Free Republic

The landlady of a pub whose collection of golliwog dolls was confiscated by police has assembled replacements, which she plans to display in defiance of a continuing investigation. Last week four Essex police officers and a trainee seized all the dolls on show in the White Hart Inn in Grays as part of an investigation into an alleged hate crime. The dolls divide opinion in Grays. On Tuesday some pub regulars turned up to show support, but others expressed their fury. The pub’s landlady, Benice Ryley, 62, refuses to accept they are racist. Clutching an armful of the dolls, including...

The administrators at the University of California, Berkeley, have launched strict coronavirus lockdown rules that include a ban on outdoor exercise. The university announced that its lockdown would last at least until February 15, but that date is already an extension from the original February 8 end time. Shockingly, the school exclaimed that the police would monitor the lockdown. “Due to the 14-day incubation period of this virus, it is too early to be sure we have contained this current surge,” UC Berkeley told students, according to the Daily Californian. “We understand this extension is frustrating, but please understand this...

This week will bring a major gut check for President Barack Obama’s climate agenda — specifically, his appetite to take on coal. The Environmental Protection Agency is due to release a White House-vetted proposal by Friday that would impose the first-ever limits on greenhouse gases produced by future power plants. It would especially squeeze plants that burn coal, the nation’s cheapest, most abundant and dirtiest fuel source. The rule coming this week wouldn’t apply to existing power plants — EPA will tackle those in a second rule due to be proposed next June and finished a year later. But EPA’s...

Here's an easy way to tell when your position isn't a conservative one. When you're standing with Van Jones, your position isn't a conservative one. When you're standing with Code Pink, then your position is not a conservative one. No amount of noise or chest-beating is going to change that.

DID YOU KNOW SOUTH AFRICA HAS A CONSTITUTION THAT'S FAR SUPERIOR TO OUR OWN? THAT'S WHAT ONE U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, AS WELL AS SHADOWY ACTIVITIST GROUPS WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES TO EFFECT CHANGE, BELIEVE. “I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa … a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights …” -Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jan. 30, 2012. That stunning disavowal—by an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court—of the Constitution she has sworn...

Van Jones, one of the most effective organizers and strategists on the left, is out with a new book. Rebuild the Dream, which debuted last week on the New York Times bestseller list, takes its name from the organization Jones helped found a year ago to stir up a grass-roots insurgency against the plutocrats we now call the 1%—and now seek harness the insurgent energies expressed by the Occupy movement into lasting institutional reform. “The American dream—the idea that ours is a land where any hard-working person can better herself or himself—is at risk of being wiped out, right before...

Offended by President Obama's decision to force health insurers to pay for contraception and surgical sterilization? It gets worse: In the future, thanks to ObamaCare, the government will issue such health edicts on a routine basis—and largely insulated from public view. This goes beyond contraception to cancer screenings, the use of common drugs like aspirin, and much more. Under ObamaCare, a single committee—the United States Preventative Services Task Force—is empowered to evaluate preventive health services and decide which will be covered by health-insurance plans. The task force already rates services with letter grades of "A" through "D" (or "I," if...

As a way to solve the national debt crisis, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue recommends suspending Congressional elections for the next couple of years. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue said at a rotary club event in Cary, North Carolina, according to the Raleigh News and Observer. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.” Perdue said she thinks that temporarily halting elections would allow members...

lternative remedies such as natural health supplements using vitamins and herbs, natural herbal remedies and holistic treatment are at risk...Senator John McCain proposed The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA ), February 4, 2010, to put the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in charge of regulating natural health supplements. Alternative remedies are protected because they are classified as food. However, the new bill reduces potency a product with 1/2 carrot's worth beta carotene for example and provides a list of acceptable ingredients. This is the same FDA that allows dangerous prescription drugs on the market with long lists of side-effects. Watch any...

Breaking News-Blast hits tourist site in Yemen; several people wounded, officials say. Banner heading. All I have so far.

A bipartisan group of Michigan lawmakers wants all sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against cervical cancer. A Republican state senator who is the lead sponsor said it's the first legislation of its kind in the U.S. The vaccine was approved by federal regulators this summer and hailed as a breakthrough in cancer prevention. The shots prevent infections from strains of a sexually transmitted virus -- human papilloma virus, or HPV -- that can cause cervical cancer and genital warts. At the time, conservatives expressed concern that schools would require the vaccine for enrollment. They argue that such mandates infringe on...

To: National Desk, Health Reporter Contact: HHS Press Office, 202-690-6343 WASHINGTON, May 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona today released a new comprehensive report on smoking and health, revealing for the first time that smoking causes diseases in nearly every organ of the body. Published 40 years after the surgeon general's first report on smoking -- which concluded that smoking was a definite cause of three serious diseases -- this newest report finds that cigarette smoking is conclusively linked to diseases such as leukemia, cataracts, pneumonia and cancers of the cervix, kidney, pancreas and stomach."We've known...