Free Republic

Duke University removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the entrance of a chapel on the Durham, North Carolina, campus, officials said on Saturday, days after it was vandalized. The decision to take down the statue followed discussions among students, faculty, staff and alumni about maintaining safety on campus, university President Vincent E. Price said in a statement. "I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university," Price said. The...

First bursting into the headlines when they shut down far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February at the University of California at Berkeley, antifascists again captivated the public imagination by battling the fascists assembled at the “Unite the Right” white power rally in Charlottesville. But what is antifa? Where did it come from? Militant anti-fascist or “antifa” (pronounced ANtifa) is a radical pan-leftist politics of social revolution applied to fighting the far right. Its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists who reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular...

A Facebook post for a protest dubbed “Destroy the Confederacy” at Sam Houston Park in Houston on Saturday warns “*Do NOT bring children.” A group “committed to protecting Texas and Texas History,” “This Is Texas Freedom Force” (TITFF), says demonstrators plan to tear down a Confederate statue. They also warn there will be violence. The promoters of the protest tell potential attendees: “We will meet at Sam Houston Park (right in front of Houston City hall) to demand that the City of Houston ERASE THE CONFEDERACY! It is a STAIN IN THE FABRIC of our history that needs to be...

BALTIMORE - Contractors in Baltimore have removed several of the city's Confederate statues overnight. The Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson monument in Wyman Park Dell was removed early Wednesday morning. The Confederate Women's Monument on West University Parkway was removed overnight as was the Roger Taney Monument from Mount Vernon Place. Taney was a Supreme Court justice who ruled African-Americans could not be considered citizens of the U.S. It is unclear if and when the city’s remaining Confederate statue - the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue - is scheduled for removal. A commission appointed by...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXjlAHAi3W8

Transgender and gender-nonconforming employees will receive greater and more explicit protections this week as new California employment regulations take effect Saturday. But some worry the new regulations might put employers in a difficult place: wanting to do right by their employees and follow the law, but lacking the resources — and the training — to do so. That’s why state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), gutted his own higher education bill to put forth a new proposal that would institute mandatory workplace training around gender identity and expression in the same way that sexual-harassment training is required...

FBI Director James Comey warned Wednesday that Americans should not have expectations of “absolute privacy,” adding that he planned to finish his term leading the FBI. “There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America; there is no place outside of judicial reach,” Comey said at a Boston College conference on cybersecurity. He made the remark as he discussed the rise of encryption since 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed sensitive US spy practices. “Even our communications with our spouses, with our clergy members, with our attorneys are not absolutely private in America,” Comey...

Full title: "After an Eight-Year Break, Hollywood Once Again Thinks It’s Cool To Depict the President Being Killed"

Statues of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are targeted for removal in New Orleans, after a federal appeals court approved the city's plan to change how it treats symbols of its history. Opponents of the move vow to keep fighting it in court. When Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for the city to remove the statue of Lee back in 2015, he said, "There may have been a time when that monument reflected who we were as a city, but times change. And so do we," as member station WWNO reported. After an intense public debate, the city...

A new directive from Israel's Education Ministry calls on preschool teachers to stop referring to "Mom and Dad" in preschool activities. The staff at the pro-LGBT Hoshen Organization, which offers training to preschool staff on the subjects of gender and sexual identity, has suggested Israeli preschool teachers speak about "parents" instead of "Mom and Dad." "It's worth remembering that there are many preschool children who come from non-traditional families. They may have two fathers, two mothers, two sets of parents, or LGBT parents who live separately and each has his or her own relationship," Hoshen explained. "Don't assume that every...

If there’s one thing we can say about Donald Trump, it’s that he’s unlike any other world leader we’ve seen to date. The problem, however, is that his differences fail to set him apart in a positive manner. Almost daily, Trump tweets about the “biased media,” “fake news,” or a world leader who has suddenly done something so terrible that he must take to Twitter to publicly berate them. Notice, however, that it’s always someone else with the problem. It’s never him. However, John D. Gartner, a registered psychotherapist from the renowned Johns Hopkins University Medical School seems to think...

Students at hundreds of colleges and universities are being systematically indoctrinated into the “New Civics” of social justice activism, according to a report released this past week by the National Association of Scholars. The report’s findings suggest that the suppression of free speech on college campuses that is making headlines is only the tip of a very large iceberg. What lies beneath the surface is a massive, publicly funded program of indoctrination through a remaking of the curriculum as a vehicle for advancing the political agenda of progressivism. The full NAS report, MAKING CITIZENS: HOW AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES TEACH CIVICS, can...

Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media were a cornerstone of his campaign and last week he called BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage,” but forcing reporters to undergo random drug tests would provoke a media meltdown.

The subjects of a TV documentary series about the Ku Klux Klan abruptly canceled last week by A&E allege to Variety that significant portions of what was filmed were fabricated by the producers. Some KKK leaders divulged that they were paid hundreds of dollars in cash each day of filming to compel them on camera to distort the facts of their lives to fit the documentary’s predetermined narrative: tension between Klan members and relatives of theirs who wanted to get out of the Klan. The findings are based on an exclusive Variety investigation based on interviews with over two dozen...

Russian hackers tied to recent cyberattacks on U.S. political organizations breached a Vermont utility, the Washington Post reported Friday. A code associated with the Russian hacking operation aimed at the U.S. presidential election, which the intelligence community has named “Grizzly Steppe,” was detected within the Vermont system. The Russians did not disrupt electrical operations, officials told the Post. According to the Burlington Free Press, the city-owned Burlington Electric was the target of the hack. Vermont Public Service Commissioner Christopher Recchia said malware was discovered on a laptop that was not connected to the grid's operations. "The grid is not in...

As President Obama's second term winds down, now is a great time to look back at all of the joy the Obama family has brought to the country. And at a time when we're facing a Donald Trump presidency, we can use all of the positive feelings we can get. So, what better way to look back at the Obamas' legacy than remembering all the times Michelle Obama mom-danced her way through her role as First Lady. During Barack's presidency, Michelle has been very active in supporting causes she believes in. She's encouraged healthy eating habits, promoted an active lifestyle...

New York gay couple Matt Lasner and his husband Attorney Dan Goldstein targeted Ivanka Trump and her family today at JFK Airport in New York City. After spotting Ivanka and HER CHILDREN the unhinged leftists CHASED HER DOWN! Ivanka Trump was flying commercial today. The unhinged Hillary supporter harassed Ivanka and her children on the plane. Lasner JFK – Chased Her Down Terminal has since deleted his Twitter account. Such awful gays.

One of the websites Facebook is to use to arbitrate on 'fake news' is involved in a bitter legal dispute between its co-founders, with its CEO accused of using company money for prostitutes. Snopes.com will be part of a panel used by Facebook to decide whether stories which users complain about as potentially 'fake' should be considered 'disputed'. But the website's own troubles and the intriguing choice of who carries out its 'fact checks' are revealed by DailyMail.com, as one of its main contributors is disclosed to be a former sex-blogger who called herself 'Vice Vixen'. Snopes.com will benefit from...

The president-elect of the United States is a notorious troll — a fact which his promise to ban Muslims from entering the country, threat to imprison and strip Americans of citizenship for exercising their First Amendment rights, and widespread insulting of people online all make clear. We now learn via Slate that the two technology platforms Donald Trump uses most prominently to spread his messages of hate and division, Twitter and Facebook, take a very different stance on how to respond to future instances of harassment by Trump. Namely, Twitter says it would consider suspending his account. Facebook, which CEO...

A New York advertiser is taking it upon himself to make sure that the “alt-right” never becomes normalized in the public consciousness.“George Zola” is the alias of a web professional who spoke with Huffington Post about his new a Google Chrome extension, “Stop Normalizing The Alt Right.” The app works by automatically taking out all mentions of “alt-right,” and replacing the term with “white supremacy.” “I don’t want this term to be sugar coated, I want it to instantly make [people] recoil in the same way most recoil when thinking of white supremacists or white nationalists groups,” said Zola. “They’re...