Free Republic

Omar Ibn Said was 37 years old when he was taken from his West African home and transported to Charleston, South Carolina, as a slave in the 1800s. Now, his one-of-a-kind autobiographical manuscript has been translated from its original Arabic and housed at the Library of Congress, where it “annihilates” the conventional narrative of African slaves as uneducated and uncultured. Amna Nawaz reports.

A Depression-era mural depicting white children playing outside in the winter was removed from Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park because school officials said it failed to represent the school’s diversity. While some said the mural was upsetting to students of color who felt it excluded them from the school, a local historian likened the removal to a “modern-day book burning.” Cynthia Brito Millan, a coordinator for the middle school’s Social Justice Club, said the push to remove the mural began in February at a district school board meeting. Students expressed frustration about an atmosphere of exclusion for students...

Kendall Jenner's alleged stalker has been arrested by ICE, and the agency made it clear ... if they didn't throw this guy out of the country there could have been a tragedy involving violence directed at Kendall. Law enforcement sources tell TMZ cops had been tracking 38-year-old John Ford for several weeks ... the guy who twice showed up at Kendall's home. Last October, he scaled a hill and ended up by her swimming pool and came back again shortly thereafter and ended up on her porch. Turns out Ford is a Canadian citizen whose visitor visa expired, so he...

Pressure has been mounting for congressional leaders to release the names of lawmakers who have settled sexual harassment claims at the taxpayers expense. House members from both parties as well as President Donald Trump have said that they believe Congress should disclose the settlements as it involves taxpayer money. Congress is a place that notoriously protects their own so many in the public don’t know what is exactly going on on Capitol Hill. Rep. Ron DeSantis from Florida said in an interview "It's taxpayer dollars at issue; taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent," He...

THE FOLLOWING IS THE ORIGINAL THAT WAS REPLACED: Except as provided in section 1461 of this title and this section, no funds authorized to be appropriated to the United States Information Agency shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States, and no program material prepared by the United States Information Agency shall be distributed within the United States. This section shall not apply to programs carried out pursuant to the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2451 et seq.). The provisions of this section shall not prohibit the United States Information Agency from...

Northern California serial killer Juan Corona, who murdered at least 25 men before police apprehended him in 1971, is dead.

CNN)In a sea of users live-tweeting the Oscars last night, one account stood out: the CIA. Apparently, the agency is into movies -- especially "Black Panther." Throughout the night, the CIA Twitter feed explored the feasibility of the technology seen in the Marvel superhero flick. The agency also tested its followers' knowledge of metals, asking if they thought the fictional metal vibranium is real...

**SNIP** Perhaps the biggest blow to the high-speed rail project came in 2010, when Republicans won control of the U.S. House of Representatives. They proceeded to block any further federal funding for high-speed rail, undermining the California project’s financial plan. Ironically, Gov. Newsom’s decision to pause high-speed rail comes just as Democrats have retaken the majority in the House, making possible a Green New Deal and billions in high-speed rail funding. California ought to show the country how to overcome these obstacles. If we believe climate change is real, then we are obligated to do something about it, and not...

If it feels like the US has become increasingly divided along race, gender, and other identity lines — it's because it has. A report released by the Haas Institute at the University of California-Berkeley last week found that the US has become less inclusive -- in other words, less welcoming to women, minority groups and people with disabilities -- compared to the rest of the world since 2016. . . . .Meanwhile, the five least inclusive states have all enacted anti-Sharia laws, an indicator that the Haas Institute used to predict discrimination against all religious minorities.

The University of Missouri has claimed that a male asking a female out on a date could be sexual harassment – if she is smaller than him. Mizzou officials made the claim as doctoral student challenged them in a lawsuit surrounding his suspension in 2016 for the romantic proposal to his student dance instructor Annalise Breaux. The college claimed that posing the question could violate Title IX, which serves to prohibit sexual discrimination on any federally funded education program, after Jeremy Rowles sued them for racial and sexual discrimination.

Kaywin Feldman Becomes the First Woman to Direct the National Gallery of Art in Washington Feldman is the fifth director to lead the venerable 77-year old institution. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, has named Kaywin Feldman as its new director. She will be the fifth director—and the first ever female director—of the venerable 77-year-old institution. Feldman, who has been director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) since 2008, will take up the new position in March 2019. The seasoned museum administrator takes the helm from longtime director Earl “Rusty” Powell III, who has led the National...

The Nation of Islam and its leaders have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the U.S. government since 2008 to teach religious study programs for federal prison inmates, according to records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. A black nationalist group led by Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam preaches that white people are “blue-eyed devils” and Jews are “the synagogue of Satan." Its leaders have received at least $364,500 in contracts and awards from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2019. The funding was designed to provide "Nation of Islam...

After more than a year of litigation, the University of California, Berkeley, has settled a lawsuit with the Young Americas Foundation and the UC Berkeley College Republicans. Campus conservatives accused the university of bias in the process of bringing high-profile speakers to campus. The original lawsuit revolved around the cancellation of an event with Ann Coulter. An amended version of the lawsuit included road blocks initiated by the university for an event with Ben Shapiro. The Department of Justice filed a statement of interest backing the campus conservatives. The crux of their argument revolved around two campus policies that they...

The latest racket in higher education, evident at my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, is the disturbing proliferation of “social justice” as a degree program, a course topic, an academic emphasis, and even as a prerequisite in campus job descriptions. “Social justice” is a seemingly innocuous term with no established definition. Many members of the general public construe it as a harmless synonym for “fairness.” But to progressives—who dominate the academy these days—“social justice” is a colloquial expression with a specific meaning: economic equity (the redistribution of wealth), “sustainability” (a pre-industrial environmental ethos), and the elimination of...

....concepts that still help me make sense of the world, like the "racial nadir" — the downturn in American race relations, starting after Reconstruction, that saw the rise of lynchings and the Ku Klux Klan. In doing so, Lies My Teacher Told Me overturned one assumption embedded in the history classes I'd been sitting through all my life: that the United States is constantly ascending from greatness to greatness. "I started out the new edition with the famous two photographs of the inaugural crowds of this guy named President Obama, his first inauguration, and this guy named President Trump, his...

A public university is paying a radical 89-year-old linguist hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach his famously leftist brand of politics, according to records obtained by Judicial after a months-long battle with the taxpayer-funded institution. Judicial Watch launched an investigation after the University of Arizona (UA), located in Tucson with an enrollment of about 40,000, announced that it hired Noam Chomsky to teach a general education course for undergraduates titled “What is Politics?” In the announcement UA describes Chomsky as a “world-renowned linguist” and one of the “most cited scholars in modern history.” The reality is that Chomsky is...

Judicial Watch obtains the first court-ordered production of Strzok-Page communications from the FBI (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has received 87 pages of records from the Department of Justice revealing former top FBI official Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page’s profanity-laced disdain for FBI hierarchy and policies. The DOJ, meanwhile, is resisting Judicial Watch’s request for a court order to preserve all responsive Page-Strzok communications. Strzok and Page’s anti-Trump text messages became center-stage amid allegations of bias at the Bureau, and both have been subpoenaed to testify before the House Judiciary and the Oversight and...

Sociology professor Alicia Walker is asking male participants to voluntarily send photos of their anatomy along with measurements – in an aroused and non-aroused state – as part of a research project approved by the Missouri State University Institutional Review Board, The College Fix reported. “The study is examining the importance of men's self-esteem and feelings about their bodies and their experiences in a society that worships size and tells men that they're less than if they don't measure up,” Walker told Fox News. “For the men I've spoken to thus far, that impact has been grave.” Walker clarified that men are not emailing...

The cries of children pierce our hearts. Scientists say they're meant to. They move us to love and protect children. This response is healthy; it's human; and it keeps humanity going. As Dr. Marc Bornstein at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development told The Scientist, "the infant cry and the caregiver response, have developed together to ensure the survival of the species." Public figures, including the pope, bishops, senators of both parties, and every living spouse of a president spoke out against the Trump administration policy that separated more than 2,300 children crossing the...

The documentary "RBG" is a look at perhaps the most unlikely rock star Washington has ever seen: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Tracing her roots, education and career, it's her early and continuing fight for gender equality that winds through the film. Jeffrey Brown talks with directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen. Read the Full Transcript John Yang: Finally tonight, she is largely known for issuing stinging dissents from the Supreme Court bench. But a new documentary, out today in select theaters, provides an intimate and rare look inside the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Jeffrey Brown has...