Free Republic

The president’s plan to make community college free for everyone is the best news for the middle class in a long time. President Obama this month gave the best State of the Union address of his presidency but it was largely written in disappearing ink. Like the vast majority of presidential speeches, little of it lingers. But one proposal in the speech could prove historic. While Obama’s $60 billion plan for two free years of community college is dead-on-arrival in the Republican Congress, it is very much alive in American politics, where progressives now have an aspirational, easy-to-understand issue to...

Jenna Tosh New President/ CEO Santa Barbara Chapter of Planned Parenthood Jenna Tosh Talks about Protestors, Congress, and Her Plans for the Santa Barbara ChapterLast week, Jenna Tosh became the new leader for the tri-counties Planned Parenthood branch, replacing longtime president Cheryl Rollings, who retired last fall. With her, Tosh, 31, brings experience heading the Orlando affiliate, where she oversaw 69 staff and a $5 million budget. In charge of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo, Tosh — who holds a PhD in public policy, which she focused on teen pregnancy — will see her staff nearly double (120)...

THE talk up in Boston is all about deflation while the talk down here is all about inflation. Our sleek, techie president, whose battery dies faster than an iPhone’s, was fully charged Tuesday night for the State of the Union. He was so puffed up, with such a bristling sense of self, that it was hard to believe this was the same guy who spent the last year clenched like a fist, beset by ISIS, beheadings and Ebola, shunned by his own party and slammed by the other party in the fall election. The murmur went up from grateful Democrats...

Soon after becoming House Speaker in 2011, Republican John Boehner started running the traps on inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to a joint meeting of Congress. But when Barry Jackson, then Boehner’s chief-of-staff, checked with President Barack Obama’s top advisers, Jackson said he was left waiting a month only to get no response. Ultimately the Netanyahu speech went ahead in May but soon after Jackson faced the opposite problem: the White House had promised South Korea’s leadership an appearance before Congress, he said, without checking first with the speaker. None of these slights justify what seems like...

I saw American Sniper last night, and hated it slightly less than I expected to. Like most Clint Eastwood movies – and I like Clint Eastwood movies for the most part – it's a simple, well-lit little fairy tale with the nutritional value of a fortune cookie that serves up a neatly-arranged helping of cheers and tears for target audiences, and panics at the thought of embracing more than one or two ideas at any time. It's usually silly to get upset about the self-righteous way Hollywood moviemakers routinely turn serious subjects into baby food. Film-industry people angrily reject the...

It's not about being a good person because racism makes you feel bad. At a recent Black Lives Matter rally, I saw a middle-aged woman come nervously to the microphone. She began to speak about her white privilege. While she chided herself for past wrongs and oversights, she said next to nothing about the events that called the rally forth: the police killings of innocent black women and men, and the failure of the justice system to hold the killers accountable. Perhaps she didn't address these issues because she feared that in doing so, she would come across as a...

Bush was one of several likely Republican presidential candidates to avoid an event Saturday hosted by immigration hardliner and Iowa congressman Steve King.When Jeb Bush said that to win the presidential election a Republican candidate might have to lose the primary, he probably had a weekend like this one in mind. In Iowa, a host of second-tier possible presidential candidates — and a few big names — flocked to the first major event of the Republicans’ 2016 cycle: a cattle call of party speakers hosted by western Iowa congressman Steve King. King, whose often personal and derogatory criticism of undocumented...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Since the film opened earlier this month, "American Sniper" has stirred up passionate responses from critics and supporters alike. What began as a surprise box-office hit, raking in $105 million its opening weekend, is now a flashpoint for conservative and liberal views of the Iraq war. The movie follows the life of Chris Kyle – one of the deadliest snipers and a US Navy SEAL – and his deployment on four tours to Iraq. During this time, he was credited with 160 kills before he was honorably discharged in 2009 after 10 years of service. His 2012 memoir, also...

Sarah Palin (left) and Taya Kyle When it comes to supporting military families, Taya Kyle – widow of Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who's portrayed by Bradley Cooper in American Sniper – is on the front lines. And former Alaskan governor and VP candidate Sarah Palin says she couldn't be prouder of Kyle's involvement. "Like most military families, Taya never stops giving of herself to support others," Palin, a friend of the former military officer, wrote in a Facebook post Friday. The two teamed up with the Sportsman Channel for a reception at the Vegas Shot Show in on...

Rob Lowe can't believe that Obama won't meet with Netanyahu, but will meet with YouTube star. How is it that a woman famous for eating cereal in a bathtub can get an audience with US President Barack Obama, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to do so? asked Rob Lowe on Twitter. Among the Hollywood actorÂ’s famous roles, is that of Deputy White House Communications Director in the television show The West Wing. On Friday Lowe entered a real-life diplomatic drama, when he weighed in on one of the most serious crises in the often infamous series of political battles...

Remember how Richard Nixon told us to watch what he does, not what he says? Good advice. Well, Barack Obama — our POTUS who makes Nixon and Clinton seem like Diogenes — thinks like a postmodern agnostic, professes to be a Christian, but acts like a Shiite. During Obama’s presidency the influence of Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iranian Shiite regime has spread across the world like the proverbial wildfire, reaching from North Africa into Iraq, Lebanon (via Hezbollah), Syria (via Assad whose red line on chemical weapons famously faded into invisibility), Gaza (via improved relations with Hamas) and now into Yemen (via...

No political summit involving people who at least claim that they want to run for President would be complete without an appearance by Donald Trump. I’ll give the man one thing… he knows how to put on a show, and I’m not just talking about Celebrity Apprentice. After initially coming out and saying that he would have demolished Barack Obama if he’s stayed with the race the last time he ran, The Donald knew just what sort of red meat to throw to the crowd. Trump told that crowd that if he runs in 2016, his first order of business...

News broke Friday evening that one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, Ernie Banks, had passed away at the age of 83. The man lovingly known as “Mr. Cub” spent his enter major league career with the North Side franchise, slugging 512 home runs and winning two NL MVP awards. The 14-time All-Star started his playing career in the Negro Leagues and was the first black player to put on a Chicago Cubs uniform. Despite playing for the perennially bottom-dwelling Cubbies, his optimism and love of the game never wavered, as evidenced by his famous quote,...

The Texas conservative and his team are trying to lock down a state director for his White House run.DES MOINES -- Ted Cruz's presidential campaign​ in Iowa is unofficially underway. The Texas senator and his lieutenants have been making calls to top Iowa activists and consultants for the past two weeks, multiple Republican sources told National Journal, hoping to lock down a state director for his White House campaign. Cruz has not yet made that critical hire, the sources said. But he's making other moves in this first nominating state. At the end of a fiery speech here Saturday to...

Ted Cruz unveiled a possible new theme for a 2016 presidential campaign — “reigniting the miracle of America” — as he wooed the Iowa conservative activists critical to a victory in the Republican caucuses next year. “It is the most important cause that unifies us together, and Iowa believes in the miracle of America,” he said Saturday. Appearing at the Iowa Freedom Summit, the unofficial kickoff of the race to win the Iowa caucuses, Texas’ junior senator appealed to the evangelical voters who could cast about half of the votes in February. Cruz spoke thoroughly about both Mayor Annise Parker’s...

DES MOINES -- Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum began the 2012 presidential race here trailing badly in both the polls and the money chase, and ended it with a narrow win in the Republican caucuses. Now he's gearing up for another shot at victory in Iowa with a message that's once again geared at courting social conservatives, positioning himself as an alternative to the GOP establishment -- and appealing to disaffected working class voters. Santorum, wearing a navy Air Force One jacket from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, worked the lobby at the Marriott hotel here Friday night, passing out...

efore Mike Huckabee ran in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Lori Jungling, a mother of four in Altoona, about 15 minutes outside Des Moines, had never been involved in a presidential campaign. Actually, Jungling had never even bothered to vote. But in 2007, the message from the Baptist minister-turned-Republican Arkansas governor made its way to Jungling’s personal faith-first foundation, and soon enough she was volunteering—a lot. Calls, emails, tweets, events. She even served as state director for Huck PAC, Huckabee’s 2008 grassroots political action committee. She didn’t take one dime. “He believes what I believe,” she told me. That’s the kind...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Bill Maher railed against the 2016 GOP field on Friday’s “Real Time,” dubbing Ted Cruz “the scariest Hispanic to come out of [Texas]” since Javier Bardem’s portrayal of assassin Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men.”Maher initially introduced the 2016 field as a group of “corporate @$$lickers” who were trying to “sign up mega-rich donors like Sheldon Adelson before one of the other guys in the pack blows him first.” He then went after each candidate individually, calling Rick Perry an “Evangelical Texas $#*+-kicker with limited intellect” to draw a comparison between him and George W. Bush. Maher was...

Volunteers cleaning the streets of Raipur, India.In cities all over India, anonymous men and women are picking up trash, fixing potholes and painting dirty walls. They’re not paid to do this; in fact, they pay for their tools themselves. These citizens are part of a growing movement of “spot-fixers”, volunteers who use their free time to clean up ugly parts of their city, and then post before-and-after pictures on social media. While teams of volunteers like this have operated steadily in big cities like Bangalore and New Delhi for several years now, dozens more have sprung up over the past...

There are enough potential candidates for president (on the GOP side at least) that you need an Excel spreadsheet just to keep them all straight. Instead of a complicated algorithm, I've boiled each candidate down to his/her most basic elements. At the end of the day, these are the things more likely to define a presidential wannabe. It's also important to distinguish between durable traits and those that are more ephemeral. For example, low name ID is something easily overcome. But, being on the "wrong side" of the base on key issues can be a campaign killer. This is by...