Free Republic

The Democratic mayor of Edison, New Jersey, is facing criticism after saying immigrants "aren't welcome" there amid an uptick in migrants arriving in cities across the United States. Democratic mayors are facing new pressure as thousands of migrants have been transported from the U.S.-Mexico border to cities including New York and Chicago. There were more than 2.4 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during the 2023 fiscal year, up from roughly 1.7 million in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

That’s some perk for a “private citizen.” First son Hunter Biden was driven to and from the federal courthouse in Wilmington, Del., in a motorcade comprising about half a dozen SUVs Wednesday, drawing outrage from conservatives. The first son’s appearance was intended to cement a controversial plea arrangement for misdemeanor tax violations and a felony firearm charge. That went awry following a dispute between prosecutors and defense attorneys over the possibility of future charges for Hunter — including potential unregistered foreign lobbying. But the elaborate security detail accompanying the 53-year-old triggered Twitter grousing over taxpayers footing the bill for the...

He tweeted,... "The entire media is Triggered that I (a private citizen) tweeted out a story naming the alleged whistleblower. Are they going to pretend that his name hasn’t been in the public domain for weeks now? Numerous people & news outlets including Real Clear Politics already ID’d him." Alleged ‘Whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella Worked Closely with Anti-Trump Dossier Hoaxer," Trump Jr. tweeted. Trump Jr. later pushed back on the claim that his tweet was a part of an effort to out the whistleblower in conjunction with the White House. “The outrage on this is BS. And those pretending that I...

Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive lineman Gerald McCoy, speaking on Adam Schefter's Know Them From Adam podcast, said he thinks there might "be an uproar" if NFL players are forced to stand for the national anthem. "I don't think guys are gonna like it," McCoy said, when asked about the possible reaction from players. "I think it's gonna be an uproar if that is to happen because you're basically taking away a constitutional right to freedom of speech. If guys wanna have a, I guess you would call it a peaceful protest, I don't think it's right to take that away."...

For most people in the southern African nation, where unemployment tops 80 percent and the economy continues to feel the after-effects of billion percent hyperinflation a decade ago, the uproar had all the hallmarks of a 'First World Problem'. "Are you saying that all this noise is about a dead lion? Lions are killed all the time in this country," said Tryphina Kaseke, a used-clothes hawker on the streets of Harare. "What is so special about this one?" As with many countries in Africa, in Zimbabwe big wild animals such as lions, elephants or hippos are seen either as a...

The suspension of Phil Robertson from A&E’s Duck Dynasty is outrageous in a nation that values freedom, according to social critic and openly gay, dissident feminist Camille Paglia. “I speak with authority here, because I was openly gay before the ‘Stonewall rebellion,’ when it cost you something to be so. And I personally feel as a libertarian that people have the right to free thought and free speech,” Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, said on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Thursday. “In a democratic country, people have the right to be homophobic as well as...

A raucous debate is raging in Egypt over whether to accept some $200 million in US aid to build up long-suppressed civil society organizations, as critics denounce Washington for "meddling" in internal Egyptian affairs by providing assistance to groups not authorized by the interim authorities in Cairo. Several weeks after the February 11 ouster of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) allocated around $65 million to democracy-development programs in Egypt, part of an economic and civil assistance package of $200 million.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican Party leader Michael Steele faced heavy criticism and calls for his resignation on Friday after blaming President Barack Obama for the Afghanistan war and suggesting it could not be won. At a Republican fundraiser in Connecticut on Thursday, Steele was videotaped while criticizing Obama's decision to bolster the Afghanistan war effort. The comments contradicted the stance of the party, which has consistently pushed for more troops and funding in Afghanistan. "This was a war of Obama's choosing," said Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or...

Afghan Pres. Says Top U.S. Commander is "Best" Person to Lead the Effort ### The spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai says the leader believes Gen. Stanley McChrystal is the "best commander" of the war. Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar says the president strongly backs the top commander in Afghanistan and hopes that President Barack Obama doesn't decide to replace him.

A film about the rise of anti-Semitic movements in Poland has recently been met with censure by members of the country's parliament and public. Hitler's Daughter, directed by Aro Korol and produced by Korol's London-based Awesome Industry, focuses on right-wing radio station Radio Maryja, as well as its founder, Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Roman Catholic priest. "Father Rydzyk sees no contradiction between wearing a collar and spreading his politics via satellite," Korol wrote on the film's Web site, hitlersdaughtermovie.com. "One of Radio Maryja's many anti-Semitic commentaries suggested that Jews were sabotaging the struggle of democracy in Ukraine and Belarus. The station...

PARIS – President Nicolas Sarkozy's 23-year-old son is angling for a key job overseeing billions of euros in commerce at France's top business district — a job critics say he does not deserve. Jean Sarkozy's conservative backers insisted Monday that he's qualified to chair EPAD, the quasi-governmental agency that manages the La Defense financial district on the western outskirts of Paris. The sprawling complex of skyscrapers houses the headquarters of some of Europe's biggest companies, such as oil giant Total and bank Societe Generale. Sarkozy, a law school student at the Sorbonne, is the main candidate for the chairmanship. Socialist...

WASHINGTON – Knocked offstride by a racial uproar he helped stoke, President Barack Obama hastened Friday to try and tamp down the controversy. Obama, who had said Cambridge, Mass., police "acted stupidly" in arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., declared the white arresting officer was a good man and invited him and the professor to the White House for a beer. Obama conceded his words had been ill-chosen, but he stopped short of a public apology. He personally telephoned both Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, hoping to end the rancorous back-and-forth over what had transpired and what Obama had...

VATICAN CITY – From the Gospel to Google, the church has been seeking ways to announce the word of Christ for 2,000 years. Pope Benedict XVI has gone on YouTube and his speeches appear in Chinese on the Vatican Web site, but judging from the uproar over a Holocaust-denying bishop and his pronouncement that condoms deepen the AIDS crisis, he's clearly struggling with his message. During his nearly four-year papacy, criticism has been pouring in from Muslims, Jews and members of his own flock, as the German pontiff seems to step into controversy at every turn. The attacks by European...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama sought on Thursday to tamp down public anger over the AIG bonus scandal and refocus Americans' attention on the bigger picture -- his administration's efforts to fix the economy. "We can be as mad as we want, but ... we gotta work through this huge mess that was made in the financial system," Obama told a town hall-style meeting in Los Angeles attended by 1,100 people who had stood in line for hours to hear him speak. "I understand how mad everybody is about this AIG bonuses business. I'm mad. But fixing...

Pope's apology fails to halt Islamic uproar By Michael Hirst and Nick Pisa in Rome (Filed: 17/09/2006) Muslims leaders around the world demanded a more personal apology from the Pope last night after the Vatican said he "sincerely regrets" the offence caused by remarks which they claimed had insulted Islam. Senior Vatican officials tried to damp down fury over the speech in which the Pope quoted from a medieval text saying that the Prophet Mohammed had brought the world "only evil and inhuman" things. Activists from the Daughters of Faith protest against the Pope Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary...

SAN JOSE – Is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Republican enough? It's a question that has dominated the state GOP convention in the Silicon Valley this weekend and will be answered by more than 1,000 convention delegates in a floor vote today. Republican state Chairman Duf Sundheim described the discussion over Schwarzenegger's policies as a historic occasion. But party activists who accuse Schwarzenegger of rejecting his Republican mantle say what is transpiring is little more than a thinly veiled attempt to silence intra-party dissent. Saturday afternoon, a party committee that shapes such discussions at the convention effectively reduced a brawl over Schwarzenegger's...

Cartoon blasphemy gets hot really hot... An international row over newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad gathered pace on Thursday as more European dailies printed controversial Danish caricatures and Muslims increased pressure to stop them. A dozen Palestinian gunmen surrounded European Union offices in the Gaza Strip demanding an apology for the cartoons, one of which shows Islam's founder wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.Palestinian gunmen kidnapped and later released a German from a hotel in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses said.Earlier, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened at a news conference to...

A Monster Thickburger bought by a reporter Monday at a St. Louis Hardee's was presented appealingly enough, wrapped neatly in light paper and standing a whopping 2 1/2 inches tall inside a box. But the double-pattied behemoth, bought as part of combo with French fries and a drink, stretched the mouth and stomach, too much for the reporter to absorb in one sitting.

LOS ANGELES - George Carlin (news) famously dissected "The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" as a way to explore what everyone was so uptight about. Thirty-two years later the same debate is still raging, now fueled by Janet Jackson (news)'s Super Bowl flash, the suspension of Howard Stern's raunchy radio show from six stations and new House legislation that would raise a performer's indecency fine from $11,000 to $500,000. So what does the 66-year-old Carlin think of the current handwringing over what is indecent, profane, obscene, immoral, lewd or insulting? "More of the same, more of the same....

Plan for lethal-virus laboratories leaves Smalltown USA in uproar By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 29 June 2003 A network of high-security laboratories for storing and investigating some of the most lethal viruses known to mankind is being built across the US, leaving communities in uproar. They not only fear the risk of the viruses escaping, but also contend that the programme, part of the $6bn (£3.5bn) Project BioShield, is a stunning case of overkill. For none of the germs to be studied is related to bioweaponry. In the tiny town of Hamilton, Montana, campaigners worry that they will become...