Free Republic

What happens when someone challenges the largest coffee corporation in the world and the capitalist ideals it represents? I recently learned the answer to that question when I walked into a Starbucks and started loudly screaming the word “capitalism” right into the barista’s face over and over again until she was forced to call the police. The experience opened my eyes to some shocking realities about our society. The truth was harsher and more unpleasant than I ever could have expected. “Please stop, sir,” the barista said after I had been yelling “capitalism” for more than eight minutes straight. “You’re...

President Obama urged the US government to adopt tighter regulations on broadband service in an effort to preserve "a free and open Internet." In a statement released Monday, Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to enforce the principle of treating all Internet traffic the same way, known in shorthand as Net neutrality. That means treating broadband services like utilities, the president said, so that Internet service providers would be unable "to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas." Obama wades into a contentious debate that has raged over...

Lopez, openly bisexual but married, works as an English professor at California State University-Northridge. He incurred HRC’s wrath because of his outspoken view that children do better when raised by a mother and father than they do when raised by parents of the same sex. Lopez, 43, was raised in a household by two mothers. He drew public attention in 2012 after penning an account of that experience in an article for Public Discourse titled “Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View.” ...Ever since Lopez went public with his story, left-leaning gay rights groups such as HRC and...

Previously unpublished data from the last big election in Burlington, Vt., reveals a significant number of votes were cast by individuals whose names were not on the statewide checklist. In the 2012 presidential election, 17,383 votes were cast in Burlington, according to city-published data. According to data not published by the city, but made available to a reporter, 639 of those votes, or 3.7 percent, came from election day walk-in voters whose names were not on the voter rolls and whose registration status was unknown. As previously reported, votes by individuals whose names don’t appear on the checklist count whether...

A federal judge has ruled against the House's bid to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for failing to turn over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. But the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson may also pave the way for the release of those crucial documents... ... Judge Andrew Napolitano analyzed the key ruling on "Fox and Friends" this morning, saying usually the Justice Department would prosecute a case like this. But since the department is run by Eric Holder, the subject of the prosecution, the House had to hire a private attorney. Napolitano...

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters today that, after the Ebola case in Dallas, the Obama administration reminded border law enforcment agencies of "protocol" to deal with people that appear to have symptoms of Ebola. Earnest also said that there "are screening procedures in place at our border." ebola "[I]n light of this incident," Earnest said at his daily briefing, "the administration has taken the step of recirculating our guidance to law enforcement agencies that are responsible for securing the border, to those agencies that represent individuals who staff the airline industry, and to medical professionals all across...

WASHINGTON — Under pressure to do more to confront the Ebola outbreak sweeping across West Africa, President Obama on Tuesday is to announce an expansion of military and medical resources to combat the spread of the deadly virus, administration officials said. The president will go beyond the 25-bed portable hospital that Pentagon officials said they would establish in Liberia, one of the three West African countries ravaged by the disease, officials said. Mr. Obama will offer help to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia in the construction of as many as 17 Ebola treatment centers in the region, with about...

When conservatives criticize the Obama administration over the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks, much of the attention is trained on the security failures preceding the raid, the dishonest public spin campaign after the fact, the lack of accountability nearly two years later, and the still-unanswered questions on a host of fronts. But that lethal event was merely a symptom of the White House's broader, unraveling foreign policy. The president intervened in Libya in 2011, deploying US military resources to help a rebel fighting force depose and dispatch murderous dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The Libya conflict was paradigmatic of Obama's approach to war:...

WASHINGTON – A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to provide Congress with a list of documents that are at the center of a long-running battle over a failed law enforcement program called Operation Fast and Furious. In a court proceeding Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson set an Oct. 1 deadline for producing the list to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The Justice Department says the documents should remain confidential and President Barack Obama has invoked executive privilege in an effort to protect them from public disclosure. The House panel says the Justice Department documents...

During Sunday's pre-recorded edition of "Connected to Chicago," Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said law-abiding gun owners who lobby elected officials through organizations like the NRA and the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) are corrupt and endanger public safety. "If there was special interests affecting police work, I believe that would be called corruption. So, if it has do with donating money versus a popular vote, I think we have a bigger problem in this country and somebody's gotta wake up to that," he said. "Well, how is it that they're controlling politicians. How are they controlling elected officials? It's not...

On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Michael Donio declined to dismiss a case for unlawful possession of a firearm against Philadelphia resident Shaneen Allen. Allen was arrested during a traffic stop last October after she volunteered to the officer that she had a firearm in her car. She mistakenly believed her Pennsylvania license to carry firearms was valid in New Jersey. This was hardly an unreasonable assumption, considering that Pennsylvania concealed carry licensees can lawfully carry in over 30 other states. Nevertheless, Judge Donio sided with prosecutors in deciding that Allen was not covered by a 180-day gun amnesty period for...

Tuesday on MSNBC's "NewsNation with Tamron Hall," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) said President Barack Obama should go ahead with his reported plans to give amnesty to 5 to 6 million illegal immigrants because the House Republicans won't pass the Senate's version of comprehensive immigration reform. The Texas Democrat said, "I would applaud the president because all we're doing is taking a sore, bleeding sore and watching it bleed, continue to be infected, and sprinkling water on top of it. That's what the Republicans are doing."

Decked out in keffiyahs and stocked with vulgar posters, anti-Israel demonstrators have been descending upon cities across the United States rallying for what they call peace. One such group gathered on Sunday, July 20, 2014, just blocks from the Israeli consulate in Miami. The flier for this protest declares, “Stop the bombing – Stop the Killing – Free Palestine” and includes logos from: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Florida, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Students for Justice in Palestine, the American Muslim Association of North America, American Muslims for Emergency & Relief, Syrian American Council of South...

Calls for slavery reparations have returned with the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlantic magazine. In making his argument, Coates goes through the horrors of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. First off, let me say that I agree with reparations advocates that slavery was a horrible, despicable violation of basic human rights. The gross discrimination that followed emancipation made a mockery of the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. I also agree that slave owners and slave traders should make reparations to those whom they enslaved. The problem, of course, is that slaves,...

From hundreds of people in every part of the country, I heard complaints about how the ever-expanding federal government was encroaching on liberties we’d always taken for granted. I heard it so often that after a while I became convinced that some of our fundamental freedoms were in jeopardy because of the emergence of a permanent government never envisioned by the framers of the Constitution: a federal bureaucracy that was becoming so powerful it was able to set policy and thwart the desires not only of ordinary citizens, but their elected representatives in Congress. So wrote Ronald Reagan of the...

Using his pen again in “this year of action,” President Obama today signed an executive order to ease the burden of student debt at the expense of “millionaires.” The program, “Pay as You Earn,” expands an existing federal loan option available to undergrad and graduate students. It issues caps on monthly loan payments at 10 percent of the borrower’s discretionary income and forgives their remaining balance after 20 years. For those working in public service or the government, any remaining debt is forgiven after 10 years. An estimated 5 million more borrowers will become eligible under the new plan. Before...

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday said the Obama administration told congressional leaders about a possible prisoner exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl more than two years ago, but then never followed up. In a statement, Boehner said lawmakers had thought they would be consulted again, and blasted the White House for trading five Taliban leaders for Bergdahl without notifying Congress. He also said lawmakers were opposed to the exchange when it was first raised, and accused the White House of keeping Congress in the dark because of that opposition. "More than two years ago, Members of Congress were briefed on...

At the end of his first year in office, President Obama flew to Copenhagen and made a big promise: that the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2020 — a bold and risky pledge that hinged on a balky Congress to make it possible. His efforts became bogged down within months, and Mr. Obama’s pledge to the rest of the world soon looked like a pipe dream. On Monday, Mr. Obama is planning to bypass Congress and take one of the biggest steps any American president has ever taken on climate change, proposing new rules to...

ATLANTA (Reuters) - While a Bush and a Clinton consider whether to run for the White House in 2016, in Georgia another U.S. presidential surname from decades past is already on a ballot. Blessed with his forebear's famous smile and mellow manner, state Senator Jason Carter is trying to emulate grandfather Jimmy in November by winning election as governor. Unlike the former president, who has moved further to the left with age, Jason, 38, is carving out room on the right as he campaigns as a Democrat against an incumbent in a conservative state. Polls show a tight race. In...

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in an interview that Washington’s cost-cutting culture helped spark the growing Veterans Administration hospital controversy by encouraging VA officials to understate their financial needs both internally and to Congress. Murray, a top appropriator and former chairwoman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, had strong words for a department that she said not only faces chronic management issues but also consistently underestimates its funding needs and how many veterans will seek care each year. Though many Republicans have called for current VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to step down from his post in light of reports of...