Free Republic

Hillary Clinton used a CNN interview on Friday to completely embrace the Democrats’ claim that white people and cops must change to help reduce the number of African-Americans killed in tense exchanges with cops. “I will call for white people, like myself, to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have ‘The Talk,’ about, you now, how to really protect themselves [from police], when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with police,” Clinton told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “I’m going to be talking to...

Human rights activist Jessie Jackson has pointed the finger at Donald Trump and his followers for helping to create a rising climate of fear in America which has contributed to the shocking deaths of five police officers in downtown Dallas. Rev Jackson said there was an 'anti-black mood' in America which also saw discrimination against immigrants, Muslims and women. Speaking in the aftermath of the coordinated attack on 11 police officers in Dallas, Rev Jackson called on President Barack Obama to hold a conference on violence and racial disparities.' SNIP Asked about Donald Trump and the rise of ultra-conservative groups,...

Donald Trump is a vulgar clown posing as a conservative, unmoored to any coherent ideology. He has generated unprecedented opposition and the contempt of people across the political spectrum. He is unbound to any principle other than his own appetite for adulation. And those very factors that make him so appalling also make him America’s only hope. Now we need to suck it up and pull the lever for this jerk. I don’t need to hear why Trump sucks again. I know why he’s terrible. I’ve written about it at length. But the Hillary Clinton charade of July 5th –...

President Barack Obama's second term in office is almost complete, leaving many to wonder what he will do when he leaves office in January. It appears the 44th President might be taking his talents to the NBA. Press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Obama, an unabashed sports fan, has "discussed" joining an ownership group for an NBA franchise. But Earnest also added that Obama would move forward only "under the right circumstances."

Conservative columnist George Will told PJM he has officially left the Republican Party and urged conservatives not to support presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump even if it leads to a Democratic victory in the 2016 presidential election. Will, who writes for the Washington Post, acknowledged it is a “little too late” for the Republican Party to find a replacement for Trump but had a message for Republican voters. “Make sure he loses. Grit their teeth for four years and win the White House,” Will said during an interview after his speech at a Federalist Society luncheon. Will said he changed...

Christian conservatives are responsible for the mass shooting at a gay bar in Orlando because they "created this anti-queer climate," according to American Civil Liberties Union attorneys. "You know what is gross — your thoughts and prayers and Islamophobia after you created this anti-queer climate," ACLU staff attorney Chase Strangio tweeted on Sunday morning. About 50 people were killed last night by Omar Mateen, a U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents suspected to have "leanings toward extreme Islamic ideologies." The FBI is investigating the attack as a "domestic terror incident." But Strangio — who "spend[s his] life fighting Christian homophobia...

What will President Obama do about the memorial service that is certain to follow the awful carnage in Orlando this morning? He has a clear pattern, but this incident does not fit in very well. In Charleston, SC, the decision was easy. The victims were black and the perpetrator was a white racist. Two check marks, so a presidential visit was assured. In San Bernardino, the perpetrators were Islamic, and the victims were of multiple ethnicities, including protected classes. A mixed signal, but because the perps were of a group that must be shielded from any public perception of collective...

US Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh made comments at an Air Force Association event on Thursday that were uncharacteristically bullish on the prospect of restarting the F-22 program. Lockheed Martin shuttered the F-22 program almost five years ago. Since then, the top Air Force brass has been focused on the troubled F-35 program as well as looking decades forward to the Next Generation Air Dominance program. In April, however, Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said in Congress: "In light of growing threats from a resurgent Russia and an aggressive China, further exploration into restarting the F-22 line is deserved." Welsh's...

Actor Richard Dreyfuss took to Twitter Monday evening to fire off several profanity-laced tweets against presumptive GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. In one particularly nasty tweet, which has since been deleted, the 68-year-old Jaws star described the billionaire real estate magnate as “a small-d*cked prick,” who had celebrity “whores” supporting his White House run.

A new translation of the Bible updates the religious text with modern technology, replacing several words with emojis. The digital text titled “Bible Emoji: Scripture 4 Millenials” uses Apple’s vast library of emoticons to retell all 66 books of the Bible in a way intended to relate to young people.

For the eighth time, Peruvian actor and environmental activist Ricardo Torres has symbolically married a tree as part of an ecological awareness campaign to urge others to care for the environment. The wedding took place at a landmark location, the town of Santa Maria del Tule, which is home to an ancient 2000-year-old cypress tree. The tree's estimated weight is more than 544.3 million kilograms. Torres left the house of his godmother, accompanied by a committee of village elders, friends and family, and walked down the Sabino street towards a cluster of Cypress tree leaves to start with the ritual...

What is the meaning of the patch on the left shoulder?

Austria could elect the European Union's first far-right head of state on Sunday, with support for Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer buoyed by a migration crisis that has heightened fears about employment and security. Opinion polls suggest the presidential run-off between Hofer and former Greens leader Alexander van der Bellen will be close. A far-right victory would resonate across the 28-member EU, where migration driven by conflict and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere has become a major political issue. Support for groups like the eurosceptic, anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) has been rising in various countries, whether they have...

The Central States Pension Fund has no new plan to avoid insolvency, fund director Thomas Nyhan said this week. Without government funding, the fund will run out of money in 10 years, he said. At that time, pension benefits for about 407,000 people could be reduced to "virtually nothing," he told workers and retirees in a letter sent Friday. In a last-ditch effort, the Central States Pension Plan sought government approval to partially reduce the pensions of 115,000 retirees and the future benefits for 155,000 current workers. The proposed cuts were steep, as much as 60% for some, but it...

Who is Bill Clinton’s mistress? Does he have one long-term mistress? What does she look like? These questions have been answered, if the writer of a new book on the former President is to be believed. Bill Clinton is alleged to have had a thirteen-year affair with a prominent New York socialite nicknamed “Energizer” by Secret Service agents, according to a new book on the former President. Julie Tauber McMahon lives just a few miles from the Clintons’ primary residence in Chappaqua, NY. And, because the Clintons are protected by the Secret Service at all times, her visits to the...

White House National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice said Wednesday there are too many white people in key government posts, creating the danger of “groupthink” that could put U.S. security at risk. Speaking at Florida International University’s commencement, Ms. Rice said a diversified government workforce is more likely to yield “better outcomes” than a predominantly white one. Referring to criticism that the U.S. national security workforce is “white, male, and Yale,” Ms. Rice told the graduates, “In the halls of power, in the faces of our national security leaders, America is still not fully reflected.” “By now, we should all...

he 2016 presidential campaign has hardly lived up to the ideal of a civil exchange of ideas facilitating a peaceful democracy. But a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center suggests that the acrimony from the campaign trail may be having a broader, negative effect on society — particularly in American schools. An online survey of 2,000 educators – one that the center notes wasn’t scientific – found half saying they witnessed an increase in “uncivil political discourse” during the 2016 campaign. Two-thirds of respondents said their students – particularly Muslims, immigrants and children of immigrants – openly expressed...

(Trump) used the term "lightweight" to describe Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., once in the presidential race, and suggested former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another former rival, was still licking his wounds from the vicious campaign. The party's 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, Trump said, "blew the election" that year and never even thanked Trump for his work on Romney's behalf. Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 nominee, said it would take a lot for him to ever stand on stage next to Trump, even though McCain has agreed to support the party's nominee.

Don't expect Oscar De La Hoya to be supporting Donald Trump's presidential campaign any time soon. The former boxing champion is making some serious claims and taking a shot at Trump's golfing integrity, saying he cheated on his own golf course. "It shows something about his character," De La Hoya told The Associated Press. "Golf is a gentleman's sport. You don't lie about your score, you don't lie about moving your ball. It goes to show what we're dealing with."

Twice in the past three months, juries have awarded tens millions of dollars to ovarian cancer victims who blamed Johnson & Johnson talcum powder for their illness — among the first verdicts in a gathering courtroom assault by law firms that are aggressively recruiting clients through TV ads and the Internet. While the link between ovarian cancer and talc is a matter of scientific dispute, a St. Louis jury Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $55 million to a South Dakota survivor of the disease. In February, another St. Louis jury awarded $72 million to relatives of an Alabama...