Free Republic

The plans of the next president are personal to the officers of the Pentagon, who are threatening to quit if The Donald becomes commander-in-chief. Republican presidential candidate and business mogul Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to build up the U.S. military if elected president. But it is not clear he will have the experienced commanders within the ranks to do it. In the halls of the Pentagon, there is a different plan afoot for the Trump presidency. Here, officers are privately contemplating what they would do should Trump become their commander-in-chief. And more often than not, they proclaim they will...

Published on Dec 16, 2015 BACKGROUND: In the dead of night after 2am this morning, Congressional leadership unveiled a more than 2,000 page 'omnibus' year-end funding bill which would, among other things: fully-fund the President's refugee expansion; fully-fund sanctuary cities; fully-fund the resettlement of illegal aliens youth and their families crossing the border; lock-in tax credits for illegal aliens; and quadruple the highly controversial H-2B foreign worker visa being used to replace Americans as truck drivers, construction workers, theme park employees, and in blue collar jobs across the nation. Sessions, the Chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, issued a statement about...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is climbing to his highest support yet in a new national poll. The real estate mogul earned a broad 41 percent support from Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters in a new national Monmouth University poll released today.

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) Operational Test Agency, in conjunction with U.S. Pacific Command, U.S. European Command, and Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense, successfully conducted the first intercept flight test Dec. 9, Hawaii Standard Time, of a land-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) weapon system and Standard Missile (SM)-3 Block IB Threat Upgrade guided missile, launched from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) on Kauai. During the test, a target representing a medium-range ballistic missile was air-launched from a U.S. Air Force...

The Constitution, not personal moral views, is THE issue when it comes to federal acts and omissions. The Constitution does not mandate federal allowance of immigration whereas the Constitution DOES at least have an implied mandate for the feds to REPEL INVASIONS (Art I, Sec 8, Cl 15) and not to give AID or COMFORT to our enemies (Art III, Sec 3) which is impeachable treason (Art II, Sec 4). People who claim to be on the Right need to get a bearing on the Constitution, the ONLY source and authorization of federal power. The Free Exercise Clause does not...

It is the opinion of the Editorial Board and many contributors of Bearing Drift that the statements made by Donald J. Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, regarding halting the entry of those of the Islamic faith from entering the United States, are reckless, inappropriate, and contrary to the founding principles embodied in Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom. Mr. Trump's statement is a direct attack on America's history of religious tolerance, and it represents a violation of the Federal Constitution, and in Virginia, of our Statute for Religious Freedom, the oldest such enacted law in...

We are living in a world rapidly evolving away from the mental constructs and language of the last 375 years. These ideas can be traced to the Treaty of Westphalia ending the 30 Years War in 1648 and Grotius proposal of a system of International Law in the same era. The ideas were then extended through the development of state warfare culminating in the Napoleonic Wars.

"Combat Effectiveness" Being Degraded by Obama's Military Policies By evaluating an overwhelming amount of evidence that has been building for 6 ½ years, the obvious conclusion personnel with extensive military experience will come to, is that Obama’s military policies have been degrading the finest US military fighting force in history. Over the last 6 ½ years, the US Armed Forces has been hollowed out by Obama, his Social Experiment On Diversity has severely fractured unit cohesiveness, his “Politically Correct Policies” have negatively affected unit morale, and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US military is being degraded. Tip of the spear...

Jeb Bush's speech laying out his foreign policy on Wednesday provided a lot of tough talk on how to keep the country safe but ultimately didn't differ in many places from the Obama administration's current plan, experts said. Bush said Wednesday he would deploy U.S. combat troops to Syria, allow special operators to target terrorist networks and rely largely on local ground forces to defeat the Islamic State. "While air power is essential, it alone cannot bring the results we seek. The United States — in conjunction with our NATO allies and more Arab partners — will need to increase...

France made history by being the first country in the European Union to invoke the mutual defense clause following the brutal attacks in Paris.The French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian invoked article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union while in Brussels, USA Today reports.According to the text of the clause, “if a member state is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other member states shall have toward it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” This is the first time article 42.7 has ever come into play. French officials have opted...

It's hard to believe we twice elected a president who refuses to defend the United States. I think people who used to dismiss our criticism of President Obama as extreme are now realizing just how naive they were. On the morning before the ISIS terrorist attacks in Paris, Obama was bragging that ISIS is contained. Are you kidding me? Even before the attacks everyone knew ISIS was on the march and couldn't possibly be contained. What have you done to contain them, by the way? And why are we even talking about "containment" instead of wholesale destruction of a known...

November 14, 2015: GOP Presidential candidate and front-runner Donald Trump spoke to thousands at a rally in Beaumont, TX at the Ford Park Arena. Trump spent the majority of the time talking about immigration...

Rand Paul had his best debate moment Tuesday when he challenged Marco Rubio on his plans to increase defense spending by $1 trillion. "You cannot be a conservative if you're going to keep promoting new programs you're not going to pay for," said Paul. Marco's retort triggered the loudest cheers of the night: "There are radical jihadists in the Middle East beheading people and crucifying Christians. The Chinese are taking over the South China Sea. ... the world is a safer and better place when America is the strongest military power in the world." Having called for the U.S. Navy...

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is removing a senior military assistant, Army Lt. Gen. Ron Lewis, from his position after learning about allegations of misconduct, Carter announced Thursday. "I directed that this matter be referred to the inspector general of the Department of Defense for investigation," he said in a statement. A senior defense official would not discuss the nature of the alleged misconduct but said Carter was "very surprised" to learn of the allegations.

During last night's Republican presidential debate, Rand Paul criticized Marco Rubio's "plan for $1 trillion in new military spending" as "not very conservative." Rubio responded by inaccurately describing Paul as "a committed isolationist" and declaring (twice) that the United States needs to be "the strongest military power in the world." But Rubio did not explain why a bigger Pentagon budget is necessary to accomplish that goal. After all, the U.S. already devotes much more money to military spending than any other country. Paul said "we spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined." According to the latest...

For the past week, the White House has been talking about its first-day promise to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay — on the last day, if need be, of Barack Obama’s presidency. And it might take that long, too, because Congress has overwhelmingly passed a new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to fund the military that extends a prohibition on transfers from Gitmo. Obama isn’t likely to issue a veto, either: The Senate voted 91-3 on the $607-billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which lays out broad defense policy requirements and restrictions.Obama vetoed the original bill largely...

Big changes are underway in Ottawa since the Liberals’ big election win. One of these is the appointment of Lieutenant Colonel Harjit Sajjan, a former anti-gang police detective, highly decorated soldier, military intelligence genius, and Canada’s newest Minister of Defense. Sajjan moved to Canada from India when he was just five years old. Joining the military at 18 after being initially rejected, he served one tour in Bosnia, three tours in Afghanistan, and was the first Sikh to command a Canadian Army regiment. In other words, this is one bad-ass, been-there-done-that Cabinet officer. During his time time in Afghanistan, he...

Congress may be (but it isn’t known when) preparing to override President Barack Obama’s decision to veto a $612B defense bill. Obama’s reasoning for vetoing the bill: it doesn’t have enough money. Number one, it keeps in place the sequester that is inadequate for us to properly fund our military in a stable, sustained way and allows all of our armed forces to plan properly. I have repeatedly called on Congress to eliminate the sequester and make sure that we’re providing certainty to our military so they can do out-year planning, ensure military readiness, ensure our troops are getting...

Two weeks of air and missile strikes in Syria have given Western intelligence and military officials a deeper appreciation of the transformation that Russia’s military has undergone under President Vladimir V. Putin, showcasing its ability to conduct operations beyond its borders and providing a public demonstration of new weaponry, tactics and strategy.

Link to the pollSome people seems to think that Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey of Tennessee said something controversial when he suggested that these are troubled times; that Christians are under attack, and that it would be wise for Christians to obtain a concealed carry permit and be willing to defend themselves.  From the timesfreepress.com:“Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West,” he wrote.“While this is not the time for widespread panic,” Ramsey added, “it is a time to prepare. I would encourage my fellow...