Free Republic

Secretary of State Antony Blinken instructed State Department employees to refrain from using gendered terms such as “mother, “father” and “manpower” in a recent internal memo, according to a report. The Biden administration official argued in the memo that gender is a social construct and that a person’s gender identity “may or may not correspond with one’s sex assigned at birth,” according to the Feb. 5 missive. The note was obtained by National Review and titled: “Modeling DEIA: Gender Identity Best Practices

This month, though, Marvel officially declared the Punisher persona non grata, eliminating the character as readers know him. Did he go out in a blaze of glory? No, in typical woke fashion Frank Castle is captured by progressive heroes, chained up and forced to go through a struggle session in which he is admonished as a murderer and a terrorist. Marvel even brings the Punisher’s wife back from the dead, only so that she can divorce him and take his money and property, and then inform him that his lifelong crusade against the criminal underworld was all for nothing. The...

How could this be all white? Organizers of a South Carolina town’s Juneteenth events have issued a groveling apology for advertising the holiday marking the emancipation of black slaves with a banner showing only a white couple. The seemingly colorblind promos for Juneteenth GVL’s June “mega fest” went viral soon after they were put up across Greenville — sparking outrage and even calls for a boycott. “You want to celebrate the depth of black culture on Juneteenth by putting white [people] as the face of it?” one outraged critic tweeted the organizers. “How were you not aware how problematic that...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Iraq elections may bear out that old adage: Be careful what you wish for. The United States has invested billions of dollars and nearly 1,500 lives to replace Saddam Hussein's dictatorship with the beginnings of democracy. But Iraq's new government isn't likely to be Washington's best friend. In election results announced Sunday, clergy-backed Shiites and independence-minded Kurds did the best. But the Shiites' 48 percent of the vote was not enough to control the legislature, and leaders are working on a coalition government that could also reach out to minority Sunnis. "There's a democratic process in...