Free Republic

A senior Navy intelligence officer has been removed from his position due to comments made regarding aggressive Chinese military movements that ran counter to the Pentagon’s talking points on the issue, according to the Navy Times. Capt. James Fanell was removed from his position as the director of intelligence and information operations at U.S. Pacific Fleet. Fanell was reassigned within the command. Though neither the Navy nor Fanell commented on the reason for the personnel change, it is widely believed to be due to an internal investigation of his comments on China, according to the report. Fanell warned during a...

A North Carolina county judge resigned on Monday because he did not want to violate his Christian faith and perform same-sex marriages, which are now permitted under the state's law. With the news that North Carolina's same-sex marriage ban was struck down by a federal judge on Oct. 10, Judge Gilbert Breedlove, a 57-year-old magistrate in Swain County and also an ordained minister, could not, in good faith, be forced to conduct same-sex courthouse weddings when his Christian belief tells him that a marriage is only between a man and a woman. "It was my only option," Breedlove told Citizen-Times....

The recent questionably unconstitutional moves by the Houston city council to subpoena the sermons of five area ministers, as well as internal correspondence dealing with social issues, should have the American Civil Liberties Union and everyone else who believes in free speech and religious freedom up in arms. We as Americans must guard every aspect of our Constitution and recognize when it is being threatened. One of the great dangers in America today is extreme intolerance in the name of tolerance. For example, in this Houston case, it is presupposed that the pastors in question may have said something that...

A Canadian woman says that she was barred from getting a job at a wilderness tourism company because of her Christian faith. Bethany Paquette, who is an experienced rafting guide, said she was “attacked” over her religion by Norwegian company Amaruk Wilderness Corp. Paquette has taken her email correspondence with the company to lawyers and is preparing a case for the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. Describing her experience, Paquette said: “I did feel really attacked on the basis that I’m a Christian”. She says she was shocked when she read an email sent in reply to her application by...

Exclusive: Matt Barber warns, 'The courts are tossing around spiritual nitroglycerin' It’s called Pandora’s Box. And the Supreme Court just opened it. Did you actually think the debate over “gay marriage” was about marriage? Have you really come to believe that this cultural kerfuffle has anything to do with “civil rights” or “equality”? Have you bought into the popular premise that this is a legitimate discussion on federalism – that it’s a reasonable disagreement over whether the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause requires that newfangled “gay marriage,” something rooted in same-sex sodomy, a deviant and disease-prone behavior our Constitution’s framers...

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a law requiring that California health care providers be trained to better understand the specific health needs of the LGBT community. The law is meant to target inequities in medical treatment for LGBT patients who, according to the San Francisco Examiner, suffer from a lack of provider understanding of gay and transgendered health issues. Assemblyman Richard Gordon, D-Menlo Park, who authored the original bill AB 496, contends that LGBT patients have a variety of negative experiences with doctors and other healthcare professionals. Lesbian couples complain that they have difficulty finding OB-GYN doctors willing to counsel...

Rights: A Ninth Circuit Court ruling that students can't wear American flag T-shirts because they may offend Mexican students celebrating Cinco de Mayo is a ridiculous yet dangerous assault on the First Amendment. On Sept. 17, more than four years after Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., sent students home for wearing American flag t-shirts, an 11-judge Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that it was the right choice, "tailored to avert violence and focused on student safety." The decision upheld the court's three-judge ruling in February that justified the school's actions based on tensions between Mexican...

New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade will finally end its ban on gay groups marching in its annual Irish celebration, organizers said Wednesday. The organizing committee said this move to “change of tone and expanded inclusiveness is a gesture of goodwill to the LGBT community in our continuing effort to keep the parade above politics.”

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed global warming regulations aren’t just about stemming global temperature rises — according to agency’s chief, they are also about “justice” for “communities of color.” “Carbon pollution standards are an issue of justice,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy in a teleconference call with environmental activists. “If we want to protect communities of color, we need to protect them from climate change.” McCarthy is referring to the EPA’s proposed rule that would limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. The agency says the rule will not only help fight global warming, but will also improve public...

Herbal tea, Clorox wipes and Skippy peanut butter have a little blue in them, while Folgers coffee and Campbell's soup are as red as their labels. Finding out where your favorite brands lie on the political spectrum is now as easy as scanning bar codes with your iPhone. BuyPartisan, a free smartphone application developed by former Capitol Hill staffer Matthew Colbert, gives users the chance to learn more about the political leanings of the makers of supermarket items. By compiling campaign finance data from the top Fortune 500 companies and matching it with their products, the app lets consumers scan...

Edelman global CEO Richard Edelman said in a conversation with an editor of Vice’s Motherboard blog that former US CEO Mark Hass was fired from the agency in part because of the way he responded to an investigation into PR agencies’ work with climate-change deniers. Quoted by Motherboard senior editor Brian Merchant, the chief executive of the world’s largest PR agency said, "We fired the head of our US [division] in part because of that stupid note he wrote, about, you know, how we don’t answer these kinds of things." In response to inquiries from the Climate Investigations Center that...

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. ... “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda [?], and assist in the preservation of open debate,” the grant said. ... “Truthy” claims to be non-partisan. However, the project’s lead investigator Filippo Menczer proclaims his support for numerous progressive advocacy groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Amnesty International, and True Majority. ... The government-funded researchers hope that the public will use...

UPDATE: Dictionary.com has removed the offensive “recommended sentences” which slammed homeschooling. Thanks to all who wrote in.For those asking, here was a screenshot of the offensive words. Because of course a dictionary has to become ideological…If you look up “homeschool” over at Dictionary.com, you get the following “example sentences” which use the word in question. If you wish to teach your children such nonsense, then homeschool where lame propaganda can remain unchallenged. If she can’t find anyone willing to validate her helicopter parenting, she’ll homeschool. If you want to keep your kids from reality and turn them into mindless automaton copies of yourself,homeschool them. My...

The Heritage Foundation recently showed a documentary entitled “One Generation Away: the Erosion of Religious Liberty.” This bold documentary emphasized the importance of preserving our natural liberties, and expressed fear that they could easily be taken away as a secular government grows. rick santorum EcoLight Studios, a Christian movie company owned by former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, will distribute the film in theatres this September to convey an important message—freedom can be taken away far easier than it is given. Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum presented the film at the Heritage event, saying that “The fight to protect our...

Some of the world’s top PR companies have for the first time publicly ruled out working with climate change deniers, marking a fundamental shift in the multi-billion dollar industry that has grown up around the issue of global warming. Public relations firms have played a critical role over the years in framing the debate on climate change and its solutions – as well as the extensive disinformation campaigns launched to block those initiatives. Now a number of the top 25 global PR firms have told the Guardian they will not represent clients who deny man-made climate change, or take campaigns...

A Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple is appealing a "re-education" order from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission.The order requires cake artist Jack Phillips to create wedding cakes for gay couples and to re-educate his staff that the state's Anti-Discrimination Act means artists must endorse all views.It also requires him to file quarterly compliance reports for two years.According to Phillips' attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom, the reports must include the number of patrons that Phillips declines to serve, along with the reason.The order stems from a 2012 incident in which Phillips refused a...

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama here, says he remembers the morning he spotted a well-known colleague at a gathering of climate experts. “I walked over and held out my hand to greet him,” Dr. Christy recalled. “He looked me in the eye and he said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Come on, shake hands with me.’ And he said, ‘No.'  ” Dr. Christy is an outlier on what the vast majority of his colleagues consider to be a matter of consensus: that global warming is both settled science and a dire threat. He...

A High School in California has insisted that it has a right to ban the mention of God in a student’s graduation speech paradoxically claiming the Constitution gives them that power. In July 18-year-old Brooks Hamby refused to follow the schools ban order and thanked Jesus in his speech anyway sending the school into fits of apoplexy. A California school district says it will not apologize to a teenager who defied its orders and mentioned God in his graduation speech. Attorneys representing the Brawley Union High School District have written a 10-page letter defending the school’s right not only to...

Dr. Lisa Rosenberg, a physician from New York, was returning home from vacation boarding a flight from PBIA to John F. Kennedy International Airport. She said she had just finished a phone conversation with a colleague when a woman said she was offended by Rosenberg’s remarks. “I was saying how it was good Israel found the students that killed the Palestinian teenager and how it was exemplary not making them into heroes, but seeking to publicly try them,” Rosenberg said. “I said any other country would have made these students out to be martyrs and celebrating them.” Rosenberg added that...

Graham Nash feels optimistic that young people will once again change America for the better. So while he’s frustrated by political ideals surrounding issues like global warming and marriage equality, he realizes that “those powers against progress” will naturally run their course. “They will all die at one point and the children will take over,” Nash said. Then he added: “Do you know anybody under 25 that gives a damn whether you marry a man if you’re a man or if you marry a woman if you’re a woman? No.” …