Free Republic

... Word of the Trump administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, which calls for prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally, has been traveling along the migrant trail that winds through Mexico and Central America. People learn of it by television, by social media and, mostly, by word of mouth. While the policy has stirred controversy in the United States, with lawmakers from both parties calling for its end in the face of defiance from the Trump administration, it has sowed confusion for the migrants bound for the United States, who are struggling to make sense of what it means for...

Last month, two friends and I backpacked for a week in the Sierra Nevada. We hiked through meadows dotted with wildflowers, slept beneath snow-draped peaks and met plenty of other hikers: the dad and son whose Green Bay Packers caps sparked a conversation about our mutual ties to Wisconsin; scientists from UC Santa Cruz studying flowers and rock formations; five recent college grads from Kentucky who were hiking the John Muir Trail before they scattered to begin their adult lives. But as the days passed, I grew increasingly troubled by the people we didn’t meet. There were a few...

Posters depicting President Barack Obama in makeup similar to the Joker from the most recent Batman movie have popped up across Lake County. A U.S. Post Office in downtown Clermont had a couple of the posters glued to a collection box. Clermont Postmaster Willie Montgomery said today that the posters were discovered yesterday. Customers complained about the pasted images, he said. "Everybody that saw those posters found them to be very offensive," Montgomery said. "These are personal attacks on the president. We don't have to necessarily agree with the way they're running the country, but we have to respect the...

On the eve of America's invasion of Iraq, he was heartsick at the prospect that he might not be military material. He even shelled out $800 for medical tests to convince the recruiters that he was fit for duty despite childhood asthma that would ordinarily render him ineligible for service. On Monday, that same eager recruit, now Lieutenant Ehren Watada, faces a court martial for refusing to deploy to Iraq and for making public statements against the war. He is the first officer to be prosecuted for publicly criticising the war - indeed the first since the Vietnam era when...

Iran complained to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan over what it perceives as the threat of a United States attack, as the regime continued to defy demands to halt its disputed nuclear drive. In a letter forwarded to the UN chief by Iran's ambassador in New York, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the regime condemned 'American officials for their illegitimate and open threats to use force against the Islamic republic of Iran'. 'These are in obvious contravention of international rules and the principles of the United Nations,' the letter was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA. The complaint came...

All my life, I believed in Republican values -- individual responsibility and limited government. Then it happened; I found myself with a small child, unemployed and disabled. I turned to my church, and after years of regular tithes, suddenly I just wasn't their problem. My Republican friends? I was now a pariah to them. My only relief was to turn to government assistance for housing, food, and other needs and I was able to survive with dignity. So chalk me up as one who no longer drinks the GOP koolaid.

I wonder if America is called a terrorist organization now days. In my opinion we literally are. If you look at it from a perspective. We tell countries what they can and what they can't do. If they don't abide we basically go to war with them and change their government and maybe to an extent their culture for them. Is this not a form of terrorism? To force a country to do something against their will. In my opinion it is, but that's just me. An it's not just with Iran and Iraq, which are recent acts of this,...

In the angry life of Maryscott O'Connor, the rage begins as soon as she opens her eyes and realizes that her president is still George W. Bush... Out there, awaiting her building fury: the Angry Left, where O'Connor's reputation is as one of the angriest of all. "One long, sustained scream" is how she describes the writing she does for various Web logs... ---------------snip---------------------- What's notable about this isn't only the level of anger but the direction from which it is coming. Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least...

A judge in San Antonio has denied the request of a former Fort Sam Houston soldier to force the Army to release her as a conscientious objector. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia ruled Friday that Pfc. Katherine Jashinski, 23, did not prove she has a firm, fixed and sincere objection to participating in war. The judge previously refused to block orders that shipped her to Fort Benning, Ga. There, Jashinski has refused to participate in weapons training in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan. She has been charged with "missing movement" and faces a court-martial, said J.E. McNeil, executive director of...

Storm the White House Multi-Day Event, Beginning March 15, come when you can and stay as long as you can - we are taking over the White House until they leave. Torture, Occupation, Genocide - Must End Now. Wednesday, March 15th 2006 12:00 AM Washington, DC USA TAKE THE WHITE HOUSE BY STORM - Stop Genocide, Torture and Occupation For Nat Turner, For Martin and Coretta, For all the Torture and Assassination in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and many others - We will not allow the Slave Holders that Still Prevail in this Country to Rule us any longer. Imprisonment and...

Events RSVP Storm the White House Multi-Day Event, Beginning March 15, come when you can and stay as long as you can - we are taking over the White House until they leave. Torture, Occupation, Genocide - Must End Now. Wednesday, March 15th 2006 12:00 AM Washington, DC USA TAKE THE WHITE HOUSE BY STORM - Stop Genocide, Torture and Occupation U.N. SOS - We need your help to end the reign of international criminals. It is our duty and the duty of the United Nations to rescue the people of the world from the U.S. dictators. Murder for occupation...

MEXICO CITY - ''The wall'' does not yet exist, and it might never be built, but already its 700 miles of fencing and electric sensors loom like a new Berlin Wall in the Latin American imagination. The proposed barrier along the Mexican border was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in December and is scheduled to be debated by the Senate next month. In Spanish, they call it el muro. El muro has been a focus of news for weeks not only in countries such as Mexico and El Salvador that are increasingly dependent on the dollars migrants send...

LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH PARIS -- French authorities have begun closing down soup kitchens run by anti-immigrant groups that serve pork because the practice is offensive to Muslims, who cannot eat pork. In Strasbourg and Nice, food handouts have been banned because they could lead to "public disorder." "Schemes with racial subtexts must be denounced," Mayor Fabienne Keller said. In Paris, police have stopped charities from serving pork soup at major stations on "administrative grounds," claiming the soup kitchens do not have the correct papers.

Member of Marines not 'sort of person UW wanted to produce'The University of Washington's student senate rejected a memorial for alumnus Gregory "Pappy" Boyington of "Black Sheep Squadron" fame amid concerns a military hero who shot down enemy planes was not the right kind of person to represent the school. Student senator Jill Edwards, according to minutes of the student government's meeting last week, said she "didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."

They're less than two months from taking the field, but the team known as Houston 1836 may soon change its name. The 1836 is the team which used to be the San Jose Earthquakes, but the new name is causing a little controversy here in Houston. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also on ABC13.com: Send news tips | RSS | ABC13 E-lert | Info mentioned on air | Search abc13.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What's in a name? Apparently a lot since Major League Soccer announced that the San Jose Earthquakes were coming to Houston and would be called Houston 1836. "People have been very sincere. Some...

Muslim students are upset by the Badger Herald newspaper's decision to reprint one of the notorious cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.Muslim students at UW-Madison have met with campus officials, are planning a campus forum on Tuesday, and are considering whether to stage protests.The cartoons, originally published in a right-wing Danish newspaper in September, have sparked worldwide demonstrations, including violent clashes with police in countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most American newspapers have decided against printing the cartoons. But after a University of Illinois newspaper was criticized for republishing the cartoons, the editorial board at the Badger Herald decided to...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- The Muslim Students Association at the University of North Carolina has asked the campus' student newspaper to apologize for publishing an original cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad. "The intention of bigotry was clear," the association wrote in a letter to The Daily Tar Heel. "One must question the DTH's ethics in advancing a widely protested issue to cause a riot of their own. The MSA not only found this cartoon derogatory but is also shocked at the editor's allowance of its publication _ one that incites hate in the current political and social context." Caricatures of...

DePaul University is rapidly becoming ground zero in the battle to reform academia’s corrupted political culture. For the third time in less than a year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has publicly rebuked the university for its politically motivated abridgment of free speech, this time for shutting down an anti-affirmative action bake sale and threatening to punish one of the organizers for violation of a newly instituted anti-discrimination policy. The DePaul Conservative Alliance set up a table in the Student Center where they were selling cookies and suggesting differing prices based on race, ethnicity and gender. It...

UW-MADISON STUDENTS RESPOND TO PENTAGON MONITORING: “SURVEILLANCE OF ANTIWAR ACTIVISTS MUST END NOW!” MADISON, WI – Antiwar activists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison are responding to President Bush’s recent justifications for surveillance along with released Pentagon documents which label student protesters as a “threat” and news of our campus administration’s cooperation with FBI counterintelligence programs. The UW-Madison antiwar student organization, Stop the War! is hosting a press conference to defend ourselves against the Pentagon’s libelous allegations. The press conference will be immediately followed by a protest to counter recruitment by US Marines on our campus. What: Stop The...

In his demand for religiously-correct language this Christmas season, loudmouth Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly blurted out one of his silliest, most uninformed opinions yet. His sham slam on the Madison media -- of which the Wisconsin State Journal is the leading force -- went like this: "Now this is a conservative city, Richmond," O'Reilly said last week, referring to a Virginia newspaper that had criticized him. "I mean, this is not Madison, Wisconsin, where you expect those people to be communing with Satan up there in the Madison, Wisconsin media." As a matter of fact, it's much too cold...