Free Republic

The scale of online abuse by ‘boys’ club’ Ligue du Lol has sent shockwaves through society F lorence Desruol was a freelance consultant living in Lyon when the attacks began in 2009. Hundreds of abusive messages were posted online, a false account was created in her name, and her head was Photoshopped on to pornograph images and published. “I was called a slut, a whore, my face was grafted on to a picture of a naked woman having sex – it was all designed to humiliate and silence me,” she said. What stood out was that the abuse was coming...

The HuffPost presidential forecast model gives Democrat Hillary Clinton a 98.2 percent chance of winning the presidency. Republican Donald Trump has essentially no path to an Electoral College victory. Clinton’s win will be substantial, but not overwhelming. The model projects that she’ll garner 323 electoral votes to Trump’s 215. For all of 2016’s craziness, that projection actually follows a fairly traditional electoral map. Trump should keep Arizona and Georgia, even though Clinton is likely to make it a closer-than-usual race. Iowa also seems firmly in Trump’s column. All three states are more than 85 percent likely to remain red. Florida,...

News outlet HuffPost — previously known as the Huffington Post — laid off 39 staffers on Wednesday, a move that follows parent company AOL's acquisition by telecom giant Verizon. The layoffs come as new editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen is "assembling a newsroom leadership team," according to a HuffPost article reporting on the layoffs. Arianna Huffington, who founded the site in 2005 as the Huffington Post, left the outlet in August. The 39 employees were represented by the Writers' Guild of America, which released a statement that was tweeted by HuffPost's media reporter. It states that fired employees will receive a severance...

News outlet HuffPost — previously known as the Huffington Post — laid off 39 staffers on Wednesday, a move that follows parent company AOL's acquisition by telecom giant Verizon. ... The layoffs also included several reporters in HuffPost's Washington, D.C., bureau. HuffPost senior politics editor Sam Stein described the layoffs on Twitter as "a very difficult day." HuffPost is "also a business, with all that entails," Stein wrote.

WASHINGTON ― Some of the Trump administration’s nominees have pushed back against the government’s ethics requirements with “a ferocity we’ve not previously seen,” Walter Shaub, the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, told a top White House lawyer in an email this week. Shaub was responding to Reince Priebus, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, who, when asked on Fox News Wednesday why the White House has been slow to fill key positions, claimed that many nominees were “sitting and waiting for OGE.” “That’s not the case,” Shaub wrote in an email sent to Stefan Passantino, the White...

The internet was aflame last night with many people upset over a piece in the Huffington Post from contributor Rebecca Walden. Walden penned a piece titled, “Young ladies of the SEC, cover it up!” and boy was it just awful. Now, it turns out that the Huffington Post wants this all to go away and so they deleted it. Not a good look HuffPost and not very journalistically sound either. But have no fear, below you can read the piece as it look on the HuffPost website before it was deleted: Dear young ladies of the SEC, can you do...

"Hillary's America" IN THEATERS NOW! Get your tickets: http://www.hillarysamericathemovie.com! Dinesh D'Souza sits down with Caroline to share his thoughts on the 2016 elections, the national debt, border security, Obama's psyche, and to discuss his latest book, "Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary and the Democratic Party."

Writing that headline shocks me as much as it probably shocks some of you. There's no mistaking the fact that, since announcing his candidacy last summer, Donald Trump has been a loose cannon who has not only stirred up tremendous controversy, but has also shaken up the entire political process. Trump has managed to alienate most ethnic groups living in America, insult women with his sexist comments, allow violence against protesters at his rallies, insult journalists and restrain freedom of the press at his rallies, and even now is engaged in an ever-escalating feud with fellow Republican candidate Ted Cruz....

Once confident Donald Trump would win the nomination, Republicans are now split between three candidates Last week Ted Cruz notched an unexpected victory in the Iowa Caucuses - and now voters have a very different view of Donald Trump's chances in the Republican primary, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll. Importantly, voters are not ready to count Donald Trump out. Two-thirds of likely Republican primary voters describe his second-place finish in Iowa as more of a "temporary setback" than a sign of serious trouble for his campaign. 54% expect Trump to win the New Hampshire primary, where he remains ahead...

There's one thing everybody can do to make the country safer. WASHINGTON -- Former President George W. Bush was a lot of things, but one thing he wasn't was soft. He responded to the attack on 9/11 by invading not one but two countries, authorized the use of torture and indefinite detention and launched a mass surveillance program. When the occupation of Iraq turned against the U.S., he surged more troops at it....

<p>If you want to pay a tribute to great artists of old, why not get help from mechanics?</p> <p>That's what Freddy Fabris did to get a unique twist on the works of Renaissance painters.</p> <p>The mechanics, clad in overalls and tools in hand, posed in an auto-shop.</p>

This led Trump to issue a blistering press release. “Mr. Trump is number one in the unimportant Huffington Post poll, along with all other recently released polls including Reuters, FOX, USA Today/Suffolk University and The Economist,” it points out. “If you read previously written Tweets [Ed. Note: We have], Mr. Trump has never been a fan of Arianna Huffington or the money-losing Huffington Post.”

Actor Ryan Reynolds has said that he supports same-sex marriage because he’s “not a monster”. The Deadpool star was speaking to HuffPost Live, discussing homophobes who said they were ‘moving to Canada’ over the issue – despite Canada also having marriage equality. He was asked: “What are your thoughts on gay marriage? Obviously you’re not opposed to it.” Reynolds replied: “No. I’m not a monster! I think it’s fantastic. It’s been legal in Canada for ten years now. To me [the opposition] just seems crazy. “I find it amusing how polarising it can be here. Ted Cruz is saying it’s...

HOUSTON (AP) — A Houston attorney on the National Rifle Association's board of directors is blaming the deadly Charleston church shooting on one of the victims, saying the slain pastor had opposed concealed carry legislation as a state senator that could have saved him and his fellow worshippers. Related Stories 1. NRA executive suggests slain Charleston pastor to blame for gun deaths Reuters 2. Slain Pastor Clementa Pinckney’s Mission Suited His Storied Church The Wall Street Journal 3. And The First Person To Blame The Charleston Shooting On A Lack Of Guns In Church Is... Huffington Post 4. White gunman...

A shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday has shaken the country, leaving many reflecting on the state of race relations in the United States. Nine people, including Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church's pastor and a South Carolina state senator, were shot to death by accused gunman Dylann Storm Roof at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Authorities have called the shooting a hate crime. But how does one explain such a crime from a scientific perspective? What could lead someone to commit a racially motivated hate crime? What is racism -- and how can we...

Openly gay New York hotelier Mati Weiderpass penned an op-ed this week, lashing out at "gay extremists" for protests surrounding a discussion he hosted with presidential hopeful Ted Cruz in late April. Weiderpass and longtime gay business partner Ian Reisner are owners of the OUT NYC Hotel and 80 percent of the commercial property in New York's Fire Island Pines, among other properties patronized by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The two ignited large-scale backlash last month when they played hosts to a "fireside chat" with notoriously anti-gay presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz in front of about...

It's going to be at least a few weeks, and probably a few months, before we know what the Supreme Court is going to do with Obamacare. But Wednesday's oral arguments in King v. Burwell have already made something very clear: Justice Antonin Scalia isn't too worried about intellectual consistency. Among the many issues that came up Wednesday were the likely consequences if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, thereby prohibiting the federal government from distributing Obamacare's tax credits in two-thirds of the states. Millions of people depend on those tax credits to purchase health insurance; without the...

For a five-month period that ends this week, every single elected Republican in Congress was a white Christian. Let me repeat that: every elected GOP Member of the House and Senate was a white Christian.

Here’s a question: how can you tell when you are reading “news” from the Huffington Post? Answer: When both views on a highly controversial topic are NOT given…meaning, only the liberal view. Case in point: An article Samantha Lachman at the Huffington Post wrote on Monday about the Federal appeals court declaring a North Carolina law requiring abortion providers to show a woman the ultrasound and describing the images in detail before going through an abortion as unconstitutional. The Huffington Post decided to quote only abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood and The Center for Reproductive Rights. From the Huffington Post:...

Five months ago, conservative were so livid over President Barack Obama's upcoming "executive amnesty" that incoming House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) couldn't bring himself to rule out impeaching the president as punishment. Now, even firebrand Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Obama's chief immigration foes, have ruled that out. GOP leaders were never seriously considering the idea, but they've successfully tamped down any talk of it. What's more, Republicans may be on the brink of avoiding a government shutdown fight, at least until March, and effectively permitting the executive actions by "Emperor Obama," as Speaker John...