Free Republic

Last week, I posted an item about a Psychology Today article titled "The Ideological Animal" (now fully available at the website). The article purports to explain what motivates those of us who made the post-9/11 shift from left to right and it uses my story, as well as the discussion group I started, the 9/11 Neocons, as an example. As I indicated at the time, I have no serious complaints about the article's take on me, which I found to be generally fair. Mostly, I objected to the inaccurate use of the term "pro-war rallies" to describe my days as...

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos concerning the University of California at Berkeley's Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) and its potential misuse of federal funds under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA). By way of background: Title VI grants use taxpayer money to "develop a pool of international experts to meet national needs" in the field of "international studies and world languages." Programs supported by Title VI must "reflect diverse perspectives and a wide range of views" for the purpose of aiding U.S. national security. The Middle East Forum's Campus...

More than 750 lecturers at UC Berkeley fear for their jobs after the university expanded its hiring freeze. Lecturers with six years or less of experience on campus originally were exempt from the hiring freeze announced April 1. But UC Berkeley officials subsequently revised the terms of the freeze to include those lecturers... [subscription required]

While public universities across the nation ban conservative speakers or permit students to violently protest them, one of the offending colleges has erected a Palestinian terrorist shrine. The University of California Berkeley, successfully sued for discriminating against speakers with conservative views, has allowed a student group at the taxpayer-funded institution to construct a display honoring distinguished female terrorists from Palestine. A New York-based newspaper dedicated to covering Jewish and Israel-related issues provides details and photos of the UC Berkley sanctuary honoring the jihadists involved in bombings and hijackings. This is the same university that wasted public funds to fight...

A popular conservative YouTube channel has posted a widely watched video featuring students at the University of California, Berkeley answering how many genders they believe exist. Will Witt of PragerU recently visited the UC Berkeley campus and asked multiple students on camera questions about how many genders there are and if it was OK for men to use the same bathrooms and locker rooms as women. “Infinite,” answered the first student in the video, adding that she believed “you can’t put things in boundaries. You can define yourself as whatever you want.” Other students responded by saying there was “a...

Radio, IR and optical observations show evolution of plumes and their impact on belts and zones Storm clouds rooted deep in Jupiter's atmosphere are affecting the planet's white zones and colorful belts, creating disturbances in their flow and even changing their color. Thanks to coordinated observations of the planet in January 2017 by six ground-based optical and radio telescopes and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a University of California, Berkeley, astronomer and her colleagues have been able to track the effects of these storms -- visible as bright plumes above the planet's ammonia ice clouds -- on the belts in which...

UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky argued last week that the recent Alabama abortion bill is “unconstitutional.” In an interview with Berkeley News, UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky argued that the recent Alabama abortion bill is “unconstitutional.” “The Alabama law is clearly unconstitutional,” Chemerinsky said in the interview. “And it’s what’s next. Whatever federal district court, whatever (U.S.) Court of Appeals, hears it would have to declare it unconstitutional. Now, that doesn’t mean that the court will have to take the case. It could be that the lower courts declare it unconstitutional, and the (Supreme Court) decides...

The University of California, Berkeley has joined the growing list of universities tied to the sweeping college admissions scandal — as a former Canadian football player allegedly paid someone to take the SATs for his sons, one of whom was on the school’s rowing team. David Sidoo, who played for the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds and later the Canadian Football League, was busted March 8 on charges related to the scam, ABC affiliate KGO-TV reported. Sidoo allegedly paid someone $200,000 to take the SAT for his sons in 2011 and 2012, according to court documents obtained by the station.

Campus police have announced an arrest in the felony assault case involving a man caught on video punching another man on the UC Berkeley campus last week. The University of California Police Department announced the arrest by email at 2:10 p.m. Friday. Police said UCPD arrested Zachary Greenberg on a warrant involving a Feb. 19 assault on Sproul Plaza. Police said last week that they had identified the suspect in the case but did not release his name until Friday. Videos of the incident went viral last week after they were shared by conservative groups and figures calling the assault...

Conservative groups are calling on the University of California, Berkeley to take action against a campus employee who praised an alleged assault on an activist who was recruiting at a table. The university employee, Yuvi Panda, cheered the alleged assault – which campus police said happened on Tuesday -- on Twitter on Wednesday night. He tweeted: “OH MY GOD THE MAGA PEOPLE ON UC BERKELEY CAMPUS YESTERDAY GOT PUNCHED IN THE FACE BY SOMEONE THIS MAKES ME FEEL EMOTIONALLY SO MUCH BETTER.” In a news release Friday night, UC Berkeley officials announced that police had identified a potential suspect "Based...

A campus conservative was assaulted by a student at the University of California, Berkeley, on Tuesday for protesting hate crime hoaxes. According to video taken of the incident, the student threatened to shoot the victim, who was tabling with Berkeley Turning Point USA, before knocking his phone out of his hand and punching him in the face. The incident occurred during the course of an argument over Berkeley Turning Point USA’s posters, which referenced growing reports that "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett engineered a fake hate crime attack against himself. Throughout the day, six to seven students harassed the campus conservative...

One morning this fall, at his home high in the Berkeley hills, the literary critic and translator Robert Alter chatted with me about the dilemmas he faced while translating the Hebrew Bible. Alter, who is 83, sat on a sofa with a long-limbed, feline watchfulness. Behind him, a picture window looked out onto a blooming garden; now and then a hummingbird appeared over his left shoulder, punctuating his thoughts with winged flourishes. He occasionally cast a probing eye on his brand-new, complete translation of and commentary on the Hebrew Bible — from Genesis to Chronicles — which, at more than...

If it feels like the US has become increasingly divided along race, gender, and other identity lines — it's because it has. A report released by the Haas Institute at the University of California-Berkeley last week found that the US has become less inclusive -- in other words, less welcoming to women, minority groups and people with disabilities -- compared to the rest of the world since 2016. . . . .Meanwhile, the five least inclusive states have all enacted anti-Sharia laws, an indicator that the Haas Institute used to predict discrimination against all religious minorities.

With the embers still raining from blackened skies choked by California’s massive wildfires, the effort turns to rebuilding Paradise — a town of almost 30,000 that was wiped off the map. But experts warn that with megafires the new normal in a warming global climate, housing in the western United States is going to need a revolutionary rethink along the lines of villages dotting Europe’s wooded slopes. “I think people are thinking about if there is a way we can design the new Paradise that can look like more of a European village or a ski town, and not have...

God bless the work that the good people at Newsbusters do on a daily basis - watching liberal crap on TV and calling out leftist nonsense so that the rest of America does not have to. This time, Newsbuster's Brad Wilmouth snagged a clip from Friday night of CNN's Don Lemon's panel of liberal hacks (except one) accusing white, pro-Trump women of being racist fools who support white supremacy. From Wilmouth: Liberal contributor Kirsten Powers argued that such women must be "racist" because they voted for Trump, while UC Berkeley Professor Stephanie Jones-Rogers argued that women have long benefited from...

A student senator at UC Berkeley abstained from a vote supporting transgender rights last week, then took a moment to explain her thinking. Now, more than 1,000 people have signed a petition demanding that she resign from student government or face a recall.

For more than a century, UC Berkeley's elite law school has been closely tied to the name of the building that houses it, Boalt Hall.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — Five months after authorities cracked a decades-old cold case by nabbing the Golden State Killer, law enforcement officials announced Friday the capture of another notorious California predator, the NorCal rapist, who is accused of raping at least 10 women over 15 years. Officers arrested 58-year-old Roy Charles Waller Thursday morning as he arrived at work at the University of California Berkeley. Authorities found Waller by applying the same method used to catch the Golden State Killer – matching old crime scene DNA with data uploaded to the website of a Florida-based genealogy company called GED match....

Full Title: Berkeley Dem Nathanial Luffman Arrested for Threatening Rand Paul – Said He Would Leave His Children’s ‘Bowels Splayed Out Across Floor’ The Gateway Pundit has learned that the man who was arrested for making multiple calls threatening Senator Rand Paul was a Democratic Berkeley resident, who used the hashtag #ObamaForLife in some of his threats. Nathanial Blaine Luffman, a devoted Democrat, is originally from Kentucky and left messages for Paul saying that he was going to “gut you like a hog” and leave “your kids bowels splayed out across floor blood spattered on the door as you lay...

A recent poll by the University of California Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) has shown that Republican James Bradley, an outsider to the political world, is almost tied with Democrat State Sen. Kevin de Leon in the race for the U.S. Senate in California in the 2018 midterm election. Compared to two years ago, more Americans today may believe that electing a political outsider to a public office is not a bad idea. The job approval rating for President Donald Trump, who had never been part of any political establishment before he was elected, recently hit 51 percent, according...