Free Republic

<p>Contrary to popular perception, Al Franken did not resign yesterday.</p> <p>"[T]oday I am announcing that in the coming weeks I will be resigning as member of the United States Senate. I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of...sexual assault sits in the Oval Office and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party."</p>

Unfortunately, I just received a call from the national campaign chairman. The event at JCJC has been cancelled. Ted Cruz will not be in Mississippi tomorrow, as he evidently does not feel well. This is difficult news to deliver, but we trust that God has a plan for the campaign and for Mississippi. I wish you all the best.

Joy Pullman entitles her excellent column on The Federalist this way: "Discrimination Is Healthy And Normal – Sex Confusion Is Not." She begins her piece by pointing out how the left has hijacked a perfectly good word and twisted its meaning: "Discrimination sounds so terrible. Shouldn't people with power stop it in every form? That sounds plausible, but like the other arguments offered by LGBTQ activists (when they offer arguments instead of appeals to emotion), it's wrong and hurtful." She goes on to point out that "non-discrimination" ordinances, which sound so constructive at first blush, are actually "anti-science, anti-reason, and...

The press has been in a reminiscent and celebratory mood this past week, as America reached the 10th anniversary of homosexual marriage. What is little discussed is that the first same-sex wedding license was issued only because Republican governor Mitt Romney broke the law. And he not only broke the law, he ordered every city and county clerk to break the law, too, or get fired. It is no exaggeration to say that America has same-sex marriage because of Mitt Romney. As the media has endlessly reminded us this past week, the first domino to fall in the crusade to...

Winger-left blowhard Ed Schultz got a mention on Drudge today, for sending out a Tweet that said, "Gay people were really the ones being persecuted in Hitler's Germany." While 10,000-15,000 homosexuals were likely to have died at Hitler's hands (which is 10,000-15,000 too many), Schultz blithely and blindly ignores the plain historical fact that that number pales in comparison to the six million Jews who were gassed or shot by Hitler's goons. What Schultz overlooks, perhaps out of sheer historical ignorance, is that the persecution of homosexuals in Hitler's Germany was carried out by other homosexuals. Hitler was seeking to...

The influential Christian fundamentalist says Palin's joke worked so well because "waterboarding is not torture" Speaking on his radio show on Tuesday, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer came to the defense of Sarah Palin, arguing that her recent controversial joke about waterboarding-as-terrorist-baptism was not barbaric and offensive but rather “clever and funny” and good. “I just love her spunk and lover her spirit,” Fischer said in Palin’s defense. Besides, Fischer said, “waterboarding is not torture.” “I mean, it may not be pleasant, it may not be fun, but it’s not torture,” Fischer continued. “The guy’s not going to die,...

Bryan Fischer will say anything to legitimize his beliefs that gay people are cooties-having hedonists destined for a life of hell. Their greatest crime? Not certain types of relations, but daring to ask the majority at large that they treat people different from them with common decency and give them the same legal protections that they and their sexless marriages enjoy. When Don’t Ask , Don’t Tell was repealed, Fischer said it would lead to more pedophilia. Apparently, the road to Michael Sam is paved in R. Kelly stones (allegedly). Fischer once compared homosexuality to robbery, arguing, “Public policy should...

The meanstream media has been all atwitter this week over the spat between the Cheney sisters – Liz, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming, and her lesbian sister Mary – regarding same-sex marriage. Actually, you can't even call this a spat, since only one of the two sisters is bickering with the other in this little family war. And the one doing the sniping here is not the heterosexual, happily-married, Christian sister. The one who is lobbing the grenades here is her perpetually aggrieved, sexually-confused, gay-activist sibling. I'm not sure what you call it when one sister is...

Russia, as the world is now aware, recently passed a law that prohibits homosexual propaganda that is targeted at teens. Russia does not want teenagers persuaded that manifestly unnatural and unhealthy behavior is perfectly normal. Good on them. And while sodomy has been legal in Russia since 1993, the new law makes it illegal among teens. Good on them. There are legal sanctions for violating this law, which has raised the hackles of Olympic athletes who want to be out, proud and in your face everywhere, including during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. What should we make of this...

For moral, ethical and biblical reasons, the United States should not drop bombs on Syria. To cross Syria’s boundary, a country which has not attacked us, is to show a profound lack of respect for its national sovereignty. Had Syria attacked us, we would of course have the moral right to use whatever military force is necessary to neutralize the threat to our own sovereignty. But absent the moral justification of self-defense, we have no right to be there. The Scriptures are clear that the boundaries of the world’s nations are established by God (Acts 17:26), and those boundaries should...

America's daughters should not be sent into combat. Period. Part of the reason is philosophical: we want to live in a nation where we expect men to use their strength to protect the women in their world, not the other way round. But there are immensely practical reasons as well. God simply did not design women to have the same size, upper body strength, or stamina as men. It's just plain stupid to ignore this biological fact of nature. The Washington Post, for instance, recently ran a story on the "throwing gap" between men and women, which has stubbornly persisted...

It is time for conservatives to reclaim and rehabilitate the word "discriminate," particularly when it comes to homosexual behavior. The left has twisted this word to create the utterly false impression that discrimination of any kind at any time for any reason is by definition wrong and immoral. Of course, leftists are oblivious to the reality that they, these self-described paragons of tolerance, routinely discriminate against people of Christian faith, by refusing them permission to pray in public, by fining them for declining to photograph lesbian commitment ceremonies, by throwing them out of graduate programs in counseling, or by suing...

Two days ago, the Washington Post published a lengthy story on snake-handling pastor Mack Wolford, who died Sunday night from, well, a snakebite he got in church. Wolford cited Mark 16:17-18 as the source for his practice of handling rattlesnakes, water moccasins, copperheads and other venomous snakes. And Mark 16:18 does seem clear: "they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them." There's only one problem: Mark 16:18 is not in the Bible. The last 12 verses of Mark's gospel were added sometime after the original gospel began to...

Secular fundamentalists, it turns out, have their own version of Sharia law. It is just as unbending, rigid and dangerous to liberty as the Muslim kind. And secular Sharia has ten commandments, just like the Judeo-Christian tradition does. The Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition supplied the foundation for the American political experiment. As George Washington said, "Of all the disposition and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports." By "Religion," Washington meant Christianity, and by "morality," he meant the Ten Commandments. In other words, according to the Father of our country, it is impossible...

The parade of hate crimes continue. This time the perpetrator is Vanderbilt University which has put five Christian student organizations on provisional status for being, well, Christian clubs. Vanderbilt was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1870s, with a donation from philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt. Thus, as is the case with 106 of the first 108 colleges and the universities in the United States, Vanderbilt was brought into existence by followers of Jesus Christ. Now his followers are being tagged as homophobic bigots and threatened with expulsion from campus because of their sincerely held religious beliefs. Worse, Vanderbilt has...

In an astonishing column published in the winger-left publication, "The Atlantic," openly "queer woman" (her words) Lindsay Miller says flatly, "In direct opposition to both the mainstream gay movement and Lady Gaga, I would like to state for the record that I was not born this way." Tellingly, she argues that saying people are "born this way" is a form of condescension, and she resents it mightily. "I get frustrated with the veiled condescension of straight people who believe that queers 'can't help it,' and thus should be treated with tolerance and pity." I've got news for Ms. Miller —...

The Interfaith Alliance, a far-left religious advocacy group in Idaho, has accused Scott Lively, a scheduled speaker at this weekend's "Shake the Nation" conference in Boise, of "bearing false witness" and of being "mean-spirited and hurtful." Lively's crime? In his book, "The Pink Swastika," Lively exposes a secret homosexual activists don't want you to know about Nazi Germany: that although the Nazis did persecute homosexuals, the homosexuals the Nazis persecuted were almost exclusively the effeminate members of the gay community in Germany, and that much of the mistreatment was administered by masculine homosexuals who despised effeminacy in all its forms....