Free Republic

"In your heart you know he's right," was Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign slogan in 1964. The critics of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who announced Monday he is running for president, are effectively saying of him: "In your head you know he's nuts." Even before his announcement, Cruz was labeled with the typical modifiers the left uses to scare people who don't pay much attention to politics -- extreme, far right, out of the mainstream. In the run-up to the next election, the left and their media colleagues will try to fool Republicans into nominating a mushy moderate from the party's...

This is serious business. What no one seems to want to talk about in public is the fact that the negotiations between Iran, the United States and its allies have the potential to lead to a world war. If Iran is seen by Israel to be close to developing a nuclear warhead to go with its ready missiles, the odds are that Israel will launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. However, Iran has managed to diversify its nuclear laboratories all over the country, thus vastly complicating the targeting for such a strike and also making its capabilities much...

Here is a short pop quiz. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress earlier this month about the parameters of the secret negotiations between the United States and Iran over nuclear weapons and economic sanctions, how did he know what the negotiators were considering? Israel is not a party to those negotiations, yet the prime minister presented them in detail. When Hillary Clinton learned that a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives had subpoenaed her emails as secretary of state and she promptly destroyed half of them -- about 33,000 -- how did she know she could get...

Americans have long used sports as a way to “get away” from the real world for a few hours and focus on a game rather than current events. Sports, after all, have a way of uniting people unlike anything else. Bias in the Booth, a new book by sports talk radio personality Dylan Gwinn, argues that there has been an effort by sports broadcasters to sway public opinion on certain issues—related to sports or not—towards a liberal viewpoint. In the book, Gwinn cites examples such as the deification of Michael Sam and Bob Costas’ rant about gun control as ways...

Wednesday, March 4: Fulton County police detective Terence Avery Green was killed, shot in the head by a suspect. According to WXIA-TV, Atlanta: "Police responded to a shots fired call early Wednesday. They were told the suspect was possibly intoxicated. Neighbors said the man was going from house to house, banging on doors and firing a long barrel gun. ... "(Fulton County Assistant Police Chief Gary) described the situation as an ambush, saying the officers 'were trying to do their job, they were trying to protect this neighborhood from someone who was shooting. And they had no other option but...

The Republican field for 2016 is deep and diverse. Democrats, on the other hand, find themselves in the position Republicans were in 1996 and 2008 – with no heir apparent, no standard bearer, settling for someone willing to run. Hillary Clinton is “inevitable,” unless she collapses under her own weight, but she’s the least inspiring candidate since Bob Dole. Dole is a fine man with a compelling story, but he was an uninspiring candidate. Hillary doesn’t even have the compelling personal story going for her. That heightens the importance of the GOP primary fight. The best thing Hillary has going...

The snarky quip attributed to 19th-century French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -- "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder" -- has recently been making the rounds to deride a letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and signed by 46 other senators. They wrote to the Iranian theocracy that any agreement on nuclear proliferation negotiated with President Obama will not constitutionally bind the next administration -- unless it is properly ratified by Congress. Democrats were outraged. They charged that Cotton's letter is a crime, a violation of the 216-year-old Logan Act. That law bars...

Last week, in his worst anti-Israel rant to date, Peter Beinart demanded that Israel be punished for electing Netanyahu. Those stubborn, stiff-necked Jews did it again, electing a candidate not approved by Peter Beinart. The Jews must pay the price. How? “It means pushing the Obama administration to present out its own peace plan, and to punish — yes, punish — the Israeli government for rejecting it. It means making sure that every time Benjamin Netanyahu and the members of his cabinet walk into a Jewish event outside Israel, they see Diaspora Jews protesting outside. It means loving Israel more...

The headline to this story is an adage taught by journalism schools throughout the country. News is supposed to be based on facts and reported without bias. But alas, reporters are human and have biases, acknowledged or not. If they are blatant and obvious, then we can dismiss them out of hand, (example: Chris Matthews saying, "I felt this thrill going up my leg," when listening to a speech given by then-presidential candidate Barack Obama). But watch out when supposed news items align with a cultural bias. Reporters should apply skepticism to everything they report on. Otherwise, emotionally charged stories...

Make no mistake about it, Israel’s election last Tuesday amounted to a second declaration of independence for the modern Jewish State. To begin with, the election results were an anomaly. Netanyahu was right when he said upon winning that his party’s victory was “against all odds.” As has come to light in recent days, the effort to oust Netanyahu extended far beyond Israel’s borders. According to the Prime Minister, this drive involved tens of millions of dollars in foreign funding directed towards groups working to promote his opponents. One Israeli official even alleged that the Obama Administration was directly involved...

“I am a servant of the Lord. I am a servant of the Lord. He has opened doors all of my life. The Lord has. He has pushed me over the mountain this time. I don’t know why, but I have no doubt that he has.” Ted Cruz could not have said it better during the official launch of his presidential campaign on Monday. He could not have said it at all, in fact, because uttering those words would have made him guilty of plagiarism. They were spoken by Ohio Gov. John Kasich during his first inaugural address in 2011....

RONALD REAGAN ONCE said that Latinos were Republicans. They just didn’t know it yet. Ted Cruz, the Republican U.S. senator from Texas who has become the first major candidate to officially enter the 2016 presidential campaign, is quietly gambling that those words were never truer than in the upcoming campaign where he also apparently becomes the first major Latino figure to run for the White House. The importance of Cruz’s entry into the race, however, is not that he is running as a Latino. Clearly he is not. Nor, quite frankly, should any Hispanic be running for that or any...

RUSH: The Daily Caller. It's actually a couple of days old. I've had it in the stack since I think Monday. "A group of Democratic senators is urging the Obama administration to delay a key portion of Obamacare because the results could be 'harmful and disruptive.' In a letter exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller, Senate Democrats pleaded with Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to delay an Obamacare rule change that puts companies with 51 to 100 employees in the costlier 'small group' market instead of the 'large group' market. "The rule change, which will result in...

RUSH: I want you to hear Brit Hume. This was last night on The Kelly File. This is Brit Hume explaining why mainstream Republicans like him will not be with Ted Cruz. They just can't see supporting Ted Cruz. HUME: Ted Cruz has not won any friends among mainstream Republicans by his choice of tactics. There's a significant number of Republicans out there who believe -- and I'm not making this up -- that the government shutdown did not hurt the Republican Party, but actually helped it win the majority. Now, obviously I don't think that's so, but those are...

Instead of congratulating the Israeli people for being one of the few countries in the Middle East to hold real free and democratic elections, Obama has decided to inflict collective punishment not on Netanyahu, but on all Israelis, even its Muslim and Christian citizens, for having an election that came out not the way he wanted it to. The terrorists have also been following with great enthusiasm reports that the Obama Administration is considering reassessing its policy -- that the U.S. no longer considers Israel a strategic ally in the Middle East. In short, Obama's anti-Israel stance is the best...

Despite the fact that feminists attacked Monica Lewinsky during the Clinton-era, calling her “slutty” and a “trashy bimbo” among other things, feminists are now embracing her as an “inspiring” figure against the tide of “slut-shaming.” The change of tune came after Lewinsky gave an interview to Vanity Fair last year, where she called feminists out for attacking her in the 90s. Jessica Bennett wrote a piece on Lewinsky in the Style section of The New York Times, March 19, describing the phenomenon: "Feminists who had stayed silent on the first go-round were suddenly defending her, using terms like “slut-shaming” and...

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the first official major candidate for president. He won't win the GOP nomination, but winning in 2016 is likely not his game plan. He is playing the long game and will win through 2016 martyrdom... [U]ltimately, Cruz may be hoping to galvanize support for his staunch brand of conservatism. He could be hoping that a mainstream Republican wins in 2016, dissatisfies conservatives with a milquetoast term that changes few or no Obama policies, and leaves the electorate hankering for a "true conservative" in 2020 or 2024. Or, perhaps more slyly, he could hope to...

Obamacare, now 5 years old, working mostly as designed: Bloomberg opinion By Jonathan Bernstein Obamacare turns five years old Monday. Let's go straight to what you need to know. -- The law is working more or less as it was supposed to. The two goals of the Affordable Care Act were to expand coverage and to cut costs. The first part has worked as the drafters expected. Even though the effort has fallen short in states that have refused Medicaid expansion (which U.S. Supreme Court allowed them to do), the law has sharply increased the number of Americans with health...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the guy who liberals tagged with killing the economy because he helped shutdown the government for a few hours more or less, has decided to run for president. And CNNMoney is sore afraid.Why?Who knows with liberals? Maybe it’s because he’s unafraid of common sense. Maybe it’s because he’s happy with going against the conventional wisdom. Maybe it’s because he’s the most sinister of characters: a white Hispanic. But no sooner had the echo faded from Cruz’ announcement than CNNMoney issued a “reality check” on Cruz’ nascent campaign’s economic platform.Most news sites are just happy to “fact...

With tax day fast approaching, it’s time to write about our good friends at the Internal Revenue Service.One of the new traditions at the IRS is an annual release of tax scams. It’s know as the “dirty dozen” list, and while it may exist mostly as a publicity stunt, it does contain some useful advice.And that’s true of this year’s version. But I worry that the IRS is looking at a few trees and missing the forest.The Washington Examiner was kind enough to let me write a cover story on the “dirty dozen” list. Here’s my effort to add some...