Free Republic

Christians in Mosul have been offered three choices by ISIS: 1. Convert to Islam. 2. Pay the ‘jizya’ tax that renders them dhimmis – i.e., second-class citizens granted limited protection if they hand over half an ounce of pure gold. 3. Death by the sword. They had until noon today to make up their minds. Bit of a no-brainer, really. Mosul’s Christians – Catholics and Orthodox who until this month had celebrated Mass in the city every Sunday for 1,600 years – are fleeing for safety. Perhaps, by the time you read this, Barack Obama – a weekly worshipper at...

Tonight --- Kristinn Taylor broke three HUGE immigration stories this week that were linked on the Drudge Report. His latest? He joins us tonight with details. Also... earlier today I participated in a telecon about the US House lawsuit against Barack Hussein Obama. On the telecom -- South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice and Constitutional Law expert David Rivkin who offered his expert opinion this morning to the House Rules Committee. The Hon. Elizabeth Letchworth, retired Secretary to the US Senate (Majority) joins us tonight to look into House speaker John Boehner's lawsuit to sue the president. Should be a good...

When Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed to address the University at Buffalo, the largest campus of the State University of New York system, she negotiated a few requirements in addition to her pay of $275,000. The potential 2016 presidential candidate's agent requested that the university provide "a presidential glass panel teleprompter and a qualified operator," that Clinton's office have "final approval" of her introducer and the moderator of any question-and-answer session, as well as "the sets, backdrops, banners, scenery, logos, settings, etc," and that the topic and length of the former secretary of state's speech would be at her "sole discretion."...

The White House said on Tuesday that Central Americans trying to cross the U.S. border should know "they will not be welcome to this country," a day after the United States deported a planeload of women and children to Honduras. A charter flight on Monday from New Mexico to San Pedro Sula, the city with the highest murder rate in the world, transported 17 Honduran women, as well as 12 girls and nine boys between the ages of 18 months and 15 years. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the return of the Hondurans should be a clear signal to...

After Criticizing White House Over Unaccompanied Minors, Martin O'Malley Said Don't Send Them to Maryland Site After his strong criticism of the Obama administration's plans to return thousands of young undocumented migrants back to Central America, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley asked a top White House official that the children not be sent to a site that was under consideration in his home state, sources familiar with the conversation said. "He privately said 'please don't send these kids to Western Maryland,'" a Democratic source told CNN. The heated discussion between O'Malley and White House domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz occurred during...

A planeload of single mothers and children arrived in this gang-ridden Honduran city on Monday, ferried back on a U.S.-chartered flight as an unprecedented surge of Central American migrants has overwhelmed U.S. border enforcement officials in recent months.. It was the first in a series deportation flights that are expected to leave the United States for Honduras carrying only women and children in the coming days. A total of 18 mothers, 13 girls and nine boys, who were being held at a U.S. detention center in Artesia, N.M., were scheduled to be on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter Monday....

Michelle Obama’s food policy czar, celebrity chef Sam Kass, was once so in with the lunch lady crowd, he landed a guest judge spot on a tearful school lunch episode of Food Network’s “Chopped” and handed out awards at the School Nutrition Association’s convention in Denver. Two years later, when he asked to speak at the group’s annual convention this week in Boston, the answer: “No.” The rebuke shows how ugly the fight has become between the first lady and her supporters, who want kids to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains in their school lunches, and the organization...

The life jackets helped many make it across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, the Mexican city across the water from Mission, just west of McAllen. Sources say they come over on rafts ferried by the so-called “coyotes,” the human smugglers whose means of transport are rendered useless whenever discovered by the Border Patrol. Many don’t make it across the river; multiple sources became emotional when recounting their discoveries of small, lifeless bodies washed up along the riverbank.FOX EXCLUSIVE: McALLEN, Texas — Life jackets of all sizes and the occasional punctured raft are strewn along the banks of the Rio Grande,...

Violence erupted Sunday afternoon during a pro-Israel peace rally in Westwood. The rally was taking place in front of the Federal Building with more than 2,000 participants. Witnesses said four men — believed to be members of Hamas — waved pro-Palestinian flags and started to attack the pro-Israel demonstrators with sticks. There was also a report of a car being shot at...

Cuban authorities arrested an unusually large group of about 100 dissident marchers Sunday, breaking up a march by the Ladies in White opposition activists. Shouting "Freedom! Freedom!," the women offered no resistance as they were put on buses by dozens of police and plainclothes agents of the only communist-ruled country in the Americas. A group of about 100 government supporters, who arrived along with the authorities at the scene in Havana's Miramar district, angrily shouted "Viva Fidel, Viva Raul" as the women were whisked away. The women's group, formed in 2003 by wives and relatives of political prisoners, marches with...

The flood of underage--and many not-so-underage--illegal immigrants from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador crested in the Rio Grande Valley, but now the waters are being diverted and channeled to other parts of the United States. Well, maybe that metaphor is a bit labored, but my point is that these young and not-so-young people are being transported to various parts of the country, to be put under the care of relatives, we are told, though it's not so clear that the caregivers are always relatives. My former Washington Examiner colleague Joel Gehrke, now at National Review,...

Jose Antonio Vargas was once well-known for being a star up-and-coming journalist at The Washington Post, a Pulitzer Prize winner before he hit the age of 30. Today, he’s best known for being America’s most prominent undocumented immigrant, after he wrote a “coming out” piece for The New York Times Magazine in 2011. Despite his high profile — or, more likely, because of it — he has avoided detention or deportation. He lives in the United States, runs a nonprofit that employs a dozen Americans and travels extensively using his valid Philippine passport. SNIP Two weeks ago, he was in...

Until now, the politics of immigration have been seen as a no-lose proposition for President Obama and the Democrats. If they could get a comprehensive overhaul passed, they would win. And if Republicans blocked it, the GOP would further alienate crucial Hispanic and moderate voters. But with the current crisis on the Southwest border, where authorities have apprehended tens of thousands of unaccompanied Central American children since October, that calculus may be shifting. Republicans and even some Democrats have accused Obama of being insufficiently engaged in a calamity that many say he should have seen coming. And the president’s own...

There are reports on Twitter that Delta Flight 469 is due to make an emergency landing at Israel's Ben Gurion airport. Further reports say the plane has around 360 on board and that the plane has been burning off fuel flying in loops off Israel's coast over the Mediterranean Sea.Source:Source:Over a dozen ambulances waiting for Delta plane to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport within minutes

Four representatives of the NAACP and the U.S. Department of Justice met with Norfolk Mayor Sue Fuchtman Thursday to talk about a controversial float in the Fourth of July parade. The meeting included the mayor, city administrator Shane Weidner and members of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, which organized the parade. The Justice Department official is a member of the Community Relations Service team that handles discrimination disputes. The float in question depicted a distraught looking mannequin in overalls in front of an outhouse with the words Obama Presidential Library on the side. "The state area NAACP has received...

Carroll County officials swiftly voiced opposition Friday to news that the federal government is eyeing a former military property near Westminster as a potential shelter for immigrant children — underscoring the challenge the Obama administration faces as it tries to manage a surge of new arrivals. A day after federal officials notified local leaders it would conduct a preliminary assessment of the vacant Army Reserve Center, the Carroll County Board of Commissioners convened an emergency meeting and, along with Republican Rep. Andy Harris, pledged to resist efforts to use the site. "Carroll County will not become a repository for Obama's...

To the villagers who fled, Zowiya is now a graveyard for all they’ve ever known. Their houses have been razed, their neighbors are dead, and their tribal codes have been violated in ways they never dreamed possible. For the extremist fighters who overran Zowiya this week in a fury of mortars and bullets, the ruins of the Sunni Muslim village carry a different symbolism: an example for any “turncoats” who dare resist the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate. “What we saw is nothing like anything in all of history, not even under Hulagu,” said a 55-year-old survivor of the attack, Abu...

I write this from the city of McAllen, which sits in the Rio Grande Valley near the border, just across from the Mexican city of Reynosa. In the last 24 hours I realize that, for an undocumented immigrant like me, getting out of a border town in Texas—by plane or by land—won’t be easy. It might, in fact, be impossible. I flew into the valley Thursday morning to visit a shelter for unaccompanied Central American refugees and participate in a vigil in their honor. Outraged at the media coverage of this humanitarian crisis (these children are not “illegal,” as news...

It’s now the extreme dividing line among the GOP’s base: Do you want to impeach the president or not? Why Republicans with long memories are worried about where all this is headed. There was a time not long ago when leaders in the Republican Party favored a cap-and-trade system to deal with the threat of global warming. And there was a time when the party coalesced around the idea of immigration reform. There was a time when it seemed suicidal to much of the party to not raise the debt ceiling. But each of those issues shifted quickly at some...

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water, Sarah Barracuda comes back to bite. SNIP But now Palin has burst back onto the political stage with a call to impeach President Barack Obama over immigration — a double-whammy from a celebrity with a following that's ripe for mobilization... SNIP Palin goes on to charge that "because of Obama's purposeful dereliction of duty an untold number of illegal immigrants will kick off their shoes and come on in," summoning the image of strangers streaming into your living room and plopping their bare or stockinged feet on the...