Free Republic

Gun-control groups are gearing up for a Hillary Clinton campaign for president, saying the White House hopeful could prove a gigantic boon for their own policy devices. “As Hillary runs for president, she has a tremendous opportunity to educate the American public about how effective background checks are and the need to finish the job,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, to the Hill.

We learned this week that the Secret Service dawdled for an entire year before fixing a broken security system at the home of former President George H. W. Bush. The Secret Service itself is looking pretty broken these days. A few weeks ago, two drunken agents returning from a party drove right through an active bomb investigation outside the White House. They didn't notice that their colleagues were examining a suspicious package. In 2012, a number of agents were found to have engaged prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, during a presidential trip. At least one of the prostitutes had links to...

Protests have been going on all week (after) Air Force veteran Michelle Manhart, was briefly detained during the flag-trampling protest for taking the flag and refusing to return it. Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress told the Valdosta Daily Times that thousands of people who "just want to come down here and support the American flag" are expected to descend on Valdosta State University.

The Columbia University student targeted by a mattress-carrying protester filed a lawsuit Thursday against the school, arguing that it failed to shield him from harassment even though police and campus authorities refused to pursue rape charges against him. In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, Jean-Paul Nungesser said the school engaged in gender bias by allowing him to be subjected to a hostile and intimidating learning environment. The hostile environment was created, the lawsuit says, by the ongoing protest of fellow student Emma Sulkowicz, also known as the “mattress girl.”

There was a time when Hillary Clinton was a bona fide leftist radical, but those days have past, swallowed up by her lust for power and money. Don't get me wrong; she's still a true liberal who stands for everything I oppose, and her White House ambitions and her flawed character are a dangerous mixture. She'll say and do whatever she has to in order to win. But as I've said, I'm not that fearful that she'll even be nominated. What does have me concerned is the degree of extremism inhabiting the Democratic Party that makes it necessary and even...

After six minutes of discussion, the Huntington Beach City Council voted 6 to 1 on Monday night to allow stores to use plastic carryout bags, taking a step toward reversing a ban that was enacted in 2013.

How should one think about the unfolding allegations rocking the Clinton Industrial Complex (which includes both her campaign and her foundation)? By now, you may have heard about Peter Schweizer's book, "Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich." The book isn't even out yet, and Clinton's team is already sheltering in place like Churchill's cabinet during the Blitz. That's in part because Schweizer, a conservative author and dogged investigative journalist, has teamed up with notorious right-wing rags The New York Times and The Washington Post to essentially re-report...

AND NOW... amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke... it is time for... that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-The-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him - do NOT doubt him - with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name (that’s Rush, for those in Rio...

Dana Perino, former White House Press Secretary and co-host of Fox News' The Five, is out with a new book, entitled, 'And the Good News Is,' which Katie wrote about here.  It's a delightful blend of autobiographical anecdotes, political observations, and morsels of sound advice gathered over an extraordinary career in public life.  I taped a radio interview about the book with Dana last evening, and thought I'd relay one of the stories she shared about President Bush's very personal role in helping to mend an important relationship in her life: PERINO: One of the reasons I wrote this book is that historians and political analysts will be writing and talking about...

IT should surprise no one that Gallipoli is a hard place to get to. AFTER all, that's the reason 10,500 Australians and Kiwis are here: to commemorate a disastrous loss for the Allied forces who tried to invade this stony strip of land a century ago. Any geographic difficulties posed by the Gallipoli peninsula, however, are only amplified by the enormous security machine that squeezed tighter in recent days and now has clamped shut on Anzac Eve. ..... The steel security curtain extends far beyond the national park where the famous Gallipoli cemeteries are: the nearby ferry port towns of...

It was sort of inevitable that on his first day of campaigning as an announced candidate for president earlier this month, Rand Paul would be asked whether he supported a ban on abortions in cases of rape or incest. Reporters have been asking Republican candidates that question ever since 2012, when the Missouri Republican Senate candidate said he supported such a ban and added that pregnancies were unlikely in cases of "legitimate rape." But Paul's reply wasn't what the reporter expected. "Why don't we ask the (Democratic National Committee) is it OK to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?...

The North Korean email hack of Sony continues to haunt Hollywood. The leftist group WikiLeaks recently posted a searchable set of the documents and the London Daily Mail found a new scandal subject: Ben Affleck ... and PBS. Harvard black-studies professor Henry Louis Gates produces a show for New York PBS superstation WNET called "Finding Your Roots." Gates tells celebrities about their ancestors. A few years back, NBC had a show just like this called "Who Do You Think You Are?" It's now on cable, on TLC. Why PBS believes it's right to use taxpayer money to copycat commercial television...

With the Obama administration increasing the number of Muslim migrants into the U.S. comes the Islamization of the West — an intentional, gradual overthrow of democracy and freedom by using that same democracy and freedom that’s afforded to them. Ironically, Muslims flock to Western countries and demand the laws be changed to implement Islamic laws that are already in place in their own nations. So, why do they feel the need to create yet another Muslim country when they already have over 90 across the globe? Because their allegiance to Islam requires them to hold nothing above it, not only...

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In a year and a half, Americans will elect a new president. What issues will be foremost in their minds? Allow me to set the table for you: The U.S. economic recovery is anemic at best, with long-term joblessness still a major problem confronting millions of Americans. Income inequality has widened, and poverty has increased. In the past six years, scandal has shaken the VA, the IRS, ATF, the Justice Department and most recently the DEA, which is why it's not surprising that Americans name "government" the most important problem facing the country today, according to Gallup. Overseas, the Islamic...

Investigations have been launched at two universities over accusations that fraternity members taunted wounded war heroes, urinated on an American flag, and spit on a wounded veteran and his service dog in Panama City Beach, Florida. The April 17 incident, involving Zeta Beta Tau fraternity members from the University of Florida and Emory University, has infuriated residents of Panama City. [Snip] ... the fraternity members were staying in the same resort [as 100 combat-wounded warriors and their spouses]– and caused a night of mayhem. The college kids made derogatory comments about the warriors’ wives, threw items off balconies and desecrated...

Students at Johns Hopkins University voted this week to ask the school’s administrators to prevent Chick-fil-A from opening a store on campus. Citing Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy’s opposition to gay marriage, students said the presence of the chain on campus would be a microaggression against LGBT members of the community, Eater reports. Though the Student Government Association approved the resolution, the move is purely hypothetical: there’s no indication that the Johns Hopkins administration was in negotiations with Chick-fil-A, though some students had wondered whether the chain might open a location in a new building under construction on campus.

Liberals have long wanted you to believe there’s a consensus in America for redefining marriage, but now they are going global! Last month, Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, along with a team of foreign law experts, submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to join the “emerging global consensus” for same-sex marriage — essentially arguing that since most countries in the world are jumping off this moral cliff, why shouldn’t we? If that philosophy — which most of our mothers warned us against as children — wasn’t weak enough, they also need to dust off their World Book...

“Are you guys religious?” It’s a question every pro-life activist doing educational outreach has heard. The question is always leveled suspiciously, as if the truth of our abortion victim photography is contingent on whether or not pro-life activists believe in God.The response to this question is simple: Abortion is wrong because it is an act of violence that destroys a human being developing in the womb. On this everyone from the late atheist Christopher Hitchens to the pope can agree. Yes, many of us are Christian, both Protestant and Catholic. But a basic overview of embryology textbooks used in medical...

....“I usually tell a bunch of jokes at these events, but with the Patriots in town, I was worried that 11 out of 12 of them would fall flat,” Obama said, referring to the team’s Deflategate ball controversy. He then looked at head coach Bill Belichick, who smiled and gave Obama a thumbs-down signal. “That whole story got blown a little out of proportion,” Obama acknowledged. But jokes weren’t the only thing missing; also notably absent from the ceremony was quarterback Tom Brady. Team officials said Brady was unavailable because of a family commitment.