Free Republic

We all have to suspect that neither Truman nor Ike would have let the Castro brothers write their own ticket as President Obama did Wednesday. We know with certainty that neither JFK, LBJ, RN, Ford, Carter, Reagan, either Bush nor Bill Clinton would have done what President Obama did vis-a-vis Cuba because none of the last nine presidents did so, even though all were confronted with essentially the circumstances: a communist dictatorship exporting revolution throughout Central and South America (and during Carter's years, throughout Africa) while brutally oppressing their own people with complete disdain for basic human rights. We can...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay, what do you want to start with? You want to start with Cuba? Or you want to start with the Sony/North Korea hack? You want to start with showbiz first? All right. Because you know they're linked. They are intertwined. I'll be happy to explain it. I just hope -- well, let me just say at the beginning, my purpose here is not to dispirit anybody. It's quite the opposite in fact. I'm not trying to depress anybody with the take that I'm gonna have on this today. I'm trying actually to wake people up. Not...

There are lots of hypocrisies surrounding the recently released executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. But they pale in comparison to the current Democratic silence about President Barack Obama's policy of targeted drone assassinations. Since 2004, drones have killed an estimated 2,400 to 3,888 individuals in Pakistan alone, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. An estimated 345 to 553 individuals in Yemen have been killed in drone strikes over the same period. The BIJ reports that the Obama administration has "markedly stepped up the use of drones. Since...

Via WaPo, it’s now officially a mixed-blessings news day for Jeb Bush fans. Two issues here. One: Does Obama enjoy more power to craft policy if Congress is deadlocked between the two parties? Ezra Klein says yes, I say no. Two: How far can Obama go in crafting policy in the name of “prosecutorial discretion”? No one disputes that he can prioritize one illegal immigrant’s deportation case over another’s. If he can do that for one person, why can’t he do it systematically for five million? At what point does “prosecutorial discretion” become unconstitutional legislation by presidential diktat?Judge Arthur Schwab’s...

The Obama administration is now trying to outlaw single-sex classrooms, a practice that has been growing as parents and teachers see its good results. The Obama administration is discouraging that option in conformity with demands by the feminists who believe in the interchangeability of the genders and insist that schools forbid any deviation from their peculiar belief that there is no difference between male and female. The Minnesota State High School League, which controls policy for all extracurricular activities in all schools, public and private, voted 18 to 1 to outlaw recognition of all sex differences in high-school sports. The...

WASHINGTON - The nation's divided Congress battled down to the wire this week over its budget for the rest of this fiscal year -- hoping to avoid a government shutdown. The $1.01 trillion spending bill must be passed before midnight Thursday, though at this writing few were placing any big bets on meeting that deadline. Still, Congress has dodged budget deadlines before and may do so again. If for no other reason than to drive a stake through the heart of a bitterly divided, unpopular legislature that can't seem to agree on anything except going home for the holidays. This...

Like two predatory animals circling each other, Republicans and Democrats are trying to sort out the meaning of last month's election and plan strategies for the remaining days of the current Congress and the new one in which Republicans will hold majorities in both houses. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), soon to be chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, spoke with me about the election and his party's strategy going forward. "I think (voters) want to see government respect taxpayers again and respect (government's) limits. And they don't want to see an executive go unchecked ... people want...

WASHINGTON -- The Democrats, who were in serious condition after being battered, bloodied and beaten in the midterm elections, are now on the critical list Hillary Clinton, the party's frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination, is receiving poor reviews for her performance on the stump, speaking to a half-empty hall at Georgetown University this week. Words like "banal" and "bureaucratic" were used to describe her vacuous, messageless, issue-light speech. At the same time, some Democrats are sensing that the former first lady and secretary of state is an empty suit, with little, if any, executive abilities behind her overinflated resume....

Evidence mounts that President Obama is reacting with greater defiance and lawlessness despite Americans' repudiation of his agenda in the November elections, and the word is that Republican leaders in Congress are relaxing their resistance. Isn't it axiomatic that if you reward bad behavior you'll get more of it and that if you punish it you'll deter it? Then why would certain Republicans choose to reward behavior they are on record condemning? I'm talking about not the president's making policy choices we disagree with but which he has constitutional authority to implement. Increasingly, he has become a law unto himself,...

In his "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior," George Washington offered this sage advice: "Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company." Too bad President Obama and his best Chicago golfing buddy (BCGB), Dr. Eric Whitaker, didn't heed our Founding Father's wisdom. The duo's continued intimacy, as the stench of government corruption thickens around them, speaks volumes about our current commander in chief's reckless disregard for his reputation. How close is Obama to the beleaguered doc? They met playing basketball while grad students at Harvard...

For the first post-racial president we’ve ever had, this is working out about just as I expected. The candidate Obama acted responsibly during the election of 2008 when he had to reassure white voters that he was really one of them. Since then has become a radical black activist, parroting the worst features of the cold, racial war that is an ugly and unfortunate feature of American life. The contrast tells us that Obama knows what he’s doing. He exploits race in the same way Elizabeth Warren has, in the same way Al Sharpton has. If Tawana Brawley had been...

It was one of the few federal programs which worked well, did something good for America, and was popular with those using it. So it was just a matter of time before it became another casualty of the Obama administration. To protect the jobs not only of Americans, but also law-abiding immigrants, many of whom devoted years to legally plod the pathway to our country, E-Verify, a method of checking the legal status of job applicants, was established in 1997 to prevent illegal aliens from gaining employment in the US. The reasoning was sound (and should be our approach for...

Now that President Barack Obama announced his intentions to violate the Constitution and grant amnesty to 5 million illegal aliens through executive amnesty, Congress is in a rush to respond. Obama's actions are a threat to the America's democracy, and it is up to the American people to demand enforcement of America's immigration laws. After returning from recess on Monday, conservative Republicans in the U.S. House circulated draft legislation which would stop Obama's plan dead in it's tracks. The language, which was inserted into an upcoming spending bill, uses Congress' power of the purse and expressly prohibits the Department of...

Want to bet on tomorrow's NFL game between Chicago and Dallas? I do. Newspapers and websites all over America tell their readers that Dallas is favored by three points. That's the "spread" posted by bookies. Millions will be bet on that game, and billions will be bet on other games this weekend -- college football, NBA games, NHL matches, UFC events ... Most of these bets are illegal. This is not a good thing. Recently, National Basketball Association commissioner Adam Silver became the first major professional sports commissioner to endorse legalizing sports betting. In the New York Times, he wrote,...

After this, the word “colloquially” should be added to the definition of “Kinsleyan gaffe” — i.e. when a politician accidentally tells the truth … colloquially. That’s what Obama did last week when he shooed away a heckler by casually reassuring him that he had changed the law on immigration — which was true. With Congress unwilling to impeach and the next president unlikely for political reasons to cancel Obama’s order, his amnesty will survive as the de facto law of the land until either conservatives win the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate or the two parties...

Recent slowdowns at West Coast ports, the result of ongoing labor disputes, are jeopardizing the more than $2 trillion in cargo that pass though these ports each year. The slowdowns are not the only way U.S. maritime shipping unions are holding back the American economy. Most Americans have not heard of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, but this piece of antiquated legislation increases costs for American consumers and discourages domestic business investment. The Jones Act is a federal statute that requires all goods transported by water between U.S. ports to be carried on...

In spite of President Obama's bravado in the wake of the mid-term catastrophe that befell Democrats in every geography and at every level, huge cracks have developed in the ranks.To prevent the story line of "Obama Rejected at the Polls" from taking root, the President held a news conference the day after the election, then took off on a multi-nation Asian tour, then made good on his delayed threat to use "the executive order pen" to change immigration law.In the run up to the election the White House was reading the same polling numbers as everyone else. Like a good...

If you take the best of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, the brilliance of Ben Carson, and add a touch of ethnic humor, you get James T. Harris, one of my favorite talk show hosts on the radio today. Broadcasting from the desert in Old Pueblo on 104.1, KQTH in Tucson, AZ, James T. is the quintessential Tea Party conservative, devout Christian and a dedicated father of three – all rolled into one . . . Oh yeah, and he’s black. He’s the kind of guy I hate to argue with, which is why I don’t. I recently sat down...

WASHINGTON - If you thought the bare knuckled, no-holds-barred, midterm elections were rough, the last two years of Barack Obama's presidency will make that look like a Sunday school picnic. Frustrated by the slow, plodding pace of democracy, the Constitution's checks and balances, and the pertinence of Republicans to want a say in their government, Obama's preparing for all out war in next year's GOP Congress. He has taken to writing his own immigration laws, and by implication, erased Article I, Section 1 of our governing document that says "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress...

That split screen of President Obama talking while Ferguson burned was the perfect image of the Obama presidency. On one side of the screen, Obama was asking for calm and praising his Attorney General Eric Holder for the work he did to promote peace and calm. On the other side, Ferguson was under attack- being looted and burned. That’s “the money shot”- the iconic image of the Obama presidency. It was almost as if Obama was saying to Ferguson, “IF YOU LIKE YOUR CITY, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR CITY.” Obama's Ferguson speech turned out to be as truthful as the...