Free Republic

The mayor of Westbrook says he will not run for another term and, in fact, will never run for public office again. Michael Foley, who was just elected last year, tells Maine's Total Coverage he has been harassed, including receiving threatening emails and phone calls related to a recent holiday lights controversy. Earlier this month, the city removed a Star of David from its Riverwalk light display and replaced it with a dreidel. The star is a historic religious symbol in Judaism. Foley says it was removed based on legal requirements that prevent government entities from appearing to endorse a...

A suburb of Portland, Maine removed a Star of David from its annual holiday lights display. A local Arab-American organization complained and called it “offensive.” The reason is the Israel-Hamas war. How convenient for the normalization of antisemitic sentiments. Unlike most Arab countries, there is religious freedom in America. There is, however, a separation between church and state. Mayor Michael Foley is using the excuse of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause for the removal. Religious displays are forbidden on public property. Here is the kicker – local Jewish groups agreed and want the Star of David removed and replaced with a...

The IDF used tanks to mark the Star of David onto the floor of a training ground for the Hamas terror group's fighters in Gaza City. The tanks can be seen in footage shared today roaming across the soil with Israel flags on a battle-worn strip of land. They are then shown in a line pumping out blue and white smoke as the symbol is displayed. The formation, performed by fighters from the Golani Brigade in the Kativa outpost, was part of a ceremony in memory of comrades who have fallen since the start of the war, according to IDF...

Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign never recovered ... The incident has become a case study not only in watching one’s words (and being nice to your waiters), but in spin control. Hammered by the media and the Democrats for sounding elitist and insulting half the country, Romney first blamed the listeners, saying they had misheard what he intended as innocuous demographic analysis. Later, as the transcripts of the video made clear that he said what everyone thought he said, Romney fell back on the classic dodge that his remarks had been taken “out of context.” A lot went wrong for...

German police officials in the cities of Duisburg and Düsseldorf, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, prohibited pro-Israeli supporters from displaying Israeli flags. During an anti-Israeli demonstration organized by the radical Islamic group, Milli Görüs, which attracted 10,000 protesters last Saturday in Duisburg, two police officers stormed the apartment of a 25-year-old student and his 26-year-old girlfriend and seized Israeli flags hanging on the balcony and inside a window. The hostile crowd pelted stones and other objects at the flags. A video that appears on YouTube shows an angry crowd in front of the apartment house and the police...

A victory for Hamas in Wednesday's Palestinian election will strengthen the Right in Israel and harm Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima Party, MKs on the Israeli Right said on Tuesday. They said a Hamas victory would serve as a wake-up call for the Israeli public that would begin a process of support shifting from Kadima and Labor to parties further to the Right. "Hamas is a terrorist organization that wants to destroy Israel, and it was strengthened by the disengagement," Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu told reporters outside the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The head of the Likud's...

Is the U.S. a terrorist state? Are al Qaeda fighters the good guys? That's what you might think, to read the New York Times editorial page, and some of the humanitarian bureaucrat-activists who, though largely unknown to the general public, have tremendous clout with the Times. An October 16 New York Times editorial (“The American Prison Camp”) attacked the Bush Administration for maintaining its detainee camp for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Citing criticism of the Bush Administration by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the editorial claimed that Administration justifications for the camp “miss the point,” are “unpersuasive,”...