Free Republic

Fox's The Simpsons is under fire for the way in which the show responded to controversy around one of its most recognizable and oldest characters, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon. The outcry over the stereotypical portrayal of Springfield’s Kwik-E-Mart owner, voiced by Hank Azaria, was addressed Sunday night in the episode “No Good Read Goes Unpunished" when Marge Simpson reads a book to daughter Lisa that has been changed from its original version to something not so controversial. “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?,” says Lisa. The show then panned to...

For his return after a 3 week whirlwind tour in California where a lot of things were going on, John's message this week concentrates mostly on Israel, Syria and the Middle East where "A Lot is Going On." From Israel finally admitting that they took out the Syrian nuclear reactor over 10 years ago, to the rapid progression of Turkey into an enemy of Israel and NATO, John looks at the latest issues that are coming to the forefront of this week's prophetic outlook. Oh, yeah..and he briefly mentions the new "Youth Movement" headed up by the foul-mouthed David Hogg,...

A student Resident Advisor (RA) at Providence College has reportedly been threatened with rape after posting a flyer that expressed a traditional view on marriage. According to LifeSiteNews, RA Michael Smalanskas has faced severe student backlash since displaying the poster on a bulletin board in early March, with upset classmates gathering outside of his dorm room and endangering his safety.

The online publishing platform Medium has suspended the accounts of prominent far-right figures Mike Cernovich, Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer. Medium spokesperson Sandee Roston told The Hill that the company does “not comment on individual accounts.” Roston did point to a Feb. 7 post detailing an update to its rules. “We have all seen an increase and evolution of online hate, abuse, harassment, and disinformation, along with ever-evolving campaigns of fraud and spam,” Medium's rules update reads. “We have strengthened our policies around this type of behavior.” “We do not allow calls for intolerance, exclusion, or segregation based on protected...

The free speech wars are getting worse, but it seems that none of the warring factions quite grasp the character of the dispute — or precisely what's at stake. At the figurative center of the clash is the norm of near-absolute freedom of speech and expression, which its defenders like to treat as the American default. A number of ideological challenges have arisen in recent years to overturn this norm. On many college campuses, groups of left-leaning students insist that free speech should be conditional on speakers adhering to explicit standards of diversity and avoiding the infliction of emotional harm...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc will change the ranking of its News Feed to give priority to trustworthy news sources above those that its users do not consider trustworthy, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.

British police forces arrested at least nine people a day for “offensive” online comments last year. Figures obtained by The Times through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 3,395 people across 29 forces were arrested last under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which makes it illegal to intentionally “cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another”, in 2016. The true figure is likely to be significantly higher, as thirteen police forces refused to provide the requested information and two did not provide usable data. Around half of the investigations were abandoned before being brought to prosecution, which...

John Haller is in Facebook prison. Clearly, he must be saying the right things. Help spread the word and get his message out. We may be experiencing to advent of two classic novels in our lifetime. Were Orwell and Rand modern day prophets? Consider this: In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell, the Thought Police (Thinkpol) are the secret police of the superstate Oceania, who discover and punish "thoughtcrimes" which are defined as personal and political thoughts unapproved by "the Party." Thinkpol used criminal psychology and omnipresent surveillance to monitor and arrest all citizens of "Oceania" who would commit...

President Donald Trump’s son, Eric Trump, on Friday accused Twitter of censoring one of his tweets. In a tweet on Friday, the president's son tweeted out a screenshot of a tweet posted earlier on Friday that read “Jobs Jobs Jobs!!!” followed by several American flag emojis. The tweet also retweeted another user's tweet that included a Drudge Report link about Friday's jobs report. Eric Trump's tweet was hidden for some viewers behind a standard Twitter warning, which was depicted in the screenshot. The grey warning box reads: “This tweet is not available because it includes potentially sensitive content.” “Why are...

BERLIN — In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion and incitement to racism. Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office, whose officers conducted home searches and interrogations. But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone’s sexual orientation. “The still high incidence of punishable hate posting shows a need for police action,” Holger...

The totalitarian left is emboldened by its selective suppression of speech. Just as scary is the deluded thought process that inspires its Stalinism. Recognizing its inability to compete in the marketplace of ideas, the left has been chipping away for years at the concept of free speech. You have to give leftists points for cleverness, not to mention persistence, because they don't openly advocate censoring conservative speech as such. They pretend to be protecting some greater good or preventing imminent harm to certain groups. When they failed in talk radio, they resurrected the Fairness Doctrine, which is euphemistically disguised as...

Tim Allen opened up briefly about what it means to be a conservative in Hollywood in 2017 during an interview with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel Thursday night, explaining that one must be “real careful” in talking about President Donald Trump or else risk being beaten up. “You’ve gotta be real careful around here. You get beat up if you don’t believe what everybody believes,” the 63-year-old Last Man Standing star told Kimmel when asked about his attendance at Trump’s inauguration in January.

Big Brother is Watching YOU! Officials in Germany's Interior Ministry are urging Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière to establish a "Defense Center against Disinformation" (Ab­wehr­zen­trum ge­gen Des­in­for­ma­ti­on) to combat what they call "political disinformation," a euphemism for "fake news." "The acceptance of a post-truth age would amount to political capitulation," the officials told Maizière in a memo, which also disclosed that the bureaucrats at the Interior Ministry are eager to see "authentic political communication" remain "defining for the 21st century." One wonders whether by "authentic political communication," the officials of the Interior Ministry are referring to the way German authorities...

A SCHOOLBOY has been put through Britain’s strictest de-radicalisation programme after he expressed his beliefs “Muslim women should not be allowed to wear the burka”. The white schoolboy was dragged in and ordered to spend time with an imam and visit a mosque after he made comments in school about Muslims “trying to take over the country”, according to local reports. Channel is part of the counter-terror Prevent scheme, which aims to curb recruitment by Islamic terrorists and is used in the most serious cases of radicalisation, targeting “individuals at risk of being drawn into violent extremism”. The organisation said...

Too many people are confused. Let's cut through the lies and make this as simple as 'ABC'. Lie Number 1: "ICANN's just a 'phone book'." No, ICANN is the chained up guard dog in the back yard. [More on that later.] The closest thing to a phonebook is a Top Level Domain like .COM or .MIL. But calling them 'libraries' would be closer to the truth. So who is the TLD's librarian? That would be the 'Registrar' who manages the TLD's registry. ~ ~ Simple as ABC: A ... ICANN .. the chained up watchdog. B ... TLD ... Top...

Can police prevent hate crimes by monitoring racist banter on social media? Researchers will be testing this concept over the next three years in Los Angeles, marking a new frontier in efforts by law enforcement to predict and prevent crimes. During a three-year experiment, British researchers working with the Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. will be monitoring millions of tweets related to the L.A. area in an effort to identify patterns and markers that prejudice-motivated violence is about to occur in real time. The researchers then will compare the data against records of reported violent acts. The U.S. Department of Justice...

London’s new Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, is allocating over two million dollars (£1,730,726) to an “online hate crime hub” enabling police to track and arrest “trolls” who “target…individuals and communities.” There can be no doubt, given the nature of the British political establishment today, which “trolls” these new Thought Police will be going after, and which “communities” will be protected from “hate speech.” “Islamophobia,” which David Horowitz and I termed “the thought crime of the totalitarian future,” is now going to bring down upon the hapless “trolls” the wrath of London’s Metropolitan police force -- and this totalitarian new initiative...

After a gunman killed 49 people in June at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., Anne Verrill, a prominent Maine restaurateur, swung through a range of familiar emotions: frustration, anger, helplessness. She reflected, too, on her typical response to the nation’s litany of gun massacres. “We write Facebook posts, we copy and paste, and we talk about it with people who basically agree with us,” Ms. Verrill, 38, said the other day. “We’ve never really done anything outside the box with regard to gun control.”

Two professors at the University of Northern Colorado were investigated after students complained that they were forced to hear opposing viewpoints. One professor instructed his students to read an article from the Atlantic written by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's president Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt titled "The Coddling of the American Mind." The article explains that allowing students to hide from controversial and upsetting ideas (like through the use of "safe spaces" or "trigger warnings") actually harms those students by not allowing them to confront those opinions. After reading the article, the professor asked his students...