Free Republic

Hillary Clinton’s greatest strength, the candidate explained in an interview with the morning newsletter The Skimm, is her “passionate commitment to helping people.” The passion was on display in 2009, for example, when Clinton personally intervened to help Swiss bank UBS settle a lawsuit with the IRS and thus protect the identities of tens of thousands of Americans who may or may not be evading U.S. taxes through Swiss bank accounts. Clinton was also asked about her greatest weakness. Here’s what she said: Got that? Clinton’s biggest fault is her inability to deal with you idiots who can’t comprehend why...

Want to buy a used nuclear Armageddon from Hanoi John? It’s hard to imagine a worse salesman for the Iran deal than John Kerry. Kerry couldn’t sell himself to Americans as a presidential candidate. Now he has to sell a nuclear Armageddon to Americans. National security was Kerry’s undoing during his presidential campaign. He had shot American soldiers in the back during Vietnam to build a base for his own political future. He had eagerly pandered to Marxist-Leninist terrorists who massacred native peoples and burned their churches. He had been for the Iraq War before he was against it and...

In Less Than Human, Dr. Smith asks, “What is it that enables one group of human beings to treat another group as though they were subhuman creatures?” According to Dr. Smith, the answer isn’t difficult to come by. He concludes, “Thinking sets the agenda for action, and thinking of humans as less than human paves the way for atrocity. The Nazis were explicit about the status of their victims. They were Untermenschen — subhumans — and as such were excluded from the system of moral rights and obligations that bind humankind together. It's wrong to kill a person, but permissible...

In the first two parts of Salon’s conversation with Camille Paglia, we covered Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton, the return of the ’90s sensibility, and then the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Today Paglia trains her devastating insight and wit on the rest of the GOP field — look out Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush. She also has some surprising thoughts on why Hillary Clinton will not be the Democratic nominee — and why it would be unwise for Democrats to overlook the appeal of Scott Walker. Catch up with the first two parts of our...

State Government: Illinois' new sheriff can be forgiven if he's feeling as underappreciated as the marshal Gary Cooper played in "High Noon." Let's hope his movie ends as happily. Gov. Bruce Rauner is fighting almost single-handedly against an entrenched, corrupt political class of lawyers, lobbyists, social service providers, media and teachers unions whose rallying cry is to smother reform and maintain business as usual in Springfield...... Years of overspending have many state and city of Chicago bonds selling at junk status. Illinois is now called "the deadbeat state" because it's two to three months behind in paying billions of dollars...

Senior Iranian officials are accusing the Obama administration of lying about the details of the recent nuclear accord in order to soothe fears among U.S. lawmakers and Americans about the implications of the deal, which will release billions of dollars to the Islamic Republic while temporarily freezing its nuclear program, according to reports from Iran’s state-controlled media.

This week, our youngest child, Robert, is turning 14. His sister, Maggie, is two years older. Gone are the days when my husband and I were parents of toddlers, preschoolers or elementary school children. Instead, we are about to enter our last year as parents of middle-school students and are just three years away from Maggie's departure for college. As seasoned parents, we now realize that having a child was just the beginning; raising a child properly requires a daily effort. In the early years, it's physically demanding -- bathing, clothing, feeding, picking up, etc. In the middle-school years,...

Obama's race-based plan to turn Congress Democratic, forever. Editor’s note: The following article is the first in a series of articles elaborating on David Horowitz and John Perazzo’s 2013 pamphlet “Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream.” “White skin privilege”—a term that has made a comeback in the last few years of racial demagoguery—was first popularized by the terror sect Weatherman in the early 1970s during its campaign to launch a race war in "Amerikka.” Although most leftists did not follow the call of Weatherman leaders Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn to join in a global race war...

WARWICK, England -- When it comes to debates the Oxford Union, which bills itself as the "world's most prestigious debating society," remains the gold standard. Begun in 1823, The Union, in modern times, has hosted debates that have included such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and the Dalai Lama. The Oxford Union debates produce useful information. The same cannot be said for U.S. presidential debates. Next week, 10 Republican presidential candidates will gather on a stage in Cleveland, Ohio, behind podiums like "Jeopardy" contestants. With so many candidates having so little time, little useful information will be dispensed. More likely the...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Rob Schwarzwaler.resident ObamaÂ’s sentimental journey to East Africa should have been a harmonious one. He used the occasion of a toast to KenyaÂ’s President Uhuru Kenyatta to joke about his own search for his birth certificate. The usual round of VIP visits and dinners were marred, however, by this presidentÂ’s insistence on pushing his radical social agenda on Africans. He lectured the leaders of Kenya about election violence. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama ignored the burgeoning Planned Parenthood scandal back home in the U.S.A. While deploring violence in KenyaÂ’s elections that took 1,000 lives in...

Donald Trump's ex-wife, Ivana, recently denied a 30-year-old allegation that Donald Trump raped her. The allegation, according to the New York Daily News, stems from the book "The Last Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump" by Harry Hurt III. The News wrote: "Hurt's 1993 book ... cited a divorce deposition, in which Ivana Trump claimed her then-husband sexually attacked her. ... In a rage, Trump allegedly tore out clumps of his wife's hair, the book claimed, and ripped off her clothes and assaulted her. 'According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, 'he raped me.'...

The details coming out these last two weeks from the undercover work of the Center for Medical Progress, showing overwhelming evidence of the fact that Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of the babies it aborts, are brutal and disturbing. The first undercover video showed Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Senior Director of Medical Services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, having a casual lunch while talking about the abortions she does and oversees, and how to more effectively get the organs she wants. She states, in between bites of food and sips of wine, “We’ve been very good at getting...

H. L. Mencken famously said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” While it was true at the time, it’s even more accurate now. But is there a bottom to hit? Is there a lie too absurd for the public to buy if it is repeated often enough? Planned Parenthood, the McDonald’s of abortion, receives more than half a billion taxpayer dollars every year and is caught on videotape selling organs from aborted babies for profit. Selling human organs is illegal, just one of many crimes the videos document, and a criminal investigation has been launched…against...

Can we be honest about illegal immigration? It is a common challenge to almost every advanced Western country that is adjacent to poorer nations. American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless. The former wanted greater profits from cheaper labor, the latter wished more political clout for themselves. Mexico conspired, too. It received billions of easy dollars in remittances from its expatriates in America. Mexico had few qualms about letting millions of its own citizens illegally cross its northern border into the United States -- even though the Mexican government would...

As both the House and Senate consider bills to defund Planned Parenthood — the abortion giant responsible for hundreds of thousands of grisly child-killings every year — pro-life conservatives should ask the members of Congress who claim to stand with them one, simple question: Are you as dedicated to life as the Democratic party is to death? The Democrats’ dedication is unquestioned. They are indispensable in providing Planned Parenthood with $528 million of its $1.3 billion annual budget, and they’ve steadfastly defended the group despite an avalanche of evidence of its sheer depravity. Founded by Margaret Sanger, an unapologetic eugenicist,...

Dana 07/29/2015 ) 1:00:00 Man Who Helped Orchestrate Planned Parenthood Vids Says This Horrifying Question Still ‘Needs to Be Answered’ Jul. 29, 2015 7:32pm, by Erica Ritz David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress —the organization that released a series of horrifying videos seemingly capturing Planned Parenthood officials discussing their organization’s sale of fetal tissue obtained through abortion,says there is one question that still “needs to be answered” amid the controversy. Speaking with TheBlaze TV’s Dana Loesch, Daleiden said Planned Parenthood must disclose how much it has profited from the practice. “We don’t have a good way of...

Scandal: Hillary Clinton assured the country in March that she had turned over every single work-related email from her private server. So why are there no emails for two months during a critical time at State?

For years, Republican candidates have been assured by their political consultants that amnesty is a runaway hit with the public. Then they always come in for a zinger of a surprise when the American people are finally able to express themselves on the subject. (Sometimes it seems as if political consultants are in the game only to make money.) Washington has tried to sneak through three amnesties in the last decade -- in 2006, 2007 and 2013. Each time, amnesty had the full support of the media, the White House, leaders of both political parties, big campaign donors and lobbyists....

Donald Trump may have hired a staff and commenced the building of a political organization, but Trump 2016 is best viewed not as a political campaign but as an evolving real-estate deal, with Trump playing the shifty developer and the voters representing the buyers to be wooed. Both developers and candidates are frequently derided as used-car salesmen. But that is unfair to used-car salesmen, who at least have in their possession—and for your inspection—the wheeled thing they’re selling. Developers and candidates, on the other hand, have only words and a few sketches to represent their product, which is a better...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Chris in Raleigh, North Carolina. Great to have you, sir, on the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Dittos, Rush, and I would like to say that the reason why Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump are liked in this country is because you're not out trashing the country on a daily basis. RUSH: Interesting observation. You think that's all it is? CALLER: You know, you listen to Trump and when he talks about somebody, he says, "I met this great guy," or, "I did this great thing," or, "I go to this wonderful golf course, I met these awesome...