Free Republic

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Was Golden State Warriors head coach Mark Jackson fired for his Christian views on gay marriage? That's what Ann Killion is asking at sfgate.com, noting that Jackson's lukewarm reaction to the coming-out of Jason Collins, last year was something of a mismatch for the Bay Area, which is the global capital of gay politics and culture. Killion writes: Everything about Jackson was under scrutiny, which includes his very public persona as a religious man. It was probably not at the top of the list, but was probably on the list.... When Jason Collins made his historic pronouncement last year that...

Mark Jackson, Golden State Warriors head coach who serves as the full time pastor of True Love Worship Center International in Van Nuys, Calif., has recently made headlines for being the victim of an extortion plot stemming from an extramarital affair. Jackson, 47, cooperated with the FBI this week to stop the alleged extortion plot created by 28-year-old former exotic dancer Alexis Adams and her 40-year-old ex-convict alleged partner in crime, Marcus Shaw. The duo reportedly attempted to blackmail the Warriors coach for six figures after threatening to expose his infidelities with Adams to his wife, according to The Smoking...

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. The...