Free Republic

Assuming the ceasefire declared in Ukraine as of sundown Friday holds—and the early signs are favorable—we celebrate the end of a conflict that has claimed a startling 2,600 lives since it broke out in April. But not so fast. It’s also time to recognize the Obama administration’s strategy in Ukraine as among the worst of its numerous foreign-policy errors. The agreement just forged between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, is acknowledged all around as the design Putin suddenly proposed when he got off a plane in Mongolia late last week. In all likelihood, this was the...

Shut Up Already! Senate Dems Want To Amend The Constitution To Stop Koch Brothers’ Ads Democratic Senators said Monday the Constitution must be amended, because people like Charles and David Koch must be stopped from flooding TV with negative ads Americans don’t want to see. “A handful of super rich donors and giant corporations are now flooding our elections and determining entire narratives of closely contested races,” Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said in a press conference Monday. “The American people are furious with the state of campaign finance in this country. They can’t stand the negative advertisements that...

America’s two great political parties are constantly transforming themselves, sometimes in small increments, sometimes in sudden lurches. They respond to cues sent to them by voters — which can range from attaboy! to fuhggedaboutit — and to the initiatives of party leaders, especially presidents. But when the other party has held the White House for an extended period, the transformation process can be stormy and chaotic. Which is a pretty apt description of the Republican Party over the past few years. Its two living ex-presidents, the George Bushes, withdrew from active politics immediately after leaving the White House, and its...

Mark Udall says he's "troubled" by Obama's quickness to act on IS (!!!?!!!?!!), and that the two journalists beheaded by IS terrorists would have wanted a "cautious" approach."I can tell you," Udall said, "Steve Sotloff and James Foley would tell us, don't be impulsive. Horrible and barbarous as those executions were, don't be impulsive, come up with a plan to knock ISIL back." Allah makes a point that didn't occur to me: Given that we know that Obama delayed the rescue mission that would have saved both Sotloff and Foley, until they were no longer present at the target site,...

They are impoverished in industry and suffer from severe poverties of honesty, decency and shame. Their fake poverty is as fake as their concern for the poor No group has been hit harder by the Obama economy than American liberals. From Marin County, where bundlers have had to struggle to scrape together a few ten grand bills to attend Obama fundraisers, to Washington D.C. whose bedroom communities now have seven of the ten highest household incomes in the country, poverty is hitting poor rich little liberals really hard. In 2006, Alaska had the highest household income. But voters chose Obama...

On "Fox News Sunday," The Washington Post's Bob Woodward described what he called "one of the untold stories," in Washington D.C., which is the "alienation between Obama and Senate Democrats" because according to Woodward "he is not engaged" and refuses to listen.

Volume two of the project I started writing in 2011, titled Political Order in Changing Societies, hits bookstores later this month. It is an attempt to map out how modern states have evolved out of patrimonial ones, and tries to show how simplistic understandings of how development works can lead to disastrous policy. I have not posted to this blog in almost a year because I have been busy finishing up my book Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. The book is now complete and will be published by Farrar, Straus and...

is has been one of the underlying themes of those who have argued from the beginning of this drama that the West doesn’t have a stake in Ukraine’s fate to even approach the stake of Russia, which has included Ukraine within its sphere of influence for the past three and a half centuries and has viewed that relationship as crucial to its sense of national security. This raises a question: If we don’t have a serious stake in the matter, and we’re very clear with ourselves and the world that we won’t fight over it, and the preponderance of power...

Detroit's Under-Funded Fire Departments Use a Soda Can For a Fire Alarm Where absent money leaves gaps, ingenuity fills in. Nowhere is that more true than in Detroit's fire departments, where, as Detroit Free Press reporter Tresa Baldas shows us, a soda can full of jangling coins and screws alerts the Motor City's long-suffering heroes when there's an emergency. The system is brilliantly simple: A soda can full of rattling metal is balanced on top of the fire department's printer at the end of the tray. When the printer spits out an emergency alert, the paper knocks over the can....

When Congress returns to Washington this week from their long summer recess, lawmakers will waste little time weighing a legislative response to last month's turmoil in Ferguson, Mo. The violent stand-offs that followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer set off a firestorm of congressional criticism over the police response to public protest. Although the saga has largely faded from the headlines, a number of lawmakers will resuscitate it in coming days in order to highlight various proposals designed to prevent another similar incident. Senate Democrats will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine...

Things involving politics rarely happen in a vacuum. Events follow a discernible course if you know what you are looking for. For the first five years of his Administration, Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder has been riding roughshod over the Constitution. It follows that the vast majority of honest FBI agents and Assistant United States Attorneys might be very angry and frustrated that a political hack like Holder should come in and destroy their career in such a rapid and permanent fashion. That anger and frustration apparently boiled over last spring when within a six week period a succession...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)In an exclusive interview Wednesday with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for accepting a multimillion-dollar job with a Wall Street investment bank shortly after leaving Congress. "This is wrong," Warren said in regard to Cantor's new role as vice chairman and managing director at Moelis & Co. "People work in Washington and, man, they hit that revolving door with a speed that would blind you." She went on to claim that banks hire politicians like Cantor "not because they bring great expertise and insight, but because they’re selling...

The argument against liberals ever being in charge of our lives can be reduced to a single word: Detroit. Detroit has fallen from its position as one of the greatest cities in America at the beginning of the 1950s to a perfect reminder of what liberal Democrats will do when given enough power and enough time to show who they really are. “The Motor City” had an unbroken succession of liberal Democrat mayors for more than 40 years and each of these men has contributed to the steady decline of their city. Acting in concert with greedy unions these mayors...

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich), chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is preparing a report that will absolve the IRS and Lois Lerner of any wrongdoing in the campaign to target and harass conservative political organizations. “Those who have alleged that Lerner and the IRS took it upon themselves to conduct a vendetta against conservative organizations have it all wrong,” Levin alleged. “Evidence has emerged that the IRS was acting upon urgent requests from highly placed members of the government. Bureaucrats being responsive to the needs of the government is behavior we should be encouraging not punishing.” The highly...

Bill Clinton is lending his political star power to Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor who is locked in a tight race for his old job in the nation’s largest swing state. The former president on Friday headlined a rally in Miami where he implored Democrats to defy historical trends and turn out and vote in November. “We’re great at doing what’s right if there’s a presidential election on the ballot, but we’re not nearly as good as our Republican opponents are at showing up in the midterm elections,” Clinton said. “The whole shebang is going to depend on...

The IRS's internal auditor distorted the facts surrounding the IRS tea party targeting scandal, leaving Americans with the impression that the tax agency went after conservative groups without also targeting liberal groups, the Senate's top investigative panel said Friday. Investigators said the IRS did mishandle applications for tax exempt status, including subjecting groups to years-long delays and "poorly coordinated reviews." But the report, written by Democrats who control the chamber, concluded that the IRS's "mismanagement" affected both liberal and conservative groups, clearing the agency of accusations of politically motivated behavior. "The subcommittee found no evidence that political bias influences the...

Wasserman-Schultz’ washed-up “War on Women” smear against Gov. Walker Democratic National Congressional Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz has effectively (yet inadvertently) ended the Democratic Party’s “War on Women” meme against the Republican Party. Her recent outrageous comments against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cannot command any respect: Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality. What Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.

CHECK OUT DRUNKEN RANT BY DEMOCRATIC FUNDRAISER AND BOSS OF CHARLIE CRIST, WHO IS NOW THE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR FLORIDA GOVERNORDrunk, Drunk, Drunk—Top Florida Democrat and Charlie Crist fundraiser John Morgan blows up in a DRUNKEN TIRADE! And it was ALL CAPTURED ON VIDEO!Democrat Charlie Crist is runnning for Governor in Florida.John Morgan went off script Thursday at “Boots and Buckles” in Lakeland. Via United West:

It is inaccurate for newscasters to say, “In the aftermath of the recent racial turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., calm and peace has now been restored.” Peace is not the absence of violence, war, inhumanity or oppression. Peace is the presence of equality, empowerment and justice. The truth is that across the United States of America, in the wake of the tragic murder of unarmed 18-year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, there are still raised emotions, traumatic stress, and serious racial disparities. Because of the murders of Trayvon Martin, Eric Gardner, Michael Brown and many others, Black America continues to endure...

The business group that has been pushing for amnesty but that has often backed Republican candidates is throwing its support behind Democrats in several key House races this cycle... the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will have endorsed four Democratic candidates in the House races by the end of the week. Wednesday the Chamber endorsed California Democratic Rep. Scott Peters, a vulnerable freshman facing reelection against Republican challenger Carl DeMaio. ... Georgia Democratic Rep. John Barrow is also slated to receive the Chamber’s official endorsement at an event on Friday... Other Democratic House members receiving the Chamber’s endorsement this year to...