Free Republic

Senator John McCain appeared on This Week today from Afghanistan, but before getting onto matters of foreign policy, he weighed in on the Republican contest going on in the United States and continued to speak out forcefully on an issue that has been part of his political identity for over a decade: campaign finance reform. McCain has not been the biggest fan of Super PACs, and McCain today blasted the Supreme Court for its decision in the Citizens United case two years ago. When Jake Tapper asked McCain about how the GOP’s divisive contest may end up handing the election...

Give the Obama administration their due, they sure are great deceivers. In an effort to escape the firestorm engulfing them because of the ObamaCare mandate that forces churches to violate their theology, the president announced a “compromise” on February 10. The details of this compromise demonstrate that President Obama simply cannot be believed. Naturally, the Washington Post, either as compliant dupes or dishonest confederates, ran with the front page headline: “ Obama shifts course on birth control rule to calm Catholic leaders’ outrage .” The headline contained a falsehood, the “shift,” as well as the administration’s messaging to Catholics,...

Memo: From Leni Riefenstahl To: President Barack Obama Schatzi, it's been over a year since I last wrote you. Please forgive me. It's been so hot here I can barely stand to touch the keyboard. Not that I don't appreciate the green energy projects you funded to cool off this place, but dear, you know even with the trillions you spent, those projects just keep going under. Yes, I know it helped put billions in the pockets of your donors, but hell is not freezing over you know and we could use energy for the air conditioners. Anyway, I forced...

High Court Dilemma: Can Lie About Medal Be Crime? Xavier Alvarez was in good company when he stood up at a public meeting and called himself a wounded war veteran who had received the top military award, the Medal of Honor. Alvarez was lying about his medal, his wounds and his military service, but he wasn't the first man to invent war exploits. He was, however, one of the first people prosecuted under a 2006 federal law aimed at curbing false claims of military valor. Concerns that the law improperly limits speech and turns people into criminals for things they...

Rights: The House Minority Leader says self-insurance is no protection against the government's contraceptive mandate, while California's junior senator says people have a right to be insured but no right to practice their faith. Lost in the phony "compromise" on the Health and Human Services mandate on religious institutions being forced to pay for contraceptive services was the fact that many such institutions are self-insured. So making insurance companies pay instead is a distinction without a difference. Sometimes these religious institutions are their own insurance company. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once complained that her fellow Catholics had this...

A court ruling last December would seem to indicate that no, bloggers are not privy to the same legal protections afforded so-called real journalists. Via the Washington Examiner: This past December, federal judge Marco Hernandez of Oregon issued a ruling in the libel trial of Obsidian Finance Group v. Cox that has dangerous First Amendment implications. Hernandez ruled that blogger Crystal Cox was not entitled to the same protection under media shield laws that other members of the press enjoy. This ruling made it easy for a jury to find her guilty of libel. That result threatens the First Amendment...

At ease, Christian soldiers. There is no "war on religion," no assault on the Catholic Church. A faith that has endured for thousands of years will survive even Nicki Minaj. It never occurred to me to evaluate the Grammy Awards show on theological rectitude, but apparently we're supposed to be outraged at the over-the-top "exorcism" Minaj performed Sunday night. The hip-hop diva, who writhed and cavorted amid a riot of religious iconography, is accused of anti-Catholic bigotry -- and seen as an enemy combatant in an escalating "war on religion" being waged by "secular elites," which seems to be used...

Urgent calls are needed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) and your two U.S. senators to urge them to support Amendment No. 1520 by Senator Roy Blunt (MO). This amendment would halt the Obama Administration’s new mandate requiring all employers—including religious employers—to violate their consciences and provide free birth control and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. Action Requested Please do three things: Call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) and urge him to allow the Senate to vote on Amendment No. 1520, the Blunt Amendment. You can reach Majority Leader Reid at 202-224-3542. Call your two U.S. senators and...

The American bishops have, with alacrity, rejected President Obama's proposed "accommodation" on the contraception mandate in no uncertain terms. Their response came before the sun had set on the very day of his announcement. Noting that the "proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions," the Catholic hierarchy virtually guaranteed more political hemorrhaging for the White House. The bishops indicated that they were not consulted in advance of the President's announcement and had just received information about...

Medical insurance premiums in the United States are on the rise, the chief architect of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul has told The Daily Caller.Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who also devised former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s statewide health care reforms, is backtracking on an analysis he provided the White House in support of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, informing officials in three states that the price of insurance premiums will dramatically increase under the reforms. In an email to The Daily Caller, Gruber framed this new reality in terms of the same human self-interest that some...

After a long day of supposed "accommodation" and discussion, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops took a close look at the supposed adjustment of the HHS mandate yesterday. Their conclusion? It represents no change at all, and the bishops will press for a “legislative solution� to Barack Obama’s mandate: These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and...

Take a look at the White House fact sheet just released on the president's "accommodation" on the Health and Human Services ruling on contraceptives and religious liberty: "Under the new policy to be announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she [sic] works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for a religious employer with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide, pay for or refer for contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to...

IRONDALE, Ala. (Legal Newsline) -- The Catholic television network EWTN is suing the federal government over the requirement by the Department of Health and Human Services for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. The act mandates that contraception, abortion and sterilization services have to be included in their health plans. "We had no other option but to take this to the courts," EWTN President and CEO Michael Warsaw said Feb. 9. "There is no question that this mandate ...

Constitution: The Air Force removes a reference to God from its logo as the Army forbids Catholic chaplains from reading an archbishop's letter to those in uniform. What's next, the crosses at Arlington National Cemetery? 'It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle," read the letter from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services to the Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military. The letter that the Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains kept from being read to...

Journalism: When the abortion giant's funding was in jeopardy, the media provided 24/7 coverage with a decidedly liberal slant. When the feds assaulted First Amendment religious freedom, you could hear the crickets chirp. Secular progressive bias in the media was never more evident than in the past few weeks with the difference in coverage of two major news stories — the temporary cutoff of funds from the Susan G. Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood and the ultimatum from the Obama administration that the Catholic Church and its institutions had a year to find a way to violate their consciences and...

1st Amendment: Catholic bishops on Sunday issued a response to ObamaCare's mandates on providing contraception in violation of conscience and religious freedom. The message was simple: We will not comply. It was hardly a profile in courage when the Obama administration, hoping to kick the issue down the road past the November election, announced last Friday that Catholic hospitals and other religious institutions will have an extra year to comply with a new requirement that most health plans provide contraceptive benefits at no cost to their members. On Sunday, America's Catholic bishops in an open letter to their parishioners and...

WASHINGTON — "We don't need you, so shut up!" That's the message the Obama administration has sent loud and clear to America's Roman Catholics. And it's a message now being sent to U.S. military chaplains — to the detriment of our armed forces. During World War II, the War Department and the Department of the Navy urged — the operative word is "urged," not "ordered," mind you — U.S. military chaplains to encourage soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines that God was on our side in the global battle against fascists, Nazis and the godless heathens running rampant across...

Military Chaplains are being forbidden from reading the letter from the bishops protesting the HHS mandate. If they do, they are considered seditious. ht Gateway. The emerging conflict between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration may have a new front: in the U.S. military itself. The Catholic Church is fighting mad about an HHS ruling that would have them buy insurance for things they consider sinful–contraception, sterilization and abortion. All the bishops in the country sent out a letter to be read in their parishes promising that the Church “cannot-and will not-comply with this unjust law.” Even Archbishop Timothy...

The stated rationale for the Fairness Doctrine was to encourage more information to be aired by radio and TV stations, on the theory that private broadcasters would tend to underprovide a public good-news about important social issues. Yet, the danger has been seen, at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Federal Communications Commission, and elsewhere, that there exists a potentially unconstitutional "chilling effect": the prospect of having to award equal (unpaid) time to dissenting points of view institutes a tax on controversial speech. In that the Doctrine was abolished in 1987, the radio market now allows us to observe licensees' unregulated...

blacklist (n.): a list of persons who are disapproved of or are to be punished or boycotted. The definition above, from an old Webster's dictionary, was common parlance in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee investigated subversive activity, Soviet espionage and pro-communist propaganda. The committee unearthed spies and traitors — Alger Hiss among them. But when the HUAC turned its attention to Hollywood writers, directors and actors, civil libertarians cried foul. The American Civil Liberties Union and others insist those on the "Hollywood blacklist" were unfairly persecuted for exercising their constitutionally protected...

Letter January 25, 2012 from Archbishop John G. Vlazny on the matter of freedom of conscience and decisions by HHSDear Brothers and Sisters in Christ: It is important for you to know that the federal government has just dealt a heavy blow to the Catholic population and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include...

Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again. I do not come at this issue as a Catholic special pleader, who wants only to protect my own, although it was a little bracing to realize that the president’s decision yesterday essentially told us, as Catholics, that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our...

Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again. I do not come at this issue as a Catholic special pleader, who wants only to protect my own, although it was a little bracing to realize that the president’s decision yesterday essentially told us, as Catholics, that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our...

For the better part of a decade, companies like Google and IAC/InterActiveCorp have been pushing for the federal government to regulate the Internet in the name of net neutrality, and I’ve been fighting them every step of the way. We beat them in Congress. We beat them in the courts. We beat them in public opinion. But we lost to them on a 3-2 party line vote at the Federal Communications Commission, led by long-time IAC/InterActiveCorp general counsel turned FCC chairman Julius Genachowski. The FCC’s unlawful order gives that commission the self-appointed power to regulate how the broadband networks that...

Free Speech: In the name of stopping online piracy of copyrighted material, some propose giving the federal government power to shut down websites without due process and control the greatest mode of free speech ever invented. Call them "sons of net neutrality," for while the Software Online Piracy Act (SOPA) working its way through the House of Representatives and its Senate companion, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), are shrouded in seemingly worthy goals, they would grant government power it should not have and arguably pose a threat to our First Amendment rights. Online piracy is a real problem, and the...

The New York City Housing Authority has extended the lease of a Bronx church that uses one of its facilities after the congregation accused authorities of trying to evict them in the context of an alleged clampdown on worship groups in government buildings. Infinity NY Church, a nondenominational ministry led by Pastor Dimas Salaberrios, has been fighting to keep its space at the Bronx River Community Center after it received a notification from NYCHA that its lease was going to expire, and that the church would need to move by February. A number of congregants staged a protest in front...

Petitioner Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School is a member congregation of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. The Synod classifies its school teachers into two categories: “called”and “lay.” “Called” teachers are regarded as having been called totheir vocation by God. To be eligible to be considered “called,” ateacher must complete certain academic requirements, including acourse of theological study. Once called, a teacher receives the formal title “Minister of Religion, Commissioned.” “Lay” teachers, by contrast, are not required to be trained by the Synod or even to be Lutheran. Although lay and called teachers at Hosanna-Tabor generally performed the same duties, lay...

Last week, I documented more than a dozen ways in which, in just the past six months, the Obama administration is trampling on the religious liberties of America's finest military service members. (If you haven't read Part 1, you can find it at creators.com.) I am very disappointed by the dissolution of religious liberties in the U.S. military. Times have sadly and radically changed since my father served in World War II, since I served four years in the Air Force and since my two brothers, Wieland and Aaron, served in the Army in Vietnam. (My brother Wieland paid the...

When someone complained about a student’s Ron Paul poster in his dorm room window this fall, Auburn University in Alabama had the opportunity to take a principled stand for free speech. Of course, since we’re dealing with a university, you can probably guess that it instead chose to double down on an unwise, needlessly restrictive, and unfairly enforced policy at odds with the spirit of the First Amendment. Auburn undergrad Eric Philips probably thought he wasn’t doing anything particularly noteworthy when he hung a banner supporting Representative Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy in his residence hall window. ’Tis the eve of...

Dear African American Center: Season’s greetings! I wanted to write to you today to share a heartwarming story that will help kick off your annual celebration of Kwanza. It involves a young woman of color who recently finished one of my classes in the Department of Sociology and Criminology. She told me that she thoroughly enjoyed the course and was glad she did not drop it as she was advised to do. Sadly, the people who advised her to drop the class were supporters of the campus African American Center. You are doing a fine job of instilling the values...

What began as an attempt to restrain foreign piracy on the Internet has morphed into a domestic “kill switch” on First Amendment freedom in the fastest-growing corner of the marketplace of ideas. Proposed federal legislation purporting to protect online intellectual property would also impose sweeping new government mandates on internet service providers – a positively Orwellian power grab that would permit the U.S. Justice Department to shut down any internet site it doesn’t like (and cut off its sources of income) on nothing more than a whim.

It is unfortunate that the placement of small crosses on a tower at the Texas A&M University-San Antonio was met with such a backlash from those offended by the religious symbolism. The small crosses on the Torre de Esperanza, or Tower of Hope, located on the boulevard leading to the public university were meant to represent the Spanish missions, those historic gems located on the city's South Side. An adjunct criminology professor initially raised questions about the crosses on the tower, which was built on private land with city money. Then last week a Washington-based organization that promotes the separation...

The Atlantic's socially liberal Andrew Sullivan asked in March 2008 two very interesting questions: "1. Why is it illegal for me to pay a prostitute for sex, but it’s NOT illegal for a film director to pay two people to have sex in front of a camera and then make money for his product in the form of a DVD or an online download? 2. As a corollary: Why are a prostitute and her john held in such contempt by the media and the public, but Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy are treated as rock stars on both cable and...

San Francisco's new ordinance leveled at pro-life pregnancy centers will face federal court scrutiny. The core of the lawsuit is First Amendment viewpoint discrimination. First Resort is a chain of pro-life centers filing the case. The group's CEO Shari Plunkett claims the Pregnancy Information Disclosure and Protection Ordination was "crafted to target one or two specific organizations and carefully shelter from its scope all groups whose viewpoints the city agrees with." Paul Suis, a longtime board member for First Resort, explains to OneNewsNow that two layers of the ordinance ensure it could only be applied to pro-life pregnancy centers and...

Bigfoot takes free speech claim to NH high court Bigfoot is taking his First Amendment case to New Hampshire’s top court. When Jonathan Doyle of Keene donned a Bigfoot costume and set out to videotape staged sightings of the fabled ape-like creature on Mount Monadnock two years ago, state park officials put the kibosh on his escapades, saying Doyle and his friends had failed to pay $100 for a special-use permit 30 days in advance and secure a $2 million bond. But such requirements stifle free speech and artistic expression and are too broad to pass constitutional scrutiny, say Doyle...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in the pepper spraying of seated protesters were placed on administrative leave Sunday, as the school's chancellor accelerated an investigation of the incident and made plans to meet with protesters amid calls for her resignation.

Many people believe in the Constitutional misconception that the newsman is afforded extra Constitutional protection by the First Amendment which states that "Congress shall make no law...abridging...the freedom of speech, or of the press." This is simply not the case. The Supreme Court rightly recognized that notion is based on fallacious reasoning, though later federal appellate courts have not been as wise in applying that precedent. "Freedom of the press" is not a term synonymous with today's media or news reporting, it refers first and foremost to the printing press, (which produced, for example, such important political opinionated works as...

Newt Gingrich is a former history professor. After finding out that he co-sponsored the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, I think someone needs to make the point that you have to listen very closely to Newt Gingrich when he speaks. This video, in my view, offers a liberal view of the aftermath of abolishing the Fairness Doctrine. The monotonous narrator doesn't point out that if not for the nixing of the Fairness Doctrine, freedom in broadcasting could not be achieved. The major media, during the reign of the Fairness Doctrine, could and did spin the news toward liberalism....

NEW YORK — When Timothy Dolan arrived in New York nearly three years ago to take over the state's Catholic Archdiocese, his "brother bishops" had a bleak warning to deliver."We've got a bruising battle coming up over same-sex marriage," he remembers being told in his first meeting with local clergy. "We are not going to relent, we are going to give it everything we've got. But you need to know that the fortune-tellers are telling us that we ain't gonna win."The Roman Catholic Church had long been at the forefront of the fight over defining marriage in the Empire State,...

Who can say "gay" isn't okay in New Jersey? Judging by Gov. Chris Christie's actions, teachers can't. Christie told CNN's Piers Morgan on June 15 that he doesn't think homosexuality is a sin even though his religion does. To be sure that the citizens of New Jersey are aware of Christie's beliefs, the interview and transcript are posted on the official New Jersey website. Okay, that's his opinion. But read on. New Jersey high school teacher Viki Knox may have been inspired by Christie's comments to think that it was okay for a New Jersey public employee to express an...

In yet another stunning attack on freedom of religion, President Barack Obama's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court last week to give the federal government the power to tell a church who its ministers will be. The case involves a former teacher at Lutheran school, who along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is pushing a claim that a Lutheran congregation should be forced to restore her ministry position. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American Atheists, Inc. have filed briefs siding with the Obama administration against the church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church...

Barack Obama’s Department of Justice will ask the Supreme Court to eliminate a long-standing legal precedent that protects religious organizations from government regulations. The department “is going against what almost every court has decided … it has has taken an outlier position,” said Richard Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law & Religion at Emory University. On Wednesday, lawyers will present their oral arguments to the Supreme Court in “Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.” Cheryl Perich taught religion and...

"There are several political signs attracting all kinds of attention in one Uptown neighborhood. On Wednesday, crowds gathered at the corner of Calhoun and Coralie streets, looking at several signs depicting President Barack Obama as either a dunce, a puppet or a crying baby in a diaper."

Here’s a dirty little (not-so-) secret: Liberal Democrats really aren’t very liberal, and they don’t much care for democracy. You want proof? I mean, beyond campus speech codes and “hate crime” laws and Thomas Friedman’s kinky fantasies about being disciplined by Chinese engineers? Okay, how about: professional gas-bag Michael Moore has signed on to professional gas-bag Dylan Ratigan’s petition to get the professional gas out of politics. That is, the two well-paid leftists want a constitutional amendment banning “corporate money” from “our political system!”

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality rules were made official on Friday morning, with their publication in the Federal Register. As already announced, they will go into effect on November 20. .... Consumer advocates were on the whole more positive. The non-partisan group Free Press, which champions universal access to communications, supported the rules while also voicing reservations about loopholes. " don't do enough to stop the phone and cable companies from dividing the internet into fast and slow lanes, and they fail to protect wireless users from discrimination that is already occurring in the marketplace...

Over at Dakota Voice, Bob Ellis has an interesting post that details the history of politics from the pulpit in America. Bob does a good job of detailing many of the stories where pastors in American history spoke forcefully and with great conviction from their pulpits about political matters. From the very beginning of our country, pastors spoke from their pulpits about matters of American life and politics that intersected with morality and religion. After reviewing this extensive history, Bob concludes: Seeing this issue in the light of the U.S. Constitution and history, it is no wonder the Alliance Defense...

Irvine - Closing arguments will resume today in the trial of 11 students accused of disrupting a speech at UC Irvine by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The students who interrupted the speech last year "meticulously" planned the disruption and one of the activists afterward boasted, "We pretty much shut them down," a prosecutor said Monday in arguing they should be found guilty of violating laws governing conduct at public meetings. But defense attorneys countered in their closing arguments that just because the students planned to protest the meeting doesn't mean they are guilty of the misdemeanor charges...

SANTA ANA, Calif. — Ten Muslim students broke the law by shouting down a speech by an Israeli diplomat at the University of California, Irvine, in a carefully drafted and executed plan that flouted repeated warnings by campus officials, a prosecutor said Monday. In closing arguments at the trial that stoked fierce debate about free speech, prosecutor Dan Wagner told jurors that emails among the students revealed they knew they could be arrested when they got up, one by one, and shouted pre-scripted statements to interrupt Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren's talk on U.S.-Israel relations in February 2010. "The right to...

A southern California couple has been fined $300 dollars for holding Christian Bible study sessions in their home, and could face another $500 for each additional gathering. City officials in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. say Chuck and Stephanie Fromm are in violation of municipal code 9-3.301, which prohibits “religious, fraternal or non-profit” organizations in residential neighborhoods without a permit. Stephanie hosts a Wednesday Bible study that draws about 20 attendees, and Chuck holds a Sunday service that gets about 50. The Fromms appealed their citations but were denied and warned future sessions would carry heftier penalties. A statement from the...

Poway Unified School District wins case against high school teacherA teacher in the Poway Unified School District has been ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals to remove two large banners that referred to "God" and the "Creator" from his classroom walls. Brad Johnson, a teacher at Westview High School, had been directed by the district to remove two large banners which read “IN GOD WE TRUST,” “ONE NATION UNDER GOD,” “GOD BLESS AMERICA,” “GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE” and “All men are created equal, they are endowed by their CREATOR.” The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals announced their...