Free Republic

Students using the seventh-floor bathrooms at the University of Southern Maine's Glickman Family Library this week were in for a surprise when the standard symbols for men and women on the doors were covered with a sign announcing the facilities were now "designated as gender neutral." With university approval, organizers for the 4th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, held Friday, erased all distinctions for restrooms at the Glickman meeting site, according to Mike Hein of the Christian Civic League of Maine. "The USM library bathrooms are designed to accommodate several people simultaneously, and they have no exterior door locks," he...

Scores of students, activists and others marched through Portland on Friday carrying the reproduced artwork of the imprisoned radical Thomas Manning and scolding the University of Southern Maine for canceling an exhibit of his work. Staff photo by Gregory Rec David Bidler, Rebekah Yonan and Ryan Edwards hold works of art by Thomas W. Manning at the University of Southern Maine in Portland on Friday. About 100 people walked from USM to Congress Square with Manning's art to protest its removal from a USM gallery show last week. Manning is in prison for killing a New Jersey state trooper. Some...

There may be a reason why academics are nearly as reluctant to discuss welfare reform as they are to do a recap of The Cold War: most professors were wrong about the War on Poverty too. “Washington declared war on poverty and poverty won,” former President Ronald Reagan famously said. Most pedagogues never saw it that way. “In Wisconsin, 33 families a day entered the state from Illinois and Chicago lured by higher benefits,” the Claremont Institute’s Eloise Anderson remembers of the land-o-lakes she called home for three decades. “The academic community denied that was a motive to move from...

US forces backed by fighter aircraft and helicopter gun ships overnight pushed an offensive along the Syrian border as Al-Qaeda in Iraq threatened to kill two marines it claimed to have kidnapped while taking part in the sweep. A force of 1000 US soldiers launched Operation 'Iron Fist' in and around the village of Sadah in the restive Euphrates Valley on Saturday, the latest offensive aimed at rooting out Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in the border region. "Coalition Forces, including helicopters from 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, engaged and killed eight armed terrorists in fighting early in the day October 1," said a...

<p>HATTIESBURG — Some faculty members at the University of Southern Mississippi are fed up with President Shelby Thames.</p> <p>University of Southern Mississippi President Shelby Thames, who took office on May 1, 2002, reflects on the successes and challenges of his administration's first year.</p>