Free Republic

Astrophysicist and cosmologist Neil DeGrasse Tyson is defending Scientology in light of HBO's highly critical documentary on the church. HBO's documentary "Going Clear" did not show the church in an entirely positive light — Scientology has a built a reputation for tormenting members who leave it either by surveillance or harassment. The film highlights the celebrities who made the religion intriguing to the world as well as the horrific stories of abuse from former members. But Tyson, in an interview with The Daily Beast, declined to bash the controversial church, saying people are free to believe whatever they want. "So,...

Scott Walker and Jeb Bush were bound to collide sooner or later. It turned out to be sooner. As the son of a Baptist minister, and the son of the 41st president of the United States, these two were destined to be the odd couple of the 2016 election. Walker is running against the establishment and the Washington elites. Bush embodies both. Walker will need at least $100 million to compete in the GOP primary, and more if he makes it to the general. Most of the Republican donors who write those kinds of checks are on Bush’s speed dial....

GenCon, the world’s biggest convention for tabletop gaming and a massive moneymaking machine for the State of Indiana, has responded to a bill that legalizes discrimination against LGBT customers by threatening to leave the state—and take their $50 million-a-year convention elsewhere. This isn’t because GenCon is run by political progressives or “social justice warriors” trying to make a difference. It really, really isn’t. If GenCon leaves Indianapolis it’ll be for the same reason it came to Indianapolis and abandoned its original home of Wisconsin, the home state of founder of D&D Gary Gygax (peace be upon him). Because it makes...

...The Doggfather’s latest venture, it was announced for the first time, will be an HBO show he is developing with Menace II Society director Allen Hughes and Boondocks writer Rodney Barnes about life on the West Coast during the ‘80s, when gang violence first began to dominate the region’s inner cities, particularly in Snoop’s home of East L.A. “Early in the ‘70s and toward the latter part of the ‘70s everything was beautiful because we had ways to have fun and communicate, and those who were underprivileged, the low economic side of life, the government would provide for us, which...

It’s estimated that at least 400 U.S. doctors kill themselves every year. Many are struggling with depression, anxiety, or addiction. Greg Miday was a promising young doctor with a prestigious oncology fellowship in St. Louis. He spoke conversational Spanish, volunteered with the homeless, and played the piano as if he’d been born to it. He had rugged good looks, with dark wavy hair and a tall, athletic build. Everybody—siblings, patients, friends, nurses, professors, fellow doctors, and above all, his physician-parents—adored him. On the evening of June 21, 2012, Greg drew a bath, lit candles, and put his iPod on speaker....

The Daily Beast has retracted an article claiming that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cut all provisions requiring the state’s universities to report sexual assaults. Before finally admitting she “screwed up,” the source of the post tried to defend herself on Twitter. As reported by Politico: The post, published Friday, cited a report from Jezebel that wrongly interpreted a section of the state budget to mean that all assault reporting requirements were to get cut altogether. In fact, the University of Wisconsin system requested the deletion of the requirements to get rid of redundancy, as it already provides similar information to...

How desperate is the media for Scott Walker attack pieces? So desperate it’ll pick up material from a third-rate Gawker blog that even most of the left thinks is a joke and run with it. The Daily Beast has retracted an article from one of its college columnists that claimed that the Wisconsin governor’s budget would cut sexual assault reporting from the state’s universities. The post, published Friday, cited a report from Jezebel that wrongly interpreted a section of the state budget to mean that all assault reporting requirements were to get cut altogether. In fact, the University of Wisconsin...

Who do I need to prove my faith to—and why should I try? ... I’m nervous to come out as a Christian because I worry I’m not good enough of one. I’m not scared that non-believers will make me feel an outcast. I’m scared that Christians will ... Here is why I believe I am a Christian: I believe I have a personal relationship with my Lord and Savior. I believe in the grace offered by the Resurrection. I believe that whatever spiritual rewards I may reap come directly from trying to live the example set by Christ. Whether or...

Adapting a worldwide phenomenon like Fifty Shades of Grey into a film can be a huge risk. There are millions of fans to appease, an author’s own vision to consider, and a taboo subject to navigate for the masses. But for director Sam Taylor-Johnson, all of those risks motivated her. “I knew it was going to be an enormous challenge,” Taylor-Johnson told The Daily Beast. It’s only her second feature film—her first being 2008’s Nowhere Boy, which chronicled the early life of John Lennon—and the subject was relatively unfamiliar territory for her. “But that’s partly why I did it.”

It’s time to admit that, whatever their motivation was at the time, the Alaska governor’s critics always had a point. Has conservative genuflection at the altar of Sarah Palin finally come to a halt? In case you missed it, her speech in Iowa this week was not well received on the right. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York called it a “long, rambling, and at times barely coherent speech” and National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke said she slipped into self-parody. And there’s more. The Examiner’s Eddie Scarry, for example, contacted several conservative bloggers who were once Palin fans, but have since...

The left-wing criticism of American Sniper was to be expected. Frankly, it’s not worth responding to the vast majority of these criticisms. Yet, if you have a piece from a left-leaning publication, like the New Republic, where the author admits to not even seeing the film, and then ends it with an analysis about the Iraq War; mockery is justified, albeit for a brief time. Recently, Dennis Jett wrote a piece about American Sniper for the Republic. There’s just one problem; He didn’t see the movie: I have not seen American Sniper. But if the trailer is any indication, Eastwood’s film,...

It's not enough to read the transcript. You really need to view the video to appreciate the depths of Christopher Dickey's world-weary, dismissive, preening political correctness. Asked on today's Morning Joe to comment on Muslim preachers inciting violence from their pulpits, Dickey of The Daily Beast sniffed that the problem is "exaggerated," claimed that the number of violent Muslims is "infinitesimally small" [down even from the "minuscule" number he cited last week], and engaged in the most fraudulent form of moral equivalency, saying that there are also crazy Christian, Jewish and Hindu preachers who incite their congregations. View the video...

If 16% of American conservatives supported suicide bombings and other violence against civilian targets, do you think the MSM would characterize that proportion as "minuscule" and fret that other conservatives were being "stained" as a result? Yet on today's Morning Joe, there was Christopher Dickey, the Daily Beast's foreign editor, describing as "minuscule" the proportion of Muslims in France who support yesterday's kind of violence. Dickey worried that other Muslims in France will suffer a "stain" as a result. But is the proportion truly "minuscule?" A Pew poll from 2007 found that 16% of Muslims in France support suicide attacks...

Too many missions and too few pilots are threatening the ‘readiness and combat capability’ of America’s unmanned Air Force, according to an internal memo. The U.S. Air Force’s fleet of drones is being strained to the “breaking point,” according to senior military officials and an internal service memo acquired by The Daily Beast. And it’s happening right when the unmanned aircraft are most needed to fight ISIS. The Air Force has enough MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones. It just doesn’t have the manpower to operate those machines. The Air Force’s situation is so dire that Air Combat Command (ACC),...

BuzzFeed News spoke to a protester who chanted for “dead cops” on Dec. 13, which was captured on video and has become a nationwide flashpoint. “We wanted to separate ourselves from people who just want to get a guy fired.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK) NEW YORK CITY — On Dec. 13, about 100 protesters splintered off from the #MillionsMarch in lower Manhattan — a huge, peaceful demonstration against police brutality — and headed up Sixth Avenue. They turned east on 32nd Street, and passed right under the window of Tom Dilello, a computer programer who works for a large bank. At about 4:41 p.m.,...

A funny thing happened in New York City last week: Cops stopped arresting people. Not altogether, of course—that would be anarchy. But since last Monday, the number of arrests in America's largest city plummeted by two-thirds compared to the previous year. The decline is a conscious slowdown by New York's police force to protest City Hall's perceived lack of support for law enforcement. NYPD officers and union leaders have been at odds with Mayor Bill de Blasio in the wake of the Eric Garner case and the killings of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos this month. In their latest...

De Blasio? Sharpton? Nope. The biggest blowback will be against the “reforming” Kentucky senator, because Republicans back cops, period.After New York City Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were gunned down in a retaliatory ambush on Saturday afternoon, the collateral damage was immediate. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio relationship with the police went from horrible to horrendous. Rev. Al Sharpton’s campaign to cleanse his race-baiting past grew more difficult, and Sen. Rand Paul—who had gone out of his way to break bread with Sharpton and to criticize police militarization—may now be facing an even more difficult task...

America’s $400 billion, top-of-the-line aircraft can’t see the battlefield all that well. Which means it’s actually worse than its predecessors at fighting today’s wars. When the Pentagon’s nearly $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter finally enters service next year after nearly two decades in development, it won’t be able to support troops on the ground the way older planes can today. Its sensors won’t be able to see the battlefield as well; and what video the F-35 does capture, it won’t be able to transmit to infantrymen in real time. Versions of the new single-engine stealth fighter are set to...

One of the most prominent A-list presences in the emails ripped from Sony’s servers by the hacking collective Guardians of Peace is none other than Jennifer Lawrence (who is, sadly, no stranger to hacking herself). Lawrence and her fabulous email handle (peanutbutt) make several cameos in the leak, including numerous pleasant exchanges with Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, over her dazzling turn in American Hustle, which was co-financed by Sony arm Columbia Pictures. There’s also an interesting email exchange between Pascal and Brian Helgeland, screenwriter of the planned Cleopatra biopic, with Pascal suggesting that Helgeland dump Angelina Jolie...

And the bells chimed for victory at 1211 Avenue of the Americas. The so-called War on Christmas, says overpaid bloviator Bill O’Reilly, has been won by his god-fearing, flag-flourishing side. “We won the war,” the Fox News personality proclaimed last week. “I have to confess, you know, I’m like a guerrilla fighter in the War on Christmas…We did this War on Christmas thing for about 10 years. This is the first year I didn’t get one call or letter saying, ‘This store has said it won’t say [“Merry Christmas”].’” Hallelujah.