Free Republic

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, and MSNBC’s Ed Schultz will soon be in the dock (below, figuratively speaking), but first, let’s make this clear: The battle over various Religious Freedom Restoration Acts has nothing to do with a dislike of, or desire to discriminate against, homosexuals. Let this also be clear: The organized Left and its media mouthpieces have won this week’s skirmishes, largely because the Right’s would-be champions proved to be invertebrate; but advocates of religious freedom have not lost the war, and cannot, must not, and will not retreat — and we have every chance of ultimately...

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is busy making good on its promise to fight for students’ free speech rights through a massive litigation campaign. Since last year, FIRE’s Stand Up For Free Speech effort has filed nine First Amendment lawsuits against campuses that quash the First Amendment, according to its website. Four of the cases have already enjoyed successes in FIRE’s favor, and the others continue to wind their way through the court system. FIRE’s early victories in its litigation campaign illustrate that colleges’ limits on free speech are onerous and unconstitutional. But the battle continues.

Everyone should take note, because THIS is how you respond to the radical left screaming about Indiana’s RFRA law. Not only does he defend Mike Pence on HuffPost Live, he calls the opposition a lynch mob and won’t back down when challenged. He also hits back at the louder voices condemning the law over their selective moral outrage and blatant hypocrisy:

Today in a pre-trial hearing, an Ohio judge casually agreed with a motion filed by a prosecutor asking to ban a defendant from bringing up the United States Constitution or the constitutionality of the law under which he is charged with a crime. Judge Catherine Barber (or Kathryn Barber), a retired judge filling in for the Xenia Municipal Judge Michael Murray stated “there will be no mentioning of the Constitution” and then laughed when the defendant claimed that uttering words on a public sidewalk constitutes free speech. (The audio of the hearing can be found here: http://bambuser.com/v/5372976). This was in...

The 'gay cake' controversy could have implications for shop owners with religious beliefs, a court has heard. A barrister for County Antrim firm Ashers Baking Company said if they lost the discrimination case there would be wide-reaching consequences. He said it would mean a Muslim printer could not refuse to print a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. The case has been taken by a gay rights activist, Gareth Lee. He placed the order for the cake with Ashers. The barrister for Mr Lee said that businesses needed to make clear in advance what they would and would not do. He...

Not Every Leak Is Fit to Print Why have federal prosecutors subpoenaed a New York Times reporter?by Gabriel Schoenfeld 02/18/2008, Volume 013, Issue 22 Investigations of national-security leaks in Washington are not all that rare. But until Judith Miller of the New York Times was sent to jail for 85 days by a special prosecutor digging into the Valerie Plame imbroglio, investigations of such leaks in which journalists are subpoenaed were about as common as unicorns wandering the National Mall. We now have another such unicorn. On January 24, a federal grand jury in Alexandria issued a subpoena to...

The project was awarded this month to Rutgers University, which has received $117,102 so far. The real-time, automatic detection of hurtful online speech is necessary, according to the NSF grant, because cyberbullying is a “critical social problem.” The grant said 40 percent of American teenagers have reported being cyberbullied. ... Vivek K. Singh, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, is leading the project. “I have worked on multiple projects including designing a novel media sharing application, detecting patterns in large scale Twitter feeds, and analyzing community behavior in social media to design...

Do you work in the media and have the gall to think that the entire Webster’s dictionary is at your disposal? Think again, you sexist. When it comes to reporting on Hillary Clinton, George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” have turned into “Twelve Words You Can Never Say About a Powerful Politician.” “We will be watching, reading, listening and protesting coded sexism,” the pro-Hillary group HRC Super Volunteers warned The New York Times’ Amy Chozick Wednesday. [Snip] Here are the words that you can’t use to describe Clinton: Polarizing Calculating Disingenuous Insincere Ambitious Inevitable Entitled Over...

Bosses can get mad when staffers vent on social media about their jobs, but they may not be able to get even. When one of Bert Martinez’ employees posted gripes about her job and the boss on Facebook last year, the publicist consulted his lawyer, who said the staffer couldn’t be fired. “The first lesson I learned is, employees are allowed to vent,” says Martinez, owner of Bert Martinez Communications in Phoenix. “If they're saying, ‘hey, it’s hard working here and I find this environment unpleasant’, you can’t fire them for that.” The employee quit a week after Martinez learned...

exas commemorates the Confederacy in many ways, from an annual celebration of Confederate Heroes Day each January to monuments on the grounds of the state Capitol in Austin. Among the memorials is one that has stood for more than a century, bearing an image of the Confederate battle flag etched in marble. But you're out of luck if you want to put that flag on your license plate. Texas says that would be offensive. Now the Supreme Court will decide whether the state can refuse to issue a license plate featuring the battle flag without violating the free-speech rights of...

On Nov. 9, 2011, a civilian texted Furminger, “Do you celebrate quanza (sic) at your school?” “Yeah we burn the cross on the field! Then we celebrate Whitemas,” he responded. On May 10, 2012, Furminger wrote to another officer, according to the documents, “I hate to tell you this but my wife friend (sic) is over with their kids and her husband is black! If (sic) is an attorney but should I be worried?” The officer wrote back: “Get ur pocket gun. Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its (sic) not against the law to...

Two weeks after passage, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finally released its landmark “net neutrality” regulations Thursday morning. Among its many determinations, the FCC stated that broadband providers do not enjoy First Amendment protections because they do not have a right to free speech. “The rules we adopt today do not curtail broadband providers’ free speech rights,” the commission said on page 268 of its decision, noting that because they merely serve as a means for others to express themselves, broadband providers are not entitled to free speech rights themselves. “When engaged in broadband Internet access services, broadband providers are...

Texas is known for a lot of things — but pushovers aren’t one of them. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) learned that the hard way when it picked a fight with White Oak High School. Using its small-town playbook, the atheist activists fired off a warning to the district complaining about a principal that reads a scripture as part of his morning announcements. tony perkins frc Dan Noll’s “Thoughts of the Day” had never been controversial before, so when a student recorded the audio and sent it to the Left’s attack dogs, it caused quite a stir. But if...

Some wonder why conservatives get the impression that many leftists are not patriotic. Well, how about their belief that the ideas of nationalism and patriotism are noxious? We told you! As you've probably heard by now, Associated Students of the University of California, Irvine voted to ban the American flag from an "inclusive" space on campus. Don't you just love loaded liberal words, such as "inclusive," which mean the opposite of what they imply? Is the American flag includable there? The language of the bill, passed by a vote of 6-4, with two abstentions (some real courage there), asserts that...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)University of Oklahoma President David Boren has expelled two students for leading a racist chant. These students’ speech was indeed quite repugnant, but for reasons I discuss here, it’s protected by the First Amendment. And here’s one reason why. Consider the president’s statement to the students: “You will be expelled because of your leadership role in leading a racist and exclusionary chant which has created a hostile educational environment for others.” Similar things could be said about a vast range of other speech. Students talking to each other about a student group event about how Hamas has it right? (The...

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt on Thursday predicted the end of the Internet as we know it. At the end of a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where his comments were webcast, he was asked for his prediction on the future of the Web. “I will answer very simply that the Internet will disappear,” Schmidt said.

The American Civil Liberties Union is siding with the Washington Redskins in a court battle over the team’s name. The ACLU filed papers last week supporting the team’s position that canceling the Redskins trademark violates the team’s free-speech rights. […] On Monday, lawyers for the Native Americans who challenged the trademark said the ACLU should not be allowed to intervene in the case. …

Political discourse has degenerated in recent years into petty insults and fake offendedness. Instead of debating the merits of issues, the focus in politics has changed to gotcha moments. Social media and TV shows are nauseatingly full of them. Both the insults and the hyped up responses are wrong, but how do you correct the problem? If you dare criticize the petty insults, you’re accused of trampling on free speech. If you criticize the fake offendedness, you are labeled sexist, racist or similar. It is a vicious and unproductive cycle that has squeezed out real debate. The truth is, the...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Milwaukee County officials say they don't plan another mass release of emails collected in the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker's aides and associates when he was county executive. County attorney Paul Bargren says in a letter Wednesday to The Associated Press that more than 29 gigabytes of documents were released as ordered by a judge between August and December. The AP and other news organizations reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents during that time.....

"....Supporters of the legislative effort say only an act of Congress can provide the certainty needed to make the rules stick. “I’m concerned that, if Congress does not act, all protection for network neutrality is at risk of being lost,” said former Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), who unsuccessfully worked on a net neutrality bill during his time in office. “Without statutory protection, the net neutrality guarantees can be swept away in the next presidential election,” he added, assuming a Republican wins the White House in 2016 and nominates FCC commissioners opposed to the new rules....."