Free Republic

Kudos to Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak at a joint session on the issue of imposing tough sanctions on Iran and to Netanyahu for accepting. President Obama has continually snubbed Israel and Netanyahu -- whom he refuses to meet with in March, allegedly because he doesn't want to interfere with the upcoming elections in Israel. Obama has been alarmingly lax in his dealings with Iran in its ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Some Obama defenders are chastising Congress for breaching protocol in inviting Netanyahu, saying, "There appear to be no rules anymore."...

Some conservative types have been extolling the electric car company Tesla's fight against archaic and anti-consumer laws that prevent direct-to-consumer car sales. But Phil Kerpen, writing in National Review Online, cautions that Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) is hardly a model of free-market capitalism. In fact, he says, the company wouldn't last long without massive government subsidies.

Public policymakers and political pundits tend to focus on problems -- understandably, because if things are going right they aren't thought to need attention. Yet positive developments can teach us things as well, when, for reasons not necessarily clear, great masses of people start to behave more constructively. One such trend is the better behavior of the young Americans of today compared to those 25 years ago. Almost no one anticipated it, the exception being William Strauss and Neil Howe in their 1991 book, "Generations," who named Americans born after 1981 the Millennial generation and predicted that "the tiny boys...

Barack Obama was ushered into the Oval Office by a wave of young supporters and first-time voters in 2008. However, they are now among those most disillusioned with Obama and his regime, and they are the ticket to winning the 2016 presidential election and preserving the heart and soul of our republic. Politico recently posted a story that started with the words, "Coming soon to a battleground state near you: White House campaigns combining census reports with Instagram and Twitter posts to target teenagers who aren't yet 18 but will be by Election Day 2016." With more than 8 million...

This week, events around the country will highlight the importance of parental control of education as part of National School Choice Week. This year's events should attract more attention than prior years because of the growing rebellion against centralized education sparked by the federal Common Core curriculum. The movement against Common Core has the potential to change American education. However, anti-Common Core activists must not be misled by politicians promoting "reforms" of the federal education bureaucracy, or legislation ending Common Core while leaving all other federal education programs intact. The only way to protect American children from future Common Core-like...

American Sniper had a record-breaking debut. It’s the widest release ever for an R-rated movie, the biggest debut ever for a Best Picture Oscar nominee; it’s the highest grossing January movie in history and it’s already the second highest grossing war movie of all-time. The movie has already gone beyond “blockbuster” all the way up to “cultural phenomenon” in the space of a few weeks’ time. However, ironically, as the movie has become more popular with the public, liberals have gotten more and more upset about it. You’ve already seen the quotes from Michael Moore and Bill Maher, but...

Defense Spending: The venerable A-10 Warthog, designed to stop Soviet tanks, and the perfect weapon to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State, as President Obama promised, faces a budgetary chopping block. We have noted the irony of how Obama was going to war against the Islamic State with weapons systems he had scrapped, ending the production runs of the F-22 Raptor and Tomahawk cruise missiles. They were dismissed by the administration as relics of the Cold War even as Russia was rearming and trying to reassemble the old Soviet Union. We've also mentioned the phasing out of the A-10 Thunderbolt,...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Who says President Obama doesn't promote bipartisanship? His complicity in Iran's moving toward nuclear bombs has alarmed some top Senate Democrats enough to get them to join Republicans in opposition to the Obama administration's potentially suicidal foreign policy. Before the current measles outbreak, measles was once almost wiped out in the United States. But an article in a medical journal more than a decade ago had many parents afraid to have their children vaccinated, for fear that the vaccine causes autism. After scientific studies refuted that claim, the medical journal repudiated the article, and...

But we won't.Today, we are not going to talk about "Deflategate", the green lipstick woman that most normal people have never heard of, the unfounded controversy about an American hero portrayed in a movie, the administration being ticked off that Speaker John Boehner actually did something constructive to maintain our relationship with Israel, or a State of the Union speech that was so out of touch with reality that even liberal Obama stalwart Chris Matthews said so.None of those distractions will do a thing to stimulate the economy, increase the income of working Americans, create jobs, reduce the national debt,...

Mitt Romney, you're an honorable and accomplished man. You would have been a good president and infinitely better than Obama as a steward of the economy and national security. But, Mitt, we need to talk. You don't get it. You don't really get the basic proposition that freedom works better than government by experts. Sure you believe the concept generally, but there are all those details and exceptions. You hired Jonathan Gruber to guide your health plan. You believe global schemes to reduce carbon will help the climate rather than enrich and empower global elites. You endorsed raising the minimum...

We are calling for an occupation of syllabi in the social sciences and humanities. This call to action was instigated by our experience last semester as students in an upper-division course on classical social theory. Grades were based primarily on multiple-choice quizzes on assigned readings. The course syllabus employed a standardized canon of theory that began with Plato and Aristotle, then jumped to modern philosophers: Hobbes, Locke, Hegel, Marx, Weber and Foucault, all of whom are white men. The syllabus did not include a single woman or person of color. We have major concerns about social theory courses in which...

As late as yesterday I read numerous mainstream media reports that Syriza would win by three to five percent and would need to form an unstable coalition to rule. In contrast, here was my January 19 prediction (and rationale): Expect a Blowout Win by Syriza in Greece. Syriza Trounces New Democracy The final votes are not counted, but exit polls show a blowout, with incumbent party New Democracy going down in flames. The Wall Street Journal reports GreeceÂ’s Radical Leftist Syriza Party Poised to Win Election, Exit Polls Say. Syriza appeared set to win between 35.5% and 39.5% of the...

Logic is the cognitive pathway to truth. While to err is human, when we objectively apply logic to the question at hand, we at least endeavor, if done so in good faith, to arrive at the truth of the matter. Jesus is the spiritual, and the very narrow, pathway to Truth, which is Himself. He invented logic. It’s a tool that helps us to observe, study and to otherwise uncover the many mysteries veiled beneath His awesome natural order. Truth is universal. It applies to everyone, including to the relativist who might prefer wandering aimless and far removed from logic’s...

The best thing about Iowa's self-promoted position as the opening act of the primary season is: It's only four letters long. Thank God the center of the political universe isn't located in a place called Chickasawhatchee, Georgia. I didn't go to the big rollout in Des Moines over the weekend, even though I knew I would pine for that unique feeling of the wind, having started on the eastern slopes of the Rockies, raced across the flat, Central Plains with nothing in its way until it slammed into my butt on Grand Avenue. Next January in Des Moines will be...

resident Obama’s State of the Union was a bridge to nowhere. His job-killing tax-and-spend proposals would just increase the deficit and prevent a robust recovery. His definition of bipartisanship remains—join me in doing it my way, or I’ll do it myself! Here’s one citizen’s alternative “State of the Republic.” Contrary to our president’s glowing assessment, the state of the American republic and the principles that sustain liberty and the American dream are deteriorating. Domestically, the economy is improving, but it’s the most anemic recovery in decades. Under his leadership, the middle class he promises to help has been hit hardest....

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. President ObamaÂ’s State of the Union Address made it clear he is no Lame Duck. Despite his midterm election drubbing, the President came out swinging. The economy has come off the mat. Ironically enough, he is benefiting from crash of oil prices. But in his case, he did everything he could do to prevent the surge in domestic oil and natural gas production. It reminds us of what Adlai Stevenson once said about Richard Nixon: HeÂ’s the kind of man who would chop down a redwood, then mount the stump to...

Gunpowder is bullet-proof preventative medicine for American physicians. Every doctor should have the option to carry concealed in clinics and hospitals. A 55-year-old man named Stephen Pasceri walked into Boston’s Brigham and Woman’s Hospital last Tuesday and asked for renowned cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Michael Davidson. When the surgeon appeared, Pasceri pulled out a .40-caliber pistol and hit the surgeon twice before turning the gun on himself. Dr. Davidson was rushed to the emergency room and operated on but the gunshot wounds proved fatal. His pregnant wife – also a surgeon – was left to mourn the death of her loving...

“for the first time in 35 years, American business deaths now outnumber business births.” Clifton says for the past six years since 2008, employer business startups have fallen below the business failure rate, spurring what he calls “an underground earthquake” that only stands to worsen as lagging U.S. Census data becomes available. “Let’s get one thing clear: This economy is never truly coming back unless we reverse the birth and death trends of American businesses. ... the numbers paint an ominous portrait of America in a dire state of decline. “I don’t want to sound like a doomsayer, but when...

As I have noted previously bond yields continue to go lower, and Investment News reports that it has some bond managers worried that it means that the country will suffer a bout of deflation this year, which mean that the economy, might be, could be, holy cow, a little weaker than expected. Wow. You donÂ’t say? Investment News reports that bond yields are a pretty accurate predictor of which way consumer prices will be going. And in this case the yields are saying consumer prices will be going down. ThatÂ’s good news for those of us who still buy things...

This past week, following the nation’s celebration of the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court heard an important case related to landmark law enacted during the civil rights era – the Fair Housing Law of 1968. This case highlights how some policies that followed civil rights era legislation – in this case government low-income housing projects – actually have hurt the very communities they were supposed to help. The Court heard arguments in the case Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v The Inclusive Communities Project, a non-profit defining itself as...