Free Republic

The original Magna Carta was a charter agreed to by King John of England in 1215. It just celebrated its 801st anniversary. So no, I wasn’t there. But that charter has become part of an important, iconic, political myth that the deal between an unpopular king and rebellious barons marked the beginning of individual English freedoms, personal liberties, and due-process protection of individuals under the law. Magna Carta has also been cited as providing the essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus. That’s the mythology, and it’s an important one. So while...

Donald Trump is campaigning like it’s 1884. That’s a good thing. His speech on Wednesday sliced open new wounds in the Clinton campaign. He has spent weeks calling Hillary Clinton “Crooked Hillary,” but for the first time since the mid-1990s, someone went after the Clintons for their cronyism and corruption. This is only the beginning, and if Trump were smart—he has proven to be adept at finding the oppositions weak points and relentlessly pulverizing them—he would adopt the 1884 playbook from the Democratic Party and call himself “Donald the Good”, with a pledge to clean up corruption in Washington, D.C....

In 2004 Congress passed the Weldon amendment, which said that no state can discriminate against a healthcare entity because it refuses to participate in abortions. The language includes states discriminating against a health plan that decides not to cover abortion. If the state does, according to the amendment, it will lose its federal funding. In August 2014, California informed its health insurers that they would no longer be allowed to offer health plans that exclude elective abortions. Insurers complied, as one might expect, and suddenly, no one in California could purchase health insurance that didn't pay for the death of...

Paul Krugman may understand the Democratic Party better than most Democrats do. The New York Times editorial writer describes Democrats as a “coalition of social groups, from teachers’ unions to Planned Parenthood, seeking specific benefits from government action.” More often than not, what these groups want from government is at someone else’s expense.That isn’t just a characteristic of the party. That’s what the Democratic Party is.There are also groups that support Republicans: gun owners, small business owners, evangelicals, etc. But Republican groups tend to not want anything from government. More often than not they just want to be left alone....

It’s not surprising that Donald Trump has been riding the Brexit bandwagon. In the days before Thursday’s referendum on Britain’s continued membership in the European Union – the results of which have been roiling global markets since the “leave” camp pulled a stunning victory – Trump had been saying that he would vote to leave. He’s not British, so he couldn’t – but that didn’t stop him from claiming his piece of the victory. On Friday, during a visit to Scotland to inaugurate a newly renovated golf course at the Trump Turnberry Resort, he took to his favorite medium to...

If Donald Trump beats Hillary Clinton, it’ll be because he speaks directly to the voters — without the poll-driven, focus-grouped blandifying filter Hillary never leaves home without. The contrast was there again Wednesday. •He delivered a thumping speech full of applause lines that spoke directly to what regular Americans see as the nation’s problems. Lines like: “We will never be able to fix a rigged system by counting on the same people who rigged it in the first place.” And: “We reward companies for offshoring, and we punish companies for doing business in America and keeping our workers employed. This...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — Black Lives Matter Bay Area organizers Friday said they were withdrawing as Grand Marshals for the weekend San Francisco Pride Parade in response to an increased police presence and security measures announced in the wake of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Black Lives Matter was chosen as an organizational grand marshal for the parade in honor of its theme, “For Racial and Economic Justice.”

The historic “Brexit” vote has the Texas Nationalist Movement calling on Governor Greg Abbott to support a “Texit.” “It is past time that the people of Texas had their say on our continued relationship with the Union and its sprawling Federal bureaucracy,” TNM president Daniel Miller posted on the group’s website. “The win for Brexit opens the door for Texit by establishing, concretely, that it is possible to have an adult conversation on independence and letting the people have the final say.”

The latest batch of emails from Hillary Clinton's term as Secretary of State exposes two new troubling developments in the long-running scandal. First, it turns out that Clinton managed to avoid turning over one key email, despite her repeated promises that she gave the State Department every single work-related email from her private email server. As the Associated Press reported, in the missing email, Clinton admits that her private setup was a problem. Excerpt, more at: http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/clinton-e-mail-scandal-state-dept-disabled-its-own-security-systems-to-accommodate-hillary/

On June 28, 1969, patrons at a gay bar in New York City's West Village neighborhood decided they had finally had enough after yet another police raid. As the NYPD attempted to enforce a law making it illegal to serve alcohol to "homosexuals," the resistance of the bar patrons turned into an uprising - the Stonewall Uprising - an event now widely credited with sparking the modern LGBTQ rights movement in the U.S. Now, nearly 50 years later, that same location - where members of the community stood up to government injustice - has been designated a new national monument...

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This is what happens when you enflame and provoke to the point of vicious irrationality. This is what happens when you make vague and heartless, crass, openly racist, fear-based, hyper-jingoistic promises that are impossible to deliver and will actually only make things far, far worse. And quickly.

For many, many years the corporate elite - the 1 percent - has been selling us on the idea of trickle down economics, i.e., if the 1 percent made money they would reinvest it back into the cities and communities and we would all benefit. Well, does anyone still believe that? I don't think so. But let's talk about what does trickle down - something never talked about by the corporate elite and something that has been missing from most if not all major media and the presidential debates - with a little exception on the part of Bernie Sanders....

"While Abortions Kill Babies, Court in Argentina Grants Basic Human Rights to an Orangutan" An Argentinian court ruled this week that a orangutan named Sandra should receive some of the same legal rights as human beings, according to the BBC. Position 9 Not in use The court decided that while the 20-year-old animal was not a human being, she is a “person” who deserves certain legal rights, according to the report. Lawyers for the orangutan argued that she was being illegally detained in the Buenos Aires zoo and that she had “probable cognitive capability,” the BBC reported. The court ruled...

Yesterday, the Senate voted to extend the draft to women who turn 18 during or after 2018. Obama has promised to veto such a bill, but there is probably enough support in congress to override a veto... I opposed allowing women to serve in combat positions. I hold the monstrously retrograde opinion that women are different from men. ... I find myself at a loss to explain why, to those who don't find this truth obvious. It's like explaining why buttered toast smells good, or why bottomless holes are terrifying. What can I say? I have many female friends who...

Barack Obama spoke at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit Friday in Palo Alto, California. This was his first speech after the Brexit vote left another mark on his years of failed leadership at home and abroad. During his speech to young entrepreneurs Obama took a swipe at whitey. “ Obama: When people can start their own businesses it helps people and families succeed… It offers a positive path for young people seeking to make something of themselves and can empower people who previously have been locked out of the existing social order, women, minorities, others who aren’t part of the...

The globalist movement is on the run as the British people on Thursday voted to “Leave” the European Union. The vote to Brexit—a hard-fought campaign by nationalist populists in the United Kingdom—puts the world elite on their heels, as a similar but bigger and stronger such movement is brewing right here in the United States.

Pink snow may be aesthetically pleasing, but scientists have found that it is indicative of the rapid pace of global warming. This snow, which thrives in high-latitude and high-altitude regions, is found in areas comparable to the Arctic, where Chlamydomonas nivalis algae, which is normally green, has a chemical reaction to the UV rays from the sun and takes on a reddish-pink hue. Scientists have been aware of rose-tinted snow since 1818, but they initially misunderstood its origins, believing it came about as a result of iron deposits left behind by a meteor. However, subsequent findings from the same year...

Megyn Kelly laced into CNN on her show Thursday night, ripping her competitor for hiring Donald Trump's fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a paid contributor. During a segment with media critic Howard Kurtz, Kelly noted that Lewandowski has "threatened more than one journalist in the course of this campaign," including with CNN's Noah Gray last November, when he warned the campaign embed "get back in the pen or he's f------ blacklisted." Lewandowski, Kelly continued before asking Kurtz for his opinion, "has had some very ugly language attributed to him when it comes to women and now he will be...

Foreign Policy magazine has unloaded both barrels at those of us who ask questions and raise concerns about Islam. First, Lawrence Pintak in his article "The Muslims Are Coming! The Muslims are coming!" runs down a list of various Americans, from Cotton Mather to Donald Trump, who have used harsh language against Muslims. While I can't vouch for every word Americans have spoken for four hundred years, the gist of his piece is, America the Intolerant or "America the Suckiful," a standard theme of the left. However, Andrew G. Bostom, all the way in 2006 (we were on the same...