Free Republic

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is accused of providing an enormous stash of classified government documents to WikiLeaks for publication, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize more than President Barack Obama, according to former Texas Rep. Ron Paul. “While President Obama was starting and expanding unconstitutional wars overseas, Bradley Manning, whose actions have caused exactly zero deaths, was shining light on the truth behind these wars,” the former Republican presidential contender told U.S. News. “It’s clear which individual has done more to promote peace.” Manning was nominated for the award in 2011, 2012 and again earlier this year. Obama won the...

A retired auxiliary bishop in Detroit has told supporters of same-sex marriage that they should continue receiving Communion, directly contradicting a statement by Archbishop Allen Vigneron. “Don’t stop going to Communion. You’re okay,” Bishop Thomas Gumbleton advised proponents of gay marriage. He was speaking just days after Archbishop Vigneron had said that Catholics who disagree with the Church on the definition of marriage should refrain from Communion. The archbishop had said that receiving Communion while being in fundamental disagreement with the Church “would result in publicly renouncing one's integrity and logically bring shame for a double-dealing that is not unlike...

Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party favorite and possible 2016 presidential candidate, is raising money for a conservative gun rights group that’s targeting fellow Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. And when one congressman complained, the message from Paul’s camp was: too bad. The Kentucky Republican has lent his name to fundraising pitches for the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that says the National Rifle Association is too willing to compromise on gun rights. The group has blitzed the districts of Virginia Republicans Cantor and Rep. Scott Rigell with $50,000 worth of TV and radio ads accusing...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the Tea Party favorite and emerging 2016 GOP presidential star, on Wednesday showed he is looking to broaden his and the Republican Party's base far beyond white males to include African-American youths. In a speech to Howard University Wednesday morning, Paul reached out to blacks, arguing that the Democrats and President Obama has failed African Americans, but admitting that the GOP has a long way to go before blacks see Republicans as their guide to success. "Some have said that I'm either brave or crazy to be here today. I've never been one to watch the...

The New York Times reports that the entry of Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and similar figures into the Republican foreign-policy debate has provoked worry in the party: Now, a new generation of Republicans like Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is turning inward, questioning the approach that reached its fullest expression after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and signaling a willingness to pare back the military budgets that made it all possible. That holds the potential to threaten two wings of a Republican national security establishment that have been warring for decades: the internationalists who held sway under the...

Libertarianism goes mainstream By: James Hohmann April 7, 2013 06:50 AM EDT Stereotyped for decades as pro-pot, pro-porn and pro-pacifism, libertarians are becoming mainstream. Fair or not, Ron Paul epitomized to a swath of voters the caricature of a goofy grandpa who invests in gold, stockpiles guns, sees black helicopters whirling overhead and quotes Friedrich Hayek. His ride into the sunset — combined with an evolving electorates’s move away from hot-button social issues — gives a new libertarian guard the opportunity to rebrand their governing philosophy as more reasonable, serious and compatible with the Republican Party. Led by Sen. Rand...

Riding shotgun in a red minivan, his foot propped on the dash, the Republican Party's man of the moment zips down the back roads of southern Kentucky. Rand Paul is on his way to a meeting with Christian leaders in Somerset, a conservative stronghold where locals couldn't buy alcohol until last year. It's his third event in as many hours, and he looks tired; his voice nearly gave out the day before. But social conservatives have rarely enlisted in the libertarian army, and Paul is trying to build a new coalition that can revitalize a deflated GOP. "A new Republican...

www.gunowners.org/op0808.htmMcCain? No Way! by Sen. HL "Bill" Richardson (ret.) Chairman of the Board, GOA Americans are being told by the mainstream media that conservatives have no other choice than to back the hypocrite from Arizona. All that is required is to pretend he is "really" a conservative. "So, crawl under the big Republican tent and vote for McCain," we are told. "Besides, what other choice do you have?" We have plenty of choices, none of which calls for casting our vote for the lesser of two presidential evils. First, the Republican race isn't over. Huckabee is still around and as...

The CIA is notorious for its disastrous, damaging failures. In the 1950s, the CIA’s meddling in Iran politics led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, creating a nation that is our implacable enemy. In the 1960s, the CIA carried out the embarrassing Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. In the 1980s, the CIA it was responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal that nearly wrecked Reagan’s presidency. In the 1980s, the CIA entirely missed the fact that the Soviet Union was collapsing. And in 2001 it was as surprised as anyone by the 9/11 attack. One would think that, with this track...

On Thursday night, conservative radio host Mark Levin attacked Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and the “has-beens” at CNN for their “hit” on Rep. Michele Bachmann after she was caught racing away from a CNN reporter confronting her over factually inaccurate claims about the president’s “lavish” White House living. On Tuesday, CNN reporter Dana Bash attempted to confront Bachmann over her claims that the president has an extraordinarily luxurious lifestyle, but was famously met with deflection and a race away from the camera. On The O’Reilly Factor last night, the eponymous Fox host criticized Bachmann for her “trivial attacks on...

WASHINGTON – While he doesn’t exactly make the lame walk, Senator Rand Paul excels at getting them to talk, and to answer difficult questions essential to the life and liberty of all Americans. The Senator’s most recent principled stand, voiced during his epic filibuster, targeted the Obama Administration’s policy on dishing out the same quick and hasty deaths without charge or trial here at home as they have been overseas. Daring to challenge Attorney General Eric Holder to a duel of wits instantly endeared Senator Paul to countless concerned Americans who are fed up with politics as usual, feel betrayed...

Don't look at me --- I was the one arguing that the state should get out of the marriage business entirely, and that the only true state interest in marriage, from a secular point of view at least, is enforcing paternal responsibility, which has no connection to same-sex relationships. This latest poll from Quinnipiac only surprises me to the extent that Catholic voters seem to be ahead of the general population in redefining the legal definition of marriage while still identifying as Catholic: American voter support for same-sex marriage is inching up and now stands at 47 --- 43 percent,...

American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said he supported a bipartisan Senate effort at immigration reform, stressing that the proposal must include a way for an estimated 11 million illegal aliens to “come out of the shadows” and be given “a legal status where they can be secure in this country for their future and that of their children.” Cardenas made his remarks on the Spanish-language Telemundo show Enfoque on Sunday, noting that immigration is an issue he plans to stress at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., which opens next week. … When asked what...

A professor at Georgetown University wrote a piece in the NY Times advising Catholics to resign from the Catholic Church in light of Pope Benedict's resignation. Paul Elie is a senior fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown, and he says that Catholics should boycott Mass (a mortal sin) as a way to instigate change, namely selecting a Pope that would introduce radical change. This is just so fitting of a Georgetown professor and the New York Times. Here's some of the most outrageous parts: AT 8 p.m. last night in Vatican City, Benedict...

Following in fellow MSNBC co-host Chris Hayes’s footsteps, the network’s conservative pundit S. E. Cupp has withdrawn from speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference next month over the issue of same-sex marriage and the exclusion of GOProud. Cupp announced her decision to back out on The Cycle earlier this afternoon.

<p>Washington (CNN) - Sen. Rand Paul will call on his fellow Republicans to be more welcoming of immigrants Tuesday night in a speech where he will also sharply criticize President Barack Obama and his congressional colleagues for failing to reduce the nation's debt.</p>

Tory traditionalists in the Cabinet are preparing to back gay marriage despite continuing anger among the party’s grassroots. Justice Secretary Chris Grayling, one of the Government’s most senior Right-wingers, indicated yesterday he will vote in favor of legalizing same-sex unions next week, while Baroness Warsi, who has previously expressed concern, also revealed she is to back the reform. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, the standard bearer for the Tory Right, is expected to abstain rather than vote against, and may even back the legislation, according to friends. … Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson is the most implacably opposed...

GOLAN HEIGHTS, Israel — Sen. Rand Paul doesn’t explicitly deny his eight-day visit to the Holy Land represents the launch of a 2016 Republican presidential nomination run. “I consider it as more an effort to become part of an international stage,” the freshman Kentucky Republican said. But at least some of the 40 evangelical Protestant leaders traveling with Mr. Paul think otherwise. “This trip to meet with Israelis, Arabs and Palestinians is absolutely the first step in his 2016 White House campaign,” said David Lane, evangelical political organizer and president of the Los Angeles-based Pastors and Pews. Mr. Paul joined...

In early December the independent and very liberal National Catholic Reporter weekly newspaper published a long, carefully reasoned editorial declaring that “The Ordination of Women Would Correct an Injustice.” If the Church were deliberately perpetrating an injustice in the matter of ordination, of course, it would be a serious matter. The NCR editorial was a response to the earlier “excommunication, dismissal, and laicization” of Roy Bourgeois, who as a Maryknoll priest had long and defiantly—and in spite of numerous warnings—engaged in what was officially described as a “campaign against the teachings of the Catholic Church”—he repeatedly and obstinately engaged in...

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announced its support last month for selling oral contraceptives over the counter without a prescription in the United States. I agree with this opinion, which if embraced by the federal government would take contraception out of the political arena. As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control. It's a disingenuous political argument they make. As an unapologetic pro-life Republican, I also believe that every adult (18 years old...