Free Republic

Gun control advocates have speculated about the gunman in Philadelphia who wounded six police officers on Wednesday. They were quick to assume that somehow America's so-called "lax" gun laws were to blame for the man having access to a firearm. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the gunman is 36-year-old, Maurice Hill, who has a long criminal history of gun convictions, resisting arrest and drug dealing. Hill was reportedly identified when an anonymous source told the Inquirer Hill's lawyer, Shaka Mzee Johnson, received a phone call asking him to come to the apartment building he was barricaded in.

It would be difficult to argue that the political environment in America has not grown significantly more toxic and hostile over the last several years. I pointed out in my column of two weeks ago that the political left cites the culture of the Trump administration for the recent deterioration in race relations. Similarly, the left blames the culture of the Trump administration for this dramatic downturn in civility. Again (as I detailed in the earlier column), this decline actually began during the Obama administration and represents the left’s reaction to the popular rejection of socialist policies by the electorate....

This week’s shoot-up of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in San Antonio is just the latest in a series of such attacks. Last month a self-described antifa member with a rifle and incendiary devices tried to blow up an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington. These attacks are occurring during a time when Democrat politicians and media personalities are continually comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, ICE officers to Nazi guards and border detention facilities to “concentration camps” where children are “locked in cages” and forced to “drink from toilets.” Which raises a big question currently being debated: To what...

The California state seal declares “Eureka,” originally a Greek word that means “I found it,” and with good reason. After James Marshall discovered gold in the territory in 1848, the rush was on. By 1852, two years after California gained statehood, the population skyrocketed from 14,000 to 250,000. But times have changed, and people are now leaving. California is the second most expensive state to live in and has the second worst overall tax burden, according to the Tax Foundation. As if that is not enough, California lawmakers want the district schools to focus on progressive grandstanding instead of serving...

If the news is any indication, Democrats and the progressive left generally have virtually nothing left in their political arsenal except for claims that their opponents are "racists" and "white supremacists." This pointless strategy -- evidence of Democrats' desperation -- is doomed to failure, for at least two reasons. First, the word "racist" has become so overused and contorted that it no longer has any meaning. The term used to refer to someone who believed that his or her race was superior to others, and who behaved accordingly. But as the number of actual racists dwindled in the past few...

A former Google employee has gone public with claims of election manipulation, intimidation, and political bias at the hands of the tech giant, including the “blacklisting” of certain websites, including The Christian Post. On Wednesday, investigative journalism group Project Veritas released an interview in which whistleblower Zachary Vorhies reveals he delivered roughly 950 pages of documents to the Department of Justice’s Antitrust division demonstrating that Google manipulated its algorithms in a way that biased its search engine against conservative media, Christian media and nonprofit groups, and Republicans.A Google employee for eight years, Vorhies — who refers to his situation as...

In a video and article published on Wednesday, ex-Google employee Zach Vorhies speaks with the antitrust investigators at Project Veritas about the thousands of internal Google documents he recently released to the public.  Among the cache of information is a list of sites that Google has blacklisted with an algorithm developed to alter users' search results.  American Thinker is one of them. The highlighted photo below is from frequent contributor Steve McCann It wasn’t easy for Vorhies to break away from his lucrative Google salary and come forward with the trove of information that shows a huge political bias...

“There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.” AUG 13, 2019 10:00 AM BY HUGH FITZGERALD Ayatollah Khomeini famously proclaimed: “Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.” His own son said...

Australia: Muslim who went on stabbing spree while screaming “Allahu akbar” was recent convert to Islam AUG 14, 2019 11:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER Yet another convert to Islam gets the impression that his new religion calls upon him to kill Infidels. Authorities the world over show absolutely no interest in this recurring phenomenon. “‘I didn’t think he’d go this far’: School friends of Sydney knifeman say he recently converted to Islam and was an ‘odd person with no friends,'” by Lauren Ferri, Charlie Coe, Hannah Moore and Daniel Piotrowski, Daily Mail Australia, August 13, 2019: Friends of the Sydney...

UK: Muslim hijacks police car, runs over police officer AUG 14, 2019 1:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER The Islamic State issued this call in September 2014: So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be. You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawaghit. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a...

Pakistan: “Every year at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert to Islam” AUG 14, 2019 4:00 PM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS The brutal persecution of young Christian girls in Pakistan is ongoing, and largely ignored by “feminists” and fake human rights activists, who call it “Islamophobic” to shed light on such atrocities: The Pontifical charity, Aid to the Church in Need, is sounding the alarm on the plight of young Christian women, and even teenagers, in Pakistan who are forced to convert to Islam. “Every year at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced...

There are two competing theories being debated today about American individuals’ “right” to gun ownership. The original theory is that Americans enjoy a fundamental right to self-defense, in order to preserve one’s person and property against any neighbors or government agents who might act against one’s individual liberty. This is a natural right that predates our government’s formation, and was therefore enshrined in the Constitution by some very forward-thinking liberals of their time. In the words of the Second Amendment: A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and...

Singer Jennifer Lopez performs onstage during her concert on the beach of North Coast city of New Alamein, north of the Egyptian Capital Cairo on August 9, 2019.Egyptian Lawyer Seeks to Ban Jennifer Lopez for 'Performing Naked' - Report © AFP 2019 / KHALED DESOUKI 21:00 14.08.2019(updated 21:02 14.08.2019) Get short URL 0 40 The lawyer was apparently offended by the clothes Lopez wore during her performance at a concert in El Alamein, claiming that the singer’s attire violated local norms. Samir Sabry, an Egyptian lawyer with a reputation of suing celebrities, is now calling for Jennifer Lopez to be...

Are taxpayers funding academic institutions to indoctrinate our kids? That disturbing and irresistible question plagued me during the long drive home last week from college orientation. I doubt I am alone in this wake-up call. Like many other women, I just sent my youngest child to college. I am so proud of him and his decision to join the Army ROTC and study engineering. He will be attending a revered Virginia institution known for its military Corps of Cadets program. The centerpiece of the campus is the military parade field featuring beautiful pylons bearing the school’s founding principles: words...

Earlier this month, the Washington Post featured an op-ed entitled “I am an uppity immigrant. Don’t expect me to be ‘grateful,’” by New York University professor Suketu Mehta, an author who recently published a book arguing that “immigration is a form of reparations” for past American crimes. In the article, Mehta accuses America of stealing “the futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders,” of causing many immigrants “to move in the first place,” and of “despoil[ing] their homelands and mak[ing] them unsafe and unlivable.” He censures the West for “despoil[ing] country after country through colonialism,...

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, never said there were "fine" Nazis or Ku Klux Klansmen. This is one of the two great lies of our time — the other being that all Trump supporters are racists — and perhaps in all of American history. I cannot think of a lie of such significance that was held as truth by so many Americans, by every leading politician of one of the two major political parties and disseminated by virtually the entire media. The major news media need to understand these are important reasons that half of America...

For the liberal media, conspiracy theories are fine so long as they’re the stuff of liberal fairy tales. MSNBC’s Hardball illustrated that point on Tuesday night as MSNBC legal analyst Paul Butler wildly asserted that, since Donald Trump was President and Bill Barr was Attorney General, the two have, “in some ways...facilitated [Jeffrey] Epstein's suicide.” Host Chris Matthews certainly wasn’t expecting that when, after introducing Butler, he complained about Trump’s “chutzpah to just say — to throw out Bill Clinton and try to trash his name into this mess” regarding Clinton’s closeness with Epstein. Butler asserted that “Donald Trump is...

On Tuesday, CBS This Morning was in awe of radical climate change activist Greta Thunberg, hailing the 16-year-old from Sweden as “the voice of the planet” and touting her plan to sail across the Atlantic to attend a United Nations climate summit in New York. The report particularly applauded Thunberg for scolding the United States and President Trump for not doing enough to stop global warming. “A teenager from Sweden called ‘the voice of the planet’ is ready to cross the Atlantic on a mission to fight climate change....She’ll be sailing from Europe to New York to call on world...

WND NETWORK FACE NOW WANTS WHITE PEOPLE 'DESTROYED' 'You do not negotiate with these people' An MSNBC contributor who previously called for a mob with “pitchforks and torches” to protest outside the home of a President Trump supporter now wants white people “destroyed.” The new comment comes from Elie Mystal during his appearance on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” program, Fox News reported. “You don’t communicate it to them – you beat them. Beat them. They are not a majority of this country. The majority of white people in this country are not a majority of the country. And all the people...