Free Republic

[A review of “The End Is Near, and It’s Going To Be Awesome: How Going Broke Will Leave America Richer, Happier, and More Secure” by Kevin Williamson; Broadside Books, 2013, $27.99 hardcover/$15.99 eBook; 198 pp.] Back in the days of classic British humor, a comic impersonating an unctuous variety host proclaimed: “Ladies and gentlemen, Petula Clark sings!” To which another comic responds sotto voce, “Yes, we know that.” I was reminded of this bit while reading Kevin Williamson’s “The End Is Near, and It’s Going To Be Awesome.” Those familiar with Williamson’s prodigious output neither will be surprised by the...

There they go again. The New York Times Book Review, which has a history of belatedly recognizing conservative bestsellers, has banished conservative legal author David Limbaugh’s latest, Jesus on Trial, from its upcoming best seller list despite having sales better than 17 other books on the list. According to publishing sources, Limbaugh’s probe into the accuracy of the Bible sold 9,660 in its first week out, according to Nielsen BookScan. That should have made it No. 4 on the NYT print hardcover sales list. Instead, Henry Kissinger’s World Order, praised by Hillary Clinton in the Washington Post, is No. 4...

IN HINDSIGHT, Joe Paterno wrote, the day after he got fired with a phone call, he wished he had done more. He had not committed a crime, he had not witnessed a crime, he had reported what sounded like a crime to his superiors. The haters jumped all over that sentence, like it was some kind of a confession that the legendary Penn State football coach had somehow enabled Jerry Sandusky to sexually abuse those kids, while he looked the other way. The haters spent a lot less time debating the note he scribbled on a pad before going to...

Dinesh D'Souza book is No. 1 on BookScan this week, far outdistancing Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, 25,714 to 17,785. In spite of those numbers, New York Times list again left Dinesh's book at No. 2 on the list that just released two minutes ago. Completely rigged. Last week was close enough to give benefit of the doubt. This week is a complete joke.

For a long time, free-market critics of programs supposedly meant to help struggling people have been pointing out that those programs are usually counterproductive. They actually harm the “beneficiaries.” Sadly, their arguments have almost always either been ignored by key politicians and opinion shapers or dismissed out of hand because those who make them are white or are said to harbor some hidden animosity towards the poor and minorities. So, what will be the reaction to Wall Street Journal writer Jason Riley’s new book, Please Stop Helping Us –How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed? Riley, who is...

Back in the heyday of the British Empire, a man from one of the colonies addressed a London audience. "Please do not do any more good in my country," he said. "We have suffered too much already from all the good that you have done." That is essentially the message of an outstanding new book by Jason Riley about blacks in America. Its title is "Please Stop Helping Us." Its theme is that many policies designed to help blacks are in fact harmful, sometimes devastatingly so. These counterproductive policies range from minimum wage laws to "affirmative action" quotas. This book...

Outwardly, they put on a show of unity — but privately, the Obamas and Clintons, the two power couples of the Democrat Party, loathe each other. “I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived,” Bill Clinton said to friends on one occasion, adding he would never forgive Obama for suggesting he was a racist during the 2008 campaign. The feeling is mutual. Obama made ­excuses not to talk to Bill, while the first lady privately sniped about Hillary.

Original Title:New Book: Oprah Calls Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett “Tiresome”, Says They Are “Walking Agendas” Who Always Want Something Ed Klein’s new book is giving Americans lots of juicy information about what life with the Royal Family — excuse me, First Family — is like. One of the juicy tidbits is that Oprah, the person that leaves Democrats clamoring for her backing, can’t stand Michelle Obama. ADVERTISEMENT Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World - Cocktails and Dinner The lovey-dovey public relationship between Oprah Winfrey and the President and Michelle Obama is a mirage, according to a new...

Former Secretary of State and 66-year-old grandmother-to-be Hillary Clinton is suffering from a bad heart and President Barack Obama believes the American people deserve a fresher face than hers in the 2016 presidential election, according to author Edward Klein in his new book, Blood Feud. "She (Hillary) had managed to keep her medical history secret out of fear that, should it become public, it would disqualify her from becoming president," notes Klein in an excerpt from the book highlighted by Drudge Report. Klein claims in the book that Clinton, who is widely seen as the front runner to become the...

Neurosurgeon and notable conservative speaker Dr. Ben Carson's most recent book has made it to the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' best sellers list. Dr. Carson's One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future, debuted on the "Hardcover Nonfiction" list at No. 1 last week and remains so this week. In the Hardcover Nonfiction category, One Nation is trailed by French economist Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century at No. 2, and Mariano Rivera's memoir, The Closer at No. 3. One Nation also is found at No. 2 for the "Combined Print and...

It depends on the definition of “bomb.” First-week sales for Hillary Clinton’s memoir/campaign book Hard Choices would not embarrass most authors; 60,000 hard-bound and 24,000 electronic outsells most other titles offered even by major publishers in a first printing. However, most authors don’t get $14 million advances, and most authors don’t plan to use their book as a springboard into a presidential campaign either.In those circumstances, Daniel Halper argues, the sales have been, er, brutal: “Between us, they are nervous at S&S [Simon & Schuster],” says the source, who gave permission for his email to be published. “Sales were...

Curiously, the dramatic climax of Marion Barry’s autobiography is exactly the kind of salacious moment that he has long dismissed as irrelevant and sensational, a notorious incident that steers attention far away from his life’s work: It was sometime in the 1980s, and the mayor was at a party at a house he frequented on 11th Street NW. A woman who was doing coke offered him some, noting that the stuff made her “hot.” This was enough for Barry: “I told myself, what the hell? Why not?” She put a line of cocaine on a business card, and the mayor...

With Hillary Clinton’s new book, Hard Choices, on the shelves, it would behoove her to stay far away from reading the Amazon comments readers left for her. Although she has 142 five stars, she has 205 one star ratings and some of them are, well, not so flattering.

Here are some of the funniest reviews for Hillary’s new book on Amazon. As of right now, the 1 star reviews have a commanding lead. Sickening: I became violently ill before finishing the first chapter and had to burn it in a bio-hazard incinerator. Dangerous stuff. Boring: The directions on shampoo were more interesting than this. I feel like the Clintons owe me 4 hours of my life back. Toilet Paper: Totally unequivocally pure unadulterated stinky no good terrible crap. I would not recommend using this as toilet paper, maybe kindling, do not waste your money.

New book shows women in combat suffer much more serious non-combat injuries, alleges IDF cover-up. A new book sums up 13 years of research on female participation in IDF combat units and declares the feminist experiment in the Israeli military a failure. “Lochamot Betzahal” by Col. (res.) Raza Sagi, a former infantry regiment commander, points to high rates of serious injury among women serving in combat units, and to involvement of radical political groups behind the scenes of the campaign for combat service by women. ..... "The study found that a particularly high percentage of women who served in combat...

BYLINE: Compared with the five-star reviews, the one-star ones are a lot more, er, colorful. Hillary Clinton is a polarizing figure. So when she releases an autobiography, opinions on said book are going to diverge. This is especially true with her book release now, seeing as many are interpreting the media blitz surrounding the book to be a test run for a 2016 campaign. On Amazon.com, as of this writing, there are 19 five-star, perfect reviews of Hard Choices. And then there are 44 one-star reviews. (The most popular line being "should be listed as fiction." Zing.) There are only...

A catalog of government lawlessness is more discomforting to contemplate when the catalog is contemporary. We are all familiar with tales of mischief, corruption and abuse of power from other ages and in other places. We call it history. But the new book Obama’s Enforcer by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund documents the rank lawlessness that has saturated Eric Holder’s Justice Department, and thus, the Obama presidency. Von Spakovsky and Fund’s book releases June 10. It details the radical nest that the Justice Department has become. Their book echoes what I still hear from Justice Department employees across...

The world waits for Hillary Clinton’s new book, “Hard Choices,” on June 10th. I know I have it all queued up on amazon.com. But Clinton’s hardest choice may start at home: will she give her ghost writer a credit this time? I wrote about a year ago that Edward “Ted” Widmer, a long time Hillary associate, was actually writing “Hard Choices.” Widmer, 51, is a Harvard graduate who wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. He has a long association with Brown University, where he was the Director of the John Carter Brown Library.At least that’s where used to be. Widmer now...

Lynne Cheney has spent decades studying and admiring the nation's fourth president, James Madison. Her new book, "James Madison: A Life Reconsidered" is a labor of political admiration that began five years ago and culminated in a historical journey in which Madison, the father of the Constitution, also becomes a prophet of productive conservatism. ....She considers Madison the prophet of small government. He pushed for a strong central government early in his political career when he served in the early House of Representatives, but he started having some doubts. "Madison began to worry about too strong a government," Cheney told...

With the release of Matthew Vines' God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships, conservative Evangelicals are responding with warnings that the book should not cause confusion regarding Scripture's teaching on homosexuality. The book, Andrew Walker – director of Policy Studies for the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission – says, "is the first step in a larger effort to fundamentally recast long-held, universally acknowledged norms pertaining to sexual ethics." In his review, Walker notes that not only does Vines identify himself as a conservative evangelical and claim to uphold the authority of...