Free Republic

WHAT IS San Francisco State University teaching that makes student leaders think that if they don't like what other students say, they can use student organizations to stifle those with dissenting views? Do they even know about the First Amendment? This story starts with an "anti-terrorism rally" held last October on campus by the College Republicans. To emphasize their point, students stomped on Hezbollah and Hamas flags. According to the college paper, the Golden Gate (X)Press, members of Students Against War and the International Socialist Organization showed up to call the Republicans "racists," while the president of the General Union...

Hamdi El-Hilu from Ramallah is expelled in police raid. One way or another I will come home, he says Roi Mandel Published: 02.08.07, 14:35 / Israel News "I cannot live without my wife and daughter. I will do anything to return to my family," said Hamdi El-Hilu after he was deported to the West Bank by Israeli police. El-Hilu, who lives in southern Israel, is married to an Israeli and has a three-year-old daughter. He was expelled after being arrested on Wednesday following a raid on the quarry at which he works. El-Hilu had previously requested Israeli citizenship on account...

Muslims Complain of Hollywood 'Bad Guy' Image Western movies from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "Aladdin" promote negative stereotypes of Muslims by casting them all too often as villains, a British Muslim pressure group said on Thursday. "There is no such thing as a Muslim good guy," said Arzu Merali, co-author of a report by the Islamic Human Rights Commission that argued that movies played a crucial role in fostering a crude and exaggerated image. The commission's study, based on soundings taken from almost 1,250 British Muslims, also found that 62 percent felt the media was "Islamophobic" and 14...

Two years ago, Muslim groups protested when the plot of the hit Fox drama '24' cast Islamic terrorists as the villains who launched a stolen nuclear missile in an attack on America. Now, after a one-year respite during which Russian separatists played the bad guys on the critically acclaimed series, Muslims are back in the evil spotlight. Unlike last time, when agent Jack Bauer saved the day, the terrorists this time have already succeeded in detonating a nuclear bomb in a Los Angeles suburb. Being portrayed again as the heartless wrongdoers has drawn renewed protests from Muslim groups, including one...

"The overwhelming impression you get is fear and hatred for Muslims," said Rabiah Ahmed, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. She said Thursday she was distressed by this season's premiere. "After watching that show, I was afraid to go to the grocery store because I wasn't sure the person next to me would be able to differentiate between fiction and reality."

Forum: How is the immigration issue impacting your community?(please enable pop-ups to see the gallery)When he came to the United States from Brazil on a tourist visa four years ago, the carpenter decided he would stay, even if it meant living here illegally. And when he thought about where he would live, Riverside, in Burlington County, seemed the natural choice.  The old industrial town's quaint feel and modest homes were reminiscent of his native village in Brazil. And many residents and merchants spoke Portuguese because there was an established community of immigrants from Portugal.  Now, he is planning to...

I’m greatly encouraged by the lengthy, indignant responses by prominent scare-mongers Joe Farah and Jerome Corsi to my on-air and on-blog denunciation (“Shame on Demagogues for Exploiting ‘North American Union’!”, 12/28) of their self-promoting paranoia regarding an alleged conspiracy to merge the US, Canada and Mexico. The defensive tone of their commentary suggests that these two have been appropriately embarrassed: Farah, in particular, dramatically deescalated his rhetoric. While previous commentary on WorldNetDaily prominently and regularly featured the noun “plot” in defining this non-issue, his answer to my purposefully harsh attack omits that key word entirely and uses language in a...

Prime Minister Tony Blair believes the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution was "completely wrong". Blair has been under fire for refusing to speak on the subject, and criticism of his silence mounted after both his deputy and his finance minister condemned the hanging of the deposed Iraqi dictator as "deplorable" and "completely unacceptable". In his first engagement since returning from a New Year holiday in Miami, Blair said he would speak about the execution next week. Downing Street declined to say when and how Blair would make his comments on Saddam's hanging. "In terms of what he will say next...

Bisher al-Rawi, a British resident held in Guantanamo Bay for four years, is rapidly losing his sanity, according to three lawyers who have visited him during the past month. Al-Rawi, 35, who was arrested by the CIA and local security forces during a business trip to Gambia in 2002, is showing clear signs of secure housing unit psychosis, a clinical condition that afflicts high-security prisoners, said Clive Stafford Smith, one of the lawyers. "I have had several clients on American death rows who have developed it and it's clear to me that he is sliding down that path," Smith said....

A dangerous divide is forcing Australian Muslims to abandon their homes, says Sydney cleric Feiz Mohamed in Lebanon reports Middle East correspondent Martin Chulov ---------- AUSTRALIA'S most influential firebrand cleric feels like an alien in his own country. And Sheik Feiz Mohamed is not alone. He believes a rising anti-Islamic tide has made Muslims wary of their countrymen, forcing at least eight families to abandon their homeland for the Middle East. From the foothills of his ancestral village in north Lebanon, the man with the most sway over the nation's Islamic youth says five years into the war on terror...

Theresa Marie Schindler was born to Robert and Mary Schindler on December 3, 1963. She was the first of three children the Schindlers would have. Terri was a shy, but comical, child who had an affinity for music, animals and the arts. She kept a small circle of friends and was dear to schoolmates, neighboring families and her own extended family. Following high school, Terri came into her own. She developed a knack for sketching and doodling. She enjoyed outings with her friends. She was an adoptive mother to the family’s dog, Bucky. Terri attended Catholic School while growing up...

A KORAN has been torn up and smeared with faeces and the floors of a Melbourne prayer hall urinated on, in an apparent retaliation to Muslim schoolboys desecrating the Bible. The Islamic community was last night furious as the police continued their investigation into the "criminal damage" done to the Melbourne airport facility on Wednesday morning. Muslim spiritual leader Fehmi Naji El-Imam condemned the desecration as "ignorant and immature", fearing that it was in retaliation to an incident earlier this month where young boys at a Melbourne Islamic school burned and urinated on the Bible. "This kind of behaviour just...

First it was the chaos. Then it was the confusion as to who was arrested and where they would be taken. Now, the Spanish-speaking residents of Cactus, Dumas and other neighboring communities who escaped Tuesday's raid because they either are here legally or do not work at the Swift meat plant, face an even bigger problem: what is going to happen to the more than 100 children whose parents were rounded up and arrested? "Right now the children are being taken care of by relatives or friends of those who were deported," said Orlando Gajardo, spokesman for the St. Peter...

Some Members Say They're Tired, Though They've Only Been on Capitol Hill Two Months of This Year Dec. 5, 2006 — - It was surprising when a member of Congress said he and his colleagues were "tired," considering the fact that this Congress has held fewer workdays than any since the "do-nothing" Congress of 1948. Still, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana told The Washington Post that he and his colleagues were worn out. "Contrary to popular belief, members of Congress are human beings," he said. Pence added that Congress members had "a certain amount of energy to be drawn on....

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- One of the teenagers responsible for beating a Holly Hill homeless man to death asked a judge to reduce his 22-year prison sentence Monday. Warren Messner and three other teens pled guilty to killing the man because they were bored, but Messner said prison is too hard. Messner is a big boy. He was 15 at the time he was brought into the woods to see the homeless man his friends had been beating. Even at that young age, he outweighed the victim, Michael Roberts, by 200 pounds when he jumped on his chest, crushing his...

CUAUHTEMOC, Mexico -- Humberto Fernandez keeps his clothes in plastic bags and boxes, trying to convince himself that his two-year stay in this town of cattle ranchers and apple farmers is temporary. Deported from the United States 39 years after he entered it illegally, Fernandez's hopes of a quick return to his wife and son in Utah were crushed when the U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld his deportation and barred him from seeking legal U.S. residence. He is now clinging to the chance of a consular waiver, which would allow him back in as a special case because of...

The UCLA student stunned with a Taser by a campus police officer has hired a high-profile civil rights lawyer who plans to file a brutality lawsuit. The videotaped incident, which occurred after the student refused requests to show his ID card to campus officers, triggered widespread debate on and off campus Thursday about whether use of the Taser was warranted. It was the third in a recent series of local incidents captured on video that raise questions about arrest tactics. Attorney Stephen Yagman said he plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing the UCLA police of "brutal excessive...

A Muslim cleric has claimed to have been tortured with electric shocks, left in a cell where rats crawled on him and threatened with rape after he was allegedly kidnapped from a Milan street by CIA agents three years ago.The claims of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, appeared in an affidavit provided to Milan prosecutors investigating his alleged abduction in February 2003, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported yesterday. Prosecutors say that the cleric, who was formerly suspected of links to terrorism, was driven to the Aviano military air base and flown via Germany to...

Gaza hospital: We're on verge of collapsing Shifa hospital struggles to treat dozens of patients injured in Beit Hanoun Wednesday morning. Deputy Director: There were people we could barely help. Physicians for Human Rights report says a third of fatalities in Gaza are children Miri Chason Published: 11.08.06, 15:42 The events in Beit Hanoun on Wednesday and numerous Palestinian casualties this past month have only highlighted the unbearable situation of the Shifa hospital in Gaza. Scores of wounded people arrived at the hospital this morning, including the 18 who were killed , after an errant IDF shell apparently stuck a...

A Muslim policeman is taking the Metropolitan Police to an employment tribunal over claims of racial and religious discrimination. It is claimed firearms officer Amjad Farooq was removed from a unit that protected senior figures, including Tony Blair, because he was seen as a security threat. A security check found his children attended a mosque associated with a Muslim cleric who has suspected links to a terrorist group, The Independent said. The 39-year-old was also allegedly told his presence might upset the American secret service, which worked closely with the Met's close-protection group. PC Farooq's solicitor, Lawrence Davies, said: "Muslims...