Free Republic

Welcome to Captive Nations Week. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Yet this usually-forgotten, federally mandated occasion — now in its 60th year — is worth resurrecting in the 21st century. Congress created Captive Nations Week in 1959, making the third week in July a time to show Americans’ solidarity with the nations dominated by communism. The original law listed 22 captive nations, most of which had substantial communities of citizens in major American cities. After the law’s passage, these communities began to hold parades and rallies every year, from Miami to New York to Los Angeles to Chicago...

Veteran journalist Art Moore was editing a story on the Trump-Russia probe last October when he heard a knock at the door. He saw a couple of men in suits on the front porch of his suburban Seattle home and thought they were Jehovah’s Witnesses making the rounds. But they weren’t missionaries there to convert him; they were FBI agents there to interrogate him, sent by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The G-men wanted to talk about WikiLeaks, specifically whether the Trump campaign had any connection to the hacktivist group’s release of thousands of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton’s campaign during...

In October 2014 Bill Cosby was in the middle of a career resurgence. His biography by former Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker had just come out to rave reviews and was climbing the bestseller list. He had a comedy special coming up on Netflix and was in development with NBC to star in a family sitcom. He was about to embark on another comedy tour based on a special that had aired on Comedy Central the year before. The special, Far from Finished, was Cosby’s first stand-up TV special in three decades, and it attracted two million viewers. It was as...

The Catholic Church spent more than half a million dollars trying to stop lawmakers from extending the statute of limitations on sex abuse cases, a new report reveals. From 2011 to 2018, the church spent $633,000 on lobbying efforts in the Garden State alone. They spent more in neighboring states: $5.32 million in Pennsylvania, $2.9 million in New York and $875,000 in Connecticut. The lobbying expenses could pale in comparison to what the church might pay if more victims of clergy sex abuse come forward and seek compensation. The report commissioned by the law firms of Seeger Weiss, Williams Cedar,...

--snip--....blaming Pres Trump and his supporters is the fastest way to become a celebrated victim, a hero...and very rich. Smollett could have correctly concluded that events don’t even have to be true to be solid gold. Enough people are willing to believe the worst because, hating Trump with every fiber of their being, they need the worst to be true. Trump haters are easy prey for con jobs. Smollett's hoax activated all the erogenous zones on the political and cultural left. His claim that his “attackers” made racist and anti-gay slurs, threatened to lynch him and declared Chicago “MAGA country,”...

A 25-year-old woman in Chicago defended herself against an armed attacker with her own legally concealed weapon. But according to Think Progress’ LGBTQ Editor Zack Ford, “That’s not how justice works.”

The 11 victims that were killed in the shooting were identified as: Joyce Fienburg, 75-year-old, of Oakland Richard Gottfried, 65-years-old, of Ross Township Rose Mallinger, 97-years-old, of Squirrel Hill Jerry Rabinowitz, 66-years-old, of Edgewood Cecil Rosenthal, 59-years-old, of Squirrel Hill David Rosenthal, 54-years0old, of Squirrel Hill Bernice Simon, 84-years-old, of Wilkinsburg Sylvan Simon, 86-years-old, of Wilkinsburg Daniel Stein, 71-years-old, of Squirrel Hill Melvin Wax, 88-years-old, of Squirrel Hill Irving Younger, 69-years-old, of Mt. Washington

In 1903, during America’s darkest period of hate, W. E. B. Du Bois heartbreakingly affirmed his intellectual affinity with Western civilization. “I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas,” Du Bois wrote in “The Souls of Black Folk.” “I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension.” Half a century earlier, Frederick Douglass had paid tribute to the 18th-century British orators whom, at age 12, he had discovered in a collection of political speeches. “Every opportunity...

VANCOUVER — Who is more likely to be victimized by teen dating violence? If you’re quick to think it’s girls, new data shows you’re wrong. In a surprising twist, recently published research indicates boys are more likely to report being victims of dating violence committed by partners who hit, slap or push them. Researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) conducted a longitudinal study of dating violence. While reports of physical abuse went down over time, they say there is a troubling gender-related trend. Five percent of teens reported physical abuse from their dating...

RUSH: First, Jim Geraghty. Folks, this is so right on the money. “The more time I spend covering politics,” Mr. Geraghty writes, “the more I’m convinced that a significant chunk of grassroots political activists aren’t really arguing about politics at all. These folks are actually grappling with personal psychological issues and projecting it onto the world of politics. Every problem they had with a parent is projected onto authority figures. “Every religious person who ever scolded them or made them feel guilty becomes the embodiment of organized religion and demonstrates its menace. Because they’ve had a bad experience with a...

Terry Strada, a leader of the group 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism, will mourn again this year, but not at the site where the towers once stood and her husband died. She plans to attend “a private service” at the Shrine of St. Joseph in Stirling, New Jersey, which she said has “a beautiful and solemn space” dedicated to all who died in the 9/11 attacks. But she is also full of fury at the government’s refusal to release all it knows about the run-up to the attacks. “It’s very sad that we’re still being kept...

While watching the Kavanaugh hearings during the last few days, I'm impressed by the fact that the democrats are basically calling for our constitution to be dissolved. Got news for them. The central government was never intended by our Founders or the constitution to be a provider of health, education, housing, welfare, etc. In fact, the powers of the federal government are restricted to only those powers actually enumerated in the constitution and all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. Regarding the democrat parade of victims and sob stories: If you are broke or sick, unable...

Last night, a young man opened fire on people enjoying a night out in Toronto’s Greektown neighborhood. Numerous people were hit; two of his victims died — an 18-year-old woman and a 10-ear-old girl. The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Toronto resident Faisal Hussain, was found dead shortly after a gunfight with police; it’s not clear if he was killed by the police or if he took his own life. As of yet, we don’t know the shooter’s motive, but given his choice of targets — people out socializing on a summer night in a neighborhood known for its many restaurants...

You probably think your opinions matter. You probably think you’re an individual with unique experiences, thoughts and ambitions. Well, I hate to break it to you, but according to current leftist orthodoxy, you’re wrong. You see, your opinion only matters relative to your identity—and where that identity ranks on the hierarchy of intersectionality. If you’re now thinking, “What the hell are you talking about?” you haven’t spent much time on a modern college campus. Intersectionality is a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to. At the bottom...

In Turkey, a NATO member and a candidate for the European Union, citizens are systematically persecuted or even murdered for having been born non-Turkish or non-Muslim. For decades, the Turkish government and much of the Turkish public have victimized millions of people – Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds and Alevis. Here are six victims whose life stories I hope will give you an idea about what it means to live as a minority member in Turkey. Yasef Yahya, 39, a Jewish dentist from Turkey, was brutally murdered on Aug. 21, 2003 in the Şişli district of Istanbul. Yahya was married...

The alleged gunman in the Valentine's Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida wants to give any inheritance due him from his late mother's estate to the victims' families or an organization that will help the community heal, his attorneys said Wednesday. Nikolas Cruz, 19, appeared at a hearing in Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale to determine whether he is truly indigent or if he stands to collect up to $800,000 from his late mother's estate and various other financial accounts in his name. It was previously determined that Cruz could not afford his own...

A strident voice for the voiceless “It must be death penalty supporters’ goal to convince the American people – and their representatives – that they should no longer accept the judiciary as fit to decide capital punishment sentencing cases, or indeed fit to decide anything of importance. We must shield the law-abiding not only from lawless predators but from lawless judges and justices who protect them” So is the declared mission statement of Dr. Lester Jackson, author of the recently released effort Equal Justice for Victims: A Blueprint for the Rightful Restoration of Capital Punishment, a withering assault on those...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 30 (C-Fam) Many websites are shutting down or curtailing their sex trade just weeks after the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed similar anti-human trafficking bills that would allow victims to sue the websites on which they were bought and sold.“Illegal commercial sex advertising platforms and forums have been blowing up, and johns have been calling our office and messaging us left and right, indicating that Congress has taken a powerful first step,” Congressman Ann Wagner’s staff told an anti-trafficking coalition on Thursday. “FOSTA-SESTA is disrupting demand for sex trafficking and shaking up the illegal commercial...

After being fired by Attorney General Sessions on March 16, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe claimed: “This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally.” The Washington Post quoted McCabe saying: “The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.” Though blaming Trump, in reality, McCabe is describing his...

Pope Francis publicly expressed “pain and shame” on Tuesday over the rape and molestation of children by priests in Chile and later listened, prayed and cried at a private meeting with victims, Reuters reported. Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the meeting took place in the Vatican embassy in Santiago. “No one else was present. Only the pope and the victims,” the spokesman said. “This was so they could speak of their suffering to Pope Francis, who listened to them and prayed and cried with them.” It was only the second time on his overseas trips that the pope has met...