Free Republic

Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, also known as Diamond and Silk, noticed six months ago that their popular Facebook page was dropping in engagement. Wish I could tell them the same thing happened to me, too! Along with Facebook judging who is right for their community and who is not, we have news that the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has instructed the intel community to be more transparent with the public to establish trust, according to a report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. And we have comments being made that the Constitution does not give you right to...

At a certain level, formerly functioning societies seem to be growing unnecessarily complicated. Yet, in a more basic sense, it's all coming together: Yesterday, as I was heading home after our live Clubland Q&A, it was all breaking news about the YouTube shooter. As usual in the first moments after such an attack, it's all tediously speculative - except for the apparent eyewitness report that the gunman was, in fact, a gunwoman. That, on the other hand, sent the breaking-news chappies boring down yet another dreary alley - that it was supposedly a YouTube employee upset with an ex-boyfriend. I...

Fox News host Laura Ingraham has apologized, as has the network, for nothing more serious than her tweet: “David Hogg rejected by four colleges to which he applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA . totally predictable given acceptance rates.)” Hogg actually has a 4.2 grade-point average. The 17-year-old Hogg, a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., is the new face of the anti-gun movement, having achieved overnight victim status, reserved, apparently, only for those on the left, which supposedly insulates him from criticism. Hogg...

Tenure used to provide faculty members with solid protection against all but criminal behavior. But now it is proving no match for weak excuses for firing professors who administrators want to be rid of. Marquette University’s termination of political science Professor John McAdams for speaking his mind about a younger faculty colleague’s handling of a student is one such case. Another case has arisen at Louisiana State University. Teresa Buchanan had been teaching in the education program at LSU’s Baton Rouge campus for nearly 20 years when, in 2015, she was fired for violating the school’s policy against sexual harassment....

We are suffering from a large-scale culture clash in the United States. Strains of anxiety and vitriol pervade our daily discourse where we’d be better served with laughter and congeniality. So why are we so divided? What is feeding it? A good touchstone for where we are and where we are heading as a society is our college campuses. This May, Boston’s streets will be clogged with U-Haul trucks driven by the parents of newly minted college graduates packing up and heading home. Honest-to-goodness adults, ready to take on the world

Sometimes, for those of us who are constantly reading statistics and poll results, something that you didn't expect to see stands out -- a number that makes you think the future will not be what you have been expecting. My latest sighting of such a number was in a March 12 New York Times report on a poll of college students sponsored by the American Council on Education, the Charles Koch Foundation and the Stanton Foundation. It asked students about free speech on campus -- whether it is allowed and whether it should be. College and university campuses have been...

LONDON, United Kingdom — Thousands of free speech enthusiasts, alongside a handful of hard-left and Islamist opposition, gathered at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park this afternoon to hear a speech written by Generation Identity’s Martin Sellner, delivered by former EDL leader Tommy Robinson. Sellner was banned from entry by the UK government earlier this month, for daring to lead a right-wing organisation which sheds light on Islamic extremism and mass migration on the continent of Europe. Robinson — formerly of the Rebel Media — delivered the speech to thousands who gathered in the snow at the historic Speaker’s Corner,...

Lately, whenever we’ve wound up covering stories out of Spain, they’ve been related to the Catalan independence movement. Today, however, the lens swings away from that region and back to Madrid. There was a concert held there recently by various artists including a rap musician named Josep Miquel Arenas, better known as Valtonyc. The show was informally considered a “farewell performance” because, barring success in a last minute appeal, Arenas is heading off to prison for a few years. His crime? He insulted the king, among other things. (WaPo) The headliner tonight was Josep Miquel Arenas, 24, the artist known...

This week, various schools across the country sponsored "walkouts" in memory of the 17 students and faculty members killed in the Feb 14th massacre carried out by Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In other schools students took it upon themselves to walkout without permission. New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) warned school administrators not to punish students who engaged in unsanctioned walkouts, asserting that "it would be wrong. Threatening to discipline students for participating in the peaceful demonstrations is not only inappropriate, it is unconstitutional. Demonstrations against gun violence are protected by the First...

Video has emerged of the principal at New Praque, Minnesota’s New Prague High School allegedly removing a student from a group of walkout participants because the student was holding a pro-gun sign. The student’s sign said, “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People.” New Prague High School student Kenny McDonald put up a Facebook post alleging that the student was not only made to walk away from those participating in the walkout for gun control but was also threatened with being placed in a police car. The post contains a video which shows the student with a pro-gun sign being...

Pro-life students should walk out of class and stand outside praying for 54 minutes. One minute per each million of their fellow children who have been aborted. Make #54milliontoo their hashtag. They now have EVERY much a right to walk out as the useful idiots yesterday. Regardless of whether or not the school faculties give them their blessing. If the students aren't allowed to, take the school board to court on grounds of violating equal access of public facilities.

Free speech may not mean what most college students think it means. The majority of college students surveyed in a Gallup/Knight Foundation study said they support free speech and believe it is vital to the health of democracy. Yet droves of students also said they favor policies that restrict free speech such as safe spaces, free speech zones, speech codes and bans on offensive Halloween costumes. Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said “the discrepancy between what undergraduate students say they believe and what actions they are willing to take is really breathtaking.” “Students like the ring...

"They just locked me out and said "au revoir"... Officially banned from UK for "racism".. doing fine though, all the cool people are being banned anyway 😉

"Being stopped from being allowed to interview Tommy Robinson, a person who has not committed any crime and is in all other aspects a free citizen, is bad enough; however, what is exponentially worse is that U.K. authorities forcibly separated Mr. Sellner and Ms. Pettibone and imprisoned them – while admitting their incarceration was entirely because they were going to speak to someone. Think about that."

Austrian activist Martin Sellner of Génération Identitaire and his girlfriend, American author and YouTuber Brittany Pettibone, have been detained by airport police in England. Sellner was on his way to give a speech that authorities say would cause “tension among local communities and possibly incite hatred.” “Yesterday, Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone were detained by the UK Government and effectively declared political dissidents. The government has decided that Martin’s talk about free speech is too dangerous to be heard. Don’t worry, some of our activists will be reading his speech at Speakers’ Corner at noon tomorrow in his stead. We...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Tim Graham. Leftists in the Trump era claim to be the guardians of the First Amendment against an allegedly authoritarian president. But over the last few years, leftists have been the authoritarians on campus, squashing speeches by speakers they deem "fascist" and claiming that ideas they don't agree with are somehow tantamount to "violence." The latest example came from Lewis & Clark College in Portland -- the alma mater of Monica Lewinsky. On March 5, the local Federalist Society welcomed Christina Hoff Sommers, author of "The War Against Boys" and "Who Stole Feminism?"...

Our nation’s elites are waging war on the American people, wielding the institutions they’ve spent several decades capturing to punish those who disagree with their preferred positions and to deny them the ability to speak publicly, all in an effort to stifle free and open debate. And no, this isn’t a George Orwell novel — this is the United States of America.While many still mistakenly view our political arena as a skirmish between “liberals” and “conservatives”, it would be more accurate to describe it as an all-out war between “elitists” and “populists”. As my late friend Jeff Bell argued in...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Video that is getting national attention shows protesters denouncing author and philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers during a speech Monday at Lewis & Clark Law School. “I’ll say the majority of students, liberal and conservative, were shocked and disapproving of these antics but they were helpless,” said Sommers. Sommers says about a dozen students refused to let her get through a speech on closing the feminist mind. “I criticize feminism as a feminist,” said Sommers. The invitation to speak came from students in the Federalist Society chapter at Lewis & Clark. “We thought that her point of view...

Florida lawmakers have passed a bill that eliminates “free speech zones” at public universities and allows schools to be sued for restricting campus protests. The Florida Excellence in Higher Education Act of 2018 passed Monday in the House and Senate by votes of 84-28 and 33-5, respectively, sending it to Governor Rick Scott’s desk where it awaits his approval. Introduced by state Rep. Bob Rommel, Naples Republican, the bill contains a provision that prohibits public universities from establishing so-called “free speech zones” and instead designates generally all outdoor campus areas as “traditional public forums,” effectively keeping colleges from restricting protest...

The free-speech wars have broken out again. The battlefield this time is the little campus of Acadia University, located in bucolic Wolfville, N.S. The villain of the piece is Rick Mehta, an associate professor of psychology who's been teaching there for 14 years. Critics call him a free-speech absolutist whose outrageous views are endangering the safety and security of his students. He calls himself an independent thinker who offers different perspectives to challenge the prevailing narrative. This week, we learned that the campus administration has launched a formal investigation to determine just how dangerous he is. A letter he received...