Free Republic

The federal Bureau of Prisons, a subdivision of President Barack Obama's Justice Department, has banished all pork products from the menus in all federal prisons ... The government says it made the decision to do this because a survey showed that inmates do not like eating pork products. The Council on American-Islamic relations said “we welcome” the move by the government to deny pork to prisoners, but warned that it might spark “Islamophobia.” ... They just don’t like the taste of pork…. “The National Pork Producers Council isn’t buying it. 'I find it hard to believe that a survey would...

The Obama administration has announced the United States will join the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, another openly anti-Israel organization. The group was created in 2006 to find ways to bridge the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies – a goal wholeheartedly embraced by President Barack Obama, who has redirected American foreign policy in pursuit of the same goal. The White House announcement stated that the move is intended to realize Obama's “vision of active U.S. engagement with other nations and international organizations,” a goal sometimes pursued, noted National Review Online columnist Brett D. Schaefer last Thursday, “even when...

As we predicted. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won the presidential election with 52 percent of the vote, according to early results. Thus, Erdogan has become the country’s first popularly-elected head of state. He appears triumphant with the crowds of millions carrying fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow flags. (Revelation 19:17)  With 98.75 percent of the ballots counted, Erdogan leads with 52 percent, the Hurriyet Daily reports. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, former Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, has received 38 percent of the votes. Selahattin Demirtas, head of the leftist pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, is in third place with just...

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won the country’s first direct presidential election on Sunday, and issued a message of unity, saying he would be a president for everyone. “I will not be the president of only those who voted for me, I will be the president of 77 million,” Erdogan said in a victory speech delivered from the balcony of his Justice and Development Party headquarters in Ankara. “Today the national will won once again, today democracy won once again,” he told thousands of flag-waving, cheering supporters. “Those who didn’t vote for me won as much as those who...

MOSCOW, ID SNIPPET: "The Moscow Police initially offered a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to the arrest of the person who’s responsible, but the Idaho State Fire Marshall’s office is now offering an additional $5,000 reward to apprehend those responsible. The anonymous tip line for the Idaho State Fire Marshall’s office is 877.752.7766 or call Moscow Police at 208.882.2677."

The Islamist government of Turkey is building a 15-acre, $100 million mega-mosque in Lanham, Maryland. Prime Minister Erdogan visited the site on May 15 in a ceremony that was attended by the leaders of two groups linked to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Also present was the Maryland Secretary of State, representing Maryland Governor and likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, Martin O’Malley. The mega-mosque is called the Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center and, according to the Muslim Link, it “will likely become the largest and most striking examples of Islamic architecture in the western hemisphere” when it is finished...

With President Barack Obama sitting just feet away, Dr. Benjamin Carson stood up for conservative principles in his speech at Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, discussing the national debt, political correctness and even healthcare. Readers loved his speech so much that TheBlaze’s story on it went viral. On Friday, Carson appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” to explain why he felt compelled to speak out against the big government policies endorsed by Obama, in front of Obama. Carson, a renown neurosurgeon, said the response to his speech has been “overwhelmingly” positive. However, he argued he didn’t make a conservative argument, but rather...

Washington -- Unless Congress acts soon, the New Year will bring plenty of misery for Connecticut's doctors. On Dec. 31, a temporary measure known as the "doc fix" will expire, resulting in a 30 percent decrease in fees to all doctors who treat patients through Medicare, the government-run health program for the elderly, and active and retired members of the military who are covered under the government's TRICARE program. "This would basically result in a collapse of our ability to provide care," said John Foley, a cardiologist in Norwich and president of the Connecticut State Medical Society. Foley said that...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Democrats left their gathering in Charlotte, North Carolina, not having paid "their fair share." According to Bloomberg News, the party of the "little guy" left Charlotte "with more than $5 million in immediate obligations and may require a direct cash infusion from the Obama campaign to pay vendors," said Bloomberg.These vendors were located inside the Charlotte Convention Center and the Time Warner Cable Arena. Vendors located outside were equally short changed.Legacy Village was the vendor's area situated under a tent outside the convention hall, where delegates voted to expel God and Jerusalem from the party's consciousness before its...

We all remember how the media attacked GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney's credibility for days due to what they described as a "misquote" in one of his campaign ads, but up until now, other than obligatory reporting, this same media has refused to call any serious scrutiny or attention to the growing pile of falsehoods discovered in Obama's reelection documentary, "The Road We've Traveled." Something else the media is all but ignoring is that the documentary is narrated by Hollywood A-lister Tom Hanks, who is now embroiled in a racial scandal surroundinga "blackface" incident caught on video tape in 2004. An...

September 21 at 6:30 PM, the Ground Zero Mosque will open its doors to show a photo exhibit in its community space. Park51 is hoping to discourage its opponents by declaring an early victory in spite of its recent embarrassments and setbacks. This grand opening does not mean that the fight is over. The project still has a long way to go until completion.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The developer of an Islamic cultural center that opened Wednesday evening near the site of the terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center says the biggest error on the project was not involving the families of 9/11 victims from the start. People crowded into the center, where a small orchestra played traditional Middle Eastern instruments and a photo exhibit of New York children of different ethnicities lined the walls. The enthusiasm at the opening belied its troubled beginnings. snip He called opposition to the center - which prompted one of the most virulent national discussions...

The organization planning to build an Islamic community center near the World Trade Center said the imam who has been the public face of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, will be playing a reduced role in the facility. The nonprofit group Park51 announced Friday that it had named a new imam to help lead religious programing so that Rauf could focus on other initiatives. Rauf announced late this fall that he would be starting a global movement that would fight extremism and promote better relations between people of different faiths and cultures. He is set to start a national...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has advertised the controversial Ground Zero mosque as an Islamic outreach to the community, a cultural center open and intended to unify all religions. Today, he still stands by that assertion, even as his proposed mosque continues to exact the opposite effect before it’s even built. Now, harsh critics, such as Chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition, William Murray, are presented with even more perplexing information in the form of Sharif El-Gamal (pictured), the mysterious developer behind the mosque. Reportedly a waiter by profession who suddenly “came into” the kind of money to spearhead a $100...

So far, the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero has unfolded along predictable lines, with the man at the center of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, drawing attacks from the right painting him as a terrorist sympathizer with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. But meanwhile, links between the group behind the controversial mosque, the CIA and U.S. military establishment have gone unacknowledged.

The imam behind the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero surfaced yesterday far from the controversy -- in Bahrain, where he's on a taxpayer-funded trip to the Middle East to spread good will. Appearing in public for the first time in weeks, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, speaking at a mosque near Bahrain's capital of Manama, said he wants to "Americanize" Islam -- but dodged questions about the uproar over his planned mosque and community center. This is Rauf's fourth US-sponsored trip to the region

Oct 13,2008 The Nation -- The elections in Iran are nearly a year away, but it's encouraging to see the emerging possibility of a new bid for the presidency by former President Mohammad Khatami. Last week, he hinted that he's considering running against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nutball whose support lies mainly in the paramilitary Basij force and elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Can Khatami ju-jitsu the all-powerful Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei and his election-rigging Guardian Council? Can Khatami loom so large that even Khamenei might choose to support him over Ahmadinejad? Might Khamenei decide to back Khatami as...

A Muslim chaplain for the city’s Department of Correction showed up for work on Wednesday as he routinely does — entering the city jail in Lower Manhattan to minister to some of the roughly 900 male inmates there. But when the chaplain, Imam Zulqarnain Abu-Shahid, flung his shoulder bag onto an X-ray machine at the entrance of the Manhattan Detention Complex, at 125 White Street, officers were alerted to the presence of metal. They found a pair of scissors and three metal blades, the kind used in box cutters, in the bag’s outer flap, the authorities said. Imam Abu-Shahid was...

POLITICAL power is rarely ceded without good reason. So eyebrows were raised last week when the US Department of Commerce decided to relax its grip on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body responsible for the naming system that ensures that when you type a web address, your browser knows where to go. In future, governments and other international organisations will be able to nominate staff to sit on one of ICANN's three newly created steering committees, something the DoC had resisted for years. "What it really means," says ICANN's chief executive Rod Beckstrom, "is that...

As the state’s shortage of primary care doctors grows, people are waiting longer for medical care, according to a new survey by the Massachusetts Medical Society. “The shortage is getting more severe,” said Dr. Mario Motta, the medical society’s president. The state’s health care dilemma can serve as a valuable lesson for a nation whose residents are locked in a frenzied debate about health care reform, he added.