Free Republic

The White House initially claimed to be surprised by the influx of illegal immigrants crossing the Southwest border, but a January 29 employment ad placed by DHS looking for contractors to escort roughly 65,000 unaccompanied alien children challenged that assertion. Now, there's even more evidence to suggest the administration knew about the impending problem well in advance. Fox News reports: The Obama administration ignored a report to the Department of Homeland Security last year which predicted that a large number of unaccompanied children would arrive at America's southern border in the coming months, according to a published report. The...

I was thinking the world could not be more absurd when I read that a Hamas official announced to Arab Israelis they should not be fearful of their attacks because the missiles were designed to kill Jews only. This development is so outstanding that the Norwegians -- citizens of probably the most anti-Semitic country in Europe -- who decide the winners of the Nobel peace prize undoubtedly secretly voted on the spot to award it to Hamas this year. I was wrong, though, there must be some virus rapidly spreading across the globe that paralyzes brain cells, creating a world...

uan Williams, former National Public Radio reporter and current Fox News contributor, threw some cold water over the liberal media’s obsession with illegal immigration Jose Vargas. Appearing as a panelist on Fox News’ Media Buzz on Sunday, July 20, Williams noted how the media treat Vargas as a celebrity and insisted that “he is no doubt a hero to the American media and especially to the American left.”

When justifying the release of five vicious Taliban terrorists detained at “Gitmo” in exchange for U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, the president said, “We don’t leave our people behind.” Sergeant Tahmooressi completed two combat tours and received two meritorious promotions for battlefield service in Afghanistan. This spring, the honorably discharged 26-year-old veteran was planning to relocate from his home in Florida to California. Late on March 31, disoriented by poorly-lighted, graffiti-covered traffic signs, he inadvertently drove his pick-up truck, loaded with all his possessions – including three legally purchased firearms -- into Mexico at the San Ysidro, Calif., Port of Entry...

RUSSIA’S President, Vladimir Putin, the little man with the big stare, has always been in control. It starts with those chameleon eyes and what, at least one observer assumes, must be decades of practice. Does Putin ever blink? He has never bothered with charm. No need. Newspapers that write the wrong thing? They close. Naughty rock singers? They go to jail. As for Western powers united in condemnation? So what? Until Thursday afternoon, that is, when a plane fell out of the Ukraine sky and Putin, a master manipulator and (sometimes shirtless) man of action, sensed it at once. A...

Background: Argentina defaulted on bonds following a debt crisis in 2001-2002. 92% of the investors agreed to haircuts, but a vulture fund picked up an 8% share at rock bottom prices and refused to negotiate. In June, the US Supreme Court ruled that Argentina Cannot Selectively Default on the small group of hold-outs. The problem with the ruling is that if Argentina pays the vulture fund full value, it will have to pay all the bondholders full value, and that would wreck the country again. In the future, bond agreements will force everyone to go along with a majority decision....

Pessimism has taken hold of the environmental movement and created an air of apocalyptic panic. Opinion leaders tell us that climate change will bring humanity to extinction. Some even suggest we should all commit species suicide rather than continue damaging the environment. This pessimism has little relation to scientific fact. Pessimism and scientific problems go hand-in-hand: interest groups exaggerate a problem’s scale to push their agenda, and the media try to cash in by adopting the rhetoric of a disaster in progress. But have no fear: doomsday prophecies never quite materialize. Scientific problems seldom live up to all the hype....

Living in a city that had 82 shootings over the Fourth of July weekend, Chicagoans could be forgiven for envying the residents of Indianapolis. Imagine living in a place where homicides have been reduced by more than half in the past two decades, where robberies are less common than they've been in nearly half a century, where car theft is at levels not seen since "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was still in production. Actually, that's where Chicagoans do live. I was only pretending to talk about Indianapolis. Those developments have all occurred right here. Right now, the city...

The Mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, Kimberly Driscoll, is actively attempting to destroy Gordon College. Dissatisfied with the Christian college, practicing its own beliefs, last week Driscoll began to take out her hostility against them. The angry tone of the actions taken against the school reveal a few things that are important for the rest of the nearly 6,400 Christian colleges in America to understand. First and foremost--none of them are safe. Not a single one. The activists--having lost the Hobby Lobby case before the Supreme Court--are looking for a place to focus their vengeance. Christian schools now seem to be...

Wage war on everything? Expect casualties everywhere. And refugees from all over the place. Continue the wars we admit to be un-winnable and never-ending? Then expect, also, to find new victims cropping up all the time, and in unpredictable corners. New enemies, too. The lesson is: choose your wars carefully. The result of not doing that? The current border crisis: Refugees from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Under-age refugees. Children. Unaccompanied minors from the most recent high impact area of America’s insane “War on Drugs.” Can this really be relevant? Yes. For most of us in America, the War on...

Since Thursday, many people have asked me what I would do about the Ukraine after the murderous downing of the Malaysian Airliner by Ukrainian rebels (which is another way of saying Russian forces). There is a clear path and it is clearly the time for that plan. President Obama has looked like a weakling to this point. His inaction over the Crimea was inexcusable. His later unwillingness to provide armaments to our ally, Ukraine, to defend itself further enhanced the impression of his being a wimp and whipping boy for Putin. In Obama’s defense (yes, there is some though...

A -- all bow -- federal judge has ruled that California's death penalty is unconstitutional because the state's "dysfunctional administration" has meted out the punishment to more than 900 murderers but imposed it on "only 13" since 1978. That's too arbitrary, wrote U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney of Santa Ana. Besides, "the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after (killer Ernest Dewayne Jones) was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment." And: A "death sentence carefully and deliberately imposed by the jury has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or legislature...

Have you ever looked at all the schlock we’re currently mired in thanks to BHO’s “fundamental transformation” of America and thought, or actually said, “Screw it. I’m done. I officially don’t give a crap anymore.” I have. And I prize myself as being somewhat of a scrappy-faith-filled dude. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I get sick and tired of being sick and tired. As a 51-year-old, I remember the good old days when we had at least quasi-legit leaders who gave a nominal flip about the continuation and betterment of this grand experiment called America. I recall how...

On Thursday, Russia’s expeditionary army in Eastern Ukraine shot a missile at what they thought was a Ukrainian jet, according to U.S. intelligence. It wasn’t a Ukrainian jet. It was a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane, flying its normal commercial route that happened to take it over Ukraine. As per usual. And it appears the Russians shot it down, killing 298 people. Vladimir Putin didn’t even bother denying it – he blamed the Ukrainians. “This tragedy would not have occurred if there were peace in that country, or in any case, if hostilities had not resumed in southeast Ukraine,” Putin said....

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. It may have been the most effective political ad in history. President Reagan ‘s 1984 “Prepared for Peace” ad was a 30-second spot featuring a bear. It put the essential question to the American voters and let them decide who was right. They decided then that Reagan was right: It was best to be “as strong as the bear, if there is a bear. President Reagan carried forty-nine states that year. It’s helpful to remember what was happening in the world at that time. Just the previous September, the USSR...

Undocumented Intelligence wrote: Ransom wants to make climate change concern all about being liberal. Actually, it's all about being rational and not blinded–as Ransom is--by an ideology that is highly inconvenienced by an overwhelming body of expert scientific evidence. -Combat Global Warming: Be Gay for a Day Dear Comrade Undoc, Please note that the Ransom Style Book will no longer recognize the phrase Hooverville Follies. Just as the Associated Press has axed the term Illegal Immigrant, we have replaced the term Hooverville Follies with a more apt phrase: Undocumented Intelligence. Thank you. Look, I’m not the one who declares every...

Growing up, I was – as I assume you were – inundated with lists of “the benefits of citizenship.” The list was long and capped, naturally, by the fact the United States was the best, strongest, freest nation on the planet. Being an American was a source of pride. But is it still? Do the benefits of citizenship still outweigh the alternative? As progressives cheer the dissolution of our southern border and, by extension, our sovereignty, it’s worth looking at the benefits of non-citizenship illegal aliens now enjoy and comparing them to the responsibilities of citizenship. Most people don’t like...

How far left was I? So far left my beloved uncle was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in a Communist country. When I returned to his Slovak village to buy him a mass card, the priest refused to sell me one. So far left that a self-identified terrorist proposed marriage to me. So far left I was a two-time Peace Corps volunteer and I have a degree from UC Berkeley. So far left that my Teamster mother used to tell anyone who would listen that she voted for Gus Hall, Communist Party chairman, for president. I wore a...

THE tragedy of MH17 will do nothing to stop Putin in his plans to re-establish a new Soviet Union. This was a tragic accident for him but his ambitions extend beyond Ukraine and this will not stop that. The world now knows he is involved with separatists connected to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. I think Putin will understand there is no going back now and he will make his move. Ukraine is only the first stage; it is the beginning of a wider campaign to increase Russia's strength. He will move to other countries, such as Moldova...

It always takes a tragedy for the world to wake up to grave threats. The catastrophic attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001 was one such incident. America initiated a period of oversees military adventurism to combat the threat of militant Islamism that reshaped the world. The callous and despicable destruction of Malaysian Airways flight MH17 over Ukrainian airspace could be another pivotal moment in history. For too long Russia has stoked conflict around the world for its own short-term political gains. Now its actions have directly led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people, 80...