Free Republic

An American cyberattack on North Korea half a decade ago was fruitless overall, sources say. The National Security Agency (NSA) led a mission in 2010 to damage North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, Reuters reported on Friday. Operatives tried using a variant of the Stuxnet computer virus deployed against Iran that same year, the news service said, with developers crafting a version that would activate once it reached Korean-language settings on targeted machines. Operatives hoped the virus would disable centrifuges for enriching uranium, much like it had when used against Iran, Reuters said, but the cyberattack stumbled when it encountered North...

Robert Chardon, mayor of the French town of Venelles, has allegedly been forced into a mental institution for tweeting, “We must ban the Muslim faith in France.” This revelation came to us via the Agence France-Presse, a highly regarded news entity that claimed Chardon was involuntarily hospitalized last Friday. Chardon also tweeted that France should revoke a centuries-old secularism law and instead “promote the practice of the Christian faith.” All this rhetoric reportedly angered Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, the same party to which Chardon belongs. “I condemn this proposal even if secularism also means...

Translation: by Brett Gasper "Ah,Here it is, kita'ab Allah (Book of Allah), this is the root of all disaster: Book of Allah. I'm not certain what day it is of this reviled month of Ramadan! You are making the tearing of the Quran such a big and dangerous thing.. It is only natural to want to tear this book! Those sons of kelba (dogs) think they can threaten me and dare me to tear the Quran - but I want to prove to them that they are nothing... and what is the big deal in tearing this book? Here the...

An appeals court today reversed a lower court’s decision compelling YouTube to remove the controversial film Innocence of Muslims, saying that such an act was a violation of the First Amendment. The film, a 13-minute “trailer” created by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in 2012, sparked outrage among the Muslim community for its depiction of the prophet Muhammad as a pedophile and a murderer, and for a time was thought to be the cause of the attacks against the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya. The initial lawsuit had been filed by Cindy Lee Garcia, one of the actresses in the film, who...

Tom Balek with Watchdog.org is doing the kind of local reporting that I hope we see more of. This story comes from the not terribly exciting sounding environment of a high school in South Carolina. Peyton Robinson is a senior at the local school who is also a volunteer fireman and drives his own pickup truck. Mounted in the back are two flags… one the American flag and the other a POW/MIA flag. Unfortunately, Peyton showed up for school one day and found that his display was no longer welcome. Peyton Robinson, a senior at York Comprehensive High School in...

Progressives say that we should all be capitulators to leftist Marxist ideology and Leninist indoctrination, worshippers of global warming, and appeasers to radical Islam. “We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
- Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev, 1959 Having made tremendous progress throughout history, advancing, protecting, and promoting freedom of speech, we find ourselves at a threshold when book burnings, forbidden free expression of ideas, and printing for the elite consumption, not the masses, do...

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” The words of the First Amendment couldn’t be plainer. Yet more than two centuries after the Bill of Rights was written, they remain the subject of fierce debate. Actually, I should amend that (no pun intended). These words would be the subject of debate if debate were permitted. But these days, apparently, we’re all so thin-skinned that we can’t bear to hear an opinion that challenges our worldview. This is even true, ironically, at our institutions of higher learning. Some colleges are far more interested in swaddling their students in...

On May 15, 2013, the Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan, an anti-Semite, attended a ceremony a stone’s throw from our nation’s capital celebrating what he claims “will likely become the largest and most striking example of Islamic architecture in the Western Hemisphere.” Next year, when completed, the Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center, in Lanham, Maryland “US of A,” a project of the Islamist Turkish government, will be the grandest Islamic site in the Western Hemisphere. Allah Akbar! The 15-acre neo-Ottoman empire inspired complex will have five buildings and a mosque capable of serving over 750 faithful Muslim worshipers. I have...

How to be "Progressive."

Xin Tian Yong, a contributor for the Chicago Maroon, has declared that free speech needs to be curtailed if people disagree with it. Specifically, Yong believes that speech that he considers “immoral or hateful” should be banned, especially if he considers it hurtful to minority religious or race groups like Muslims or African Americans. Yong’s article, titled “Actions speak louder than words,” begins by talking about a writer for Charlie Hebdo speaking at the University’s French Club. Zineb El Rhazoui, the writer for Charlie Hebdo, defended both satire and free speech... Yong writes that El Rhazoui spoke about the terrorist...

Some University of Oklahoma students in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity were videorecorded singing (as best I and others can tell), There will never be a nigger at SAE There will never be a nigger at SAE You can hang him from a tree But he’ll never sign with me There will never be a nigger at SAE University of Oklahoma president David Boren said, “If I’m allowed to, these students will face suspension or expulsion.” [UPDATE: The president has indeed expelled two of the students.] But he is not, I think, allowed to do that.

Internet is a medium by which every one may publish to every one. The medium must not can not be regulated. Regulation is an abridgment of the freedom of speech and of "the press" Internet is “the tyrant’s foe, and the people’s friend” The FCC is seizing control of the medium. They claim laws of the 1930's as their authority. The 1930's are well before computers and internet existed. The FCC has no authority to regulate the medium. There can be no authority to control the medium.

As the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission toy with regulating aspects of the Internet, critics on those agencies are warning that speed and freedom of speech are in jeopardy. In a joint column, Federal Communications Commission member Ajit Pai and Federal Election Commission member Lee Goodman, leveled the boom on the Obama-favored regulations, essentially charging that it will muck up the freedom the nation has come to expect from the Internet. In one key passage of the column published in Politico, the duo wrote Monday that heavy-handed FCC regulations like those imposed in Europe will significantly slow down

Former film star Brigitte Bardot, France’s iconic blonde bombshell and “sex kitten” who reigned supreme from 1952 – 1973, is currently on trial for the fifth time for insulting Muslims and “inciting racial hatred.” Bardot has been fined four times and has also received suspended jail sentences.

A man-on-street video. The University of Michigan took some pretty big steps toward stifling free speech on its campus this month with its “Inclusive Language” program. They’ve even gone as far as to create a list of “unacceptable words”. Just how important is the 1st amendment to students today. I’m pretty sure that after watching the video, you’ll feel more compelled to protect the 1st amendment than ever before!

Danish police have said three officers were shot and wounded at blasphemy debate in Copenhagen where the French ambassador was speaking. Two gunmen are said to be still at large. Reports say up to 40 shots were fired outside the venue in the Danish capital. Controversial Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who has drawn caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, was also present at the debate. Shortly after the attack, a message appeared on the Twitter feed of French ambassador Francois Zimeray saying he was unharmed. Lars Vilks stoked controversy in 2007 by drawing pictures of the Prophet Muhammad dressed as a...

The Federal Election Commission is considering expanding their regulatory power to include political speech online… Yeah, let’s regulate the internet. I mean, free speech can’t just be expected to run wild or anything, right? The FEC held an open hearing yesterday to determine if they will move forward on clamping down on political content online (such as blogs, YouTube videos, and other “free” messaging). According to CNS News:Last October, FEC Chairwoman Ann Ravel issued a statement in which she complained that the agency was not doing enough to monitor activity on the Internet.Right… Because I know I’m terrified that the feds...

As France recovers from last week’s terrorist attacks against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the Western world, including journalists and social media spectators across the political spectrum, are rallying around freedom of speech – even offensive speech. While they are rightly united in the conviction that objectionable expression should be safe from violent retaliation, it is increasingly clear that the freedom of speech often works only at that bare minimum — protecting us from imprisonment and decapitation by governments, but not from social and economic destruction by our fellow Americans, including government officials. Take the case of Kelvin Cochran, Atlanta’s...

Pope Francis suggested there are limits to freedom of expression, saying in response to the Charlie Hebdo terror attack that "one cannot make fun of faith" and that anyone who throws insults can expect a "punch." The pontiff said that both freedom of faith and freedom of speech were fundamental human rights and that "every religion has its dignity." "One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people's faith, one cannot make fun of faith," he said. "There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity ... in freedom of expression there are limits." The pope was speaking to reporters on...

[...] Zvyagintsev [a noted Russian film director whose "Leviathan" has recently taken the Golden Globe prize] swims resolutely against the tide. One remark by Russia’s culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, who, earlier this year, said openly that he did not like Leviathan, seems especially to irritate. “He said: ‘Let all the flowers grow, but we will only water the ones we like.’ After these words he should have been fired, because this is a direct violation of the constitution, a direct violation of human expression. You cannot impose rules on art. Everybody should be equal. Government help, without which art cannot...