Free Republic

Common Core sucked all the energy, money, and motivation right out of desperately needed potential reforms to U.S. public schools for a decade, and for nothing. It’s been about nine years since the Obama administration lured states into adopting Common Core sight unseen, with promises it would improve student achievement. Like President Obama’s other big promises — “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” — this one’s been proven a scam. “If you set and enforce rigorous and challenging standards and assessments; if you put outstanding teachers at the front of the classroom; if you turn around...

The United States has been at war with China since at least 1947-49, when Chiang Kai-shek, his extended family and the Chinese Nationalist regime were air and boatlifted from mainland China to Taiwan, this after Mao Zedong’s Communist forces prevailed against Chiang’s Nationalists. During the Korean War (1950-53), large scale military combat between U.S. and Chinese forces actually took place; however, since then the war has largely been an economic one, and the Chinese have beaten the United States badly. Make no mistake about it, it is truly a war — although many fail to realize it. Here are just...

NeverTrump Republicans have been rabidly obsessed since 2015 to prevent Donald Trump’s nomination, election, and having failed, to join the left in nonstop criticism and condemnation of President Trump. They may be succeeding, but to what end? As they look around at the current political landscape, are they truly happy with the direction of the country? Or is that irrelevant, as long as they can strut around on their high horse, feeling smug, telling each other “I told you so”? The NeverTrump movement began shortly after Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. So-called “principled Republicans” were incensed that a...

.Editor's note: Jamal Khashoggi’s murder has taken the world by storm.Khashoggi, as I’m sure you’ve heard, was a Saudi journalist. He lived in the United States, worked for The Washington Post, and was highly critical of the Saudi regime.Last month, Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey… and never walked out. The story is that he was tortured and murdered by 15 Saudis before his body was dissolved in acid.You can see why this is such a big scandal. But maybe it shouldn’t be…I say this because of a recent conversation I had with Doug Casey. Below, you’ll find...

In the wake of Election 2018, analysts have delved deeply into a seemingly limitless supply of data points to explain the details of what happened. What role did suburban women play? Or health care? Was there a Kavanaugh effect? This obsession with details may be causing us to miss the bigger picture of what's going on. Donald Trump became the fourth consecutive president to win the presidency with his party in control of Congress and then lose control. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all been there before. This swapping back and forth of political...

The conventional wisdom coming out of the 2018 midterm elections is that President Trump is likely to be aggressively “checked” by the incoming Democratic House of Representatives. And, to some extent, that is clearly true, in view of the oncoming flood of investigations and possibly impeachment hearings for Trump and others. If nothing else, such actions are likely to prove a nuisance for the president, as well as a potential quagmire that could slow down his administration’s actions on any number of fronts.However, while Democrats are likely to try to tie Trump’s hands in any number of other areas, there...

Abraham Lincoln, when informed that General Ulysses S. Grant was a drunk, famously asked Grant's accusers what whiskey he was drinking so Lincoln could send a barrel to every general in the army. Keep this in mind when President Donald Trump's critics accuse him of "racism" against blacks. Under this "racist" President, black unemployment, since the government began keeping numbers, hit an all-time low in May. Polls show that inner-city parents want choice in education: specifically, they want the means to opt out of sending their children to an under-performing government school the child has been mandated to attend....

Times change, attitudes change, and (thankfully) hairstyles change. In the last few years we’ve been witness to one amazing change that is surprising in its speed – the idea that adults should be allowed to smoke marijuana, either for medical purposes or because they want to. There’s no reason to think this trend will ever reverse itself. In the interest of full disclosure, while it’s been more than a decade, I am intimately familiar with marijuana. I didn’t experiment with it, I majored in it in college. But, like most people, I grew out of it. I didn’t make a...

The good thing about screwing up is that you can learn from your mistakes and do better next time. That, of course, assumes you are not a Republican Party official, because the GOP Establishment seems largely incapable of learning from its mistakes.We should try again anyway.We won some races, but we lost a lot more. Losing has one advantage over winning – pain is a better teacher than joy. After all, winning generally teaches you the wrong lessons. It makes you complacent. Look at Texas. The governor did worse than expected; Ted Cruz had a close call, and down ballot...

Forget for a moment about “Medicare for All.” A proposal is gaining steam on the left that would overhaul the U.S. economy in a far more radical way. Known as a federal job guarantee, the plan would require the government to provide work on demand to any American at a minimum of about $12 an hour plus full benefits. Three senators and rumored 2020 presidential candidates, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker and Bernie Sanders, have publicly supported the idea. Their visions for the program vary, but the fundamentals of a job guarantee were fleshed out most fully in a proposal released...

In past years, this unique education system has attracted a great deal of high-level attention. Has anyone ever wondered how come Switzerland regularly features at the top of world ranking in competitiveness and innovation? How come unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is among the world’s lowest? How come Swiss salaries and GDP per capita are highest among industrialized nations? Don’t look further. The magic formula has a name: apprenticeship or, to use a more modern label, VET: Vocational Education Training. People look with amazement when one tells them that seven out of 10 Swiss young people do not go to high...

Well, it’s happening in more places than just Baltimore, but they probably need the help more than most cities. The subject at hand is the trend of police departments solving crimes in greater numbers because of the increasing number of home and business owners who have external security cameras monitoring their property… and the street beyond. As this report from CBS Baltimore indicates, some cases which might otherwise have gone cold wound up being solved in short order. When police needed a break to solve a high-profile murder in Federal Hill this year, they turned to neighbors who protect their...

RUSH: This is kind of a strange picture to me. Right now Senate Republican leaders are holding a press conference on today’s leadership election. That’s right. Republican Senate leaders had an election today, and that determined who the new leaders for the Republican majority in the Senate are. Fine and dandy. While that is going on, in Palm Beach County they’re gonna have to start their recount over because the voting machines overheated. The caravan has reached the southern border in Tijuana. I thought that was just an election stunt created by Trump? Remember the media telling us there was...

RUSH: Speaking of Mexico City and all that, have you seen the NFL move? There was a big Monday night game in Mexico City. The Chiefs and the Rams. And, folks, this is the strangest thing. The NFL has known for a year — well, no. The schedule came out in the spring, but before the schedule comes out, they scheduled this game. I mean, it has to be almost a year, certainly nine months the National Football League has known that they were going to play a game at Estadio Azteca, Aztec stadium, Mexico City. They’ve known this for...

BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- People always learn the wrong lessons from elections. Most people think the election results just prove what they already believed. The smarter people in politics learn something new from the races they win -- and they learn even more from the races they lose. President Trump could learn from 2018 that immigration isn't everything. Yes, he needs to maintain his base, but also he needs to expand his electorate. In short, he has to try to win back suburban men. Everybody is going to write about suburban women. Truthfully, the GOP can lose plenty of suburban...

Buried in the mounds of data fleshing out what happened in the midterm elections is an interesting take on blacks. Nationwide data on black voting in this election cycle does not point to much change. Various polls over recent months seemed to indicate that blacks were starting to warm up to Republicans and President Donald Trump. But blacks went 90 percent for Democrats and 8 percent for Republicans. Pretty much business as usual. However, digging down, we find something interesting. Blacks ages 18 to 29 voted 82 percent for Democrats and 14 percent for Republicans. That seems to point to...

CNN's war on the Trump White House is now entering the legal system. CNN filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia insisting that denying its chief White House shouter Jim Acosta a permanent press pass has caused "irreparable harm," and that Acosta has a constitutional right to shout at the president under the First and Fifth Amendment rights. How lame is this? Let us count the ways: 1. CNN claims its network is "significantly hampered," causing harm to Americans who "rely on CNN as an essential news source." As a network, CNN is not...

Undoing wrongful convictions takes a killer instinct. Chicago-based exoneration specialist Kathleen Zellner's got it. Her record speaks for itself. Over the past two decades, she has righted more wrongful convictions than any private attorney in America. What's her secret? The Herculean task of untangling official lies, investigative bias, prosecutorial misconduct, ineffective counsel and forensic junk science to free 19 innocent men requires more than intellectual firepower (of which Zellner possesses a chess grandmaster's surplus). The job demands iron will and unshakeable fortitude to beat a system rigged to preserve government errors and protect prosecutions. As the "Survivor" slogan goes: "Outwit,...

The media is missing the real story on the peninsula. If that gives Koreans space to lead, maybe that's not such a bad thing. Remarkable changes are taking place on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas are actually starting to demilitarize the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Just in the last couple weeks, they have taken down 22 guard posts, demined the Joint Security Area, and established a no-fly-zone about the peninsula’s dividing line. They’ve pulled back from confrontation along their maritime boundary. North Korea has shut down its coastal artillery units and the two sides have discussed a plan to reduce...

Groucho Marx once resigned membership from the Friars Club quipping, “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.” Imagine Groucho’s dismay had the club been compelled to disclose his membership to the government! That is exactly what California’s attorney general is doing by requiring 501(c)(3) charities to divulge their donor or member lists—and the Ninth Circuit appears poised to let him get away with it. Americans have long banded together to support causes they hold dear, donating their time, talent, and treasure to charities. The attorney general’s demand jeopardizes such activities, along with...