Free Republic

There are many issues Democrats and Republicans disagree on, but elevating women in peace negotiations should certainly not be one of them. Just a few weeks ago, the United States under the Trump administration became the first country in the world with a Women, Peace and Security (WPS) comprehensive law (2017) and strategy (2019) bringing women to the negotiating table in global peace efforts. This is something to be widely celebrated. I have proudly worked with women across the aisle to train, support and empower women around the world — because ending poverty and violence against women, and increasing their...

The United Nations chose Saudi Arabia, the country that covers women in black tents, doesn’t allow women to drive nor considers women actual human beings in charge of “promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women”.    Makes perfect sense to me.     Via The Daily Caller:   The UN’s Economic and Social Council voted by secret ballot to put Saudi Arabia on the Commission on the Status of Women.   It is the principal international organization responsible for the “promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women,” according to the commission’s website.   Saudi Arabia, a...

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid  refuses to say why for months he has blocked a bipartisan bill designed to ensure inspectors general access all of the official documents they need to fight waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government. Three months ago, the Nevada senator blocked an attempt to pass Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley’s IG Empowerment Act with unanimous consent, which would make it crystal clear that the 1978 Inspector General Act gives presidentially appointed IGs authority to access all agency records for investigations and audits. Reid still refuses to change his position or explain his objections....

A student at Duke University started doing porn to pay for her tuition. She became a media sensation and liberals everywhere loved telling her story. She would do interviews and say things like porn is “empowering” and “freeing”. She is in a documentary coming up and now that she has been in the industry for a little bit her view of porn has dramatically shifted. “The sex industry has a way of making you very cynical and very bitter,” a tired-looking Weeks tells an off-camera interviewer, “In a way I’ve started to become kind of a bit bitter and a...

Belle Knox, the Duke University freshman paying for college by doing porn, has upped the ante this week with a new blog post on XOJane.com espousing rough sex, and a spin around a stripper pole at a New York City skin joint. “This is my first time dancing,” Knox told The Post before hitting the stage Tuesday night. “I’m nervous, but I think it’ll be really empowering.” That "empowerment" line is the same one she used in her new, graphic blog post written largely about her first porn video, which included submission, name calling, and slapping.

There’s a lot in the Wendy Davis story besides Davis and her constructed and false “narrative.” Here is one of Davis’ most recent official statements on the matter, a little masterpiece of accusing the accusers: We’re not surprised by Greg Abbott’s [her Texas governorship opponent] campaign attacks on the personal story of my life as a single mother who worked hard to get ahead. But they won’t work, because my story is the story of millions of Texas women who know the strength it takes when you’re young, alone and a mother. I’ve always been open about my life not...

Sometimes words reveal more than they are meant to. When I read the testimonials from the charitable organization Plants for Patients (P4P) I sense a ghostly sadness. P4P hands out plants to abortion patients, succulents because they are “incredibly adaptable” and “come in a vast array of colors and shapes” like the women who experience abortion. The succulent plants are growing in tiny hand-made planters made specially by a ceramic artist. The organization is neither pro-life nor pro-choice, but pro-compassion, offering gifts to women after abortion to show “love and empathy” not “shame and hate.” Why plants? Because scientific research...

Herman Cain gave a speech today in Detroit introducing “Opportunity Zones” in his 999 plan. In short, if you are at or below poverty level, the plan will be 9-0-9. While he was delivering it, I must say that it occurred to me that he was sounding more presidential than ever. That’s the first time I’ve had that thought.

Making the rounds on YouTube these days is a film of a group of manly looking women preparing for and conducting a "flash dance" in a Philadelphia food store. The crew of ladies, dressed in tight black clothes and sequined accessories, arrives at The Fresh Grocer supermarket, breaks into a preplanned chant ordering shoppers not to buy Sabra and Tribe hummus and telling them to oppose Israeli "apartheid" and support "Palestine." From their attire and attitude, it is fairly clear that the participants in the video would congratulate themselves on their commitment to the downtrodden, the wretched of the earth...

Sluthood wasn't always considered a virtue. Most normal, rational people look at sleeping around as something sad and wrong. It's not healthy, physically or mentally, it can be damaging to a young girl's reputation, and it can also be incredibly dangerous. Women that sleep around oftentimes end up feeling used and regret their choices when they get older and decide to settle down. Other women end up contracting STDs, which may or may not be treatable. For these reasons and more, being a slut is understandably looked down upon -- it can be genuinely harmful. Today's pseudo-feminists, however, have...

President Barack Obama cited the influx of new technology as "putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy" in a commencement address to graduates at Virginia's Hampton University on Sunday. "You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t rank all that high on the truth meter," Obama said. "With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations; information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment. "All of this is not only...

A group that thinks an ad celebrating Tim Tebow's life is bad news for women might be a little out of touch with what women really want. That helps explain why the National Organization for Women and other feminist groups have vehemently opposed abstinence education while failing to notice that a culture of casual sex hasn't been so liberating for women. Just ask the 29-year-old Briton living in America whose anonymous account appeared in her country's left-wing Guardian newspaper. "(M)y sexual liberation was perversely trapping me in destructive relationships, while intimacy had become something elusive, insubstantial, disappointing, surreal," she writes....

WASHINGTON – Praising and prodding Congress at once, President Barack Obama on Wednesday said a vast reform of the nation's health insurance system is required to head off instability to families, industry and the government itself. "Deferring reform is nothing more than defending the status quo — and those who would oppose our efforts should take a hard look at just what it is they're defending," Obama said in the Rose Garden, pushing for landmark bills to get through the House and Senate before Congress' August recess. Putting more of his own political stake behind the effort each day, Obama...

What is the value of choosing to believe anything without being open to other possibilities? If being open to other possibilities is the primary requirement to learning and I choose to believe something without being open to other possibilities, then have I voluntarily limited my ability to learn? Is there awareness without contrast? If one was born in a fragrant garden, lived their whole life in the garden and finally died in the garden would that one be aware of the fragrance? May something be so common and pervasive that we may not be aware of it? If something is...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, March 31, 2009 – Thousands of people living in northern Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley are improving basic reading and math skills, and local teachers are receiving training, under a U.S.-funded program. During a lesson about numbers, an Afghan woman asks her colleague to write the number 100, March 23, 2009, in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province. The women are enrolled in a two-year U.S. Agency for International Development-funded program called “Learning for Community Empowerment,” designed to increase literacy and numeracy education, while also providing vocational training. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Amanda Cutler  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available....

CAMP ECHO, Iraq, March 17, 2009 – A large crowd of Iraqi girls and women, ranging from teenagers to grandmothers, gathered at a youth center in Diwaniya, Iraq, March 8 for a graduation ceremony and to mark International Women’s Day. Iraqi teenagers and women gaze at art honoring the plight, history, goals, accomplishments and freedom of women after a graduation ceremony and celebration of International Women’s Day at al Nehrawan Youth Center in Diwaniya, Iraq, March 8, 2009. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Rodney Foliente  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “There is progress here in Diwaniya and in...

RUSH: I have four more sound bites, however, on the immigration bill. I want to go back and play two more. Two that we played in the previous hour. One from Harry Reid and one from Senator Kennedy. They've unwittingly set me up here, ladies and gentlemen, to explain the futility and the irrelevance and the lack of total necessity, at least in terms of people being properly informed, of the Fairness Doctrine. The purpose of the Fairness Doctrine from their side is to shut up opposition they don't want to deal with it. But let's go back and listen...

Rome paid tribute to the barbarians clamoring at her gates. It didn't do any good. Paying ransom only postponed the inevitable sacking, burning, and looting of the empire's capital. The UK's Neville Chamberlain sought to pacify Hitler, only to see Brits hiding in basements from the blitzkrieg a few years later. Instead of remembering history's lessons, the Washington Post today indulges in feel-good, intellectual rationalization of Muslim intolerance and hatred. In a 5-page manifesto entitled, "Anatomy of the Cartoon Protest Movement," authors Anthony Shadid and Kevin Sullivan exercise unlimited poetic license, calling Islamist hooliganism "a rare moment of empowerment among...

On any given Sunday, 100 million households from Australia, Europe, and across the USA will tune in to view Joel Osteen broadcasting from the 30,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. Rated as the #1 inspirational television program by Nielson Media Research, Joel Osteen is preaching a message that certainly seems to be touching home with people all over America. In his much respected best selling book, Your Best Life Now-7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, Osteen outlines a seven-step process for effecting profound change in your life. He speaks in terms of the positive in everyday life. Expect...

In case you needed any proof that the left could care less about our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere for that matter, comes Moveon.org's new advertisement. The ad shows a soldier sinking in quicksand and calls Iraq a quagmire and says only a new President can get us out. This the day after Kerry explained his position on Iraq to Imus - who was then forced to admit he couldn't make sense of it and that trying to get a straight answer felt like he was hitting his head against a jukebox. Make no mistake, the left is in...