Free Republic

Coal miners and gay activists — two groups that, in 1980s England at least, you might have figured would steer clear of each other — partner surprisingly effectively in the real-life story that's affectionately fictionalized in Pride.....

When President Barack Obama takes Air Force One on a fundraising swing, he is required under the law to reimburse taxpayers for certain travel expenses. But as Mark Knoller of CBS News reports, the White House has made it a practice of not publicly releasing specific reimbursement figures, making it impossible for the public to see exactly how much they pay every time the president goes on a political trip. Knoller says it’s not about national security reasons, but rather about saving face. “Very simply, the White House doesn’t want to disclose the material because it might be embarrassing and...

The U.S. Forest Service has tightened restrictions on media coverage in vast swaths of the country's wild lands, requiring reporters to pay for a permit and get permission before shooting a photo or video in federally designated wilderness areas. Under rules being finalized in November, a reporter who met a biologist, wildlife advocate or whistleblower alleging neglect in any of the nation's 100 million acres of wilderness would first need special approval to shoot photos or videos even on an iPhone. Permits cost up to $1,500, says Forest Service spokesman Larry Chambers, and reporters who don't get a permit could...

IMPORTANT: This information should not be downloaded using government equipment, read during duty time, sent to others using government equipment, or sent to anyone while in a government building because it involves election related activity. Today is National Voter Registration Day and while volunteers around the country will be on street corners, outside of groceries stores, at bus and subway stops and elsewhere to help people register, you can get started right now, right here with just one click.If we’re going to beat back the attack on working families by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Scott Walker, the Koch brothers and other...

A new policy put in place by Cal State University could cost InterVarsity and other Christian groups up to $460,000 to meet on campus because they cannot change their leadership requirements to include any student. "No campus shall recognize any fraternity, sorority, living group, honor society, or other student organization unless its membership and leadership are open to all currently enrolled students at that campus," the policy states. The rule requires leadership positions to be open to any student, regardless of whether they hold the same beliefs as the Club. The policy went into effect in 2012 but up until...

PBS, who operates partly on the dime of the U.S. taxpayer, just ran a one-hour special on the terror-sponsoring dictator who shrieked that “war with the U.S. is my true destiny!” and who came within a hair of nuking millions of PBS’ involuntary donors during the gravest military threat against the United States in modern history.PBS, who bills itself as America’s “most-trusted source for news and public affairs programs,” aimed their documentary on the “turbulent life” of the “controversial Cuban leader” at a U.S. audience and titled it, The Fidel Castro Tapes. But PBS pulled off its documentary without mentioningthe...

On Monday, PBS aired the controversial documentary “After Tiller,” a film that sympathizes with the four remaining late-term abortionists in the country. Pro-life groups immediately filed petitions urging the station to remove the film from its lineup, to no avail. Today, the documentary’s filmmakers and Dr. Susan Robinson, one of the abortionists featured in the film, participated in a Google Chat to field viewers’ questions. Their “answers” were misleading, accusatory, and, at times, outright lies.“What is the hardest part of your job?,” one Google participant asked Dr. Robinson: “Listening to the desperate, sad stories and not taking it on as...

Millions of pro-life people may be up in arms about a pro-abortion film PBS will air this evening that “humanizes” late-term abortions, but the taxpayer-funded network doesn’t seem to care. Instead, it’s announced it is hosting a live video chat with the producers of the film, “After Tiller,” that glorifies late-term abortion practitioners. PBS posted a promotional for the chat on Saturday. Some pro-life groups are already encouraging pro-life advocates to be involved so the chat is not a one-sided affair in favor of abortion. RSVP and join the conversation on Google+ » pbsOn Tuesday, September 2, 2014, from 1...

I work about a mile from the Smithsonian museums and like every good Washingtonian, I never visit the famous sites. Today, being Labor Day, and having nothing else to do, I decided to go the Smithsonian Museum of American History. In one area they had a poll, taken by the museum visitors (how many thousands would that be?), voting for the greatest president in history. George Washington came in first, Abraham Lincoln second, Barak Obama third. I always thought "my jaw dropped" was just a fanciful expression, but my jaw DID drop. Reagan, by the way was 4th.

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...

According to proposals on the table at the Texas Department of Transportation, the highway system around Downtown Houston may be subject to a significant transformation. This well may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city to reconnect neighborhoods long bifurcated by highway IH-45 while also improving traffic capacity of the highways. How to change and improve the highway system is of great debate. As the Department of Transportation follows through on its federally required processes to propose and examine alternatives to the expansion of IH-45, also called the North Houston Highway Improvement Project, itÂ’s winnowing the options quickly. Now is...

The political arm of the Planned Parenthood abortion business says it will spend as much as $3 million in Texas to elect pro-abortion gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and other pro-abortion candidates. Cecile Richards, the president of America’s biggest abortion corporation was in the Lone State State to push her plan. Cecile Richards, president of the national advocacy group Planned Parenthood Votes, said the effort aims to draw differences between Democrat Wendy Davis and Republican Greg Abbott, the state attorney general, in the campaign for governor. wendydavis12“When women have a chance to know the difference between candidates, they won’t vote for...

With the children being sent across the country, a Houston woman went on an epic rant when she learned that officials were looking at a closed school in her neighborhood as a potential detention facility. Bernadette Lancelin not only opposed the idea, but did so emphatically: It’s not right. Now billions of dollars want to be borrowed from the White House to help feed and house them. What about the kids here? In our neighborhood? In our country? Not just in this neighborhood but in our country. All these kids? Really? Why can’t they go back? I’m sorry that their...

That National Public Radio has nice things to say about socialism shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public,” explains NPR’s own website. “Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism…and eventually the loss of public radio stations.” NPR’s brand of journalism came under fire most recently when Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn sponsored a bill in 2011 to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. “Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds programming for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received...

Imagine the press letting a Republican or conservative try to get away with trying to avoid uncondtionally calling something as infuriating and outrageous as the Veterans Administration waiting list scandal a real scandal. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did that on Monday (HT Patterico and Real Clear Politics) in an interview with Vox's Ezra Klein, who naturally let it slide right on by:

Proving that communism has worked no better for students at a University of California-San Diego cooperative living space than it did for the billions of citizens of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the aptly-named “Che Cafe” is quickly running out of cash. In the cleverly titled article, “In the Red,” The UCSD Guardian noted that the Che Cafe–a student-run co-op named after mass-murdering dictator Che Guevara and governed by the communist philosophy–has become a “money pit consistently plagued with safety issues.”

Nasa has released pictures of a prototype space suit, parts of which American astronauts could one day wear on the first manned mission to Mars. The public voted on three different designs for the Z-2 and the "Technology" design won by a landslide with 63 per cent of the vote. The design uses luminescent wire to form a light on the front of the suit that can be personalised to help astronauts identify other individuals on their team. The Z-2 is a prototype so will not be making any future trip to Mars itself as it does not have the...

The Obama daughters aren’t the only ones with travel privileges. Vice President Joe Biden told a gathering on Monday that he likes to bring his grandchildren with him when he travels. “I literally—at Christmastime, Mr. Ambassador, I always sit with the kids the last five or—and say, well, where do you want to go this year? Because one of the great advantages of being vice president, I’m able to take, if I’m not going into a war zone, one of my grandchildren with me. And I do take them all. They’re good kids. They don’t get in the way. And...

PONTIAC, MI -- It was fun while it lasted for hundreds of gay Michigan couples who got married Saturday. With a voter-approved ban against same-sex nuptials out of the way for about 24 hours, couples rushed to tie the knot in four Michigan counties where clerks held special weekend hours to issue marriage licenses. But an appeals court put a stop to the immediate wedding planning, issuing a temporary stay of U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman's Friday ruling that called the Michigan Marriage Act unconstitutional. Friedman issued a decision that rejected all of the state's arguments that voters made a...

First Lady Michelle Obama will be accompanied by her children and her mother on her trip to China, which begins today. But she won't be accompanied by the press. "Michelle Obama’s trip to China starting on Wednesday will be nonpolitical, the White House says, a 'people-to-people exchange' emphasizing the importance that both nations place on education. As if to underscore the point, no reporters are traveling with the first lady, and she does not plan to give interviews while there," reports the New York Times. The White House is defending the first lady bringing her family along for the ride...