Free Republic

Back in 2014, the political leadership of California became alarmed at the rapidly rising prison population in the state. The state was also under court order to reduce the overcrowding in state prisons. The people of California set a grand objective to reduce the number of convicts in the state. Fewer people going to prison has to be a good thing -- right? The first thing they did was pass Proposition 47 -- the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. That sounds like something everyone would want. 58% of Californians voted in favor of the measure. There was just one problem....

Newt Gingrich isn't exactly chasing the gay vote. The Republican presidential candidate told a homosexual Iowa man at a campaign event on Tuesday to vote for President Obama. Scott Arnold, a Democrat and associate professor of writing at William Penn University, approached the ex-House speaker in Oskaloosa wanting to know how Gingrich would represent him as President, according to the Des Moines Register. "I asked him if he’s elected, how does he plan to engage gay Americans. How are we to support him? And he told me to support Obama," Arnold told the newspaper. The Gingrich campaign did not immediately...

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have bought a man-made island in the shape of Ethiopia that is part of an ambitious luxury development off the coast of Dubai, a newspaper reported Wednesday. The Hollywood couple intend to use the reclaimed piece of land to showcase environmental issues and encourage people to live a greener life, the Emirates Today newspaper said. The couple's purchase is part of cluster of 300 islands, shaped like a world map, that is gradually surfacing in waters off the booming Gulf emirate. Representatives of the pair in the US and other reliable sources had confirmed the...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - Monday, February 20, 2006 Does the United States need a military? Editor -- As a born and raised San Franciscan, an anti-war protester since the '60s, a former vice chair of the state Democratic party and a person who goes on national TV on a regular basis in defense of our anti-war stances, I have to say that when I heard Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval say on the Fox News show "Hannity & Colmes" that the United States should not have a military, I thought that I didn't hear him correctly. After the fourth time he...

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a potential presidential candidate, said Monday he meant no offense to homosexuals when he used the word "fruits" in a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine. In a lengthy profile titled "God's Senator," the magazine quotes the Kansas Republican as criticizing countries like Sweden that allow civil unions between same-sex couples. "You'll know them by their fruits," Brownback said, quoting a biblical passage from Matthew 7:19. Rolling Stone writer Jeff Sharlet said in the story, appearing in the magazine's current issue, that Brownback appeared to be calling gay Swedes "fruits," a derogatory term for...

CARACAS, Venezuela - Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who set up camp near President Bush's Texas ranch last summer, said Saturday she is considering running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) to protest what she called the California lawmaker's support for the war in Iraq. ADVERTISEMENT "She voted for the war. She continues to vote for the funding. She won't call for an immediate withdrawal of the troops," Sheehan told The Associated Press in an interview while attending the World Social Forum in Venezuela along with thousands of other anti-war and anti-globalization activists. "I think our senator needs...