Free Republic

The pathetic thing about Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his water carriers at the Weekly Standard and historically pro-segregationist rag National Review is that none of them will ever have the stones of someone like George Wallace and stand for the modern segregation of LGBT people and pledge never to get out-queered again. The optics are too bad and too unambiguous for their political ambitions to survive.But you only sign a law like Indiana’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act – which radically expands private businesses’ ability to discriminate against against LGBT citizens by preserving bigoted business ownersfrom private litigation –...

An op-ed piece titled "Conservatives, Please Stop Trashing the Liberal Arts" appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal. But it is not conservatives who trashed the liberal arts. Liberal professors have trashed the liberal arts, by converting so many liberal arts courses into indoctrination centers for left-wing causes and fads, instead of courses where students learn how to weigh conflicting views of the world for themselves. Now a professor of English, one of the most fad-ridden of the liberal arts today, blames conservative critics for the low esteem in which liberal arts are held. Surely a professor of English...

"There's something very dangerous happening in states across the country," Apple chief executive Tim Cook warned Monday in a Washington Post opinion piece against Indiana's newly passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It matters not to the corporate big shot that President Bill Clinton signed a federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993 (which current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi supported) or that then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama voted for a similar law in 1998. It was one thing for Democrats to support religious freedom when there was no downside to standing up for the devout. Today there could be a...

The Internal Revenue Code is a mess. In this, most agree. Marco Rubio has announced his plan to reform the Internal Revenue Code and each Republican candidate will undoubtedly follow quickly with their own particular plan. As a former tax practitioner and a current tax professor, while I will like some plans more than others, unless the FairTax makes an untimely reappearance, I will believe that each plan is far better than the current Internal Revenue Code. (I co-authored a book entitled The FairTax Fantasy that in retrospect deems the FairTax flawed in ways so similar to Obamacare that it...

For the first time in a decade, the U.S. House of Representatives may soon vote to kill the death tax. The death tax in the United States was born in the North and South as a way to pay for the Civil War. When the war ended, the tax lingered until 1870. It sprang back to life to fund World War I. The war ended and the tax shrank. It then grew to full fury during World War II. The tax has been cut back, then expanded. It even disappeared for one full year in 2010 before returning. But even...

It is far easier for an individual to do great evil than to do great good. That the world isn't fair is known to every human being who thinks. It may be our first insight into life. What child who ever complained, "That's not fair," wasn't told by some adult, "Life isn't fair"?One sad example of how unfair life is concerns how much harder it is to do massive good than massive evil. One psychopath, in one hour, killed 149 innocent people aboard a Germanwings airliner. How many people will ever be able to do nearly as much good for...

In masterful article by Kristi Culpepper, a muni-bond expert who works for the state of Kentucky, Chicago’s bond financing scheme is exposed as a house of cards that postpone debt payments in return for higher interest payments over time. Amongst the questionable strategies exposed by Culpepper include using long-term financing to cover day-to-day expenses, using bonds to pay pension obligations and misappropriating returns from the interest rate swap portfolio as an “ATM” for the city. And the winners are: Chicago city employees—union employees, for whose paychecks and benefit the scheme of providing short term-cash in return for high interest payments...

If Hillary Clinton survives her myriad real scandals and becomes the Democratic presidential candidate for 2016, are we going to be bludgeoned with sexism the same way Barack Obama's supporters have exploited "racism"? If recent rumblings from Clinton supporters are any indication, I'm afraid this could be the case. New York Times reporter Amy Chozick recently received an email from a Clinton-supporting group, called HRC Super Volunteers, warning her, "We will be watching, reading, listening and protesting coded sexism." How feminist of that group. You know, that sure sends a signal that its gal can fend for herself without any...

There are still nearly two years left in Barack Obama's presidency, but historians looking back on his record in foreign policy will surely identify one costly error: his refusal to follow through on the implied threat in stating that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line." That statement was made in a press conference on Monday, Aug. 20, 2012. The president was not scheduled to appear; press secretary Jay Carney said, "Looks like there's a surprise guest here." After fielding questions on other topics (Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, Mitt Romney's attack ads and tax...

Liberals never argue with one another over substance; their only dispute is how to prevent the public from figuring out what they really believe. Meanwhile, it is a source of constant alarm to conservatives that the public will not understand what they really believe. – Ann Coulter If you listen to liberals, you’d believe that conservatives are hateful, racist, cruel, selfish dishonest, mean-spirited Fascists while liberals are compassionate, caring, open minded, honest, giving saints who want the best for everyone. If that’s true, then why is it that liberals have to incessantly lie about what they’re doing, what’s happening...

As academia strays farther and farther from the truth, those of us residing here on earth are left asking, “When does it end?” Every time you think they couldn’t get more out there, they trump themselves. We’re constantly reminded how horrible segregation was unless it’s called an “Ethnic minority safe space,” in which case it’s “essential.” In college, the Social Justice Warriors have cast such a wide net when it comes to rape, you have students getting in trouble simply because they look like a rapist. However, when it comes to the real-life rape issues facing Spring Breakers in Panama...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I want to go to Indiana and discuss this supposedly controversial Indiana religious freedom law. It's made to order for the modern-day Drive-By Media. On Saturday and Sunday, ABC, CBS, NBC -- virtually every mainstream media organization -- condemned a new law in Indiana that would protect private businesses from government infringement on their religious freedom. What this means is that the Obama administration wants to do away -- and the media is assisting -- with the whole notion of free markets, the Constitution, and the freedom of religion clause. The administration wants the power to mandate...

RUSH: Man, oh, man, the news coming out of there is distressing, it's depressing, but it's all too predictable. One of the sidebar news stories about the Iranian nuclear talks is that Obama, there's a credible train of thought, folks, that is percolating inside the Beltway and up to New York, the New York-Washington corridor, that Obama is officially, within the next few months or so, is officially going to abandon Israel as a United States ally. The way it would happen, you know, we've been negotiating the Middle East peace process, which we have detailed in great detail here...

RUSH: I played golf yesterday and somebody suggested to me that, if I ever do write another book, the title should be On the Golf Course, because of what I hear so often and the things that happen, the conversations that ensue with people on the golf course. One of the guys I played with yesterday is an admitted French socialist. We're having lunch after playing golf and he's asking me -- and I've developed a technique when dealing with people that I'm either meeting for the first time or don't know them very well. Rather than just ask them...

RUSH: You know, Obama was down here this weekend. He was up at the Floridian. I'm a former member of the Floridian. Wayne Huizenga owned the course, Wayne Huizenga, the Miami Dolphins owner, waste management impresario, well-known billionaire, built the course and extended membership to his friends. Then he sold the course to the guy that owns the Houston Astros, Jim Crane, and a lot of member's went their own way. So it's got a whole new membership now. Jim Crane, a big Democrat fundraiser, and Obama has been down here, second time. He played with Tiger Woods the first...

A heavy majority, but maybe not heavy enough. If McConnell can’t muster more than 62 votes in the Senate to override an Obama veto of whatever Congress chooses passes. we’ll be stuck with this Iran sh*tburger until January 2017 at the earliest. And probably much longer than that, if we’re being honest. Nice to see President Overreach get a rebuke in the polls, though. Which is different from expecting any sort of meaningful public backlash if he makes a deal over Congress’s objections.At first glance that looks like a neatly consistent result. Americans favor giving their representatives the final say...

A responsible financial institution would not extend a new loan of between $17 and $40 billion to a borrower already struggling to pay back an existing multi-billion dollar loan. Yet that is just what the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did last month when it extended a new loan to the government of Ukraine. This new loan may not make much economic sense, but propping up the existing Ukrainian government serves the foreign policy agenda of the U.S. government. ?? Since the IMF receives most of its funding from the United States, it is hardly surprising that it would tailor...

When will John Boehner learn that a bill is bad news if Nancy Pelosi supports it, President Obama wants to sign it, and the press sings its praises? That’s precisely what he had on his hands with H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, a.k.a. the “Doc Fix.” Yet today we find him basking in the approbation of the Beltway establishment for getting this bill passed. This “fix” will add billions to the federal deficit, replace an unworkable price control system with a worse scheme that will dictate how doctors practice medicine and place financial burdens on seniors....

Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn't matter what the terms of the agreement are, if Iran can cheat. It is amazing — indeed, staggering — that so few Americans are talking about what it would mean for the world's biggest sponsor of international terrorism, Iran, to have nuclear bombs, and to be developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver...

After litigating religious liberty issues for more than 20 years, I’m used to utter hysteria erupting on the Left when Christians try to assert conventional and traditional religious liberty rights. Perhaps my favorite example was the claim — by a Tufts University student panel — that a Christian group had to be thrown off campus without due process, in part because the Christian group’s insistence on selecting only Christians as leaders placed Tufts students at greater risk of suicide. Yes, suicide. But for national freakouts, it’s tough to beat either the sky-is-falling rhetoric around the idea that a few Hobby...