Free Republic

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) -- Washington state officials on Monday released copies of signature petitions that forced a vote on a 2009 domestic partnership law, disclosing the names of signers after a judge rejected arguments that supporters could be harassed. The Washington State Archives provided a DVD to The Associated Press showing the 138,000 signatures for Referendum 71. The release came despite an attorney's vow to appeal the ruling and seek temporary protection from the disclosure of names.

Sorry, but I can't allow Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' statement that "we have a lot of re-education to do" slip by without comment. It's amusing when avowed leftists don't even recognize the Marxist buzzwords they're sputtering. Sebelius is attributing the public's vehement opposition to Obamacare to "misinformation given on a 24/7 basis. ... Unfortunately," she said, "there still is a great deal of confusion about what is in (the Obamacare law) and what isn't." She is especially peeved about the vulnerability of seniors, who "have been a target of a lot of the misinformation." (The target of...

Ever-vigilant for opportunities to quash anything contrary to the liberal worldview, Leftists in Congress are working on new ways to silence any dissent. Most of us know about the “Fairness Doctrine” that they got away with for years to harass and control the opposition. Most of us also know the liberals have been trying for years to bring it back. Their latest attempt is HR 1966, ostensibly to fight “cyber bullying,” but it could very easily be used to prosecute “hate crimes,” or essentially any electronic communication that hurt someone’s feelings. David Rittgers of the Cato Institute discusses this Orwellian...

If yesterday's Holocaust Museum slaying of security guard and national hero Stephen Tyrone Johns is not a clarion call for banning hate speech, I don't know what is. Playwright Janet Langhart Cohen appeared on CNN yesterday right after the shooting, as she wrote a play that was supposed to have been debuted at the Holocaust Museum last night. Her play is about Emmett Till, whose lynching helped launch the Civil Rights Movement, and Ann Frank, whose diary told the story of Holocaust victims in hiding in the Netherlands during World War II. She said something must be done about ridding...

One of the gravest threats to religious liberty and freedom of speech is proposed hate crime legislation. Even while national attention is focused is on the economy and Obama’s radical economic and foreign policy, the far left is at work undermining our First Amendment rights at home with hate crime legislation. In other countries where these types of laws have been implemented, pastors and Christians have been jailed and fined for their faithful adherence to the scriptures. US Congressman John Conyers is reintroducing the same hate crime bill that was passed in the last Congress, but was vetoed by President...

You won't believe this one. But, then again, you might. A blogsite called Newstin (is that short for tin news?) is now rating blog posts based on wording *tone,* not truth. This is right out of the novel Fahrenheit 451 or George Orwell's novel 1984. Apparently, any content that is negatively *toned* toward Leftist ideas are labeled *negatively toned.* The web masters at Newstin call their monitoring program *Sentiment Analysis* Excerpted from Newstin - http://www.newstin.com/tag/us/103990119 Sentiment Analysis is a tool developed by Newstin to indicate the overall tone of an article i.e., whether it has a positive, negative or neutral...

Remarks against Obama probed Durham police conducting internal investigation; chief says it wasn't a slur Stanley B. Chambers Jr., Staff Writer DURHAM - Derogatory remarks toward President-elect Barack Obama made on a social networking Web site are now the subject of an internal police investigation. A police department employee claims the statements were made on the MySpace pages of two Durham officers. "There's no exact words that were said," said Police Chief Jose L. Lopez Sr. in a telephone interview Wednesday from San Diego, where he is attending the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference. "It wasn't a racial...

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face." Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people's faces. They seem determined to shut people up. That's what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg's WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama's relationship...

The Obama campaign is demanding that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against a non-profit advocacy organization and one of its donors because they have the audacity to sponsor a television ad criticizing the close connection between Obama and unrepentant former terrorist William Ayers. The campaign is also threatening the license of television stations; and is enlisting state law enforcement officials for partisan prosecutions, all for running political ads that Obama claims are misleading and false. These actions should cause every American to ask, can Obama be trusted with the powers of the Justice Department, the Federal Election Commission and...

It apparently takes more than a government investigation and the threat of fines to keep a priest in Canada from speaking his mind about biblical issues. Father Alphonse de Valk, who WND reported just days ago is the target of a Human Rights Commission case over his biblical references regarding homosexuality, now is warning of an educational agenda to be implemented in support of "gay" pairs. In a column at Catholic Insight, de Valk writes under the headline "Fascism has come to Canada" that the Department of Education in British Columbia plans in September to "introduce the mandatory teaching of...

Two Christian preachers in Britain have been told that trying to spread the gospel to Muslims is a hate crime. It's another sign that much of England has given up on being England. British media are reporting that Arthur Cunningham and Joseph Abraham, American evangelical ministers who've been living in Great Britain for years, were told by a police community support officer to "stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham."....

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year. Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming...

DENVER (AP) ― Rep. Douglas Bruce was ordered to leave the podium of the Colorado House of Representatives on Monday after calling Mexican workers "illiterate peasants." Bruce, a Republican with a history of provoking controversy with his statements and actions, made the comment during a debate on a bill designed to ease a farmworker shortage in Colorado. It drew an audible gasp from the House. "How dare you," said Rep. Kathleen Curry, a Democrat who was serving as chairwoman during the debate. She told Bruce he was no longer recognized to speak. The bill under discussion would allow the state...

New Bill in Maine Makes “Visual Sexual Aggression” a Crime It might be 2008 in the rest of the USA, but in Maine, it’s 1984. A new bill in the Pine Tree State would make it a crime to peer at children in public. It’s been asserted that some legislators can justify making any action a crime–as long as they add the magic words “for the children” to the mix. This Maine bill adds proof to that assertion. State Rep. Dawn Hill, D-York, is the head cheerleader for a bill only a fan of police state actions could love.

PARIS (Reuters) - French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of "inciting racial hatred" over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers. Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was "destroying our country and imposing its acts." Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim...

That poor woman down the street Apparently it's perfectly okay for the CHRC to hijack its neighbour's computer systemI should begin with a correction. Last week, I was at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing for the case of Warman vs. Lemire. Richard Warman is the Canadian Human Rights Commission's plaintiff on every single complaint filed since 2002, and Marc Lemire is a supposed white supremacist on trial for the "hate messages" at his Freedom Site — or, at any rate, the handful of "hate messages" on his Freedom Site that weren't posted by undercover CHRC operatives whiling away an...

Suicide by toleranceLorne Gunter, National Post  Published: Monday, January 28, 2008 Walt Kelly, the cartoonist and satirist once had his famous character Pogo say, "We have met the enemy and he is us."In the clash between the West and Islam, that is increasingly true. We are our own worst enemy.Those of us who care about the survival of Western civilization occasionally rage about the way Muslim organizations feign outrage in the media at the tiniest slight. We grind out teeth when those organizations file human rights complaints against the writings of the likes of Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant. We...

Francisco Nava '09 was physically attacked by two men in Princeton Township yesterday evening, sustaining a concussion but no other serious injuries. The assault comes on the heels of several threatening messages recently sent to Nava, apparently in connection with his involvement with the socially conservative Anscombe Society. Nava was walking from a borrowed car to the house of a boy he is mentoring when he was stopped by a man dressed in black and wearing a ski cap. According to Nava, the man said that someone was hurt and asked for his help. A second assailant, who was waiting...

A firefighter who reported finding a knotted rope and a threatening note with a drawing of a noose in an East Baltimore station house last month had placed the items there himself, city officials said yesterday. The man was suspended last week for performance-related issues and will likely face additional punishment, fire officials said. Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Police Department and for Mayor Sheila Dixon, said the man admitted to the hoax and will not face criminal charges. Officials identified the firefighter who they say acknowledged writing the note as Donald Maynard, a firefighter-paramedic apprentice who is black....

Diversity assembly at Eastern sparks backlash from parents WENDY L. GARMAN For The York Dispatch Article Launched: 11/16/2007 10:47:40 AM EST Eastern York School District's board meeting was standing-room only Thursday night after more than two dozen people turned out to protest a diversity assembly held last week at the high school. Kathy Freeland, who has a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old in the district, said she received no notification of such an assembly and was "disturbed" to learn that her children were addressed by a "gay man, an African-American woman and a Jew." "I send my children to school to...