Free Republic

Ted Cruz claims to be a “constitutionalist,” but expects us to believe that the issue of gay marriage should be left to “debate…in the legislative chambers.” In response to President Barack Obama’s comments about gay marriage in the State of the union, the Texas senator said: I think the proper place to debate those issues is in the legislative chambers. I’m a constitutionalist…From the beginning of this country, marriage has been a question of the states, and we should not have the federal government, or unelected judges, setting aside the policy judgment of the elected legislatures and imposing their own...

Ava DuVernay, the director of the Martin Luther King historical movie "Selma", is set to again team up with the film's star David Oyelowo for a new project about Hurricane Katrina. DuVernay and Oyelowo, who were both finalists at this year's Golden Globes, will "develop a new narrative feature film chronicling a sweeping love story and complex murder mystery during the time of Hurricane Katrina," Participant Media said Monday. The project will mark the pair's third collaboration after "Middle of Nowhere" and "Selma", which has been nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture.

Hollywood relishes making anti-American movies, but, maybe even more, loves to lavish fulsome tributes on full-blown Communists, you know, those fellows who swooned at Joe Stalin’s feet, teamed up with Hitler as he bombed the hell out of London in World War II and worked overtime to inflict deadly harm on America. Tinseltown is at it again, celebrating Dalton Trumbo, a major Hollywood Ten figure and longtime Communist enthusiast, in a brand new picture directed by Jay Roach and featuring Bryan Cranston, the star of the hit television series, Breaking Bad. The publicity for Trumbo says that Dalton bravely took...

The negative impact plastic is having on our oceans has been widely documented. Billions of pounds of plastic can be found on our beaches and in the oceans and 80 percent of the plastic pollution enters the ocean from the land. In the Los Angeles area alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day. For the surfing community, and the world, the war on plastic is an ongoing battle, and it’s one that we’re losing. We are drowning in plastic and sustainable efforts need to be implemented and supported...

December 27, 2014 KNEEPAD ALERT: FOODIE OBAMA IS HIPPEST PRESIDENT EVER! By John Hinderaker By any reasonable standard, the Obama administration has been a train wreck. But that doesn’t prevent our state media from fawning over him as though he were the reincarnation of George Washington. Here, it is CBS, telling us that Obama is a “foodie” who eats at the trendiest restaurants, is “far hipper” than other presidents; in particular, “so much cooler than President Bush.” Actually, if you watch to the end you will get a clue as to why President Bush generally chose not to dine out...

This discussion was necessary after the grand jury decisions on Michael Brown and Eric Garner that had nothing to do with racism. People reported: The protective bubble that comes with the presidency – the armored limo, the Secret Service detail, the White House – shields Barack and Michelle Obama from a lot of unpleasantness. But their encounters with racial prejudice aren’t as far in the past as one might expect. And they obviously still sting. “I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” the first lady told PEOPLE, laughing wryly, along with her husband,...

The Obamas open up about raising their daughters, the impact of stereotypes, and what's on the POTUS dance party playlist. Subscribe now for instant access to the exclusive PEOPLE interview! -snip- "I think people forget that we've lived in the White House for six years," the first lady told PEOPLE, laughing wryly, along with her husband, at the assumption that the first family has been largely insulated from coming face-to-face with racism. "Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs," Mrs. Obama said in...

The Obamas talked with People magazine about dealing with their "own racist experiences," as the magazine described. Michelle Obama told one story that recently took place, even as she was first lady of the United States. "I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone...

We need law and policing reform, but first we have to want to end state-sanctioned violence against African-Americans. As the countless protests, tear gas, National Guard deployments and looting proved, police brutality provokes more anger than other outrages because it’s the supreme violation of our individual rights in a democracy. It is the state actor, as another person, violently snatching our breath away “under color of law.” That the state’s victims throughout our history have been overwhelmingly African-American stamps it as an indelible “badge of slavery,” which means that nothing makes you feel more black in America than experiencing police...

Given all the attention paid to sexual assault on college campuses in recent months, you'd think a Justice Department report showing that the campus rape and assault rate had dropped 52% since 1997 would attract a lot of attention.

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Attention Dr. Blake Armstrong of South Texas College: here’s why your comparison of the Tea Party to the Nazis is inaccurate The Blaze recently reported:Prof. Tells Students Not to ‘Tell Anybody’ About His Vexed Tea Party ‘Analogy’ — He Didn’t Know It Was Already Caught on VideoDec. 8, 2014A psychology professor at South Texas College in Weslaco, Texas, was seemingly caught on video last month comparing the tea party to the Nazis of the 1930s in Germany.He then told his students not to “tell anybody” about his remarks — but one of his students had already...

The First Lady had a pretty special first date with the man who would go on to become both her husband and the president of the United States — and now, Michelle and Barack Obama’s romance is about to get its own movie. Entitled “Southside With You,” the indie film will follow the young couple on their first date in Chicago’s South Side.

Excerpt in video of "Rolling Stone backtracks on UVA rape story"

It’s all about true love – not only for the Obamas, but also for the media. “The White House legend that is Barack and Michelle Obama’s romance is heading to the screen,” reported Deadline’s Jen Yamato on Dec. 5. The drama, “Southside With You,” will detail the Obama couple’s “epic first date” the summer of 1989 – consisting of the Art Institute, a long walk, and Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing.” In July 2015, the filming will begin where their romance blossomed: Chicago. “Get On Up” actress Tika Sumpter will star as Michelle Obama – but the real question...

Why do people in the United States (and probably other Western countries, as well) over-estimate the proportion of gays and lesbians in the population? Ever since 1948, when the Kinsey Report suggested 1-in-10, Americans have accepted wildly exaggerated figures. Last year, The Smithsonian, the official web magazine of the famous museum in Washington DC, even suggested that it was 1-in-5!However, a recent government survey in the United Kingdom found that in 2013, 1.6% of UK adults identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual. This is a very small proportion of the population, but it becomes even smaller when the figures are broken up. Only 1.6% of men...

Do not accept the Ferguson police officer’s retirement. Just keep talking about his phantasmagorical fear of the black body – or else.It would be easy enough to call Darren Wilson a liar, as so many pundits have done, after reading the now-former Ferguson police officer’s testimony in the case of the killing of the 18-year-old Michael Brown. We could imagine this paragon of whiteness, soft-spoken and soft around the middle, as a rational actor, spending months after the shooting to carefully prepare for his grand-jury testimony, to repeat his performance in front of George Stephanopoulos for a television interview. Calling...

My 102-year-old mother-in-law, Henryne Walker Stewart Goode, whom we buried a week ago at the Walker family cemetery in Okolona, Miss., often told an unforgettable story at our kitchen table. She attended Okolona College, where she was taught English and public speaking by James Raspberry, the father of my late Post colleague, William Raspberry. At one time, in my mother-in-law’s telling, animals on the school’s farm were falling victim to some invading marauder. A school employee discovered the culprit — a dog — and shot it. But the white farmer who owned the dog retaliated, turning up at the school...

With the midterm elections approaching, Texas senator Ted Cruz penned an editorial in USA Today this week detailing what he’d like a potential Republican-controlled Congress to prioritize in 2015. As you might expect, the list is full of Tea Party staples: repealing Obamacare, cutting taxes, and slashing funding for federal programs. What makes Cruz’s list of Congressional priorities interesting is that it essentially previews what a Cruz 2016 presidential campaign agenda might look like–and it’s not pretty. As Ted Cruz’s multiple trips to Iowa have suggested, Texas’ junior senator is all-but-confirmed to be running for president in 2016. Though his...

According to the Latino American Dawah Organization (LADO), more Hispanics are turning towards Islam and interestingly, more than half of Miami’s 3,000 Hispanic Muslims are female. Florida, bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, is the US’s fourth most populous state and is highly distinguished by its thriving Hispanic community. In 2010, Hispanics and Latinos made up 22.5 percent of Florida’s population.

When President Barack Obama launched his campaign for an open U.S. Senate seat in late 2002, his wife Michelle enlisted the help of a longtime friend, Kevin Thompson. Michelle had gotten to know Thompson back in the early 1990s, when she was still Michelle Robinson and the pair worked in the policy shop of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Over the years, the two had stayed close, working together again at the University of Chicago Hospitals and swapping home improvement ideas over meals. Obama, who was then a state senator, would be facing off in the Democratic primary against businessman Blair...