Free Republic

NEW YORK — A federal jury ordered former President Trump to pay $83.3 million for defaming E. Jean Carroll when Trump in 2019 denied the longtime advice columnist’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her decades earlier. It marks the second time Carroll has won damages from Trump at trial, with the new total adding to a $5 million verdict last year finding Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her over a separate comment. Carroll’s latest trial became intertwined with the heat of the early primary contests, beginning the day after Trump’s historic win in the Iowa caucuses and...

CHARLOTTESVILLE — A federal court jury decided Friday that a Rolling Stone journalist defamed a former University of Virginia associate dean in a 2014 magazine article about sexual assault on campus that included a debunked account of a fraternity gang rape. The 10 member jury concluded that the Rolling Stone reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, was responsible for defamation, with actual malice, in the case brought by Nicole Eramo, a U-Va. administrator who oversaw sexual violence cases at the time of the article’s publication. The jury also found the magazine and its publisher responsible for defaming Eramo. The $7.5 million lawsuit...

On Inauguration Day, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in a New York Times ad ("An Invitation to a New Partnership"), told "Dear President OBAMA" that Muslims "have compelling strategic and moral reasons to cooperate and peacefully co-exist with the United States in particular, and with the West in general." Many Muslims here and elsewhere want that partnership; but some, jihadists in the name of Islam, disagree violently. In its address to our new president, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which has permanent status at the United Nations) made no mention of its own strategic skills that resulted, on...

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun. As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own. But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune. Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished...

On July 4, Sunni Muslim terrorists attacked Shiites performing prayers in a Quetta, Pakistan mosque. About 60 people were killed -- roughly triple the number of civilians who died in last year's Jenin "massacre." The next day, two female suicide bombers dispatched by Chechen Islamists activated their "Martyr's belts" at the gates to a Moscow rock concert, killing 14. Two days after that, a terrorist apparently connected to Palestinian Islamic Jihad blew himself up in an Israeli home, murdering a 65-year-old woman. Four days; three countries; three attacks in the name of Allah; more than 70 dead. The attack in...