Free Republic

In what seemed like a political nanosecond, the Republican National Committee (RNC) released a statement on Saturday condemning Donald Trump’s callous assertion that day that Sen. John McCain is “not a war hero.” Senator McCain is an American hero because he served his country and sacrificed more than most can imagine. Period. There is no place in our party or our country for comments that disparage those who have served honorably. The RNC is 100 percent correct. McCain is a hero. His sacrifice and service to this country when so many like Trump looked for ways to avoid the Vietnam...

Donald Trump finally said something that shook the Republican establishment out of its self-induced stupor over his presidential candidacy. “He’s a war hero because he was captured,” the loudmouth from New York said about Sen. John McCain, Vietnam War veteran and prisoner of war, at a GOP cattle call in Iowa on Saturday. “I like people that weren’t captured.” That’s rich coming from a billionaire who received five deferments from military service during the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, McCain, who refused early release, was held captive and tortured in a North Vietnam prison for five-and-a-half years. Anyone who aspires to be...

Education remains separate and unequal nearly everywhere in the United States, but Confederate-flag-waving Southerners aren’t responsible for the most racially divided schools. That title goes to New York, where 64 percent of black students attend schools with few, if any, white students, according to a recent report by the Civil Rights Project. In fact, the Northeast is the only region where the percentage of black students in extremely segregated schools — those where at least 90 percent of students are minorities — is higher than it was in the 1960s. Schools in the South, on the other hand, saw the...

It was the spring of 1968 and Donald Trump had it good. He was 21 years old and handsome with a full head of hair. He avoided the Vietnam War draft on his way to earning an Ivy League degree. He was fond of fancy dinners, beautiful women and outrageous clubs. Most important, he had a job in his father’s real estate company and a brain bursting with money-making ideas that would make him a billionaire. “When I graduated from college, I had a net worth of perhaps $200,000,” he said in his 1987 autobiography “Trump: The Art of the...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: Which of these Donald Trump headlines is false? (1) Trump Mocks Vietnam War POW John McCain for Being Captured (2) Trump Tells Iowa Dairy Farmers He Has Cows 500 Times Bigger Than Theirs (3) Trump Hate-Tweets Magician Penn Jillette at 3 a.m. It could be any of those because The Donald is capable of anything (for the record, it’s number 2). Here’s a wonderful excerpt from The Onion story under that headline: “Your cows are small and scrawny, and you should be embarrassed to milk them,” said Trump, adding that each of his cows was the size of “at...

PHOENIX—Bernie Sanders is unaccustomed to being heckled by protesters. The self-identified democratic socialist was caught off guard here Saturday when African-American and Latino activists jeered him at Netroots Nation. Sanders’ inability to control the audience – he tried to shut them up and then he tried to yell over them – underscores his broader struggle to expand his appeal and highlights why his summer surge is unlikely to last. The huge crowds Sanders draws are overwhelmingly white, and polling consistently shows that virtually all of his support comes from whites. After Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two contests on...

As the candidates who will qualify for the presidential debate in August begin their preparations, they are going to want to bone up on a range of policy issues and make sure they have coherent answers to hard questions. (Now that Syria is a mess what do we do about it? If a Supreme Court vacancy opens on Day One, who is at the top of your replacement list? Has the president pardoned too few or too many people?) Equally important will be a game plan for neutralizing Donald Trump. Even before Trump self-destructed on Saturday, we saw candidates like...

The Obama administration has begun a profound shift in its enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws, aiming to hasten the integration of long-term illegal immigrants into society rather than targeting them for deportation, according to documents and federal officials. In recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has taken steps to ensure that the majority of the United States’ 11.3 million undocumented immigrants can stay in this country, with agents narrowing enforcement efforts to three groups of illegal migrants: convicted criminals, terrorism threats or those who recently crossed the border.

Count one former major leaguer who has made his conservative bona fides well known out of the Donald Trump camp. Curt Schilling, no stranger to vigorous Twitter debates over, among other things, evolution and trolls who came after his daughter, used the platform to take issue with the presidential candidate’s comments on the war record of Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war during the Vietnam war. Schilling, whose Twitter page photos contain photos of a military cemetery and a serviceman, said he was crossing Trump off the Republican candidates he was considering.

You might think that the recent poll showing Donald Trump spiking among Republicans is about Donald Trump. It is not. It is about the Republican Party and its very dark soul when it comes to immigration. The rank and file didn’t much care for Trump as recently as May. It swooned this month when it discovered he’s a bigot. In May, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 65 percent of Republicans saw Trump unfavorably. In their relative and blissful ignorance, these Republicans had it about right. But then Trump declared his candidacy in a frothing statement about Mexican rapists,...

Greece wildly overcommits in spending on its welfare state, spending the country to the brink of collapse and then failing to live up to the terms of not one but two IMF bailouts, both of which were heavily financed by Germany I don’t even know what to do with this. If you ever help anyone with a problem, don’t expect to get credit for it from the Washington Post. Because it might be necessary for you to make the recipient of the help shed some bad habits, and if you do that . . . hey, remember how cruel Hitler...

At midnight, the deadline for candidates for president (and other federal offices) to report how much they raised and spent over the first six months of the year were due at the Federal Election Commission. Campaign finance nerds are spending today (and tomorrow and the next day) combing through the fine print of each report for the nuggets that provide some insight into how candidates are raising and spending their money -- and why. While they do that, we thought we'd give some of the topline takeaways from the second quarter of fundraising for the 2016 presidential race. Below are...

As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump travels the country issuing strong condemnations of illegal immigrants and the government of Mexico, Hispanic voters are listening — and they don’t like what they are hearing, according to a new survey. The Univision News Poll, conducted by the independent research firm Bendixen & Amandi International with the Tarrance Group, shows that 7 in 10 Hispanic registered voters say they have an unfavorable impression of the New York businessman. Nine in 10 Hispanics say they have heard about Trump’s comments and, when read specific remarks, nearly 8 in 10 say they find them offensive.

Current state of play Yes or leaning yes (34 needed to uphold veto, keep the deal): 24 No or leaning no (67 needed to override veto, kill the deal): 48 Unknown/unclear: 28 And now, the 100 senators ... Yes (1) Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) Clearly leaning yes, reserving final judgment (12) Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) Leaning...

Hillary Clinton issued a lengthy statement tonight not only giving props to the Iran nuclear deal but also basically taking credit for it. “I am still studying the details, but based on the briefings I received and a review of the documents, I support the agreement because it can help us prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. With vigorous enforcement, unyielding verification, and swift consequences for any violations, this agreement can make the United States, Israel, and our Arab partners safer,” Clinton said. “…Today’s agreement is the culmination of a sustained strategy of pressure and engagement executed over many...

Yasser Arafat was notorious for his double speech: Nice and peaceful in English, harsh and extremist in Arabic.The tactic came to mind Friday, when the Washington Post published an opinion piece written by Labib Al Nahass, the head of the foreign bureau of Ahrar Al Sham, a group founded in Syria with the help of al-Qaida leader Ayman Al Zawahiri.Al Nahass portrays Ahrar al Sham in a moderate light and fails to detail the group's nefarious agenda. He claims that his group was founded by Syrians and fights on their behalf. "We believe that Syria needs a national unifying project...

As we all remember, the media completely freaked out after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in favor of free speech. Taking aim primarily at the right-leaning Koch Brothers, the media posed as defenders of democracy against the corrupting influence of outside money in politics. As usual, the facts prove that the media are big fat liars. Although legions of left-wing corporations like NBC News, Politico, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, Univision, Comedy Central, MTV, HBO, and ESPN spend billions of dollars pushing a political agenda 24/7, the left-wing media want a...

Ha! Just what you'd expect.The American news media is feeling a bit confused by two conservative Republican Lateeeeeen-ohs running for president.Here's their dilemma: How are they to cover such an aberration?If they emphasize their ethnicity, they might actually win them some votes among those hot-blooded irrational Lateeeeeen-ohs. Better not to mention it.Ah, but if they fail to emphasize their ethnicity, some of their more sensitive politically-correct listeners and reders might start to think that there is some politically-incorrect bias involved. Better to make a big deal about it.So, take a look at these two reports from yesterday.First, examine this...

President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders in federal prisons, as part of his administration's effort to reform the criminal justice system. Obama’s clemency to non-violent drug offenders comes as the administration is working to reduce operating costs and overcrowding in federal prisons, as well as to provide relief to inmates who were sent to prison under the harsh sentencing guidelines put in place in the late 1980s as the country was grappling with the crime and violence associated with crack cocaine.

President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders in federal prisons, as part of his administration's effort to reform the criminal justice system. Obama’s clemency to non-violent drug offenders comes as the administration is working to reduce operating costs and overcrowding in federal prisons, as well as to provide relief to inmates who were sent to prison under the harsh sentencing guidelines put in place in the late 1980s as the country was grappling with the crime and violence associated with crack cocaine. Since the Obama administation announced last year that it would grant clemency to nonviolent...