under pressure from Capitol Hill and Obama, has said that they will issue a ruling that states government can keep making contributions to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides.  In other words, “we” the “serfs” will be paying for Congress and their staff to keep their “Cadillac...

Remember back in 2008 when Barak Obama said this? “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired power plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them. Under my plan, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Well, well. It took almost five years and his re-election, but now it looks as though Obama’s prophecy is coming true. Circumventing Congress and ignoring the will of the American people, Obama is forging ahead with his promises to thwart “climate change” through Executive Orders. Why, one would ask, would he do this in the midst of an anemic economic recovery that could go on...

As a follow up to my May 20th article, I have a new theory. The audacity and arrogance of our current government has reached heights that no one could have predicted. When the news came down last week that the IRS, while still under Congressional scrutiny was going to receive $70 million dollars in employee bonuses, I thought that I was listening to a late-show comedian telling a good joke. It was no joke however. The truth is that yes, as ridiculous as it sounds, the IRS is scheduled to receive $70 million MORE of tax money to pay them...

I always believed that giving to a good cause or helping victims of a disaster was a noble thing to do. I mean, “There but for the grace of God go I”, right? With the recent uncovering of scandals within the government, more and more investigators are digging to uncover other cases of fraud and mismanagement. Is nothing sacred anymore? A recent investigation exposed by CNN, The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Tampa Bay Times have found that there are dozens and dozens of charities that basically do next to nothing for the causes they raise money for. 50...