Free Republic

For many conservatives, agreeing with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is a rare occurrence. Warren is a pure collectivist who views strong government control as a critical mechanism for politicians to "improve" the lives of Americans as they see fit. Her liberal voting record and view that individual financial success creates a social obligation to pay heavy taxes reinforce those perspectives. Yet, in her recent opposition to federal spending legislation, Warren correctly noted that reinstituting federal insurance for riskier financial products like credit default swaps was a concession to the largest banks in America contrary to the interests of most taxpayers....

President Barack Obama has broken two barriers: Being the first black president -- and becoming the first Latino president, according to Tom Perez, Obama’s labor secretary. Perez made the comment a day after Obama’s shocking shift to take steps to normalize relations with Cuba and a month after the president’s executive actions on immigration that had widespread appeal among Latinos. “When I reflect on the breadth and depth of what he has done for Latinos, it really makes him in my mind, and in the minds of so many others, the first Latino president,” Perez said Thursday, according to Politico....

Now that the GOP is taking control of the Senate in 2015, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., offered up a resolution of sorts for the opposing party to abide by next year: Get Ted Cruz under control. Durbin’s suggestion comes days after Cruz’s disastrous maneuver last week that brought the Senate into session on Saturday, unwittingly opening the door to the approval of dozens of President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees. That infuriated Republicans, leading Cruz to apologize days later. “It was classic Cruz. He knew how to get the headline, but he didn’t know how to close the deal,” Durbin...

In an upcoming People magazine interview, Barack and Michelle Obama sit down and discuss life as the First Oppressed Couple of the United States. Hoping to shed light and relate to recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, Barack reached into the upstairs White House bedroom of his mind and called upon his famous imaginary son to make an appearance: The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” President Obama said. “It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of eight federal drug defendants on Wednesday, including four who were set to die in federal prison, as part of a new initiative to reduce harsh sentences for nonviolent crimes. Sidney Earl Johnson, Jr., Rickey Marcell McCall, Larry Nailor and Israel Abel Torres had received life sentences and were going to die behind bars. But now Obama has commuted their sentences and those of four others who were convicted of drug crimes, and all eight inmates will be released in 2015. Obama has taken heat for not making full use of his clemency and...

U-M professor Susan Douglas Susan Douglas is a University of Michigan professor and department chair who is not shy about expressing her viewpoints - political or otherwise. Earlier this week Douglas penned a column for the independent nonprofit magazine In These Times titled "It's okay to hate Republicans." "I hate Republicans," she wrote to begin her column. "I can't stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal 'personhood.'" University of Michigan...

Sen. Rand Paul broke with the field of Republicans considering a 2016 presidential run on Thursday, calling President Barack Obama's decision to normalize relations with Cuba a "good idea" since the American embargo against Cuba "just hasn't worked." Paul, a likely presidential candidate, made the remarks in an interview with News Talk 800 WVHU's Tom Roten, just a day after his potential competitors for the Republican nomination -- former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz -- slammed the decision to normalize relations as a dangerous move. Rubio and Cruz are sons of Cuban immigrants. Paul...

In the aftermath of President Obama giving the Castro regime diplomatic recognition, Senator Marco Rubio has been pretty much everywhere, including multiple television appearances and authoring this Wall Street Journal op-ed. According to Senator Rubio, “By conceding to the oppressors in the Castro regime, this president and his administration have let the Cuban people down, further weakened America’s standing in the world and endangered Americans.” Whether or not one agrees with Rubio’s position–and I’m sympathetic to it–he makes his case clearly, intelligently, and with passion. Despite some differences with him now and then–I found his advocacy for the tactics that...

Earlier this week, National Review’s Eliana Johnson reported on how Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) plans to approach the 2016 presidential campaign: “His strategists aren’t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination,” writes Johnson. “According to several of the senator’s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups — including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials — that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, ‘not getting killed with independents.’” The plan has...

Insiders agree the party has lost focus on ‘bread and butter’ economic issues.Elizabeth Warren may have captured the imagination of the Democratic Party’s base, but many in her party worry that it does not have a message that can reach beyond its most loyal supporters. In recent weeks, Democratic operatives have begun to voice concerns that the 2014 midterms made plain the limits of an approach that failed to reach beyond minority groups or those who are reflexively liberal. And yet what should come next is not yet totally clear. “You have to answer the mail about what people’s concerns...

OTTAWA - A slickly produced video released on Sunday urged Muslims to launch indiscriminate attacks against Canadians, similar to those carried out in October in Ottawa and Montreal. The SITE Intelligence Group, an American based company that monitors trends within the global jihadist movement, said the video was produced by the Islamic State and the Levant. It was also been distributed on Twitter and jihadi forums. On the video a man, who says he is a Canadian and identifies himself as "Abu Anwar al-Canadi," urges his Muslim countrymen to follow the example of Martin Couture-Rouleau. The National Post identified the...

Terrible findings in the torture report "are not who we are," John Kerry claims. Well, here's a U.S. history lesson. It’s comforting for those whose actions are not aligned with their stated values to believe that what one does in real life is not what ultimately defines who one really is. It’s nice to think who we are is determined not by the things we did the day before, but by the stated ideals we hope to aspire to fulfill, starting tomorrow. In a nation-state founded by settler-colonial Protestants, the argument is familiar – it’s what’s deep down inside that...

“TOMORROW (Tues), #OccupyCountycouncil, 2:30PM! We demand an end to a justice system that jails nonviolent offenders but lets cops kill! 41 S. Central, 63105.” These were the words of a mass text sent to subscribers to the “Ferguson Action” list. The list includes groups that formed in response to the August shooting death of an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, by police officer Darren Wilson and have fueled the protest movement that has continued since. Video was posted online of the Tuesday meeting showing that a few protesters had indeed attended. Four members of the group spoke to the St....

California’s “yes means yes” law turns the idea of sexual consent upside down. Suddenly, nearly all sex is rape, unless no person involved reports it as such. Consent, under the California law that is spreading to other American universities, is required to be “ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.” The law also states that “a lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent.” Also, previous sexual activity “should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.” The law also states that incapacitation due to drugs...

Marquette’s suspension of a professor — apparently for criticizing an instructor who seemingly refused to allow discussion of anti-gay views in her philosophy of ethics class — reminds me about the Marquette “unlawful harassment” training, which I’d been meaning to blog about. Some months ago, Marquette conducted training on “Unlawful Harassment Prevention for Higher Ed Faculty and Graduate Assistants.” As usual, the training involved some specific vignettes, with questions and answers. I have copies of the screenshots from one of the vignettes, and here are some excerpts (this John McAdams (Marquette Warrior) post also has more): All week, Becky and...

Sen. Mark Begich can still return to the Senate.Even though lawmakers who will not be returning to Congress in January might feel downtrodden, they can find solace in the fact that they retain some congressional perks. Those perks, ranging from floor access to permanent identification cards, were outlined in the Congressional Research Service’s Dec. 5 report titled “Selected Privileges and Courtesies Extended to Former Members of Congress.” CRS American National Government specialist R. Eric Peterson wrote in the report, “Some [privileges] are derived from law and chamber rules, but others are courtesies that have been extended as a matter of...

Senator Ted Cruz just gave a major foreign-policy speech at the Heritage Foundation critiquing the disastrous nature of what he labeled as the “Obama-Clinton” approach to the subject. His desire to lay out his foreign-policy views in detail at such a venue as well as his focus on Clinton was a clear indication of something that is not exactly a secret: he’s planning on running for president in 2016. Members of his party’s establishment, which generally despises him as much as his fellow senators and the liberal media, do not take Cruz’s ambition too seriously. But as much as it...

Six official clay seals found by an archaeological team at a small site in Israel offer evidence that supports the existence of biblical kings David and Solomon. Many modern scholars dismiss David and Solomon as mythological figures and believe no kingdom could have existed in the region at the time the Bible recounted their activities. The new finds provide evidence that some type of government activity was conducted there in that period.A Mississippi State University team found this bulla, or ancient clay seal, on a dig site in southern Israel last summer. It offers evidence of government activity in the...

The key bit comes at 1:20. BuzzFeed headlines this clip, “Jeb Bush Thinks He Can Persuade The Republican Base To Get Behind Immigration Legislation.” Is that what Bush said? “A candidate gets to persuade,” Bush said to Miami’s NBC 6. “I think there’s a compelling case that if we want to be young and dynamic again, we have to make legal immigration easier than illegal immigration, that we control our borders, enforce the laws. But that we embrace our immigrant heritage and allow our country to take off. You gotta do both.” “You gotta protect the borders, enforce the law,...

Defeated Democrat declines to address her political future.Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of State, is threatening to take Rand Paul to court to block him from running both for president and reelection to the Senate in 2016. In her first television interview since Sen. Mitch McConnell routed her by 15 points last month, the Democratic Senate nominee declared that she will not be “bullied” by Paul, who is a heavy favorite to win a second Senate term if he’s allowed to stay on the ballot. “The law is clear,” Grimes told WHAS-TV in Louisville. “You can’t be on the ballot...