Free Republic

The U.K. and U.S. have thrown their muscle behind Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s bid to recover billions of dollars he says his compatriots embezzled and stashed abroad. At stake is whether courtrooms thousands of miles from Africa can help the continent track down stolen money, seize it, try the culprits and return the funds in timely fashion.

One of the many painful signs of the mindlessness of our times was a recent section of the Wall Street Journal, built around the theme "What's Holding Women Back in the Workplace?" Whenever some group is not equally represented in some institution or activity, the automatic response in some quarters is to assume that someone has prevented equality of outcomes. This preconception of equal outcomes requires not one speck of evidence, and defies mountains of evidence to the contrary. Even in activities where individual performances are what determine outcomes, and those performances are easily measured objectively, there is seldom anything...

Students and community members protesting Portland State University's then-proposal to arm campus security officers in a demonstration downtown last December. Nearly 100 students walked out of the PSU Convocation opening ceremonies to protest the administration’s decision to arm campus security last December. Inside the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom the diverse crowd of students chanted “Disarm PSU!” and “Black Lives Matter!” before leading the rally into the streets of downtown. Olivia Pace, freshman at PSU and an organizer for the school’s student union who organized the event said the group’s attempts to work with administration to reverse their decision have...

Gov. Chris Christie wants the leader of New Jersey's National Guard to shape up. The Republican governor has given Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Cunniff 90 days to slim down and meet his obligations. The action comes after Christie's staff told The Washington Post that the governor was unaware the general had been reprimanded by the Pentagon about his weight and for repeatedly dodging physical-fitness tests.

A British jihadi posted a gripe-fest about the Islamic State on his Tumblr account, ripping on Arab manners including other jihadists walking off with his shoes.Omar Hussain, a 27-year-old former grocery employee from southern England, goes by Abu Sa’eed Al-Britani since running off to join ISIS. He frequently writes PR, including an appeal for doctors to come to the Islamic State, and other missives.His post on the “Culture Clash” is, like other writings, pulled from his “Message of a Mujahid” video series. His first complaint is that Arab get up in others’ private space too much.“They see no issue in...

Hillary Clinton said on Monday that victims of sexual assault have the “right to be believed,” a shift from how the Clintons and their aides have previously treated women and girls who have made sexual assault accusations. [Snip] During Bill Clinton’s presidency, multiple women who came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment or assault were subjected to public and private attacks on their credibility by the Clinton camp. Juanita Broaddrick, who says she was raped by Bill Clinton in 1978, claimed she was personally threatened by Hillary Clinton after she came forward in 1998. Kathleen Willey, who accused Bill...

Stephanie Burns came up with the idea for Chic CEO, a free online platform for female entrepreneurs, in 2008, when she was getting her MBA. Many of her friends had lost jobs in the recession and were asking her for tips on how to start their own businesses. After hosting about 15 friends at her San Diego home to exchange advice, Burns realized there was a market for offering entrepreneurial guidance to women. A year later, she launched her company. Up until 2014, the focus of her work involved providing practical business advice to women in the form of free,...

If they can do it, so can we ...

MCLENNAN COUNTY - Law enforcement officials from across the country met at McLennan Community College for four days for a private conference about policing the growth of motorcycle gangs. The conference, put on by the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association out of St. Louis, MO, was scheduled before the Twin Peaks shooting May 17 after investigators saw rising tensions between motorcycle gangs on the rise in Central Texas. "We do a considerable amount of talking about these confederations and coalitions... and try to make them understand a little bit the motives behind these is other than what they advertise,"...

A Senate hearing about the Transportation Security Administration’s recent failure to identify prohibited weapons in security tests at airports across the country was interrupted on Tuesday by a bomb threat. Lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security Committee were getting their first chance to question officials about the findings of the TSA report, documented a series of undercover sting operations in which agents tried to pass through security with prohibited items; much of its findings remain classified. The panel’s chairman interrupted testimony to announce the floor of the Senate Dirksen Office Building where the TSA hearing was being held in was...

Things haven't gone too well for the former CFO who criticized Chick-fil-A in a video he posted on YouTube. Unable to find lasting work, 37-year-old Adam Smith is living on food stamps with his wife and four kids in the RV they call home, he tells ABC News. "I think people are scared," Smith says of potential employers. "I think people are scared that it could happen again." Back in the summer of 2012, as thousands of people were opposing Chick-fil-A's stance on gays, Smith rolled into a Chick-fil-A drive-thru for a free glass of water and slammed the female...

David Ruenzel knew, better than most, about the white privilege that killed him. As a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of this favorite topics was rooting out racism. And how white racism is permanent. White racism is everywhere. And white racism explains everything. This mantra of the Critical Race Theory and the Southern Poverty Law Center applied to all white people because, even if they were not personally cracking the whips, or breaking the skulls, white people benefitted from a racist system that did all that — and a lot more. Ruenzel was writing about white privilege...

Intentional or not, some photographer has capture one of the greatest truths of our time...

As Planned Parenthood’s phony war on women mantra gets aborted we watched as the map turn red in last night’s election. Today, Planned Parenthood appears to be placing their future election hopes in women of color and young women. Planned Parenthood lobbied heavily for many pro-abortion candidates in 2014 who lost by a landslide. Candidates like North Carolina Senate hopeful Kay Hagan who Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood called their number one priority. Wendy Davis in Texas nick-named “Abortion Barbie” for her filibuster of a late term abortion ban in the state, also fell hard after Planned Parenthood flooded...

A recent announcement from the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) / Masjid Al-Rahmah advised that it will be receiving a grant from the Nonprofit Security Grant Program administered through the Maryland Emergency Management Agency (MEMA): ISB will be receiving $74,675.00 which will go towards upgrading, enhancing and adding to our security infrastructure. Over the next several months you will see contractors on-site conducting these security enhancements. The Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) is nationwide and overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Part of DHS’s Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), it has been in effect since 2005. To...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is continuing its efforts to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Ma’an news agency reported on Tuesday. According to the report, the PA’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Riyad al-Maliki, met with ICC officials to discuss the Israeli operation in Gaza. During his visit, Al-Maliki inquired about the legal procedures necessary for the PA to join the ICC and sign the Rome Statute in order to take action against possible Israeli war crimes in Gaza, according to the report. Al-Maliki said he would consult members of the Palestinian Authority government on the matter after his visit. He...

Cobb, author of This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, and Danielle McGuire, a historian at Wayne State University, discuss the fundamental role of armed resistance in the civil rights movement.**********On his first visit to Martin Luther King Jr.’s house in Montgomery, Alabama, the journalist William Worthy began to sink into an armchair. He snapped up again when nonviolent activist Bayard Rustin yelled, “Bill, wait, wait! Couple of guns on that chair!” Worthy looked behind him and saw two loaded pistols nestled on the cushion. “Just for self-defense,” King said. In his new...

From education to gun control, progressive movements need to do a better job empowering the people whose interests they claim to serve.At a panel titled “Grassroots Organizing” at the Network for Public Education conference in Austin in March, an audience member asked the all-white panel for its definition of “grassroots.” The conference had been called to “give voice to those opposing privatization, school closings, and high-stakes testing.” As the questioner pointed out, those disproportionately affected by these developments are poor and minority communities. Chicago, for example, a city that is one-third white, has a public school system in which 90...

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal narrowly avoided getting hit by a train Friday during a press conference about why it’s important to keep yourself safe around trains. The politician was standing on the platform of a Metro-North station in Milford, Conn., while the town’s mayor, Ben Blake, spoke about commuter safety.

In a remarkably baffling move, Planned Parenthood is selling baby onesies in its online Marketplace. The abortion giant writes: Care for your little one in this adorable 100% combed ringspun cotton onesie. Featuring our tagline, Care. No matter what, in an adorable heart design, this onesie is designed to handle everyday knock around. Well, for starters, “everyday knock around” doesn’t exactly describe how a caring parent should treat an infant. (Keep in mind that these onesies are sold in sizes as small as newborn.) But I suppose the idea of “knocking around” a kid shouldn’t sound that foreign coming from...