Free Republic

Sometimes in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. It is high time to declare our personal independence from any remnant of obligation to those who have spit upon the rule of law. We owe them nothing - not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. Think about it. If you are out driving at 3 a.m., do you stop at a stop sign when there’s no one coming? Of course you do. You don’t need a cop to be there to make you stop. You do...

Protesting the Obama administration’s policy in Syria, dozens of State Department officers have signed an internal document calling on the administration to order targeted military strikes against Damascus to force regime change as the only way to defeat ISIS, the Wall Street Journal reports. The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy in various capacities, according to an official familiar with the document. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of the cable, which repeatedly calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire...

resident Obama held a press briefing, updating the nation on the threat posed to us by the Islamic State. He said that first and foremost, our minds are with those who have suffered unbearable loss and grief in the wake of the Orlando attack on Sunday. He reiterated that the victims are not alone. The American people, our allies, and friends all over the world stand with them. FBI Director James Comey updated the president on the terror investigation, saying that there is no credible evidence that a foreign terrorist organization ordered this attack, but repeated the point that the...

June marks just the second month since President Obama committed the U.S. to the Paris Climate Agreement, but already concerns over the potential for success are starting to pile up. Government reports and policy experts increasingly point to mounting evidence that Obama’s pledge under the Paris Agreement is simply unachievable, leading to the conclusion that the Agreement could be the precursor for even more job killing and economically disastrous regulations. Pursuant to the Paris Climate Agreement, President Obama pledged that the U.S. would reduce total greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. Aside from...

Ah, the "good old days," the ones that President Obama took a sarcastic swipe at during his recent commencement speech at Rutgers University when he said that America's "good old days weren't that great." Certainly he misread his teleprompter. Sure, we've experienced enormous advances in things like technology and medicine, but the "good old days" aren't so bad, especially compared to what's happening today. During the speech Obama said, "...by almost every measure, America is better and the world is better than it was 50 years ago, or 30 years ago, or even eight years ago." Apparently, Hillary Clinton missed...

A military parade may soon look less like a VE-Day parade down Times Square and more like a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, unless liberals in leadership stop using the U.S. military as a social engineering experiment. Let us not forget the same president who confused "corps" with "corpses" and exchanged a traitor for terrorists, also promised to fundamentally transform America. What we didn't know is that transformation would begin with the U.S. military, the protector of our nation and our values. The wussification of our military is in full swing, thanks to all the empty suit "yes-men" clad...

resident Obama said last year that he would rather the U.S. “with all the safeguards and standards that we have, be producing our oil and gas, rather than importing it, which is bad for our people” and “potentially purchased from places that have much lower environmental standards than we do.” Except, it now seems, in resource-rich federal waters in the Atlantic Ocean. The administration backpedaled on its promise to implement an all-of-the-above energy approach by deciding not to consider potential future oil and gas leasing at least 50 miles off the southeastern U.S. coast through 2022, despite the lease sale...

What does a suffering military veteran have to do to force an unresponsive government to change its ways? How about self-immolating in front of his VA clinic? Hello, paper-pushers and desk jockeys? Are you there? Would the heat, the smoke and the smell of burning flesh rouse you in the least? Nope. Apparently, even this horror is not enough to move the inert bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs -- let alone the indifferent tango dancer-in-chief. While President Obama sashayed in Buenos Aires two weeks ago, proud Navy veteran Charles Richard Ingram III, 51, made his last life's journey....

When I went to Israel for the first time in the summer of 2014, I visited the Museum of the Bible. Inside I found a Bible from 9th Century Mosul, Iraq, carefully protected behind glass walls. The wood bound Bible’s handwritten and delicate pages, with a Syriac translation of the Gospels, struck me more than the rest of all the history in the museum as the Islamic State continued its march across Iraq, destroying centuries-old Christian sites and executing an entire religious population along the way. According to a study released last year by the charity Aid to the Church...

For the past seven years, the Obama administration has systematically dismantled the immigration enforcement capability of this country, substituted its own policies for constitutionally enacted laws, granted de facto amnesty and work authorization to people who are here illegally, abused every discretionary authority to allow inadmissible aliens to enter and remain in the U.S., and ignored every state and local policy aimed at thwarting the removal of foreign criminals. And yet, when the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a letter last week addressed to the chairman of the House Committee that controls the departmentÂ’s budget, just about everyone was taken...

Military triumphs and catastrophes have often hinged on how well (or luckily) armies and navies employed, avoided or benefited from weather, seasonal and other natural events. Severe storms helped the British navy defeat Spain's Armada in 1588. George Washington knew horrid weather meant the Hessians would not expect an attack across the Delaware River on Christmas 1776. Napoleon captured Moscow before leading his Grande Armee's exhausted, starving, freezing remnants back to France through a bitter 1812 Russian winter. Hitler's army never even reached Moscow; it was decimated by disease, starvation, bullets and frigid cold at Stalingrad 140 years later. Eisenhower's...

Who needs Congress when you've got a horde of unelected bureaucrats willing and able to write law and do the will of the president? Congress can't decide on anything anyway. They're always arguing. It takes great leadership to circumvent Congress and really get things done. Good job President Obama, you've built quite a legacy of destruction. Here's just another example of the Obama administration's government overreach that is systemic. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) was established thanks to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act becoming operational in 2012. In just four short years, the CFPB has...

The Obama administration is "blatantly breaking the law" with its implementation of the new Visa waiver program, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) argue. The terror attacks in Paris urged lawmakers to launch a bipartisan effort to strengthen the program. McCaul and Miller, along with other members of Congress, asked the White House to consider a national security and law enforcement waiver only for certain individuals intending to enter the country. They made this clear in their proposed Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015, which passed 409 to 21. Instead, the...

Yesterday, a proposal by South Carolina state representative Mike Pitts floated the idea of requiring journalists to register with the state to ensure a responsible approach to the First Amendment. As someone who has more than a passing familiarity with Second Amendment activism, the "South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law" was immediately recognizable as a provocation to the media over its reporting on gun control demands. Unfortunately, a number of journalists showed themselves to be woefully unfamiliar with the gun-rights argument about regulating the First Amendment to match the way gun-control advocates want to regulate the Second Amendment, as could...

At my very first newspaper job, the editor had a banner above the newsroom that said, "Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable." Thus, he trumpeted his view of the news business as a vehicle by which to reform society. Reporting objectively? Surely you jest. That pretty much sums up the media today, although they're nowhere near as honest about their true calling as was my editor, an old-style liberal who was open about his biases but still actually attempted to provide fair and balanced coverage. Nowadays, they don't even bother to pretend. Nothing has exposed this more than the...

There has been a lot of talk -- almost all of it accurate -- about how Barack Obama's presidency has fueled the rise of Donald Trump. The president's fans hate this talk, for understandable reasons. They see the president as dignified and cerebral. They see Trump as crude and bigoted, a "short-fingered vulgarian," as Graydon Carter famously put it. The argument that Obama paved the way for Trump takes many forms. He "lowered the bar" for presidential qualifications, argues Peggy Noonan. Trump's Don Rickles act, writes Michael Barone, reflects "the coarseness of Obama's non-stop insults of Republicans and anyone who...

As President Barack Obama once again wipes himself with the Constitution to the cheers of Democrats and the media, even his most ardent supporters admit his executive actions on guns wouldn't have saved one life in any of the recent mass shootings. So why do it? The same reason Democrats have destroyed the economies, families and hope in every major city they control - because it empowers them. If you want to improve the quality of life of the largest swath of Americans possible, forget gun control; we need liberal control. In his speech, the president cited roughly 30,000 gun-related...

There's been much hand-wringing over U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement of gun-related executive actions. Few issues spark as much passion in America as gun control, and it's almost impossible to have a rational conversation about firearms these days without some people freaking out about having their guns taken away. Nervous gun owners should take a deep breath, since tighter gun control would require government to suddenly become efficient at something. Despite being mugged in Paris a few years ago, I don't feel naked or vulnerable because I don't carry a gun. Firearms aren't readily available in France, and there isn't...

The last few weeks we have heard over and over again "America needs to take the lead" in this so-called refugee crisis. In fact, right before the president and the rest of Capitol Hill went on Christmas break, those in power made sure to wrap a deplorable omnibus bill, and put it under the tree for the American people. Many issues counter to the will of the Americans found their way into this mammoth piece of legislation. Perhaps the most heinous of these measures in this sweeping ode to the Obama administration, is the full funding of the controversial Refugee...

Well, if there's one thing that was left out of the president's final press conference of the year, it was gun control. There have been rumblings that some policy initiative coming from this administration on guns could be announced after the holidays (via Roll Call): So far, the White House is keeping its plans — and the details of its legal review — under wraps. But sources say the administration is zeroing in on the definition of just who is in the gun sales realm. "What we expect is that they are going to better define what it means to...