Free Republic

President Joe Biden confirmed on Thursday that he would not pardon his son Hunter Biden, if he was convicted in his gun trial.The president and the White House have previously claimed Joe Biden would not pardon his own son in the past, but expressed support for Hunter Biden amid the legal battles. Hunter Biden's gun trial, which centers on claims that he lied about his drug addiction status when purchasing a gun in 2018, began on Tuesday.Joe Biden previously dodged attempts to talk about his son's trial, and did not go into detail in an ABC News interview on Thursday....

Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood has warned that the federal government’s online harms bill is “Orwellian” and its definitions of punishable hate speech are vague and could invite abuse, such as unwarranted complaints under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Ms. Atwood said she has been the frequent target of “hate speech, online vilification, lies, threats and doxxing” and is “no fan of this kind of online behaviour.” But, in an e-mail exchange with The Globe and Mail, she said she is “also no fan of unsupervised authority acting under vague laws, without any oversight.” On Friday, she posted on X her...

Currently, only platforms with user numbers above a certain threshold, to be set out through regulation, will be covered by the billPeople blocked from posting hate speech on social media might migrate to smaller platforms not covered by Canada’s new online harms bill, minority advocates warn. Richard Marceau, general counsel at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said he supported the bill as a way to combat hate speech. But he was concerned that if the bill only included the big platforms it would not deal with “people kicked off them or active on smaller platforms.” What to know...

Parents at a California elementary school have been left outraged after discovering a 'secret' LGBTQ club set up by a teacher. The third-grade staffer, who was not identified, formed the 'you be you' at Pleasant Grove Elementary School in Elk Grove. The teacher invited students in the fourth through sixth grade to attend the private meetings. Brittani Cortina, who has a second and a fourth grader at the school, said her older child told her the teacher went into class and told the students about the club. Cortina said: 'The teacher came in and spoke about how boys like boys...

A Canadian law that aims to make social media platforms safer is getting flak for what some decry as government overreach. Introduced late last month, the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, would allow judges to imprison adults for life if they advocate for genocide. The law would also allow a provincial judge to impose house arrest and a fine if there were reasonable grounds to believe a defendant “will commit” an offense – a provision Wall Street Journal columnist Michael Taube likened to the 2002 film, The Minority Report. Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, has criticized the...