Free Republic

Why does the U.S. Constitution make no mention of education? Because the Founding Fathers understood that the education of children must be at the local level. We now stand at the edge of a cliff as the federal Common Core State Standards continues its march across the country. How did we get here? In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education blackmailed the states with stimulus money in the form of Race to the Top (RTTT) grants. If states wanted to get out from under No Child Left Behind, and wanted more funding they had to agree to adopt the Common...

Looks like yet another left-winger missed the meme on the New Civility. Attorney and "Ring of Fire" radio show co-host Mike Papantonio, guest-hosting on Ed Schultz's radio program yesterday, revealed two things -- he hates old people and wants tea party retirees to hurry up and die. Don't take my word for it, listen to Papantonio's remarks after a caller said he saw "one of these baggers" push a woman during dueling protests over the weekend in Madison, Wisc.

When Webster Groves High School purchased solar panels to put on the roof of the school, no one told them they could catch on fire! The fire department was called on Saturday to put out the flames ... Plumes of black smoke could be seen coming from the roof at Webster Groves High School Saturday. Firefighters say solar panels caught fire around 2:00pm. Nearby residents noticed the smoke and called the fire department. The panels are above the new science wing.

The city council of a tiny rural hamlet in Somerset, England, has vetoed a plan to fly the flag of St. George because its links to the Christian Crusades in the Middle Ages may offend the town's Muslim residents. ... John Clements, vice president of the Royal Society of St. George, a patriotic organization, called the Radstock councilors' decision “nonsense” and a form of “censoring” of the national flag.

Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love has declared she wants another shot at the congressional seat occupied by Democrat Jim Matheson. The announcement that she wanted a rematch came during an afternoon speech Saturday to several thousand delegates at the Utah Republican Party’s annual organizing convention. “You and I have some unfinished business with Jim Matheson,” Love said during her speech, which was met with loud cheers and resounding applause.

The Homeland Security Department has granted legal status to 99.2 percent of all illegal immigrants who have applied under President Obama’s new non-deportation policy for young adults, according to the latest numbers released Friday. That’s a slight drop from the 99.5 percent approval rate reported last month. The policy, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, grants legal status to most illegal immigrants under the age of 31 who came to the U.S. before age 16 ... DACA is seen as a test-run should Congress pass a broad legalization for the 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the...

How the College-Industrial Complex drove tuition so high. Class of 2013, No one else is going to tell you this, so I might as well. You sit here today, $30,000 or $40,000 in debt, as the latest victims of what may well be the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history. It is a conspiracy so big and powerful that Dan Brown won’t even touch it. It’s a conspiracy so insidious that you will rarely hear its name. Move over, Illuminati. Stand down, Wall Street. Area 51? Pah. It’s nothing. The biggest conspiracy of all? The College-Industrial Complex. Consider this: You have...

Al-Hamad, who is Wahhabi (extremist Sunni) and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite and Shiite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. ... Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes...

A man identified on Twitter as Abul Ala and claiming to be a Salafist-Wahhabist cleric, has decreed women should not turn on air conditioners or coolers at home, in the absence of their husbands... "turning on the cooler ventilator is prohibited for women in the absence of their husbands" because "the woman's act is very dangerous, and may bring about immorality in the society. When she turns the cooler on, someone may notice her presence home, and this might bring about immorality". ... In April, a Salafist cleric called Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni posted a YouTube video claiming the rape of...

Former hostage ‘spared after he recited verses from Quran’. Vienna: An Austrian man held hostage for five months in Yemen said he was kept in permanent darkness in a room too small to stand up in and was forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. At one point, Dominik Neubaur told Austrian magazine News, he was taken out for what he thought would be his execution — but believed he was spared after he recited verses from the Quran. “I heard a weapon being loaded and felt its muzzle on the back of my head,” he said his first interview...

Larry Connors, the KMOV anchor who asked Barack Obama some tough questions about his family's vacation habits and claimed earlier this week that he might have been harassed by the IRS as a result, has been taken off the air.

Internal Revenue Service to investigate conservative groups? Was the IRS to read between the lines of his request? A keen observation by View from a Height blogger Joshua Sharf may have tied Colorado’s Democratic U.S. Senator Bennet, who now chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to the most recent Internal Revenue Service scandal. Late last week, the IRS came under scrutiny for targeting conservative groups, such as the Richmond Tea Party, for inappropriate intrusion into their business dealings. According to the DailyMail, the Richmond Tea Party received a letter in January 2012 asking that they complete a 55-question document that...

Herseth Sandlin passes on Senate run, leaving Republicans with early edge to win seat. ... Democrats had targeted the onetime congresswoman, who served from 2004 to 2011, as their top recruit in a seat currently held by retiring Sen. Tim Johnson. Even if Johnson had decided to run for another term, Republicans would have considered the solidly-Republican state one of their top pickup opportunities of the 2014 election. ... The state's former GOP governor, Mike Rounds, has already declared he will seek the Republican Party's nomination. While Rounds announced his campaign early and has high name-identification in the state, he...

<p>Karen and Billy Vaughn lost her SEAL son Aaron in 2011 in Afghanistan along with 16 other Navy SEALs. At the memorial service in Afghanistan an Islamic cleric desecrated their son and the other SEALs. Now they’re speaking out.</p> <p>On Sunday the Vaughns went on FOX and Friends. Billy Vaughn wants the Commander-in Chief, “To defend the policy that in this United states government that allows the body of a slain warrior to be desecrated and allows the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be mocked.”</p>

the IRS may have been casting an even wider net, and agents could have unfairly targeted groups that touted better government economic policy and debt pay-down. Also among the targeted: Groups that tried to educate about the Constitution or government policy critics ... at least one congressional member has wondered: What about Obamacare? Do critics of Obamacare face extra layers of IRS scrutiny, also?

Women on UK university campuses are being discriminated against as more and more events force separate attendance and seating arrangements. ... The events in question have been primarily hosted by Islamic societies on campuses, who often use separate telephone numbers for men and women to book their attendance, and either advertise each individual event as segregated, or have blanket policies enforcing the move. Events with speakers such as Zahir Mahmood, Abu Usamah, Lauren Booth, Hamza Tzortzis and Adnan Rashid have all been segregated.

The Qur'an allows for the owning of sex slaves: ... This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011 that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves ... on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke out in favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality. ... While the savage exploitation of...

Anjem Choudary and his fellow protestors can be seen fighting with what was reported as other Muslim groups on London's Edgware Road. ... Protestors marched with hard-line Salafist placards and flags, many of which read, "Support Jund Al Sham". ... The protestors were marching in opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who they are known to deplore for his Alawite religion. Protestors also took up the cause against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah, who they deem as "Shia Enemies of Allah" for their Shi'ite Muslim backgrounds. The protestors are thought to be hard-line Salafists, who have...

In mid-March, she was bitten by a Mohave rattlesnake just feet from her apartment while trying to save her cat. "You can feel it grip on. It's like cutting through butter. It grabbed my thumb and went down through the tendon. When it turned around it nicked me on the other side," said Wallace. The Mohave's venom put Wallace in a coma. She spent a total of nine days in the ICU and had to be readmitted to the hospital three more times. Wallace was left with no feeling in much of her hand. A few months prior Wallace told...

Some residents in Valencia Park are resting easier this weekend. Two pit bulls that were terrorizing the neighborhood have been put to sleep following an attack Friday. A viewer contacted 10News on Friday afternoon after her dog was mauled that morning. The County of San Diego Animal Services confirmed that the two pit bulls in question killed a neighborhood dog in 2009. The owners of the pit bulls are now facing criminal charges, despite the dogs having been euthanized. ... The County of San Diego Department of Animal Services says within the past three years, both pit bulls have been...

Five Iranians have been arrested after allegedly posing as police officers in order to rob motorists in northern Italy. ... The band of thieves allegedly set up fake control points at motorway service stations, where they would walk away with tourists' documents and money under the pretext of checking their authenticity.

As the Obama administration prepares to launch a new round of strategic nuclear missile cuts, Russia’s strategic nuclear forces are undergoing a major modernization, according to U.S. officials. Russia's military announced last month that as part of the nuclear buildup, Moscow later this year will deploy the first of its new intercontinental ballistic missiles called the Yars-M. Details of the missile are being kept secret, but it has been described as a fifth-generation strategic nuclear system that Russian officials say will be able to penetrate U.S. missile defenses using a new type of fuel that requires a shorter burn time...

the high prevalence of Democratic legislators, including Jared Polis, who “bought friends” on Twitter (approximately 82%). The original story cited The Hill. Yesterday, the New York Times also has called out Polis for his fake friends. ... While Polis may be cited as the member of Congress with the highest percentage of fakes, he’s certainly not the only liberal guilty of this type of astroturfing. The Hill also noted that it was estimated that 70% of President Obama’s followers also were bought. While a few (thousand or million) fake followers on Twitter may not seem like a big deal, does...

The FBI has revealed that they now know the identity of the American known as Misha who helped radicalize the Boston bombing suspects. Family members of dead bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev have described Misha as the guiding influence in the elder bomber developing radicalized views. Speculation as to who Misha is has varied wildly in the past week, with some suggesting he is the mastermind behind the marathon bombings while others believe he could be a Russian spy - sent to identify and keep tabs on young men like Tamerlan who are at risk of turning to militant Islam. To date...

Louie Gohmert is a conservative firebrand. Not afraid to stand alone on an issue he believes in, the Texas congressman is often in the news for making statements deemed outrageous — or that are actually outrageous, depending our your perspective. ... based on the findings of the Dallas Federal Court and the Fifth Circuit of Appeals, the two largest front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood are ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America, and CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations. And people from ISNA, like the President Imam [Mohamed] Magid, has access to him. He had access in the State Department...

Colorado Senate Bill 252 and the multibillion-dollar economic burden it would impose on .. Colorado. ... SB 252 is being fast tracked to limit public debate. The bill squeaked through the Senate by just one vote and now will be heard in the House. Coloradans: It's time to contact your representative to say how critical it is to stop this costly bill. ... It will just take a minute or two to make your voice heard and your representative needs to hear from you today.

Nothing argues for gun rights quite like a man breaking into your house with a baseball bat. In Midland, Texas, a would-be robber attempted to break into a neighbor’s home. Samuel Pompa, 32, was wielding a baseball bat. His would-be victim, 19, had a shotgun.

Warren Watson, a Colorado prison parolee who fled from parole and confessed to a murder in Lakewood, had a long history of such escapes but had still been placed on a comparatively low level of supervision by Colorado’s Division of Parole. ... a series of missteps, miscommunications and questionable judgments in the Watson case, much like in the case of parolee Evan Ebel, who is suspected of murdering Colorado’s Corrections Director and a young father while Ebel was on parole. The parole department is examining its handling of the Ebel case. Internal Colorado parole records now show that the Colorado...

The DOC says an average of three ankle monitors, like the one suspected killer Evan Ebel wore, are cut off every day in Colorado. According to a document released by the DOC Tuesday, the department’s monitors triggered 89,000 alerts in just the past six months. “I want you to think about the scope of information that comes in on a daily basis,” Alison Morgan, a spokeswoman from the DOC. The 89,000 alerts include every type of incident, from a simple power loss to tampering. ... The DOC says the first time Evan Ebel tampered with this ankle monitor was the...

Investigators are still looking for the person who opened fire during the 4/20 celebration at Denver’s Civic Center Park. ... Leon Kelly, leader of an anti-gang organization, says the shooting during the 4/20 rally was predictable. He says tensions in gang neighborhoods are already high and they spilled over in the park. He says the violence wasn’t between rival gangs. Kelly says the shooting was violence between members of the same gang and Denver investigators agree. “Over the last number of months you had friction between in-house battles, Crips on Crips,” Kelly said. Nobody was seriously injured in the shooting,...

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stopped talking once he was prematurely read his Miranda rights. That helps the authorities establish the lone wolf narrative. Whatever else we might have learned from him is probably lost. ... District Court Judge Marianne Bowler arrived at the hospital where he is being treated to preside over his initial hearing Monday, when she read him his Miranda rights. ... Judge Bowler has some interesting international connections. She is a member of the Member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Apparently in that capacity, she visited and spoke on legal...

LAWBREAKERS, LAWMAKERS: In some parts of Chicago, violent street gangs and pols quietly trade money and favors for mutual gain. The thugs flourish, the elected officials thrive—and you lose. ... both law enforcement and gang sources say, is that some politicians ignore the gangs’ criminal activities. Some go so far as to protect gangs from the police, tipping them off to impending raids or to surveillance activities—in effect, creating safe havens in their political districts. And often they chafe at backing tough measures to stem gang activities, advocating instead for superficial solutions that may garner good press but have little...

Buried within the 844 pages of the bipartisan immigration bill -- amid historic shifts in policies such as a path to citizenship for 11 million unauthorized immigrants -- are pet provisions of the senators who crafted it. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham wants more visas for the meat industry, a major employer in his state

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, while testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today, actually conceded that Abdul Rahman Ali Al-Harbi, the Saudi national who moved from ‘suspect’ to ‘person of interest’ to ‘witness’ to ‘victim’ all in less than 24 hours after the Boston bombings, was indeed placed on a terrorist watchlist. This is in stark contrast to what she told the Rep. Jeff Duncan at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing last week. Providing further intrigue is that one day before Napolitano conceded Al-Harbi’s watchlist status, talk show host Glenn Beck explained how difficult it was for someone...

A new documentary secretly filmed inside several of the 85 Islamic Sharia Law courts operating in Britain has exposed the systematic discrimination that many women are suffering at the hands of Muslim jurists. The documentary, Secrets of Britain's Sharia Courts, was filmed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was first aired on BBC Panorama, a long-running current affairs program, on April 8. The undercover investigation proves what has long been suspected: namely, that Sharia courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Islamic Sharia law that are at...

Islamist militants in Somalia have killed the widow of a Christian who was slain for his faith in December, leaving the couple’s five children orphaned, sources said. Islamic extremist Al Shabaab rebels shot 42-year-old Fartun Omar to death on April 13 in Buulodbarde, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Beledweyne, according to Abdi Aziz Suleiman of Radio Shebelle in Beledweyne. The extremists had been searching for her for several months, as they knew that she was a secret Christian like her late husband, Mursal Isse Siad, sources said. Siad had been receiving death threats for leaving Islam. ... “A week before...

Why more patients share rooms with the blood-sucking pests. As if adapting to health-care reform and curbing the “nightmare bacteria” weren’t challenge enough, hospitals are increasingly plagued by another problem: Bedbugs. More than a third of pest management companies treated bedbug infestations in hospitals in 2012, 6% more than the year before and more than twice as many as in 2010, according to a survey released today by the National Pest Management Association. The percentage of exterminators dealing with bedbugs in nursing homes has also almost doubled since 2010, to 46%. Bedbug experts also report seeing them in ambulances. Hospitals...

After years of pretending to be a Navy SEAL and a member of law enforcement, a Rhode Island felon is facing multiple years in California and Rhode Island prisons after finally slipping up because of expired vehicle tags. William Burley pleaded not guilty to charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and in possession of ammunition on Wednesday in Morongo Superior Court. Just the previous week in the same court, Burley, a Yucaipa resident, pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, a prohibited person in possession of ammunition and receiving stolen property. Due...

Harry Reid and Wal-Mart hope nobody will notice their online revenue raid. Every time Congress has taken a serious look at proposals to boost Internet sales taxes, it has rejected them. That's probably why pro-tax Senators are trying to rush through an online tax hike with as little consideration as possible. As early as Monday, the Senate will vote on a bill that was introduced only last Tuesday. The text of this legislation, which would fundamentally change interstate commerce, only became available on the Library of Congress website over the weekend. And you thought ObamaCare was jammed through Nancy Pelosi's...

The House Committee on Homeland Security wrote DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano a letter on Saturday demanding answers on the Boston Marathon bombing. This was after Tamerlan Tsarnaev became the fifth person since 9-11 to participate in terrorist activities despite being under federal investigation. DHS Committee Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul told reporters Saturday that we are “probably looking at a terrorist cell” being involved in the Boston attack. ... Committee Chairman Rep. Mike McCaul said bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev appears to be the fifth person since 9/11 to participate in a terror attack, despite being under FBI investigation. McCaul, R-Texas, said...

There’s something sick about an administration which is so pro-Islamic that it can’t even tell the truth about the people who are trying to kill us,” Mr. Gingrich said ... Mr. Gingrich accused the White House of being unwilling to discuss threats from some Muslims. And he slammed President Barack Obama for mounting a “war” on the Catholic Church over contraception but apologize to Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the burning of Qurans.

Slain Chechen terror suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was married to middle class college student Katherine Russell, 24. The couple have a three-year-old daughter called Zahara. Tamerlan spent every weekend with Katherine's family at their suburban Rhode Island home. The 26-year-old Chechen – who was shot dead by cops last night – was regularly seen at his wife's family home in Rhode Island. And neighbours today spoke of their shock at waking up to see Katherine's home being raided by the FBI and cops before dawn this morning. At 5pm today, Katherine was driven back to the house by a relative and...

Given the long history of Muslim Brotherhood activity in this country, its declared objective to "destroy the Western civilization from within," and the extensive evidence of successful influence operations at the highest levels of the U.S. government, it is urgent that we recognize this clear and present danger that threatens not only our Republic but the values of Western civilization. ... Since its inception in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood consistently has championed the cause of global jihad ... Aside from its ideology, if there is a single characteristic that defines the Brotherhood, it is organization. From its earliest days, the...

Four Canadians on a ground excursion during a Caribbean cruise thought they were going to be killed when four masked gunmen with homemade shotguns and pistols ambushed them in a lush botanical garden retreat, fellow passengers say. About 60 tourists and three guides were systematically searched at gunpoint and robbed of their money, jewelry, cameras and cellphones on Friday. They were then ordered to march forward, during which they feared they would be shot in the back, but instead the gunmen slipped away into the foliage ... The victims were on a shore excursion from the cruise ship Celebrity Eclipse,...

The National Weather Service has posted a winter storm warning for far eastern South Dakota, and winter weather advisories in other parts of that region and also southeastern North Dakota. ... Snowstorms have been crossing the Dakotas for the past week, dumping record amounts of snow

Denver Public Schools has quietly put the rest of its controversial variable-rate bonds with swaps on the market to sell as fixed-rate debt. Five years after issuing a 30-year, $750 million school pension bond that turned into a financial quagmire for the district, DPS is selling $519.8 million in fixed-rate, refunding certificates of participation (COPs), set to price during the week of April 15, according to an announcement Friday from Fitch Ratings. ... DPS "fixed out" — or issued debt at a fixed interest rate — half of the original $750 million in debt in 2011, and paid nearly $42...

Forty percent of Colorado’s class of 2011 enrolled in a Colorado college or university needed remedial education courses in at least one subject in order to catch up to college-level work... in the core subjects of reading, writing or math. the new figures may jolt school board members, school and college leaders, policy wonks and parents. That’s because the state has changed the way it calculates remediation rates with the aim of making them more accurate. But by doing so, remediation rates for students from many districts look much worse. ... Using the old methodology a year ago, only 31...

Labor secretary nominee Thomas Perez cut a "secret deal behind closed doors" with leaders of a Minnesota city, persuading them to drop a contentious lawsuit in exchange for the Justice Department staying out of whistleblower cases brought against the city, according to a congressional Republican report. The "quid pro quo," according to the report, potentially cost taxpayers as much as $200 million. ... Both cases involved the city of St. Paul.

The head of an extremist Jordanian Muslim Salafi group said early Tuesday that he was "happy to see the horror in America" after the explosions in Boston. ... A Mideast counterterrorism official based in Jordan said the blasts "carry the hallmark of an organized terrorist group, like al-Qaida." ... one can say it was a well-coordinated, well-targeted and near-simultaneous attack

There is a fire at JFK Library in Boston, Massachusetts. The JFK Library incident is reportedly unrelated to the explosions at the Boston Marathon. ... police are investigating video footage to see if the fire was caused by a bombing. ... A third bomb was detonated by police near the finish line of the marathon.