Free Republic

The suspension of a Rolla High School student who wore a shirt that displayed biblical verses and words opposing homosexuality raised debate on social media websites over the weekend after a St. Louis television station reported on the incident Friday. However, Rolla public schools’s superintendent has responded to the TV station’s report, clarifying that students are disciplined for wearing clothes that are disruptive, not because they have religious quotes written on them. Dr. Aaron Zalis, superintendent of the Rolla Public Schools system, spoke with the Rolla Daily News by phone Monday morning about the school’s dress code policy and to...

What began as a simple traffic stop ended in a humiliating and nightmarish ordeal for a New Mexico man. It won’t come as a surprise to most people why the man has now filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. The incident began on Jan. 2 as David Eckert was leaving the local Walmart in Deming, N.M. He reportedly failed to make a complete stop at a stop sign, prompting police to pull him over. The officers asked him to step out of the vehicle and claim the man appeared to be clenching his buttocks, Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, told TheBlaze....

The Conservative movement in America - much like those who fought valiantly at the Alamo - will shortly be overrun and butchered at the hand of a godless and lawless world (Matt. 24:12, Gal. 1:4; Eph. 6:12, Rev. 13). These sobering realities are too much for the majority of American conservatives to think on and understandably so, they do not want to retain this reality in their thoughts. These individuals have put ALL of their trust in this sound and crucial ideology for fallen humanity and rightly so, true conservatism is key for a healthy society and beneficial for obtaining...

The family of a Colorado preacher’s wife is still fuming after the director of the city-owned cemetery refused to engrave her final resting place with the name ‘Jesus’ because it might offend people. The city eventually reversed course under public pressure. “We were in disbelief,” said Stacy Adams, the daughter-in-law of Linda Baker. “Who tries to censor Jesus from a cemetery?” “At first they told us it wouldn’t fit,” Adams said. “But after we kept pushing them the cemetery director told us that it might offend somebody. They weren’t going to allow it.” The family was devastated and asked the...

Last week, Amnesty International released a report on U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, concluding that as many as 900 civilians might have been killed and 600 seriously injured in the attacks since 2004, when the controversial program began. The United States launched between 330 to 374 drone strikes in Pakistan between 2004 and September 2013, according to the report. And those strikes have created a culture of fear on the ground. "I wasn't scared of drones before," Nabeela, an 8-year-old whose grandmother, Mamana Bibi, was killed by a 2012 drone strike, says in the report. "But now when they fly...

Don’t donate to the tea party or to evangelical Christian groups — that was the message soldiers at a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood said they received from a counter-intelligence agent who headed up the meeting.If you do, you could face punishment — that was the other half of the message, as reported by Fox News.The briefing was Oct. 17, and about a half-hour of it was devoted to discussion about how perceived radical groups — like tea party organizations and the Christian-based American Family Association — were "tearing the country apart," one unnamed soldier said, to Fox News.Among the...

According to information released at a May 9, 2013 press conference by the families of Navy SEALs killed in an August 2011 helicopter shoot-down in Afghanistan, "military brass prohibited any mention of a Judeo-Christian G-d" and "invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah."  The accusations arose over a "ramp ceremony" held at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan as flag-draped caskets of the dead soldiers were loaded onto a plane for transport back to the United States.  The shocking...

It's called the largest single experiment in getting kids more active in Snohomish County. The Gear Up & Go program involves handing out nearly 7,000 watch-sized electronic devices to fifth-graders at 15 school districts throughout the county. The devices will measure the activity levels of participating students throughout the school year. --SNIP-- Students can check in on their progress at computers programmed to keep a running tab on their activity. --SNIP-- The information gathered in the project will allow data to be collected and mapped in a number of ways. --SNIP-- Other information will be overlaid on the maps, such...

In my quest for sources of news that may or may not provide information you can't get through more mainstream channels, I ran across an analysis of a Fox News piece on Dianne Reidy, the House Steno who purportedly 'lost it' and committed career suicide. Leaving aside that the source of the information is from a conspiracy theory website, I sat through the above YouTube video. It analyzes Bret Baier's segment on it during his Special Report show. The woman in the YouTube video points out several things: 1. The audio in the piece had its audio dubbed. 2. The...

This month, more Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles (MRAPs) have found their way from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Main Streets of America. These are just the latest acquisitions in a growing practice by Pentagon that's militarizing America's municipal police forces. Police departments in Boise and Nampa, Idaho, each acquired an MRAP, as did the force in High Springs, Florida. The offer of war-ready machinery, at practically no cost, has proven hard to resist for local police departments. Increasingly, they are looking like soldiers equipped for battle. The growing similarity between our domestic police forces and the U.S. military...

The family of a Colorado preacher’s wife is still fuming after the director of the city-owned cemetery refused to engrave her final resting place with the name ‘Jesus’ because it might offend people. The city eventually reversed course under public pressure. “We were in disbelief,” said Stacy Adams, the daughter-in-law of Linda Baker. “Who tries to censor Jesus from a cemetery?” Linda Baker lost her battle with cancer last week. She was the wife of Mark Baker, the pastor of Harvest Baptist Church in Ovid. Adams said her mother-in-law was passionate about her Christian faith and her family. Her final...

This month, more Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected vehicles (MRAPs) have found their way from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Main Streets of America. These are just the latest acquisitions in a growing practice by Pentagon that's militarizing America's municipal police forces. Police departments in Boise and Nampa, Idaho, each acquired an MRAP, as did the force in High Springs, Florida. The offer of war-ready machinery, at practically no cost, has proven hard to resist for local police departments. Increasingly, they are looking like soldiers equipped for battle. The growing similarity between our domestic police forces and the U.S. military...

Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values. The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. A soldier who attended the briefing contacted me and sent me a photograph of a slide show presentation that listed AFA as a domestic hate group. Under the AFA headline is...

This weekend, new state law enforcement officers to completed training in Islam that they were compelled to attend by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The new recruits were in training from October 8 through the 11th; experienced recruits are expected to have similar training at their regularly scheduled in-service. This sensitivity training is aimed at helping “bridge the understanding” of Islamic culture to law enforcement. However, some think this is more of “be a good dhimmy” on the part of Governor Christie. New Jersey.com reports that the training is a min-version of a 10 week course on Cultural Understand taught...

“The instructor said AFA could be considered a hate group because they don’t like gays,” the soldier told me. “The slide was talking about how AFA refers to gays as sinners and heathens and derogatory terms.” The soldier, who is an evangelical Christian, said the chaplain defended the Christian ministry. “He kept asking the instructor, ‘Are you sure about that, son? Are you sure about that?’” he said, recalling the back and forth. Later in the briefing, the soldiers were reportedly told that they could face punishment for participating in organizations that are considered hate groups. That considered, the soldier...

Crystal Dixon has run out of options. Dixon, the former associate vice president of human resources at the University of Toledo (UT), sued her former employer in 2008 after she was fired for publishing a column expressing her opinions on homosexuality. In February 2012, a federal judge ruled against Dixon. Later that year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit concurred with the lower court. Now, this week, the United States Supreme Court has declined to hear Dixon’s appeal. In her column, published in The Toledo Free Press, Dixon, who is black, had expressed her disagreement with comparisons...

Scientists, engineers and policymakers are all figuring out ways drones can be used better and more smartly, more precise and less damaging to civilians, with longer range and better staying power. One method under development is by increasing autonomy on the drone itself. Eventually, drones may have the technical ability to make even lethal decisions autonomously: to respond to a programmed set of inputs, select a target and fire their weapons without a human reviewing or checking the result. Yet the idea of the U.S. military deploying a lethal autonomous robot, or LAR, is sparking controversy. Though autonomy might address...

Scientists, engineers and policymakers are all figuring out ways drones can be used better and more smartly, more precise and less damaging to civilians, with longer range and better staying power. One method under development is by increasing autonomy on the drone itself. Eventually, drones may have the technical ability to make even lethal decisions autonomously: to respond to a programmed set of inputs, select a target and fire their weapons without a human reviewing or checking the result.

United States v. $35,651.11 (The cash in the account of Schott's Supermarket) Feds Seize Family Grocery Store’s Entire Bank Account Can the government use civil forfeiture to take your money when you have done nothing wrong—and then pocket the proceeds? The IRS thinks so. For over 30 years, Terry Dehko has successfully run a grocery store in Fraser, Mich., with his daughter Sandy. In January 2013, without warning, the federal government used civil forfeiture to seize all of the money from the Dehkos’ store bank account (more than $35,000) even though they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. Their American Dream is...

A Wisconsin school district is apologizing after middle school students were shown a video that featured Hollywood celebrities pledging to be a servant to President Obama.“I pledge to be a servant to our president,” Demi Moore said in the “I Pledge,” video shown Wednesday at Hudson Middle School. The video was part of a number of Peace One Day activities, an international event to build peace awareness. The students were also invited to make their own pledges after viewing the video. But there was a big problem – the video conveyed the idea that Americans should serve the presidency instead...