Free Republic

A national women's organization is challenging Gov. Bruce Rauner's appointments to the Illinois Tollway, saying he is violating state law by creating an all-male board. Over the past three months, Rauner has named five male directors and re-appointed another to the nine-member Tollway board, which already included three men. In addition, Rauner backed Greg Bedalov as the agency's new executive director. Bedalov replaced Kristi Lafleur, who had held the post under the tenure of former Gov. Pat Quinn. The National Council of Women's Organizations is charging that Rauner is violating the Illinois Gender Balanced Appointments Act. The 1991 law is...

RAW VIDEO: Activists disrupt rally featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders

Walker handled it pretty much perfectly. During the summer of 2013, we began to see immigration amnesty activists use the Why do you want to deport my daddy? tactic against Republicans. The tactic involves sending children to confront candidates — with the video rolling. It all was a set up, in the hope the candidate would do something stupid or mean. Most famously, Speaker John Boehner was confronted by well-coached children while eating at his usual breakfast spot: (video at source) A similar confrontation just happened to Scott Walker, and it was all a set up by a “social justice”...

Michelle serving up her trademark malicious menu of malcontent Okay, we get the picture the mainstream sends. First Lady Michelle Obama is so much in demand as a celebrity that she gets to sip tea at will with Prince Harry at Kensington Palace and merits “an affectionate reunion” with Barack “bro” Prime Minister David Cameron and his Mrs. on the steps of Downing Street. Oh, the powers protocol bestows on the wife, daughter and even the mother-in-law of a president. Just as the rarified gentry of the Victorian era, when matrons waited at home for other mavens to come calling,...

The president of the Louisville police union caused a backlash when he issued an open letter calling unspecified activists “sensationalists, liars and race-baiters.” Dave Mutchler is the president of the River City Fraternal Order of Police and a sergeant in the Louisville Metro Police Department. He distributed the two-page letter six days after a police officer shot and killed 35-year-old Deng Manyuon, a Sudanese refugee who attacked him with a flagpole. …

Modern progressive college students have become so militant they’re frightening their own like-minded professors, according to an account posted by one such professor on the website Vox. The professor, using the pseudonym Edward Schlosser, claims to have taught for nine years and currently works at a midsize state college. Over that time, he says, students have decisively shifted to become so protective of their fragile emotions that defying their sensibilities can be “suicidal” for one’s career. “Things have changed since I started teaching,” Schlosser writes. “The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this,...

The arrival in Seattle Thursday of an oil rig Royal Dutch Shell is outfitting for oil exploration in the remote Arctic Ocean marks a pivotal moment for an environmental movement increasingly mobilized around climate change. Activists paddling out in kayaks to meet the rig off Seattle's picturesque waterfront said it's their moment to stand against opening a new frontier of fossil fuel exploration. "Unless people get out there and put themselves on the front lines and say enough is enough, than nothing will ever change," said Jordan Van Voast, 55, an acupuncturist who was going out on the water to...

After I write a column that rips Barack Obama up one side and down the other, talks about our debt or the fact that we essentially don’t have borders any more, there are usually conservatives who show up in the comments section or email me something like, “I agree with you 110%, but what’s the solution? What policy do we put in place to fix everything that’s going wrong? When are we going to have another Ronald Reagan ride in on a white horse and fix what’s wrong?” Here’s the problem with that: It’s the wrong mentality. It’s sort of...

Oh my goodness, the 2014 election victories didn’t end the war! You mean the progressives are still out there dreaming of a future full of hugs and goosestepping? You mean the GOP Establishment hasn’t just given up its power and knelt before us, begging to be forgiven for its craven crony corporatism? You mean the fight’s not over? No, the fight’s not over. So stop whining that you can’t go back to sitting on your rear end – we have a long campaign ahead. I know you’re tired. I know you’re frustrated. And I don’t care. Some people want to...

#BlackLivesMatter Activists Shut Down Emeryville Home Depot; Demand Surveillance Tapes Of Fatal Police Shooting EMERYVILLE (CBS SF/KCBS) — Dozens of #BlackLivesMatter protesters forced Home Depot in Emeryville to close its doors for several hours Saturday. The group was demanding answers about the February 3 shooting death of Yuvette Henderson, an Oakland woman shot and killed outside Home Depot by two Emeryville officers. Henderson was accused of shoplifting and trying to carjack motorists. Police said Henderson pointed a gun at them, but protesters don’t believe that. They want the store to release security tapes of the incident.

Actor James Woods, who might or might not know he’s been nominated along with Rob Lowe to run for Barbara Boxer’s seat in the Senate, wasn’t pleased to hear that a CNN correspondent on Friday referred to the Islamist terrorists who killed 12 staff members of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo as “activists.” James Woods ✔ @RealJamesWoods CNN actually described the Paris jihadist murderers as "activists." So the police who finally killed these scum would be..."reactionaries?" 5:06 p.m. - 9 Jan 2015

White is right — in activists’ book.  That is, the right color to ignore when it comes to stories of people shot by police.So says American Thinker editor Rick Moran while reporting on the shooting of a pellet-gun wielding white man on Sunday by San Francisco police. The Washington Post describes the incident: The shooting occurred in the parking lot of the San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station [at 5:20 p.m. PT]. In a statement, the department said that the confrontation began when police sergeants asked a man in the station’s restricted lot to leave. Instead, the man stood in...

Multiple far-left groups are using Ferguson as a pretext to rehearse widespread civil disobedience when the Welfare State taps the brakes. The scaling down of the Welfare State in America is not a question of “if,” but “when.” The status quo is unsustainable. “Unsustainable” is one of those Washington D.C. words with a history of meaning little -- like Foggy Bottom’s use of “unacceptable.” But unlike unacceptable, unsustainable, when applied to the Welfare State, is a derivative of mathematics -- a major determinant of the wealth of nations. The American Welfare State is unsustainable -- destined for significant downsizing by...

A core of community organizers is behind the 45 organizations placing demands on the policing agencies in St. Louis County. As the Grand Jury’s decision concerning Officer Darren Wilson is awaited, Don’t Shoot Coalition (DSC) is preparing its role in street demonstrations likely to come in the wake of an anticipated No True Bill. The sub-culture of progressive social activism is organic. Its alliances evolve and dissolve, only to reconstitute under changed names, but with unchanged ideologies. The internet facilitates the proliferation of evolving variations of front groups. Many of their websites have on-line donation solicitation capability. The larger, more...

Two “Stop the Violence” organizers allegedly beat one of their colleagues so severely that he vomited blood and was left unconscious in critical condition. Nikole Ardeno and Emanuel Velez, both 30, accused their former roommate of stealing their property, and allegedly punched and kicked him in the street until he had seizures. Arrested moments later, Ardeno was still wearing the same “Stop the Violence” T-shirt she had on the night before when she coordinated a march protesting two recent shootings, Washington Police Chief Chris Luppino said. The victim, Joshua Magraff, also is a community organizer with the anti-violence group, and...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Ebola quarantine policy is drawing strong opposition from people who work closely with him on another infectious disease: AIDS. New York State’s imposition of a 21-day quarantine on health workers who have had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa “is not supported by scientific evidence” and “may have consequences that are the antithesis of effective public health policy,” according to a letter released Monday with signatures from over 100 H.I.V. activists, researchers and clinicians. They consider the state’s quarantine policy unacceptable even though, as Governor Cuomo announced Sunday night, affected people will be able to serve...

CAIR also got several police departments in President Obama’s home state of Illinois to cancel essential counterterrorism courses over accusations that the instructor was anti-Muslim. The course was called “Islamic Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy” and departments in Lombard, Elmhurst and Highland Park caved into CAIR’s demands. The group responded with a statement commending officials for their “swift action in addressing the Muslim community’s concerns.” CAIR has wielded its power in a number of other cases during the Obama presidency, including blocking an FBI probe involving the radicalization of young Somali men in the U.S. and pressuring the government to...

The abortion backer who attacked a pro-life man in a profane rant captured on video last month has been ordered to pay restitution and the case has been closed. Mark Harrington, founder of Created Equal, whose group held abortion victim signs which enraged the abortion activist, provided the update on the case. Previously, Harrinton and Seth Drayer, who was physically attacked (video below) while leading a group of pro-life students in sharing the pro-life message in downtown Columbus, Ohio, said they would drop the charges if Victoria Duran would meet with them. createdequal“We’re willing to drop the charges,” Harrington told...

From the Cleburne Times-Review to the New York Daily News to Gawker — it’s been a heck of a week for 19-year-old Kendall Jones, the Cleburne native and Texas Tech University sophomore now known as “The Texas Cheerleader Famous for Killing Animals in Africa.”

President Obama’s senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett held a series of meetings with illegal immigrant activists during Obama’s first term and concluded that “They are the best that we have.” Jarrett, a Chicago-era mentor to Obama and wife Michelle, is currently fighting to pass immigration reform legislation, in her words, “this summer.” “I had met, maybe, a year-and-a-half ago, with about Four Dream Act kids,” Jarrett said in a 2012 conversation with Walter Isaacson at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, video of which was posted by The Aspen Institute in 2014.