Free Republic

An assistant principal was removed from his position at the Rodriguez Middle School in Denton, Texas after it was discovered he wrote a children’s book starring the controversial internet meme character Pepe the Frog. In Eric Hauser’s 54-page illustrated story, titled The Adventures of Pepe and Pede, the anthropomorphic frog protagonist Pepe and his centipede friend Pede work together to rid their local swamp of the antagonist Alkah, a bearded alligator who has brought chaos to the entire Wishington Farm. To vanquish their deceitful foe, Pepe and Pede throw magical buds from their farm’s Honesty Tree, apparently red-pilling the alligator...

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday insisted that she would "never" allow Gibraltar to slip from British control against the wishes of Gibraltarians as the issue took centre-stage in early Brexit wranglings. May told Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo that "we will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their freely and democratically expressed wishes." Her comments came as Spain pledged it would not close its border post-Brexit with the 6.7-square-kilometre (2.6-square-mile) British overseas territory on the southern tip of Spain.

A major step was taken Thursday in the U.S. government's plan to hand off oversight of the Internet domain name system. A nonprofit international group approved a plan and forwarded it to the Obama administration Thursday for review and approval. The group, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has historically been contracted out to manage the behind-the-scenes workings of the Internet that pair up numerical IP addresses with their familiar Web addresses. A few years ago, the group was tasked with transitioning fully from U.S. government oversight to an international multistakeholder model. The Commerce Department will have...

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN in which he issued a dire warning regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. .. Video 4:11 min

JERUSALEM - Israel has told Syrian leaders it is willing to give up the captured Golan Heights as part of a peace deal that would require Syria to distance itself from Iran's virulently anti-Israel regime, a newspaper reported Friday. Yediot Ahronot said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently sent messages to Syrian President Bashar Assad through German and Turkish diplomats saying Israel was open to direct peace negotiations and to give up the strategic plateau it seized in the 1967 Mideast war. The paper said Syria had not responded to the overture, quoting unidentified officials close to Olmert. Olmert's office would...

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has signaled that Israel might cede the disputed Chebaa Farms area to Lebanon if the Lebanese carry out all provisions of their cease-fire with Israel, including the disarming of Hezbollah guerrillas, Israeli media reported on Friday. In a meeting with Russian Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday, Olmert said if the U.N. decides the area is Lebanese, and if Lebanon implements U.N. resolutions ending the war, "we'll agree to discuss it," the Haaretz newspaper said. When Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation, the U.N.-drawn international line did not...

WASHINGTON - Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), an Ohio Republican implicated in a lobbying corruption investigation, said Sunday he will step aside temporarily as chairman of the House Administration Committee. "Unfortunately it has become clear to me in recent days that the false allegations made against me have become a distraction to the important work of the House Republican Conference and the important work that remains ahead for the House Administration Committee," Ney said in a written statement. That was a reference to a scramble by Republicans in the House and Senate to come up with a new...