Free Republic

The recent coronavirus outbreak, which sprouted within China in December, has now stagnated the world’s second-largest economy for more than a month. Since then, the virus has spread to more than 50 countries across six continents, all except Antarctica. The World Health Organization declared the virus a “global threat” and urged countries to prepare.The medical journal JAMA published a paper last week, titled “Characteristics of and Important Lessons From the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Outbreak in China.” Its data was based on the 72,314 cases reported by Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Since China has the largest...

A Chinese court has sentenced Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in jail for "illegally providing intelligence overseas". Mr Gui, who holds Swedish citizenship, has been in and out of Chinese detention since 2015, when he went missing during a holiday in Thailand. He is known to have previously published books on the personal lives of Chinese Communist Party members. Rights groups condemned the "harsh sentence" and called for his release. He was one of five owners of a small bookstore in Hong Kong who went missing in 2015. It later emerged that they had been taken to...

In time for the election, Reddit cripples and censors their Trump-fan discussion forum, one of the biggest and most important conservative discussion forums on the internet. The moderators of the forum have announced Reddit is taking them out and asked people to migrate elsewhere, such as https://thedonald.win/ , ruqqus, etc..

On Wednesday, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell and other conservative leaders released an open letter to Attorney General Bill Barr. The letter highlighted the deep concerns they have about tech giants Google, Twitter and Facebook and the need for transparency and a respect for free speech.

In yet another window into the country’s polarized political environment, in 2017 the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans regarding their views of major civic institutions. While there were divisions in how Republicans and Democrats viewed churches, banks, and labor unions, the largest gap was reserved for “colleges and universities,” with 72 percent of Democrats viewing them positively versus 58 percent of Republicans having the opposite opinion. Many on the left took the results as an illustration of a supposed broader anti-intellectualism on the right. Looking at the survey outcomes, Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye wondered, “Has America hit peak anti-intellectualism?” Citing the...

In a free society, speech at times can be annoying, obnoxious, unsettling or offensive. Panhandlers and political protesters can approach you on the street. Controversial ideas can be expressed on tee shirts, bumper stickers or license plates. And governments cannot block speech merely because it is irritating or bothersome — unless you are talking about commercial speech, in which case government bureaucrats have been given more deference to restrict speech. For example, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission determined that Uber and Lyft drivers could not install tablets that would display advertisements or allow passengers to play games...

A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on our nation. The leftward political bias, held by faculty members affiliated with the Democratic Party, at most institutions of higher education explains a lot of that disappointment. Professors Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens document this bias in "Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges." Langbert and Stevens conducted a new study of the political affiliation of 12,372 professors in the two leading private and two leading public colleges in 31 states. For party registration, they...

...The financial impact of the Gibson’s Bakery loss is not yet clear. It will be interesting to see if the negative publicity impacts the incoming class, and how much in grant money needs to be spent to maintain quality and quantity. But clearly Oberlin College has suffered a public relations body blow from the case. The seriousness of the situation is further revealed in a campus announcement that Oberlin College will seek to replace UAW union workers in the dining hall and custodial services with outsourced contractors...

Leftists Riot Against Kaitlin Bennett at Ohio University

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing two former students at Georgia Gwinnett College asked the U.S. Supreme Court Friday to hear their case and vindicate their free speech rights. Two federal courts declined to address whether Gwinnett violated the students’ constitutional rights because the college modified its policies after the case was filed. Most federal courts will decide the constitutional question even if the government changes its policy because doing so prevents future misconduct and vindicates the essential freedoms that the Constitution protects. Student Chike Uzuegbunam tried to share his Christian faith with other students on the Lawrenceville, Georgia, campus in...

Skip Indeed, students reported that they worry less about censure from faculty than from peers. Skip An alarming 25.5 percent of survey respondents said it would be appropriate to “create an obstruction, such that a campus speaker endorsing this idea could not address an audience.” This authoritarian view was held by about 19 percent of self-identifying liberals, 3 percent of moderates, and 3 percent of conservatives. Skip Also troubling were the undergraduates who reported having kept an opinion to themselves in the classroom, even though the opinion was related to the class, because they were worried about the potential consequences...

Five years ago, Valentine's Day was marked in Denmark by murder - not a lot of murder by the standards of similar events before and after, but this one struck close to home: It would be the last time my old comrade Lars Vilks appeared in public. My closing remarks below on the shriveling perimeters of free speech and the popular support it requires have proven sadly true in the half-decade since. Here is some of what I had to say about the events of February 14th 2015: Today, Valentine's Day, a café in Copenhagen hosted a discussion on "Art,...

Avoiding censorship by going abroad

SALINE, MI - Four Saline High School students have filed a federal lawsuit claiming the school district should not be able to discipline them for sending racist messages to fellow students in a Snapchat group.The four unidentified students filed the lawsuit Tuesday, Feb. 11, in U.S. District Court in Detroit, claiming the district suspended two students, who have since returned to classes, while expulsion has been recommended for two others.“The school is acting outside the scope of its authority, has no legal right to impose the discipline carried out, and has violated our clients’ constitutional rights by their reckless and...

... During the 2018-19 school year, 107 bias and hate complaints were filed at UW-Madison, each of which I retrieved through a freedom of information request. While the information identifying students and professors was redacted, the breadth and scope of what campus community members are willing to report one another for is revealing. UW-Madison isn’t alone—In 2017, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education found 232 American schools with Bias Response Teams. This number is almost certainly outdated—in 2020, it is difficult to find any major public university that doesn’t have some sort of reporting structure, whether they call it...

Leaders of the Church of Planned Parenthood say their regular protests are not intended to disrupt the facility’s services. Councilwoman Lori Kinnear wants to make sure of it. Kinnear introduced a new law Monday that she said aims to respect free speech and the protesters’ right to their opinion, while ensuring their chorus of objection does not intrude on the services inside the health care facility’s walls. “It does not impact free speech. Protests are still allowed, that’s not the issue. It’s about noise,” Kinnear said. The South Hill councilwoman drafted a law that would set specific protections for health...

.Lo got political during her Super Bowl half time show which featured Latino children in cages who then broke into a rendition of 'Born in the USA' in what appeared to be a swipe at Donald Trump's immigration policies. Both Shakira and J.Lo put their Latina heritage front and center of the show, with the former - who was born in Colombia - taking to the stage shouting 'hola Miami!' before bringing out rapper Bad Bunny who sung in Spanish. But it was J.Lo who made the bigger statement during the latter part of her performance, when the lights rose...

If you haven’t notice, the Bolsheviks are nervous. You heard it here on CD Media first — the tipping point against the communist agitators in our midst has finally arrived. It’s morning in America. Donald Trump will not be impeached, will be re-elected, and will continue to change America for the better. Brexit is a done deal. The American economy is roaring, China is fading into a morass of virus-infected zombies. Minorities are coming to Trump in droves. This has nothing to do with the color of your skin, and everything to do with your children’s future. Michael Johns ✔...

In a long-running case that was revived by the California Supreme Court, appellate judges now rule that the 'Marlon' star's conduct toward a co-worker can be connected to public discourse. In a long-running case that was revived by the California Supreme Court, appellate judges now rule that the 'Marlon' star's conduct toward a co-worker can be connected to public discourse. Most people don't get a chance to taste the victory of an important free speech ruling. On Friday, actor Marlon Wayans experienced success for the second time at California's Second Appellate District. For several years now, Wayans has been defending...

A man who telecom regulators say was apparently behind a barrage of racist robocalls in six states — sowing hate in response to the killing of an Iowa college student by an undocumented immigrant and a white supremacist’s murder trial in Virginia — is facing a proposed fine of nearly $13 million by the Federal Communications Commission. The man, Scott D. Rhodes, who anti-hate groups say is a white supremacist and runs the website Road to Power, was “apparently” responsible for more than 6,000 robocalls in 2018 “with the intent to cause harm,” the F.C.C. said on Thursday. The commission...