Free Republic

It looks like Washington D.C. residents are taking Rep. Maxine Water’s advice and confronting members of the Trump administration as they go about their lives in public places. The latest incident occurred Monday in a D.C. restaurant and the target was the EPA’s Scott Pruitt. Bonus points for having a 2-year-old toddler in tow as she confronted him.Kristin Mink, a teacher, was having lunch with her toddler when she noticed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt three tables over. Taking a page out of the social justice warrior’s playbook, she “had to say something”, so she did. To...

A woman publicly confronted Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt while he was eating lunch on Monday and urged him to resign, according to video posted on Facebook. "EPA head Scott Pruitt was 3 tables away as I ate lunch with my child. I had to say something," Kristin Mink posted on Facebook with an accompanying video of her encounter with Pruitt.Minka, who is a schoolteacher according to her Facebook profile, lists off multiple scandals Pruitt has been ensnared in since becoming EPA chief, including the rental of a Capitol Hill condo owned by the wife of an influential...

Recall not long ago or far away, when President Barak Obama was in office and the prevailing view on the left was not only that any substantive criticism of his policies was racist, but that it was tantamount to sedition. Recall in 2010, when the conservative Tea Party held a big rally in Washington and made a lot of noise, including allegedly yelling some racial slurs at some congressmen (an allegation that was never documented, even with smartphones everywhere) but didn’t attack or harass anyone physically and even cleaned up after themselves. That was labeled overt sedition, incitement to violence...

Two days after White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders began preaching civility when she got asked to leave Red Hen Restaurant in Virginia, GOP unleashed it’s “Unhinged” ad for the midterm election. RNC considered Wolf’s White House Correspondents Dinner performance “unhinged” enough to be featured.Unhinged

Taking a political stand — like asking a White House press secretary to leave your restaurant — can be polarizing and risky. So experts say an owner who decides to act should do so with forethought and civility. The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, has become internationally famous since ousting Sarah Huckabee Sanders over last weekend. The owner had consulted with employees, who said Ms. Sanders made them feel uncomfortable. It was an on-the-spot decision, and led to condemnation by President Donald Trump, an onslaught of negative Yelp reviews and global media coverage. Under federal law, restaurants and other businesses...

LEXINGTON, Va. (WDBJ7) Hundreds of people, representing several different groups, gathered in Lexington Saturday for demonstrations sparked by the actions of a restaurant owner. Motorcycles roared down East Washington Street as dozens lined the sidewalk, holding signs with sayings like "The Red Hen laid a rotten egg." Nearly everyone who came out for a series of rallies was there to show support for President Trump, after the owner of the Red Hen asked his chief spokesperson to leave the restaurant more than a week ago. "That was the straw that broke the camel's back and set us off and made...

John Legend is not interested in Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s dining experience. While leaving a Beverly Hills restaurant with his wife Chrissy Teigen on Wednesday night, John Legend was asked by a TMZ reporter if he believed Real Housewives of Atlanta star Claudia Jordan had gone too far when she fat-shamed White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, saying she’s “not missing any meals, she’ll be all right.” “Ask me ‘Should we be reuniting 2,000 kids with their families?’” Legend replied, referring to the thousands of immigrant children torn from their families under the current administration’s family-separation policy. “Yes, we should.”...

The co-owner of the Virginia restaurant that refused to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has resigned from a local business group. News outlets report Stephanie Wilkinson, co-owner of the Red Hen, resigned Tuesday as executive director of Main Street Lexington. […] The Red Hen has not reopened since that night. Protests continue, with one man being escorted away by police after throwing chicken manure. …

Reviewers flooded the Yelp page of a Canadian restaurant with one-star reviews after a manager was fired for kicking out a man wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. The Teahouse in Vancouver’s Stanley Park has come under fire for the incident, which occurred less than a week after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was kicked out of a Virginia restaurant. The negative reviews came from both sides of the aisle, with some critiquing the restaurant for kicking out the patron, and other tearing into the restaurant for firing the manager. “The cowardice decision to err on the...

The left-leaning commentariat didn't hesitate to backstop the restaurant owner who asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment on Friday. The issue is democracy, not civility, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote. Civility has only marginal value in the current political moment, Tom Scocca argued in The Washington Post. When Trump supporters say they care about civility, they don't really mean it, Vox's Matt Yglesias suggested. Liberals are in fighting trim, and they're spoiling for a showdown with the president's minions. But that's a bad strategy. Abandoning civility and escalating the outrage cycle --...

If you’re thinking about checking out the website owned by the restaurant that asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the premises, you might want to hold off. There’s some site compromise action afoot. Although the homepage appears to be acting in a perfectly normal manner, turning off scripts so you can see what’s happening under the hood provides a rather stark visual discrepancy. Visiting as normal: Visiting with scripts turned off: Why yes, that’s a collection of Viagra spam text injected into the website with the aim of giving a search engine boost to the...

In almost every opinion on the restaurant that famously refused to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders, there is a too-neat congruence between the moral argument and the meta-political argument. If you think it’s right and just and admirable to deprive a Trump administration mouthpiece of an evening out in polite society, you probably also think that this sort of direct action is the vital spark that the left needs to mobilize and defeat Trumpism outright. On the other hand, if you think that the restaurant owner committed an obnoxious breach of the basic bipartisan civility that prevents our empire from becoming...

The 2016 election gave us the “Silent Trump Supporter” — Trump voters who would not reveal their true sympathies to pollsters. This was a great mystery at the time, but seeing now how Trump supporters are routinely denigrated, harassed and vilified, their silence was understandable if not prescient. In 2018, the Silent Trump Supporter has gone global. Around the world, government officials and heads of state ritually denounce President Trump to anyone who will listen. But at the same time they are pursuing the game-changing policies the president has championed. Take this story from the European Union, please. “China and...

It’s only been five days since the Red Hen’s owner Stephanie Wilkinson refused service to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family in quiet Lexington, Virginia. What followed next was five days of raucous outroar of epic, nay, biblical proportions. Not wanting to miss the action, RVA Magazine arrived in Lexington on Wednesday morning to dig the vibe. Tempers were running hot and expectations were looking grim–a certain sting was in the air. The protests the day before saw one arrest and a hot mess of chicken shit (yes, actual chicken feces) splashed across the restaurant doors....

Having your business suddenly in the political spotlight can have several adverse consequences, including gaining the attention of online fraudsters. The Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington, Virgina, which recently made news refusing to serve White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is being targeted in a cyberattack according to a researcher. The scammers have apparently taken over parts of the Red Hen's website in order to use its sudden popularity to drive traffic to their own web sites, which sell things like discount Viagra. The scammers likely weren’t trying to take a political stand, and instead hoped to capitalize on...

We heard the disturbing news that early last week that Kirstjen Nielsen, Homeland Security Secretary, was heckled by demonstrators while attempting to enjoy a quiet dinner in a Washington D.C. Mexican restaurant. Then, a few days later, it was reported that a restaurateur in Virginia asked White House Press Secretary Sara Huckabee Sanders to leave her restaurant after already being seated and served. It seems to me that these public servants aren't deserving of such treatment, marking a new low in the behavior and civility of the political left. Perhaps it's time for a new approach when those of us...

LEXINGTON, VA (WCMH) - A West Virginia man is facing charges after he allegedly threw chicken poop at the restaurant that denied service to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. Reginald Scott Lee, 51, of Martinsburg, was arrested and charged with littering and disorderly conduct after allegedly throwing the chicken feces outside the Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, WSET reported. Both charges are misdemeanors.

Restaurants have no obligation to serve agents of mass human suffering Last week, restaurants once again served as a battleground in the culture wars, igniting a debate over how Trump administration officials should be treated in public. It started when Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was jeered at MXDC Cocina Mexicana, a D.C. Mexican restaurant, in the wake of the administration’s extreme immigration policies. Days later, it came to light that senior White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of the government’s family separation policy and genuinely Bad Person, was called a fascist and heckled by his...

Most voters fear that political violence is coming from opponents of the president’s policies, just as they did in the second year of Barack Obama’s presidency, and nearly one-in-three think a civil war is next. Thirty-one percent (31%) of Likely U.S. Voters say it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years, with 11% who say it’s Very Likely. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 59% consider a second civil war unlikely, but that includes only 29% who say it’s Not At All Likely. (To see...

They come in all different disguises. * Protesters disrupting the Mexican restaurant meal of a Cabinet Secretary, forcing her to leave. * The owner of an innocent-sounding “Red Hen” restaurant in Lexington, Virginia boasting that she refused to serve the presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders and asked her to leave. Sanders quite politely did. Now we learn from Sanders’ Dad, Governor Mike Huckabee, that when Sanders did as requested and went to another nearby restaurant — the angry Red Hen owner followed and kept harassing her. (Note: At press time I had heard that Sanders herself was present at another...