Free Republic

A Waite Park man won't have to pay fines for hanging anti-Islamic posters on utility poles in St. Clou An administrative hearing officer on Friday dismissed two $100 citations against Sidney Elyea. He ruled that St. Cloud selectively prosecuted him for violating an ordinance against posting materials on utility poles. The ruling by Russell Cherne said the city has never issued a citation in hundreds of previous violations of the ordinance, typically for lost pet or garage sale signs. The city has usually issued cease-and-desist orders instead, and Elyea will get one.

A St. Cloud town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday invites people of all faiths and backgrounds to discuss a recent anti-Muslim incident in the city. The meeting will give citizens a chance to talk with community leaders about concerns they may have, said Taneeza Islam, the civil rights director for the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN), one of more than a dozen organizations sponsoring the event. "There's a lot of interest," said Lori Saroya, chairwoman of CAIR-MN, who said the meeting was moved to the St. Cloud City Council chambers where there is more seating....

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — Most people in this quiet all-American town describe themselves as devoutly Christian, but even here they are deeply divided over what should happen to John Freshwater. Mr. Freshwater, an eighth-grade public school science teacher, is accused of burning a cross onto the arms of at least two students and teaching creationism, charges he says have been fabricated because he refused an order by his principal to remove a Bible from his desk. To some, Mr. Freshwater is a hero unfairly punished for standing up for his Christian beliefs. To others, he is a zealot who pushed...

The threat to free speech on radio will not come through the "fairness doctrine." The threat comes from Mark Lloyd, newly appointed Chief Diversity Officer of the FCC.Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow. Loyd has called for making private broadcasting companies pay licensing fees up to an amount equal to their total operating costs to fund Public Broadcasting. Lloyd wants to upgrade and revamp the Corporation for Public Broadcasting through...

This thing is going global (rough FR translation since original site is only in Chinese): Major Chinese website, seen by millions, is running the story.人民网5月6日讯 据美国有线电视新闻网报道，英国政府日前公布了一份22人的“不受欢迎者”名单，其中白人至上主义者，伊斯兰神职人员，一名堪萨斯州神父以及美国脱口秀主持人均因“煽动仇恨”榜上有名。 ("According to British Press reports, the UK government has made a prohibition of 22 people to enter the country, among them are white supremicists, fundamentalist Islamists, an extremist preachers, but also a famous American talk show host.") 　　英国内政部表示他们将至少在数月内拒绝这些人入境。内政部仅公布了其中16名“上榜”人士的信息，然而他们拒绝透露其他六人的姓名。 ("This is a report by the Home Ministry which prohibits certain people from entering British territory. 16 of the names were made public, but 6 names were not made public.") 　　在这份名单中最被人熟知的莫过于美国脱口秀主持人Michael Savage，其本名Michael Alan Wiener赫然在名单之列。他的电台脱口秀全美排名第三，这位主持人以他反对堕胎，反对同性恋婚姻，反对移民的观点备受争议。("A famous...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of parents and students at Lakeview Elementary School in Wilson County after school officials ordered “God Bless the USA,” “In God We Trust,” and other phrases referencing God and prayer to be covered up on posters before they could be displayed in the school’s hallways.  The posters were hand-drawn by students and their families to announce “See You at the Pole,” a voluntary, student-led prayer event held outside of class time. “Christian students shouldn’t be censored for expressing their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Nate...

Obama’s Assault on the First Amendment Stifling political debate with threats of prosecution is not the “rule of law” — it’s tyranny. By Andrew C. McCarthy In London last week, a frightful warning was sounded about encroaching tyranny. At an important conference, speaker after impassioned speaker warned of the peril to Western values posed by freedom-devouring sharia — the Islamic legal code. Like all tyrannies, sharia’s first target is speech: Suppress all examination of Muslim radicalism by threats of prosecution and libel actions, and smugly call it “the rule of law.” But we may already be further gone than the...

The Democrat Party Will Take Away Religious Freedom Filed under: Uncategorized — Hierothee @ 11:09 pm Lifesite News has published an important article about a new program in Quebec that will impose a relativist educational agenda on all schools in the province, public and private, as well as on all homeschoolers. The program is entitled “Ethics and Religious Culture,” and it will be mandated from grade one until the end of high school. Here are some features of the program: 1) it presents homosexual “marriage” as a laudable lifestyle choice; 2) it presents all religions as equal, because equally the...

A scrappy Web site that's built a reputation for taking on Goliath-sized corporate and government corruption is now fighting a holy war over copyright infringement. Wikileaks.org — a watchdog Web site that leaks corporate and government documents — hasn't officially launched, yet it has already uncovered human-rights violations in China, claimed to have swayed Kenya's Dec. 2007 elections and exposed the inner workings of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. So many were surprised when it recently turned its sights on two lawyer-heavy religious groups: the Mormons and the Scientologists. The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City

Inside the Beltway "Very odd," says our source. "They sat at a table in the back." Referring to the intriguing trio of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and his wife, Valerie Plame, of CIA-leak fame,

On Saturday, Gibson released a statement apologizing: "After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the L.A. County Sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am...

Southern California High School Sued for Silencing Student on Issue of Illegal Immigration To: National Desk Contact: Richard D. Ackerman, Esq., Lively, Ackerman & Cowles, 951-308-6454, 951-258-5456 cell RIVERSIDE, Calif., June 2 /Christian Newswire/ -- The public interest firm of Lively, Ackerman & Cowles filed suit on behalf of Jurupa Valley High School student Joshua Denhalter on Thursday afternoon. The First Amendment suit alleges that the public high school has intentionally interfered with his right to speak out on the issue of illegal immigration. Mr. Denhalter alleges that on March 27, 2006, dozens of high school students, mostly of Mexican-American...

More than two dozen students walked out of Skyline High School Friday morning to protest what they say is a ban that doesn't allow the American flag to be flown on school grounds. Several students said that they were upset that Mexican flags can be waved around but that American flags couldn't. They said that school officials confiscated their American flags because it has become inflammatory because of recent immigration issues. "When the immigration laws came out we noticed that a lot of Hispanics were waving Mexican flags and what we were thinking to ourselves is like, isn't the immigration...

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday postponed a controversial decision on subjecting Internet political speech to campaign-finance regulations, raising the stakes for today’s scheduled House vote on a bill that exempts all blogs, Web ads and other online communications. The heated debate over a proposal by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) to exclude online content from the “public communications” covered by campaign-finance law has engulfed every corner of the political world, splitting both Democrats and Republicans and pitting mainstream editorial boards against left- and right-wing bloggers.The House Rules Committee scheduled a meeting late yesterday to determine the ground rules for debate...

Congress is attempting to regulate our free political speech on the internet! We MUST rise to stop this attempt. But there is a bill pending that would make our political speech protected, just as the Founders of this country intended. But it isn't going to happen by osmosis. WE must raise our voices. This from RedState Blog, who is helping to spearhead this issue from the center right in the blogoshere. __________ Friends, We've been working for a long time on HR 1606 - The Online Freedom of Speech Act. It will come up for a vote on the floor...

Sean Treglia, a former high-ranking operative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, a foundation worth more than $4 billion, last year openly admitted that passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law—which bans political free speech in the 60 days leading up to an election—was engineered, planned, funded and executed by several lavishly wealthy, anti-gun foundations. In other words, it was not a grassroots movement of people throughout the country. It was a big scam. A fraud. A con job. Or, to be more exact, a midnight assassination hit on America’s First Amendment. In an explosive videotape obtained by the New York...

Donald Alexander Downs. Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus. Cambridge University Press. 318 pages. $28.99Our universities are ailing. Many, including most of our elite universities, have abandoned the notion that a liberal arts education is constituted by a solid core, that is, a basic knowledge of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences that all educated people should possess. Furthermore, for all their earnest words about the beauty and necessity of multicultural education, university administrators and faculty preside over a curriculum that routinely permits students to graduate without acquiring reading, writing, and speaking fluency in any foreign language, let...

<p>Web loggers, who pride themselves on freewheeling political activism, might face new federal rules on candidate endorsements, online fundraising and political ads, though bloggers who don't take money from political groups would not be affected.</p> <p>Draft rules from the Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, would require that paid political advertisements on the Internet declare who funded the ad, as television spots do.</p>

Judges must be criticized. We must not move to a society that limits the criticism of tyrannical judges. We must foster criticism of these tyrants.

Condemned man gets life in prison for killing waitress Updated: 2:47 p.m. ET March 28, 2005 DENVER - The Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death sentence Monday of a man convicted of raping and killing a cocktail waitress because jurors consulted the Bible during deliberations. The court said Bible passages, including the verse that commands “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” could lead jurors to vote for death. The justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for the 1994 slaying of Rhonda Maloney. Harlan’s attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering five...