Free Republic

The final debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, held on Thursday evening, was the first one of the entire campaign that actually felt like a debate. The first debate was a chaotic disaster thanks to Trump’s constant interruptions... This time around, better moderation and the handy use of a mute button allowed both candidates to express their thoughts — leading to a mix of actual substantive policy exchanges and personal mudslinging. The format seems to have suited Biden, who seemed energized and on-target — getting in a number of strong attacks on Trump’s record on...

John Dingell knows a thing or two about how Congress works. First elected to the US House of Representatives at age 29 in a 1955 special election, Dingell left office in January 2015, nearly 60 years later. The last president he served with, Barack Obama, was born six years after Dingell entered office. His tenure was the longest in the history of the House or Senate, outlasting stalwarts like Strom Thurmond and Ted Kennedy by more than a decade. So his call to abolish the Senate, announced in an Atlantic excerpt from his new memoir, is pretty notable. He pairs...

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the premier pro-gun lobby in the United States and arguably one of the country’s most powerful interest groups on any policy topic, says that efforts to fight it by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) could make it “unable to exist as a not-for-profit or pursue its advocacy mission.” In the July 20 amended complaint, first reported by the New York Law Journal’s Dan M. Clark and embedded at the bottom of this article, the NRA accuses Cuomo, as well as New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) Superintendent Maria Vullo, of issuing a...

I first heard the term “basic income” in the socialist magazine Dissent in 2005. I was a 15-year-old leftist with a taste for weird, radical plans to restructure society: say, having the government buy up majority stakes in every company and then distribute them equally to every American; converting all companies into worker cooperatives; trying a planned economy where the planning is done by decentralized worker and consumer councils rather than a government bureaucracy. Basic income, wherein the government gives everyone enough cash to live on with no strings attached, struck me as an idea in that mold: another never-going-to-happen...

This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it. Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can't be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada. But I'm reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better...

You are not worthy!!! That pretty much sums up the brutal assessment of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro by Dylan Matthews of Vox. He was listing the pros and cons of various possible running mates for Hillary Clinton. Most of them seemed weighted on the pro side but when it came to Castro, the cons screamed off the page in a most cruel way that overwhelmed whatever pros he has according to Matthews:

On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler and Colleen McCain Nelson broke the news that Hillary Clinton is vetting Elizabeth Warren for the vice presidency — but not vetting Bernie Sanders. In the process, they provided a shortlist of candidates that Clinton is considering: Beyond the Massachusetts senator, other prospective candidates include Labor Secretary Tom Perez; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Sens. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey; Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Reps. Xavier Becerra of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio, several Democrats said. Now, this...

Memorial Day and Veterans Day often get equated, but there is an essential distinction between the two. Veterans Day honors all who have served the American military in wars. Memorial Day honors those who've perished. It's an annual reminder that wars have grave human costs, which must be both recognized and minimized. Those costs are not inevitable. We ought to also set aside time to remember those throughout American history who have tried hardest to reduce them, to prevent unnecessary loss of life both American and foreign: war resisters. War resistors can be heroes....

Donald Trump's interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week (above) is a great distillation of why covering the Republican frontrunner is proving so difficult for mainstream press outlets. On the one hand, he demands coverage. He's leading the race everywhere: nationally, in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina. And with the exception of a brief surge for Ben Carson that's quickly dissipating, Trump has been leading consistently for more than three months. So outlets like ABC and shows like This Week would, naturally, like the longstanding GOP frontrunner to appear on their programs from time to time. It...

Due to the catastrophizing tendencies of political journalism, the revelation that Ben Carson has been lying about getting into West Point for 25 years has prompted rampant speculation about what happens if his campaign collapses and he drops out. Multiple commentators suggested that Ted Cruz, who, like Carson, is trying to court evangelical voters, has the most to gain...

Generally, I’m not one to hammer on outlets as a whole, although some — Salon comes to mind — seem to use trolling people with ridiculous premises as their entire marketing strategy. Vox has its moments like this, although they also recently hired the estimable Jon Allen as a political editor to shore up their credibility. However, it’s essays like today’s “3 Reasons the American Revolution was a Mistake” two days before Independence Day that provide most of Vox’s reputation for intellectual heft. Well, it’s those and that West Bank to Gaza Bridge that inspired Sonny Bunch to offer “The...

Remember Dylan Matthews? He is the youthful Vox writer who suddenly noticed that the U.S. Senate is not based on proportional representation therefore...SNAP! Abolish the U.S. Senate! Upon being informed that can't be done because a federal system was set up by the U.S. Constitution then...SNAP! Abolish the Constituion! Now young Dylan is bringing the same analytical skills to the immigration crises in Europe and the U.S.A.. He has noticed that many illegals are surging into both areas so...SNAP! Abolish borders!Although Dylan talks about this solution for Europe, he also means the same "solution" for the U.S.A. since he includes a graph...

Intrepid boy reporter Dylan Matthews at General Electric (also Comcast) Vox got hilariously spanked in public recently when he proposed that the U.S. Senate be abolished because it was "anti-democratic." Matthews somehow forgot (or never learned) that we have a federal system so such an abolition would be impossible under our system of government. Therefore, young Dylan found another outlet for his pubescent enthusiasms. Why, if we can't abolish the Senate under the current system then BINGO! Ditch the despised constitution and replace it with a parliamentary system. To get a proper fix on Dylan's latest crusade, let us take...

WAAAAAAH!!! I don't like my Windows 8 so I think I'll dump it! Okay, no big deal. Most of us are not pleased with that operating system. However, Dylan Matthews of General Electric Vox displays the same glibness which, while perhaps appropriate to switching computer operating systems, is completely absurd when wanting to toss over 200 years of constitutional federalism overboard by deciding to abolish the U.S. Senate because he has decided it is "anti-democratic." Here is Dylan making the case that the Founding Fathers were in error: