Free Republic

This weekend, leaders from Ole Miss Greek life convened upon Camp Hopewell in Lafayette County for a three-day retreat designed to build leaders and bring campus closer together. The retreat was cut short Saturday night, however, after three black students found a banana peel in a tree in front of one of the camp’s cabins. The students shared what they found with National Pan-Hellenic Council leaders, sparking a day’s worth of camp-wide conversation surrounding symbolism, intended or not. In the midst of the open and sometimes heated discussion, senior accounting major Ryan Swanson said he put the banana peel in...

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned a notorious former Arizona sheriff who willfully violated a federal judge’s order by unlawfully detaining individuals his officers claimed might be in the country illegally. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had previously proclaimed himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” was convicted of criminal contempt last month for violating a 2011 order that barred Arpaio and his office from detaining individuals solely based on suspicions about their legal status. Arpaio, 85, was scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 5. “Throughout his time as Sheriff, Arpaio continued his life’s work of protecting the public...

PHOENIX - Phoenix police say they’ve arrested a man who allegedly kicked a can of tear gas at officers after the President Trump rally earlier this week. Police shot the man with a pepper ball moments after he kicked the canister. Police say 29-year-old Joshua Cobin has been arrested on three counts of aggravated assault on police and one count of unlawful assembly.

CHICAGO (CBS) — A Chicago pastor has asked the Emanuel administration to remove the names of two presidents who owned slaves from parks on the South Side, saying the city should not honor slave owners in black communities. A bronze statue of George Washington on horseback stands at the corner of 51st and King Drive, at the northwest entrance to Washington Park. Bishop James Dukes, pastor of Liberation Christian Center, said he wants the statue gone, and he wants George Washington’s name removed from the park.

Help Musicians, Britain's largest independent music charity and provider of health and welfare support, has announced a new campaign for the music industry called MUSIC MINDS MATTER. This offers wide support of the world's first dedicated 24/7 mental health service for people working in the music industry. Help Musicians has been serving the music industry for almost 100 years and has identified a ‘mental health crisis’ in the music industry, which has led the charity to initiate a unique Mental Health Fund with an investment starting at £100,000. The announcement of the campaign sees Help Musicians call for ‘arm in...

The film industry has messed with our relationship perceptions, would you agree? We are constantly expecting to have the perfect, fairy tale relationship - like Hollywood ruined real life relationships didn’t it? We expect to have Chuck and Blair or Allie and Noah love story. But nothing is further from that truth. We love to imagine that you will traditionally fall in love or that you’ll randomly meet your perfect “other half” in the back of a limo. Sure enough, you will encounter your peak and low moments, but in essence you dream of finding that special soul mate you...

A Democratic congressman has proposed convening a special committee of psychiatrists and other doctors whose job would be to determine if President Donald Trump is fit to serve in the Oval Office. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who also teaches constitutional law at American University, has predictably failed to attract any Republicans to his banner.

On the Revocation of White Privilege in North Korea “That’s what the hell he gets. Good for him!” My mother had uttered those words in her typical matter-of-fact tone one morning as she watched the news. “He” was Michael Fay, an 18-year-old from Ohio who had confessed to vandalizing cars in Singapore, and was subsequently sentence to six lashes from a rattan cane. I was in sixth grade and all I could imagine was how horrible the pain would be. My mother was unmoved at the thought, remarking, “He earned that.” I thought about my mother’s words a few days...

<p>Campbell yelled, shoved and even mocked spitting at the security guard before the very patient Philadelphia police officer had to handcuff and arrest her.</p> <p>“You’re arresting a girl for no f***ing reason,” she yelled in the officer’s face. “If I had my tits out and my ass hanging out you wouldn’t arrest me right?”</p>

Now that an NFL team has righted a terrible wrong and gotten Austin Davis back into the league, it seems like a good time for some clarity about the quarterback (Colin Kaepernick) the team (Seahawks) passed over in favor of Davis. For one thing, it’s clear that neither the NFL nor its teams are all that interested in being honest about why they don’t want to sign Kaepernick this offseason. There have been pockets of honesty here and there on Kaepernick-related topics, from 49ers general manager John Lynch, Giants owner John Mara and Seahawks coach Pete Carroll himself. But the...

Highly recommend this 3:45 video clip!!! [excellent video clip of Ambassador Bolton explaining that the real issue about the "Paris Accord" is all about the left's efforts to enact global governance over the USA and all nations. China and India (huge emitters) would not even have to begin to consider limits before 2030, but meanwhile the international bureaucrats would get their hooks deeper into the USA and every country. President Trump says NO to the global bureaucracy.]

Would you be friends with a transgender person? A full 27 percent of American adults on a recent YouGov survey said no. Even fewer—less than 20 percent—said they would be open to dating a transgender person. The disappointing but unsurprising results reveal a sad truth about the transgender rights movement: Cultural acceptance has tended to lag behind formal recognition.

It’s still surreal—horribly surreal—and we aren’t about to wake up. The Trump presidency confronts the majority of Americans with a situation that has rapidly degenerated from shock and disbelief to rage and dread. The op-ed page of the New York Times has been reduced to perpetual teeth-grinding. Faint signs of hope from Donald Trump’s lips have proved to be illusions, the vagaries of a flimflam artist soaking up adulation for what amounts to a despicable regime. The last slender thread of hope, that the Republican-run Senate will stand up to him, is likely to snap soon. When there’s no escape,...

What college does to our young people.

Add another chapter to the ongoing star war between President Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger. By way of dimly-lit video shot from an urban waterfront, Schwarzenegger mocked the president’s low approval ratings via Twitter on Tuesday. The former California governor and actor was not above tossing a few barbs in the president’s direction. “Donald, the ratings are in, and you got swamped,” said Schwarzenegger, a Republican but not a Trump supporter. “Wow. Now you’re in the 30s?”

Rachel Dolezal, the infamous white woman who for years passed herself off as African American and rose to become head of an NAACP branch, is now jobless, on food stamps and expects to soon be homeless. A defiant Dolezal, 39, recounted her current plight to The Guardian. Dolezal said she’s only been offered jobs in reality television and porno flicks. A friend helped her come up with the money for February’s rent and she doesn’t know how she’s going to pay for March. And she still says she’s not white. “I do think a more complex label would be helpful,...

Perpetually raging about the world's injustices? You're probably overcompensating. people publicly rage about perceived injustices that don't affect them personally, we tend to assume this expression is rooted in altruism—a "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others." But new research suggests that professing such third-party concern—what social scientists refer to as "moral outrage"—is often a function of self-interest, wielded to assuage feelings of personal culpability for societal harms or reinforce (to the self and others) one's own status as a Very Good Person. Outrage expressed "on behalf of the victim of [a perceived] moral violation" is often thought...

BURLINGTON, Conn. (CBS Connecticut) – A court date Friday for a Harwinton woman accused of trying to hit a police officer with her car Thursday in Burlington. State police say 58-year-old Eileen Pierce tried to hit an officer directing traffic at a tree-trimming site on Route 69– allegedly driving her Subaru wagon directly at him, yelling out the window, and shaking her fist. The officer quickly got out of the way, and police say Pierce narrowly missed hitting a tree crew. When Pierce was pulled over at the Burlington-Bristol line, troopers say she rambled for several minutes, saying she was...

As part of its January 2017 issue exploring our evolving understandings and definitions of gender, National Geographic is featuring nine-year-old transgender rights activist Avery Jackson on its cover—the first time a trans person has made the cover of the magazine. Jackson rose to stardom last year when she began documenting her transition with “Avery Chats,” a series of YouTube videos describing how she came to understand her identity at such a young age and eventually came out to her parents as trans. “When I was born, doctors said I was a boy, but I knew in my heart I was...

The state of Utah has denied it has anti-gay school laws as it defends itself from a lawsuit challenging restrictions on talk about homosexuality in the classroom. The case quotes selectively from state law and school rules, which don’t contain the phrase “anti-gay laws,” state attorneys said several times in court documents filed Tuesday. They say the state school board is immune from a lawsuit and ask for the case to be dismissed. The National Center for Lesbian Rights argues the ban on so-called advocacy of homosexuality stigmatizes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students. …