Free Republic

Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted on Thursday saying, “Meet [Nina Jankowicz] the new director of the first Federal Speech Police in American history. Instead of stopping drugs and illegal immigration [DHS] will be focused on stopping American citizens from sharing opinions or information this new bureau decides is misinformation.”

Ever post a Bible verse on social media? Under the law in Finland, this could land you in jail. A Finnish provision holds that if a person is found to have expressed an “opinion” or “another message” deemed to have “threatened, defamed, or insulted” they could face imprisonment for up to two years—potentially serious jail time for nothing more than a perceived insult. Lest this sound unfathomably dystopian, this law has been employed by Finland’s Prosecutor General to bring three criminal charges against long-time Finnish Member of Parliament, and former Minister of the Interior, Dr. Päivi Räsänen. Her alleged crime:...

Twitter announced the 12-hour suspension, saying it determined Green’s post “violated the Twitter rules, so we’ve temporarily suspended some of your account features.” The social media giant tagged one of Greene’s tweets about the Jan. 5 election. “The 1/5 disaster in Georgia lays solely in the hands of state leadership who failed voters in our state. @GaSecofState and@GabrielSterling were begged by Republicans to fix our elections. They did nothing. They are to blame, not me, not @realDonaldTrump, not @CollinsforGA,” she wrote on Twitter, referencing election officials in the Peach State. It included clips of former Attorney General Bill Barr and...

In light of how people are saying they want to be called, him/her, it, etc....try this at work. Tell them you now identify as: MASTER. This is how they must now address you.

The First Amendment to our Constitution was proposed by the 1788 Virginia ratification convention during its narrow 89 to 79 vote to ratify the Constitution. Virginia's resolution held that the free exercise of religion, right to assembly and free speech could not be canceled, abridged or restrained. These Madisonian principles were eventually ratified by the states on March 1, 1792. Gettysburg College professor Allen C. Guelzo, in his article "Free Speech and Its Present Crisis," appearing in the autumn 2018 edition of City Journal, explores the trials and tribulations associated with the First Amendment. The early attempts to suppress free...

Lena Dunham is calling out American Airlines after the actress claimed to have overheard two apparent employees engaged in "transphobic talk." The "Girls" creator said her flight on another airline was delayed for hours Wednesday at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport. Dunham, 31, wrote that the "worst part of this night" waiting at the airport came when she overheard two American Airlines' "attendants having a transphobic talk." "At this moment in history we should be teaching our employees about love and inclusivity @AmericanAir," she added in a subsequent tweet. "That was worst part of this night." Dunham...

The federal government has become a vast cornucopia for people who know how to play the system. If you do, you can enjoy showers of money for doing things that few if any Americans would willingly pay for. Just to point to a recent instance that made headlines, after Democrats griped that the Center for Disease Control had been crippled in its ability to deal with Ebola because of budget cuts, quite a few writers scrutinized the research that the CDC had been paying for. As Michael Tanner of Cato Institute showed in this column, CDC bureaucrats have been funding...

A few years ago ago I was on a Question Time panel which was preparing to pontificate to the nation from a studio in Norwich. Before the show goes on air there's always a warm-up question so the pundits can get into their stride and the audience can build up their hatred of whichever government spokesperson has been passed the black spot by the Number 10 press office. Ours was on the decision of Norwich city council to fell a fine row of horse chestnut trees, which it had branded as a public menace. Unctuous officials justified themselves by warning...

Elton John has said stars are scared to speak out against war in Iraq because of "bullying tactics" used by the US government to hinder free speech. "There's an atmosphere of fear in America right now that is deadly. Everyone is too career-conscious," he told New York magazine, Interview. Sir Elton said performers could be "frightened by the current administration's bullying tactics", The singer likened the current "fear factor" to McCarthyism in the 1950s. "There was a moment about a year ago when you couldn't say a word about anything in this country for fear of your career being shot...