Free Republic

The premiere episode of NBC’s reincarnated “Will & Grace” was essentially a 30-minute anti-Trump infomercial on Thursday night and conservatives have taken notice. The first episode of “Will & Grace” in 11 years referred to First Lady Melania Trump as a “hostage,” portrayed Midwesterners as people who didn’t eat vegetables until Michelle Obama came along and featured Debra Messing’s character, Grace, complaining about the results of last year’s presidential election. Grace has somehow landed a job redecorating the Oval Office because Trump “has been pouting that his office is a real dump.”

Teresa Stanton Collett, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, sets the record straight. Football was once the place Americans could go to get away from anxiety, division, and politics. No more. Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel for the National Anthem during the 2016 season has set off a chain reaction of sorts, one that is seriously threatening America’s pastime. Facing the prospect of being cut by the 49ers prior to the 2017 season, Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the team. When he didn’t land on another NFL team, ESPN, Bleacher Report, and other...

A Lake of the Ozarks bar owner was taking heat Tuesday for what at least one passer-by saw as a racist doormat out front. “It’s not a race thing,” said Jason Burle, who owns the S.N.A.F.U Bar near the Bagnell Dam. “A lot of people want to twist it around to be a race thing.” Burle said he ordered two NFL jerseys to be used as doormats outside his bar after NFL players started kneeling during the national anthem at football games. “We pulled them out of the box, taped them down. There was no ill-intent,” Burle said. Burle used...

The oldest evidence of life on Earth ever discovered may lie within rocks that are 3.95 billion years old, a new study finds. The new finding represents the earliest sign of life yet on Earth by 200 million years or more, the researchers said. Evidence of life early in Earth's history remains sparse because few well-preserved rocks have survived from the Eoarchean era, which spanned from about 4 billion to 3.6 billion years ago. During that time, Earth's primitive atmosphere and oceans — as well as the oldest signs of life — first emerged. Until now, the earliest hints of...

Police were called to the Johnston home of 30-year-old Erin Lee Macke on Sept. 21 after receiving a report that children had been left unsupervised, the Des Moines Register reported. While conducting a welfare check, police found Macke’s four children – two 12-year-olds, a 6-year-old and a 7-year-old -- alone. Police discovered that Macke left the U.S. a day earlier and wasn’t set to return until Oct. 1, the Register reported. She did not arrange any supervision for the children, authorities said.

The NFL ratings dropped substantially after a record number of players protested the national anthem on Sunday, and polls have even shown that the majority of Americans believe that players should stand for the national anthem. During the Patriots versus Texans game, it was blatantly obvious what fans thought of the players kneeling for the national anthem. As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, fans noticed 17 Patriots players kneeling. Then the stadium of approximately 60,000 began booing and screaming, “Stand up!” Watch: But now, Sporting News is reporting that it spoke with a “behind-the-scenes TV staffer” and found that the NFL...

A Los Gatos homeowner is worried people living in a downtown homeless encampment will start a wildfire, killing themselves, his family, tenants and neighbors. John Whitney says he’s been trying for years to get authorities to clean up the encampment, to no avail. The encampment runs alongside Highway 17 behind the post office. Ironically, there’s a blackboard at the encampment’s entrance that reads, “Stay Alive.” “This is a fire hazard right here,” Whitney said, pointing to a discarded pizza box, and sleeping and garbage bags. “The amount of dumping is unbelievable. Last year, Caltrans came out but nothing happened.” Caltrans...

Hugh Hefner, who created Playboy magazine and spun it into a media and entertainment-industry giant — all the while, as its very public avatar, squiring attractive young women (and sometimes marrying them) well into his 80s — died on Wednesday at his home, the Playboy Mansion, in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles. He was 91. The first issue of Playboy was published in 1953, when Mr. Hefner was 27, a new father married to, by his account, the first woman he had slept with. He had only recently moved out of his parents’ house and left his job...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that a federal judge will personally review, in camera, redacted material from emails discussing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of iPads and iPhones during her tenure at the State Department. Judge Kollar-Kotelly also ordered the State Department to file an affidavit addressing why it should not have to search new Clinton emails recovered. In taking these steps, the court rejected arguments by the Tillerson State Department and its lawyers at the Sessions Justice Department. The court will review the blacked-out information so as to better ascertain whether the government misconduct exception would...

“They’re effectively operating as a church within a church.” No, they’re operating a mosque within a church. A mosque is not the same thing as a church. In a mosque, those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God are said to be cursed by Allah (cf. Qur’an 9:30), and the obligation is preached to make war against and subjugate such people (Qur’an 9:29). Meanwhile, where is this gesture being reciprocated? Right, nowhere. Nowhere in the world is there a church operating inside a mosque as a result of the hospitality of Muslims. Once again, the “outreach” goes only...

Hefner founded Playboy in 1953 and he quickly succeeded in making it an important cultural marker. He rebelled against his conservative Protestant parents, whom he called “very repressed,” and set out to rectify the problem by targeting Christianity. In 1962, Hefner made his case for sexual freedom in his series, “The Playboy Philosophy.” While it is a stretch to call it a “philosophy,” it was much more than mere musings about matters sexual: it was a clarion call for libertinism, and a wholesale rejection of Christian sexual ethics. The series lasted for two and a half years, and during that...

SAN JUAN — As Puerto Rico slips deeper into what many call a humanitarian crisis following Hurricane Maria, the island is primed for a mass exodus of what could be 1 million people — a sizable number of whom are expected to settle in Florida, the nation's biggest swing state. That could well prove to be a boon to Democrats in a state which the past four top-of-the-ticket races have been decided by about a percentage point. "It’s going to mean a lot more people voting Democrat in Florida," Marco Rigau, president of the San Juan municipal assembly, told POLITICO...

That malty elixir is toasted annually on September 28th on National Drink Beer Day. As the Oktoberfest season comes to an end, this day is a great reminder to enjoy the world’s most popular adult beverage. Beer lovers have more selection than ever before in the ale and lager market. An explosion in the craft beer industry keeps the competition and the flavors robust, churning out new flavors seasonally...

On October 4th, 2017, Hudson Institute will host Guo Wengui (also known as Miles Kwok) for his first public appearance in the United States. Mr. Guo will discuss high-level corruption in Chinese politics and its implications for the upcoming Party Congress, as well as the threat China’s kleptocracy poses to the United States and its allies. The New York Times described corruption allegations made by Mr. Guo against senior Party officials as “the biggest political story in China this year.” In a recent Washington Times article, Mr. Guo described his revelations as an effort to “expose the leviathan Chinese Mafia...

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. - A baby abandoned on the shoulder of an Oklahoma City freeway is now in state custody and the infant’s mother has been admitted to a local hospital for evaluation. A church group on their way back from an amusement park spotted the baby in a car seat on the shoulder of I-40 in the scorching heat Saturday, according to KOCO News. Police said $5,500 in cash, a birth certificate and a Social Security card were found stuffed into the car seat with the baby.

The first officer issued an emergency and safely diverted the aircraft to Kuwait. An Etihad Airways aircraft headed to Amsterdam from Abu Dhabi was forced to make an emergency landing in Kuwait after the pilot died en-route, the airline said in a statement on Wednesday. According to the statement, a medical team was waiting for the aircraft in Kuwait following the incident. "Etihad Airways is saddened to report the death of on its pilots onboard flight EY 927, a freighter service from Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam," the statement read. "After the captain became incapacitated early in the flight, the First...

After all the excitement and the flurry of media coverage and great posts I've read here on Free Republic in the last few days, I thought I'd post this series of random, rambling thoughts about the self-inflicted demise of what had once been one of this country's iconic cultural institutions: the National Football League. I gathered these from many of the things I've posted in recent days, and I wanted to share them with anyone (everyone) who wants to chime in on this unfolding disaster. I was going to post it as a more serious, formal article, but I figured...

Mohammad Barry in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab Christian; Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan Muslim migrant, in September 2016 set off bombs in New York City and New Jersey; Arcan Cetin, a Turkish Muslim migrant, in September 2016 murdered five people in a mall in Burlington, Washington; Dahir Adan, another Somali Muslim migrant, in October 2016 stabbed mall shoppers in St. Cloud while screaming “Allahu akbar”; and Abdul Razak Artan, yet another Somali Muslim migrant, in November 2016 injured nine people with car and knife attacks at Ohio State University. What’s more,...

Taya Kyle is the widow of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history. Chris Kyle was murdered in February of 2013. He was shot and killed at a shooting range in Texas. Taya was widowed at 38 years old; the couple have two children. The beautiful Taya Kyle is a Fox News contributor and activist. She wrote a scathing letter to the NFL following the explosion of anthem protests over the weekend. Taya Kyle originally posted her open letter to the NFL on Facebook at it immediately went viral. Kyle started off by saying the...

One man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder in the shooting of rapper Young Dolph in the heart of Hollywood’s tourist district, police said. Corey McClendon, 43, was arrested near Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard shortly after the Tuesday afternoon attack and has been booked on suspicion of attempted murder, according to Det. Megan Aguilar, an LAPD spokeswoman. It was not clear whether McClendon fired the gun or was simply involved in the brawl that preceded the shooting near one of the city’s most popular tourist destinations, Aguilar said. Young Dolph, a 32-year-old Memphis-area rapper whose real name...