Free Republic

We thank you for your comments concerning Lowe's holiday advertisements. Lowe's operates more than 1,170 stores in 49 states and 11 million customers visit our stores each week. Lowe's serves many diverse populations and groups. We strive to ensure that all customers feel welcomed and respected in our stores. By utilizing the words "Holiday Season" in our marketing materials for 2005, we believed that this term would allow us to meet the needs of our customers, regardless of their faith or background. We regret that this may have offended some customers. Due to feedback we have received from customers, Lowe's...

Sky Sports has been censured by a media watchdog... The character, played by an American, Mark Copani, entered the ring wearing an Arab headdress and surrounded by a phalanx of masked men in combat clothes who were described by the commentators as his "sympathisers". There was also use of emotive language, including the words "martyr", "sacrifice" and "infidel" and footage of a previous clash between him and another wrestler was set to music that sounded like the Muslim call to prayer. After the programme, Sky approached WWE to ensure the character would be withdrawn, and it ended his contract.

Is Muslim a Dirty Word in Hollywood? Updated 8:47 AM ET November 4, 2005 This week's "Give Me a Break" goes to Sony Pictures, the movie company, for getting so upset about a "bad" word in the title of one of their movies. The movie is titled "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World." And apparently that word "Muslim" is a problem. In the film, the U.S. State Department, which wants the Muslim world to like us, is determined to find out what makes Muslims laugh. The movie was written by and stars comedian Albert Brooks, playing himself. Summoned...

Religious vilification laws converge with the Islamist vision of a blasphemy-free society. ON SEPTEMBER 6 AND 7, Pastor Daniel Scot, who last year was found to be in breach of Victoria, Australia's Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, met with human-rights lawyers and policymakers in Washington, D.C. In these meetings, Scot described his experience defending himself in Victoria's courts against the charge of inciting hatred against Muslims. Many of the people and groups with whom Scot met hope his visit will serve as a springboard for a campaign against the religious vilification laws that have been increasingly considered, and adopted, in...

Radical mosques are the spark lighting the fuse that can kill Americans. That has killed Americans. That will kill more if we let it. Such killing sprees, moreover, are plotted by young, male, Muslim militants who often enter to the United States on student and other visas from places known to sponsor or export terrorism. None of this is news. But it is cloaked in taboo. Thus, controversy was stoked last week when Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts governor and potential Republican 2008 presidential hopeful, did something that you should never do in this country. Not, at least, if you want...

HAYWARD, Calif. — Two men who had sex with a transgender (search) teen were convicted of murdering her after they discovered she was biologically male, but a third defendant's case ended in a mistrial. In their verdict Monday, the jury rejected defense arguments that the killing of 17-year-old Gwen Araujo amounted to no more than manslaughter (search). "It's murder," said Gwen Smith, who maintains a Web site memorializing people believed to have been killed because they were transgender. "And a murder conviction shows that transgender lives are valuable." Michael Magidson and Jose Merel, both 25, face mandatory sentences of 15...

Vic Germany thought registering a federal trademark for San Francisco's iconic Dykes on Bikes organization would be no problem. After all, the nonprofit lesbian motorcycle group has become internationally known for riding in the lead position at San Francisco's pride parade every year for nearly three decades. Instead, the group has spent a humiliating two years slogging through the swampland of trademark law, with no end in sight, said Germany, president of the San Francisco Women's Motorcycle Contingent, a.k.a. Dykes on Bikes. Twice, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected the Dykes' application, on the grounds that "dyke" is...

June 21, 2005 The Hon. John Hickenlooper Mayor of Denver 1347 Bannock Street, Suite 350 Denver, CO 80204-2718 Dear Mayor Hickenlooper: Several Denver residents who are affiliated with the Denver Public Library have come to me with concerns about changes underway in the Library. I hope their concerns are misplaced, and I hope you can show me they are misplaced. I will put these concerns in the form of several questions. Each question is based on information from employees and patrons of the library. Unfortunately, these Denver citizens choose to remain anonymous because they fear for their jobs. My questions...

Just when I thought I had seen everything, I stumble across what might be the most grotesque example of intellectual insanity in the history of the universe. It figures I would find such a shining example of imbecilic lunacy in the halls of our own congress. This special kind of idiocy takes the form of House Resolution 288, conceived and sponsored by none other than Mr. “can’t we all just get along without religion” John Conyers, Jr. [(D) of course…] our esteemed Representative from Michigan. The pending bill is Mr. Conyers answer to the bogus Newsweek report which wrongly accused...

"John hurried past the “Memorial Day Ceremony” banner and burst through the double doors. He was late. He heard Mary checking the sound system before he saw her. “Hey, I’m here,” called John. “Great, we need your expertise,” Mary smiled gracefully. “Ok, on what? I thought I was going to help move some of the heavy plants.” Mary laughed, “Oh, no, Mr. Ex-military, we need your help for getting the flags right and everything. We want to honor the veterans properly. Every year there are fewer vets, especially now that we’re at peace.” “Peace? We withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan....

ON APRIL 30, American journalist Chris Crain became the victim of a hate crime in Amsterdam: While walking in the street holding hands with his partner, he was savagely beaten by seven men shouting antigay slurs. A few days later, Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Program at the Human Rights Watch, expressed some sympathy for the gay-bashers. Crain's attackers were reportedly Moroccan immigrants. ''There's still an extraordinary degree of racism in Dutch society," Long opined to the gay news service PlanetOut. ''Gays often become the victims of this when immigrants retaliate for the inequities that...

Marcy's 13-year-old daughter has a knack for switching computer screens or shutting the laptop when mom walks in the room. Like in many families, the two often argue about whether mom has the right to see what her daughter is doing online. The conversation is never really resolved. But a few months ago, Marcy's need to keep up with her daughter's Internet travels took on a new urgency when she found an unfinished message on the screen urging a friend to check out her daughter's picture on a special Web page her daughter had set up. With that, Marcy made...

A Canadian radio station was formally reprimanded Wednesday after one of its presenters insulted immigrants to Canada and then said the Sikhs of northern India were "a gang of bozos." The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said the item on Montreal's CKAC-FM was "abusive and unduly discriminatory" and ordered the station to make a public apology. Immigration is a sensitive issue in Canada, one of the few western countries that still accepts large numbers of immigrants each year. In a show broadcast in December 2003, CKAC-FM presenter Pierre Mailloux told listeners that immigrants who came to Canada should abandon their habits...

The Orwellian LeftBy David HorowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | March 21, 2005 A semiotically confused website called Whiskey Bar which is evidently the work of a historically challenged individual with the nom de net of "Billmon" has attempted a heavy-handed satire of the academic freedom for students movement, caricaturing it as an attempt to pull off a Maoist purge of leftwing academics and their doctrines from American university campuses. Other equally at sea leftists, have linked the Billmon agit-prop and spread it across the net. Michael Berube recommends it as a “brilliant analysis” (even though it just a collection of paired quotes with...

I really don’t understand how perfectly rational, sane and kind-hearted individuals could subscribe to the idea that so-called "hate-speech" must be silenced. The world is not a better place because we punish people who say things that we, as the current mainstream, do not like and that fly in the face of decency, if not sanity. B’nai B’rith was ecstatic over the expulsion of Ernst Zundel from Canada. Zundel, you may recall, was the nut bar holocaust denier who for 40 years ranted that the murder of 6,000,000 Jews during World War II was a fabrication of the International Zionist...

It seems that at least one search string will result in an "Offensive Search Results" warning on Google. The string in question is "Jew." Yes, "Jew." Part of their explanation includes, "that the word "Jew" is often used in an anti-Semitic context." I've yet to find any other such "offensive" terms. Is this a kind act of cultural, ethnic, and religious sensitivity or an example of political correctness gone out of control?

No….I’m not referring to your personal computer here….my exclamatory title refers to Political Correctness! As we all know (and how could we not), political correctness (PC), has become the scourge of our society, every bit as vexing as the virus that attacks your personal computer, perhaps even as vile as a venereal disease that somehow, someway might find its way to invading your pristine body. PC appears to be fully entrenched in our society and its invasiveness may be just as destructive as those aforementioned viruses. Essentially, PC is attacking our freedoms and our culture. Just ask yourself the question…Do...

If you’ve been thinking that we have finally defeated the diabolical illness of political correctness that has been plaguing our society for far too long, you better think again! What do you call people who blow up police stations, ambulance services, restaurants, hospitals, schools, water and electric services, behead social workers who feed their hungry and provide medical attention to their sick, murder men who are there to rebuild their schools and teachers who give their children hope for the first time, Muslims who blow up Muslims, even on the holiest day in the Muslim faith, at the mosques no...

If you’ve been thinking that we have finally defeated the diabolical illness of political correctness that has been plaguing our society for far too long, you better think again! What do you call people who blow up police stations, ambulance services, restaurants, hospitals, schools, water and electric services, behead social workers who feed their hungry and provide medical attention to their sick, murder men who are there to rebuild their schools and teachers who give their children hope for the first time, Muslims who blow up Muslims, even on the holiest day in the Muslim faith, at the mosques no...

Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and author of two books, of which her latest is In Defense of Internment (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2004). In it, she provides a defense of "threat profiling" already taken or contemplated since September 11. Ms. Malkin's earlier book was Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2002). Her syndicated column appears in nearly 200 papers nationwide. Ms. Malkin addressed the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, on December 2, 2004. Millions of American schoolchildren have been taught that there was no evidence...