Free Republic

"Never allow a good crisis (to) go to waste. It's an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible." Thus did chief of staff Rahm Emanuel advise Barack Obama on the financial crisis he inherited in 2009. Following the Capitol riot by a mob of pro-Donald Trump protesters, the left took Rahm's counsel, seizing upon and exploiting the episode ever since to paint the right as America's safe harbor for "domestic terrorism." According to leftist columnists and commentators, going back to the '60s, the real threat of domestic terrorism has always come from the right. That is not,...

When Donald Trump pardoned Steve Bannon last week, the outgoing president blocked the former White House strategist's prosecution for bilking donors to an organization that claimed to be raising money for a wall along the border with Mexico. When Trump granted a commutation to Craig Cesal, by contrast, he freed a man who had already served 17 years of what was originally a life sentence for repairing trucks that were used to transport marijuana. As those examples reflect, Trump's acts of clemency mixed favors to cronies with relief for genuinely deserving federal prisoners hit with grossly disproportionate penalties. The controversy...

The great Jackie Gleason once said, "The past remembers better than it lived." And so it is, apparently, with the Obama years. There was no economic "boom" as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are misremembering. This was an economy that skidded into a financial ditch and seemingly never pulled out of it and got back on the prosperity hot lanes until Donald Trump won the election in November 2016. You can mark the real recovery -- an economic inflection point almost the day after that surprise election outcome. Every liberal forecaster and most academic economists had guaranteed America that, if...

Disturbing questions emerge from a joint Senate report on the Biden family’s dealings with America’s greatest adversary. Given the grave threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), especially near an election and in an era in which fears of foreign influence are at an all-time high, one might think revelations about the family of Democratic nominee Joe Biden cashing in on Communist China while he was vice president might be a “big [expletive] deal,” in the cellar-dwelling candidate’s words.Yet the media and political class have completely blacked out these newly released facts. This was on display during the first...

In April of 2005, Senator Barack Obama took to the floor of the United States Senate and passionately spoke out against Republican efforts to end the filibuster. Then a rising star in the Democratic Party, Obama noted that despite the pressure partisans might feel, it was imperative to "rise above an 'ends justify the means' mentality because we're here to answer to the people -- all of the people -- not just the ones wearing our party label." This week, Obama made precisely the opposite argument during John Lewis's funeral, contending that eliminating a vital check on partisan power was...

No one should be above the law, Republican or Democrat. Nor should our elected leaders undermine equal justice under the law.Okay, now that these obvious statements have been made, what should we make of the 1,100 signatures to a letter calling on Attorney General Barr to resign amid all the debate regarding the Department of Justice (DOJ)? As someone who served, albeit briefly, as a federal prosecutor, this question is of particular interest to me.First, consider that the DOJ resides in the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Department of Justice Building. Bobby Kennedy was his brotherÂ’s closest political ally and...

The self-proclaimed “activist” Attorney General, Eric Holder, told reporters that he “fixed” George Bush’s politicized Department of Justice. In fact, he went on to explain that the Obama DOJ is completely unbiased, irrefutably fair, and painstakingly judicious. And, humbly, the guy who once sued Ally Bank for discrimination without any actual evidence took full credit for “fixing” the politicization that took place during the years of Obama’s incompetent predecessor.And, he did it all without any intended sarcasm, satire, or irony… Given his history of suing banks, and handing the revenue over to Democrat oriented non-profits, I’d have to say this took a little bit...

It takes a very specialized economic ignorance in order to come up with some of the policy prescriptions proposed by the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In what I can only assume is a plan to continue his pattern of proposing budgets that get soundly rejected by Congress, Barack Obama is proposing a slew of new business taxes to fund (a portion) of his $4 trillion budget.Concerned over the rate at which businesses have been fleeing high US corporate tax rates, Obama has proposed a plan: Tax companies a little more. (Only a Democrat would think we could solve the...

Tuesday’s State of the Union speech was yet another glaring reminder of just how out of touch our president seems to be with reality and the true threat of radical Islam on the West. Our son Aaron was a U.S. Navy SEAL. He’d seen the enemy our president refuses to acknowledge face-to-face. His heart had been seared by the blackness of those who exist solely to discharge the terror of Jihad not only on America, but the entire globe. After returning from a deployment in 2010, he uttered hauntingly clear words to his father, “Dad, they hate us, but they...

Unless you've been living under several rocks, you've heard by now that the New England Patriots were investigated for under-inflating the footballs used during the first half of their 45-7 victory in the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. The whole matter has come to be known as "Deflategate" or "Ballghazi," and has dominated the national news this past week.In response to all of this, Rep. Todd Young (R-IN), a Colts fan, published a "Who said it?" quiz on his official website comparing the rhetoric used in DeflateGate with the White House's official response to several scandals during the...