Free Republic

Three questions continue to perplex me. Why is anyone surprised that Donald Trump is still leading the race for the GOP nomination? Why is anyone surprised that Ted Cruz is catching up? And last, why is anyone surprised that a GOP-controlled Congress passed a gallstone with a $1.1 trillion “omnibus” budget bloated with pork, pork, and Planned Parenthood funding? I’ll start with the last question first. Congress needs an enema, and has needed one for nearly two decades.  The last useful Congress we had, from a small-government, fiscally-responsible viewpoint, sat when Newt Gingrich was speaker and Bill Clinton was president. ...

Nobody argues against the fact that there needs to be diversity at the top of large companies, but the Left is pushing for over-representation of minorities, and they make no bones about it. Sam's Club CEO Rosalind Brewer told CNN how she deals with the white patriarchy.  “Just today we met with a supplier and the entire other side of the table was all Caucasian males.”  She went on to say how “there were actually no females, like, levels down” in the company.  She vowed to “place a call” to the CEO. Brewer said that it has to start at the top, adding that...

I was asked to write this story by my editor at BizpacReview.  To the victims of mass murders, whether it's terrorism like San Bernardino or a mentally ill killer like Aurora, Colorado, making these events into political theater is "insulting, insensitive and off-base," as my writing colleague Frieda Powers wrote.  Powers lost her cousin in the San Bernardino massacre. For one of us at BPR, the cold-blooded act of terror is more than just a story—it's deeply personal. Writing for a political news blog,  it's easy to get caught up in the vitriol and arguments surrounding events. Things can get reduced...

Having run out of excuses why mass shootings are becoming regular events, Leftists have exposed their worldview like a peacock fanning its tail feathers: in full lavish display.  To them, prayer is, and always has been, a useless exercise.  They see no hand of God in anything. Lord, forgive them.  They know not what they do. This new phenomenon has been dubbed "prayer shaming," as if somehow it's offensive that people of faith are praying for victims.   They call it "platitudes" instead of action.  They proclaim "God isn't fixing this." They think gun control is some magic medicine to...

I must admit I have a grudging but growing admiration for Donald Trump*.  He has a way of saying things that’s like popping the clutch on a ’73 Z28 Camaro with a 350 V8.  Everybody hears the screech, sees the smoke, and then it leaves a long skid mark. Trump’s enduring claim that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrated in New Jersey after the World Trade Center towers fell on Sep. 11, 2001 was at first ridiculed.  The New York Times published “A Definitive Debunking of Donald Trump’s 9/11 Claims” just three days after Trump made his remarks in Birmingham,...

President Obama thinks Republicans are scared of the Islamic State.  We are not.  But we’re terrified of Obama’s policies, the New York Times editorial board and the liberal narrative they are spouting. The president said the Islamic State "can't beat us on the battlefield so they try to terrorize us into being afraid."  The Left’s response to being bullied to is be foolhardy, call Republicans fear-mongers, and deny responsibility for the entire situation. The New York Times editorial board took Obama’s side Sunday, in a piece titled “The Price of Fear.” History will always be kinder to those who are...

Overnight, Islamic terrorists took 170 hostages at a hotel in Mali.  Why would Islamic terrorists take hostages in Mali?  Most Americans don’t even know what continent Mali is on (Africa), or where it is in Africa (I admit, I had to look on a map).  What’s special about Mali?  Turns out, quite a bit. Mali is former French colony, now an Islamic state.  It’s a poor—very, very poor land-locked country.  Let’s unpack all the history and current entanglements and see where it leads. Going back into history, from the Left’s viewpoint, those Western Christian colonialists who try to spread their...

Can we get serious?  Because our enemies are dead serious. I grieve for Paris, and for the families who lost loved ones.  I grieve for those who are frightened.  The two largest terror attacks against civilians in the West in this century both took place in cities boasting a Statue of Liberty.  I don’t think that was missed by the Islamic jihadists who perpetrated the slaughter in Paris. The plaque beneath the lady sitting in New York harbor reads: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send...

Mike Huckabee tweeted “We are months away from actual votes being cast and neither the pundits nor the press will decide this election, the people will.”  This after he was unceremoniously dumped from the main 9pm stage in the Fox Business News debate to be held Nov. 10 in Milwaukee. I like Huckabee.  I’ve met him a couple of times, and found him to be genuine, humble, and compassionate.  These are great qualities for a former pastor-turned-politician.  But the former governor is mistaken about a great many things, his tweet being one of them. If he was alive, Steve Jobs...

How important is it really that Dr. Ben Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist?  And does it matter if the Seventh Day Adventists are a cult? Donald Trump, the master at sowing doubt while retaining deniability (“it wouldn’t be nice if I said [insert insult here] but I have to be nice.”), said “Seventh Day Adventist, I don’t know about.  I just don’t know about.”  Trump says nothing without a purpose—of course he knows that many people consider them a cult, and he’s playing the card. Questioned about he remarks on Face The Nation on Sunday (see the video at...

The left has a favorite Bible verse, one that even President Obama can’t resist. Jesus said it in the Sermon on the Mount: “Judge not.” Of course, Obama is wont to misquote the Bible whenever he pleases, making up stuff that “the good book says” like “don’t throw stones at glass houses.” (Hint: they didn’t even have glass in Biblical days.) But judging is exactly what the left does, while they tell Christians not to, because, you know, do what I say, not what I do. Let’s take same-sex marriage.  Oh, Christians shouldn’t judge says the liberal elites.  It doesn’t...

You need to know three things about the Oregon killings, the latest senseless act of hate directed at Christians in America. The father of shooting victim Anastasia Boylan, who was shot in the back and survived, said this after talking to his daughter before her surgery about Christopher Harper Mercer’s killing spree at a Rosewood, Oregon community college. I don’t know how much time elapsed before he was able to stand there and start asking people one by one what their religion was. ‘Are you a Christian?’ he asked them. And if you’re a Christian stand up, and he said ‘Good....

Americans are cynical about Congress.  Approval ratings are in the basement at 15.2 percent according to RealClearPolitics. We see congress like a bad TV show being acted before our eyes, with the real purpose to only sell us one more show to watch.  It’s like the fake freak shows at county fairs, or the ring toss at the carnival midway where the barker just wants you to spend another few bucks to win a tiny cheap stuffed animal, but behind the scenes he scorns you over a beer and a Marlboro. The only difference between that carny and the congressman...

President Obama and Russian Czar President Vladimir Putin went into a room at UN headquarters mano a mano and whatever happened behind those closed doors, one man came out the victor.  And it wasn’t Obama. Putin took over Syria, and that’s that. Charles Krauthammer blamed it on the “utter passivity of the United States,” that has allowed ISIS to attract 7,000 new jihadis in the last few months alone.  Some of them are from the U.S., and some of them are from Russia.  While we hand-wring our way into irrelevance, Russia is determined never to let ISIS fighters back into their country. "The irony...

It’s remarkable watching Donald Trump eviscerate the mainstream media. If this was “The Matrix” he’s Neo.  If this was “Star Trek,” I’d be like Spock studying a new intelligent life in the universe that feeds off its own popularity: the more energy put into killing it, the stronger it gets. Trump is the hate eater; he digests abhorrence and excretes devotion. “Fascinating,” the Spock in me says, watching Trump effortlessly turn “60 Minutes” host Scott Pelley into Jell-O, then deliver his own sound bite right on cue.  It wasn’t even challenging for the master of manipulation, like Bruce Lee playing...

On Sunday, a Muslim cleric declared that Fantasy Football is considered “haram”—that means forbidden by Islamic law.  That’s only the latest thing found to be off-limits for followers of Islam.  Islamic State clerics famously forbid the practice of pigeon breeding because “sight of the birds’ genitals as they fly overhead is offensive to Islam.” (Leading to perhaps the greatest headline in the history of publishing: “Allah Hates Pigeon Penises,” by Jonah Goldberg.) You might think these religious decrees are funny, or even quaint, but they’re dead serious, and form the strongest defense of Ben Carson’s statement on NBC’s Meet The Press, “I would...

The GOPe has already handed Iran $100 billion, and they’re not even ashamed.  And Sen. Ted Cruz has proved once again that it’s not easy being right--and alone. Cruz’s brilliant speech at the anti-Iran deal rally on Capitol Hill hit congressional leadership right between the eyes.  That speech will come back to haunt Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner for many years, and historians will cite it long after their deaths as the equivalent of Churchill’s response to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” visit to Munich. Having thus fortified myself by the example of others, I will proceed to emulate them....

Here’s what I got from reading Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s op-ed in The Washington Post:  Donald Trump loves America much more than Abdul-Jabbar.  And Trump’s right—Kareem has no clue. Trump tangled with the basketball legend, answering his “you’re so nasty compared to Bernie Sanders” WaPo piece with a handwritten note scrawled across the essay like a teacher correcting a student’s writing assignment. Dear Kareem, Now I know why the press always treated you so badly — they couldn’t stand you. The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again! Best wishes,...

Over a year’s time, from October 1934 to the following October, the Chinese Red Army undertook “The Long March”—a grueling 6,000 mile circling retreat from the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. During that year, the Red Army suffered nearly 90 percent losses, crossing 18 mountain ranges and 24 rivers to arrive at its new base at Shaanxi, in northwest China. The GOP has many lessons to learn from the Chinese Communists. When the Long March began, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai led the Chinese Communist Party.  By the end, Mao Zedong was in complete control.  Prior to 1934, Mao’s guerilla...

Mark Twain wrote with enormous sentiment about a great patriotic movement, as “a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun.”  Thus is the receiving line of the disaffected for Donald Trump, of whom legend and song shall be duly recorded in history. Leading in the polls, standing tall above all the other GOP candidates, indeed above Her Majesty Hillary Clinton, whose shine has turned to a patina in the manner of copper left in the rain, Trump’s supporters wax heroic about their leader, ready to defend him with their honor for the glory to come. Then home from the war, bronzed heroes,...