Free Republic

Michael Hastings’ new book, The Operators, jabs at what could be a vulnerable spot for the Obama Administration, the president’s relationship with the troops. The book describes a visit to Baghdad: After the talk, out of earshot from the soldiers and diplomats, he starts to complain. He starts to act very un-Obamalike, according to a U.S. embassy official who helped organize the trip in Baghdad. He’s asked to go out to take a few more pictures with soldiers and embassy staffers. He’s asked to sign copies of his book. “He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he...

(CNSNews.com) – On Jan. 1, the California Department of Education started implementing a new law that requires all children in the state’s public schools to study the “role and contributions” of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans” to the “development of California and the United States of America.” This law, according to the pro-family group SaveCalifornia.com, will require the schools to promote “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans as role models” and mandate that “children as young as kindergarten must be taught to admire persons who engage in homosexuality.”

At least 10 doctors not previously disciplined by the state signed sick notes for Madison School District employees that the district considered fraudulent, according to a State Journal analysis of the notes submitted amid Capitol protests earlier this year. The newspaper also found that about 570 district employees submitted sick notes for at least one of the four days in February when teacher absences forced a school shutdown. The number presents, for the first time, a clearer picture of how many Madison employees sought an excused absence. The documents - obtained by the newspaper Friday as part of a settlement...

Normally, when people confront her on gay rights, Michele Bachmann has a response ready.

San Antonio, TX – A young woman was fired from a Macy’s department store for refusing to violate her religious beliefs by permitting a young man dressed as a woman from entering the women’s dressing room. Natalie Johnson claims she saw the young man walk out of the women’s fitting room and politely told him that he could not go back in because it was for women only. The cross-dressing young man claimed that he is a “female.” Johnson said that he was wearing make-up and girl’s clothing, but clearly he was a male. The cross-dresser was accompanied by five...

Pelosi Calls Catholic Bishops ‘Lobbyists’—With Whom She Has ‘Some Areas of Disagreement’ By Edwin Mora December 1, 2011 (CNSNews.com) -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) on Thursday described America’s Roman Catholic bishops as “lobbyists in Washington, D.C.” in their efforts to persuade the Department of Health and Human Service to rescind a proposed regulation under the new health-care law that would require all health care plans to cover sterilizations and all-FDA approved contraceptives, including abortifacients. The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics cannot be involved in them. CNSNews.com asked Pelosi...

For release: November 28, 2011 MOVIE WAITS FOR OBAMA TO SNEEZE (Los Angeles) Barack Obama coughs or sneezes and you win. It's a new promotion for the movie SICK & SICKER: ObamaCare Canadian Style. SICK & SICKER shows what happens when politicians play doctor by taking over the health care sector of a nation. So today, Logan Darrow Clements, the producer of SICK & SICKER announced he will let average Americans play doctor by observing President Obama and reporting if he looks sick. Starting in January 2012 the first person to email Clements a link to a video of Obama...

PHILADELPHIA — The landlord of the apartment building at first thought a circuit breaker had tripped when he went to the basement Saturday and found all the lights were out. Then he realized all six bulbs had been removed, and he heard dogs barking inside a boiler room, its door chained shut. He removed the chain, stepped into the dank, foul-smelling room and lifted a pile of blankets. Several sets of human eyes stared back at him. Turgut Gozleveli had stumbled upon four mentally disabled adults, all weak and malnourished, and one chained to the boiler. He may have also...

An Alberta judge has let a woman who strangled her newborn son walk free by arguing that Canada’s absence of a law on abortion signals that Canadians “sympathize” with the mother. “We live in a country where there is no protection for children in the womb right up until birth and now this judge has extended the protection for the perpetrator rather than the victim, even though the child is born and as such should be protected by the court,” said Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition. Katrina Effert of Wetaskiwin, Alberta gave birth secretly in her parents’...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A 67-year-old man was arrested after police said he left vulgar and sexually explicit notes on several telephone poles. Police arrested Kenneth Downs, and they said the victim was his 15-year-old neighbor. Over the course of a week, investigators said Downs wrote several vulgar notes on telephone poles near her house. One of them was right in front of her home, which prompted her father to call police. The rest of the notes were found along the route she walks to catch the bus. The victim and her father told police they're worried Downs is a danger...

Sinead O'Connor is "in desperate need of a very sweet sex-starved man" and she wants everyone to know it. The Irish singer has taken to her blog and Twitter to snare a potential suitor and to lament the current lack of romance in her life. "My sh---uation sexually/affectionately speaking is so dire that inanimate objects are starting to look good as are inappropriate and/or unavailable men and/or inappropriate and/or unavailable fruits and vegetables. I tell you yams are looking like the winners," she writes. "Needless to say what I do for a living makes it hard for me to find...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Warrants have been issued and rewards are being offered in connection with three cases of animal cruelty in Louisville. All three cases happened this month. The only connection is that each involves what the director of Metro Animal Services calls "heinous" abuses. Kelly Stice, 30, is wanted on three felony warrants for animal cruelty. On Aug. 19, officers found three dead dogs locked inside a home on Manslick Road where Metro Animal Services said Stice lived until a month and a half ago. "They had been dead for a long period of time," said MAS Director Justin...

Darrell McHargue Charged In Connection With Boy's Rape SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky. -- A 48-year-old Shepherdsville man is accused of raping a 12-year-old boy in the woods a few miles from his home. The rape took place Saturday night, police said. The suspect was arrested and charged with first-degree rape just hours later, but he has since posted bond and been released to house arrest, leaving the young victim's mother outraged. "My son calls my husband, his dad answers the phone and he says, 'Dad, I've been raped, get down here,'" said the victim's mother, who asked that WLKY not reveal her...

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. -- According to police, a central Indiana man said he was helping his wife commit suicide, but is facing not only a murder charge but also a charge of cruelty to animals after police found the woman and her pet cat strangled in a Kentucky hotel. Over the weekend, Lonnie Daughtery was found in bed with his wife. Police said they both had multiple injuries but his wife had been strangled. Elizabethtown police said the couple was supposed to check out of the Holiday Inn Express on Saturday, but when they didn't, that's when police discovered the crime...

Americas: If anyone out there still thinks Venezuela is a democracy, the silence and secrecy of Hugo Chavez's long absence for an undisclosed ailment ends that idea. It's the act of a dictator. How about treating him like one? Photos of the Venezuelan strongman have shown him looking out of sorts for months — withering weight, reddening complexion, a broken knee, all of which had been dismissed by his secretive presidential ministry as nothing serious. Now that he's in a full-blown health crisis, convalescing in a Cuban hospital for the past 20 days, there's little doubt he's got bigger problems...

Top gay rights leader: kids of religious families are ‘target demographic’ of anti-‘gay bullying’ ad by Kathleen Gilbert Fri Jun 10 7:18 PM EST June 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After the broadcast of a homosexualist advertisement during the family-friendly Fox show American Idol prompted outrage, the founder of the ad campaign has confirmed that such advertisements are intended to promote the message of the gay rights lobby to young children in households that normally wouldn’t support it. One conservative leader has now demanded that Google, Fox, and Disney-Pixar sever their ties with the campaign. Peggy Nance of Concerned Women...

A newborn baby is recovering in Brooklyn Hospital after he was reportedly thrown down a trash compactor Sunday morning. The Daily News reports police received a call at about 9:20 a.m. for a baby found in a plastic trash bag inside the Walt Whitman House, a housing project in Brooklyn. The building's superintendent had heard the baby's cries coming from inside the trash bag attached to the compactor chute, according to the Daily News. It wasn't clear how many floors the baby fell.

After decades of debate, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) on Tuesday struck down a barrier to ordaining gays, ratifying a proposal that removes the celibacy requirement for unmarried clergy, in the latest mainline Protestant move toward accepting gay relationships... Differences over the Bible and homosexuality have split Protestant groups nationally and worldwide for years. Within the Presbyterian Church, about 100 of the 11,000 congregations had already broken away ahead of the vote, but a group of large theologically conservative congregations, which calls itself Fellowship, has decided to remain in the denomination for now. Top Presbyterian executives issued a statement to the...

I would like prayer for my elderly mother. She's very ill and I'm not sure how long she has. She's bounced back before but, this time it's pretty bad. Long story short she had a bad fall, ended up with a head injury and broken wrist. She is just not getting better, losing weight, feels nauseated, won't eat, weak and down right miserable. The fall was 4 weeks ago. Tonight I talked to her and she said she had a burning in her chest. The doctor thinks it might have something to do with her aorta, which felt a bit...

This is some sick stuff. Far left teachers are now teaching first graders the “Boycott Big Business” song for