Free Republic

Republicans in 2014 won the biggest majority in Congress they've had since the 1930s, so the grassroots expect them to deliver the fruits of victory. The best guide for action is the "Immigration Handbook for the New Republican Majority" by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), issued a couple of weeks ago. Sessions' report asks the fundamental question: "What sense does it make to continue legally importing millions of low-wage workers to fill jobs while sustaining millions of current residents on welfare?" Republicans can't win in 2016 without tapping into that unrepresented American constituency. President Obama has issued orders granting work permits...

Last September President Obama cited his drone program in Yemen as a successful model of US anti-terrorism strategy. He said that he would employ the Yemen model in his effort to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But just a week ago, the government in Yemen fell to a Shite militia movement thought to be friendly to Iran. The US embassy in Yemen's capitol was forced to evacuate personnel and shut down operations. If Yemen is any kind of model, it is a model of how badly US interventionism has failed. In 2011 the US turned against...

Today President Obama will deliver his whopping $4 trillion budget to Congress. President Barack Obama sent Congress a record $4 trillion budget Monday that would boost taxes on higher-income Americans and corporations, pushing past tight federal spending caps to fund an ambitious public works program and provide middle-class tax relief. Obama's budget, which will set off months of wrangling in Congress, proposes spending $4 trillion — $3.999 trillion before rounding — in the 2016 budget year that begins Oct. 1. That's a 6.4 percent increase over estimated spending this year, projecting that the deficit will decline to $474 billion. POLITICO...

Hard to miss the recently kerfuffle over the fact that the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, invited the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to speak to a joint session of Congress. This happened immediately after President Obama’s State of the Union speech where many thought he skirted over the crisis with Iran. The problem is almost all of the analysis has missed the point. It begins with trying to understand why Speaker Boehner gave the White House only a half-day notice of the invitation. In what was disclosed by the Washington Post, the Speaker previously had been left...

In the 90s, the Clinton Administration formed a bipartisan coalition to pass the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA. Nineteen states followed suit. The legislation came in response to a Supreme Court decision that had seen an American Indian suffer legally for having used a drug during a well-established American-Indian religious ceremony. RFRA's framework was common sense. "Under RFRA, the government may not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion unless it can demonstrate that the burden is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest, and it is the least restrictive means of advancing a compelling interest." See Perez...

A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world. In his State of the Union address, Obama refused to even take note of the GOP's historic midterm gains and the fact the House and Senate are now both under Republican control. On foreign policy, Obama talked as if everything was going swimmingly abroad, prompting even the Washington Post's Dana Milbank to marvel at Obama's "disconnect" from what is happening in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Russia....

There was a time, not so long ago, when interviewing the President of the United States was considered the pinnacle of a professional journalist’s career. Such an opportunity to probe the mind of the man responsible for directly or indirectly impacting the lives of virtually every person on the planet, was entrusted only to those with the qualifications and pedigree to handle such an important assignment; not to mention making the most of the president’s valuable and limited time. Not so today. Rather than a Pulitzer Prize or Peabody Award as the prerequisite for the honor of personally interviewing the...

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama was upbeat and inspiring, particularly if a listener had no prior knowledge of his many speeches that were quite similar but bore no fruit. It almost appeared that he was living in an alternate universe that bore no resemblance to present-day America and the current global stage. He boasted that the economy was doing very well and that unemployment had been cut in half since he took office. Perhaps someone should educate him about the labor force participation rate, which is at its lowest point in the past 36 years...

Kudos to Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at a joint session on the issue of imposing tough sanctions on Iran and to Netanyahu for accepting. President Obama has continually snubbed Israel and Netanyahu -- whom he refuses to meet with in March, allegedly because he doesn't want to interfere with the upcoming elections in Israel. Obama has been alarmingly lax in his dealings with Iran in its ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Some Obama defenders are chastising Congress for breaching protocol in inviting Netanyahu, saying, "There appear to be no rules anymore."...

“Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined,” President Obama said during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. “Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs. Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago — jobs at companies like Google, and eBay, and Tesla.” While Politico pointed out that most of the companies Obama touted are big, left-leaning D.C. spenders, his choice of mentioning eBay...

So I just watched President Barack Obama deliver his sixth State of the Union address. If it didn’t involve my job, there is no way on God’s green Earth I would watch this thing, ever. Obama’s speech was like listening to a grown man sit on Santa’s lap, listing everything he wants and threatening a temper tantrum if he doesn’t get it. What doesn’t the president want? That’s not a rhetorical question. I have no idea what he doesn’t want government to do for people. Community College? That should be “free!” And by free I mean other people should be...

Enthusiastic, entertaining, energized and eminent, President Obama's demeanor and delivery at the State of the Union belied his political reality. Unbowed, unbroken and possibly unaffected by the recent midterm Republican wave, Obama displayed his great skill by delivering an emotional teleprompter-driven speech that was a throwback to his first election. Varying tempo, pitch, passion and inflection, his speech was more a theatrical performance than a delivery of a prewritten, pre-released text. He was unbounded by his political reality. Possibly no one in his staff had informed him that he had 90 fewer elected Democrats in his audience than has any...

WASHINGTON -- No matter what President Obama said about the state of our union Tuesday night, the economy's prognosis is not good. Who says so? A hefty majority of the American people in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that sought their opinion about the economy's health. Roughly six in 10 said it was "not so good" or "poor." Six years into Obama's painfully slow recovery, jobs are hard to come by in many parts of the country and wages remain flat. Hourly earnings actually fell last month, the U.S. Labor Department reported last week. It's gotten so bad that...

resident Obama sure is consistent. His State of the Union address sounded like his other speeches: What I've done is great! America is in a much better position. We've created a manufacturing sector that's adding jobs. More oil is produced at home. I cut deficits in half! Give me a break. The deficit is lower now not because of any prudence on Obama's part but merely because the $800 billion stimulus spending blowout didn't continue. All the president does is increase spending: free community college, free Obamaphones, free birth control, etc. Yes, our annual deficit is lower, but it's still...

Here's a suggestion for Joni Ernst, the new Republican senator from Iowa, who will deliver the GOP response to the State of the Union address Tuesday night. Get a chorus together and open with this old Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne number: "It seems to me I've heard that song before; it's from an old familiar score, I know it well, that melody." Advance leaks of the president's address indicate he will call for higher taxes on the wealthy and successful in order to pay for programs for the poor and middle class. This is boilerplate Democratic wealth redistribution we've heard since...

RUSH: Here's Al in Boise, Idaho. Hey, Al, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Yeah. My one football thing is to say, "Way to go Broncos." RUSH: (laughing) CALLER: But my thing is, I'm an employee at the airport, and we heard that Obama's coming Wednesday and I'm wondering why in the world is he coming here. I mean, right now I'm sitting here in a store and I just saw two guys with guns at their side and everybody here has concealed weapons and they have flags flying on their cars and, you know, why...

Mid-January is the time to ask the annual question: Are we ready for a big, noisy, overhyped prime-time production that has outgrown its simple origins and usually leaves us feeling both gorged and disappointed? If not, you may want to skip the State of the Union address and prepare for something humbler, like the Super Bowl. President Barack Obama has been doing his best to make a low-news event a no-news event, by traveling the country unveiling the sort of programs presidents normally use the speech to unveil: free community college, paid job leaves, universal broadband access and more. By...

The Justice Department is about to put the squeeze on the Standard & Poor's credit rating service for the tune of $1billion, roughly its 2014 profit, and a fine meant to send a message, according to a Jan. 12 report in The New York Times. The message: Do not tangle with the Obama administration. The charge: Standards & Poor's analysts misrepresented their sincere opinion of securities, and instead downplayed the amount of risk associated with the securities, specifically Residential Mortgage-Back Securities and Collateral Debt Obligations, in order to ingratiate themselves to the companies issuing the securities. This charge, which Attorney...

I am guessing you don't know one of the major things President Obama was doing while snubbing France and world leaders who convened in Paris to express solidarity in the civilized world's war against radical Islamic terrorism. I assure you it was something close to his heart -- as opposed to fighting Islamic jihad. It was something that will thrill the anti-business, anti-energy extreme environmentalists but will not warm the hearts of American businesses and energy producers, and it is not good news for America's currently overhyped economy. Yes, you heard me right; despite all the faux euphoria projected by...

The Obama administration is historic. That’s something we hear constantly from media elites, from congressional Democrats and, frankly from the White House itself. And they’re right. This administration has overseen a historically slow economic recovery; it has overseen the ceding of more ground to terrorists than ever before; it rung up more debt than every previous administration combined, and so on. It is historic. Another way in which the Obama administration is historic is in its employ of Islamic theologians in positions where such expertise isn’t required. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest has spent the last week explaining to...