Free Republic

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is on a roll. First, his team insists Republicans can win the presidency without independent voters (we really must be failing to teach math in this country), and now he says he is an innovative start-up: On Fox News’s Special Report on Tuesday, host Bret Baier asked the senator how he’s handling the criticism. “You know, in some level, I’ll agree with what they said,” Cruz said. “I am not trying to play the rules of Washington. Because I think Washington’s broken — I think it’s profoundly broken — and I think the only answer is...

Michelle Obama wants you to feel bad for her, and for Barack, because they are black. “I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” Michelle says in People Magazine. “Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.” Oh, the horror. Why didn’t the emperor clean up Chicago neighborhoods with his pen and his phone while he was there? Cabs likely would have stopped more frequently if the city, especially the South and West Sides, wasn't infested by crime....

RUSH: I just got a note. "Hey, you know, this is a good thing that you're talking about here, the loss of honest media, targeting anything conservative. Do you do you take any hope in people seeing what you're talking about more and more?" Yeah, I do. Look at the last two midterm elections. I think the American people see clearly what's happening here and they don't like it. I think the American people are totally -- those voting, anyway -- are very aware of all of this. And they're voting to stop all of this stuff. All of this...

Blacks didn't begin rioting in America until white Communist taught them how. In fact, the Watts riots were the first urban race riots driven by blacks. Acting a fool has never affected change for the better. Eric Garner is dead, due in part, to excessive liberal regulations. Michael Brown is dead because he beat down a cop, attempted to take his gun and then charged the officer like he was trying out for the NFL. Berkeley students burdened and trained in the art of "white privilege" are incensed because their professors tell them they should be, and though Al Sharpton...

Jonathan Gruber should have been Time's Person of the Year. The magazine gave it to the "Ebola Fighters" instead. Good for them; they're doing God's work. Still, Gruber would have been better. Time's Person of the Year designation has lost a lot of its stature over recent years. Part of its decline can probably be attributed to the fact that it's come to be seen as an honorific. It was originally conceived to recognize the person who, "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year." So Adolf Hitler (1938) and Josef...

Europe Should Learn Ethiopia’s ‘Islam Lesson’Posted By Raymond Ibrahim On December 17, 2014 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Originally published by VIE.Yet another Christian church was destroyed by Muslims in Ethiopia—this time by local authorities.Heaven’s Light Church, which served some 100 evangelical Christians, was demolished last November 28.  The church had stood and functioned in the Muslim-majority city of Harar for five years.  In the days preceding the destruction, officials forcibly removed the church’s exterior sign and warned believers not to worship there, citing complaints by a local Muslim.  Officials further told church members who had...

Editor's note: This piece was co-authored by Tim Graham.Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are polar opposites, a Tea Party conservative and an Occupy Wall Street socialist. Then there are the similarities: Both were elected in 2012, both have Harvard on their resume and both are mentioned as presidential material. But the media's read of the two demonstrates an unquestionable slant. Both senators have shaken up the Senate over heavy spending and regulation. When Warren does it, she's promoted as a profile in courage, standing up for fairness. When Cruz does it, he's a selfish brat causing meltdowns. On...

The recent release of a Senate report commissioned by Democrats regarding torture of terrorism suspects in order to obtain vital information was a waste of $40 million of taxpayer money. It already had been documented extensively that three suspects were waterboarded and that sleep deprivation and other such techniques were used to extract vital information from terrorists. Though the report says otherwise, that information played a part in the apprehension or annihilation of many upper-echelon terrorist leaders, including Osama bin Laden. The high-profile release of this information at a time when we are engaged in war with various terrorist groups...

It's the season for giving. That doesn't mean it's the season for government. Government creates loyalty in the minds of citizens by pretending to be Santa Claus, doling out gifts and favors. Politicians claim they help those unfortunates who aren't helped by coldhearted capitalism. The truth is, government gets in the way of charity, making it harder for people to help others and for the poor to help themselves. It also gets in the way of commerce, which is what really makes people better off. When I was in college, President Lyndon Johnson declared "an all-out war on human poverty....

Allow me to unite America's left, right and center in just three words: No, Jeb, No. Former GOP Florida governor Jeb Bush made the obvious official this week when he announced on Facebook that he's "actively exploring" a 2016 White House run. Of course, he's running. That's what inveterate politicians do. Well, I hate to break it to Jeb Inc. There's no popular groundswell for Bush Part III. None, zip, nada. Independents, progressives and conservatives are all weary of the entrenched bipartisan dynasties that rule Washington and ruin America. Only in the hallowed bubble of D.C. and New York City...

They haven’t even been sworn in yet, but these members start off the cycle as underdogs in their quests for re-election in 2016. Most of 2016′s initial targets are incoming Republicans, swept into office in a GOP midterm wave. They will represent districts Democrats carried with big margins in presidential election years — seats the newly minted Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján will probably want back. Only one vulnerable Democrat made this list. What’s more, the window for either party to oust these freshman could close quickly. It’s easier to defeat an incumbent in their first re-election,...

... The Compact for a Balanced Budget is a well-conceived idea that would give the nation a new amendment putting a limit on the amount the federal government can borrow, a maximum of 105 percent of the current debt. Nick Dranias, who is spearheading the compact, argues in this Freeman interview, “Using an interstate compact to coordinate the amending of the Constitution from the states, which represents perhaps the ultimate problem of collective action in politics, is just a natural solution.” I suspect that it’s the only solution. What makes the state compact approach both appealing and practical is that...

What if domestic animals — pets such as dogs and cats as well livestock like cows and chickens — were granted citizenship rights? That may sound like a crazy question, but Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka thinks it's a critically important one. Kymlicka, a professor at Queen's University, is a well-regarded figure in modern political philosophy. He's also the author, along with writer Sue Donaldson, of Zoopolis, a book making the case for animal citizenship. Their basic premise is simple: animals are already part of our society, as pets and work animals, therefore we should formally recognize them as such. That's...

Last week, the Obama administration announced new curbs on racial profiling by federal law enforcement. Before deciding whether this is good or bad policy, we might try to develop a description/definition of racial profiling or any other kind of profiling. A good definition of profiling in general is the use of an easily observed physical characteristic as a guess for some other, difficult-to-observe characteristic. The reason people profile is that information is costly and they seek methods to economize on information costs. One way to do that is through profiling. Imagine a chief of police in a city where there...

I don’t usually get so personal in these columns, but today I want you to know that I feel particularly blessed. I am in the Holy Land with my friends, Dr. Ben and Candy Carson. Israel is one of my favorite travel destinations in the world. This will be my eighth visit. It is the first trip there for the Carsons and it is truly a privilege to escort them through this remarkable country. Dr. and Mrs. Carson are deeply faithful Christians, who I suspect will soon find themselves enveloped by the deep sense of spirituality that is palpable in...

If government anti-poverty programs focused on individual outcomes, the results would be those like Lance from Michigan. His father on death row and his mother a prostitute, Lance wandered into Florida and lived behind a dumpster at a 7-11. Hungry, dirty and homeless, he later found a place to live, became sober, got a job and will go to college on a scholarship. We don’t hear stories like that attributed to government assistance. That is because there are over 90 government welfare programs ranging from cash payments to housing and nutrition that are projected to cost $14 trillion over the...

The city of Scranton hiked property taxes 57% and garbage collection fees 69% to shore up a police and fire pension funds that will run out of money anyway, in 5 years and 2.5 years respectively. Amusingly (to outsiders) but certainly not to Scranton taxpayers, Scranton Pensions Increased as Much as 80 Percent as a result of inane mayoral promises. The 2011 court ruling that awarded huge raises and millions of dollars in back pay to Scranton firefighters and police officers was a windfall for retirees too, with some seeing a more than 80 percent hike in their pensions between...

My recent interview with Bret Baier, and his new book "Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love"Gayle Trotter: I am speaking with Bret Baier, Fox News Chief Political Anchor, and anchor of the top-ranked evening news program, Special Report. Thank you for joining me, Bret. Bret Baier: Thanks Gayle, good to be here. GT: Bret wrote an awesome book called Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love, which chronicles his journey in his career and his family life. It is hilarious and vividly written, and it brought me to tears at least twice. Bret,...

The stunning 40% drop in the price of oil over the past few months has scrambled global economic forecasts, changed the geo-political landscape, and has severely pressured many energy sector investments. Economists are scratching their heads to determine if the drop is good or bad for the economy or whether cheap oil will add to or decrease unemployment, or complicate the global effort to "defeat" deflation. While all of these issues merit detailed discussions, the first question to address is if the steep drop is here to stay and whether energy prices will stay low enough, for long enough, to...

Among the journalistic takeaways from the late Congress' death frenzies is the equivocal plight of the two parties -- the grown-up deal makers in both cases squeezed by hardcore, do-it-our-way extremists. On the Republican side John Boehner beset by Ted Cruz, in the Democratic camp the pragmatic Hillary Clinton wing forced to contend with the true-believing fans of Elizabeth Warren. It is the strategy some of our friends in the liberal media may have seized on to take away the bitter taste of defeat at the polls. In this telling, the left-left MoveOn.org/Daily Kos faction, anti-military and pro-big government, has...