Free Republic

At one point in Laura Hillenbrand’s World War II book Unbroken, the top turret gunner of a B-24 bomber over the Pacific stays doggedly at his post and keeps on firing, trying to ward off an attacking Japanese fighter plane. Eventually he succeeds. Staying focused on saving the lives of one’s comrades under such terrifying conditions is admirable enough. Stanley Pillsbury did it after one of his feet had been practically blown off by a cannon shell from the enemy aircraft. When they got his boot off after the engagement, his foot was shredded. His big toe stayed inside the...

<p>“I identify with some things as a Democrat…I was never a Bush fan. [When] the economy crashed so horribly under George Bush, because of mistakes they made having to do with banking and lots of other things, I don’t think the Democrats would have done that.”</p>

To many in Washington, there's little question that the 2016 presidential election should feature a dynasty rematch between the Clinton and Bush families. To most outside of Washington, that's the last match-up they want to see. The difference could perhaps be described as a tale of two Americas. The past 15 years have been a great time for political insiders, as the city of Washington, D.C., has become a boomtown. In fact, our nation's capital is now the nation's wealthiest metro market. Fueling the economic growth in our nation's capital has been an explosion of federal spending during the Barack...

California’s initiative process has sometimes been a boon to taxpayers—think Proposition 13, which checked the uncontrolled growth of property taxes. On other occasions, however, it has yielded some mighty boondoggles. Chief among these are the “boutique initiatives” advanced by celebrities and Silicon Valley billionaires to make themselves feel good or to advance pet political causes—think Proposition 10, Hollywood director Rob Reiner’s early-childhood-development measure that created a host of busybody commissions funded by cigarette taxes. Boutique initiatives usually come with boutique prices. Among the costliest is Proposition 39, a 2012 measure that hiked corporate taxes on out-of-state businesses to “create energy...

Among a very long list of harms inflicted upon the United States by Barack Obama and his party, perhaps the worst was Caesarism. Obama relished the worship of millions in 2008. From his star turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was treated not as a political candidate, but as a savior. Progressives fell into a swoon, typified by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas' 2008 comment, "I mean in a way Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world; he's sort of God." Now, a similar kind of unreasoning adulation is greeting (improbably enough) Donald Trump. Fred Barnes...

The double standard our media impose on child sexual abuse is garishly obvious. On Aug. 14, The Washington Post set the stage for the coming American visit of Pope Francis with another splashy front-page story on a man still berating the Catholic Church after being abused by a priest from 1969 to 1976. But on Aug. 21, after a court sentenced former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader Molly Shattuck, 48, for sexually abusing a 15-year old boy merely a year ago, the Post ignored it completely. Apparently, there was no room. That boy's family had no media advocate there. It's horrible that...

"One can't believe impossible things," Alice objected. "I daresay you haven't had much practice," the Red Queen replied. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." You may be reading this sometime after breakfast, and six is a pretty large number of impossible things. But looking at developments in the 2016 campaign, I can see two impossible things -- impossible in the sense that almost every pundit (including me) ruled them out -- that might happen in the weeks and months...

HOV is good; HOT is even better. As we saw during the Pan-Am Games, High Occupancy Vehicle lanes were great for cars with three or more people and other designated vehicles. The trouble was that they went largely unused. High Occupancy Toll lanes solve that problem by opening up the designated space to cars that don’t have the numbers but whose drivers are willing to pay for the convenience. Premier Kathleen Wynne has hinted that she’s willing to implement HOT lanes, but has not been specific about where and when. If the U.S. experience is anything to go by, however,...

Once again, Donald Trump has managed to open up a robust national discussion about an issue that up to this point had been largely ignored by the political class. This time, the discussion is about so-called "birthright citizenship," the idea that whenever a foreign national (regardless of legal status and with a very few exceptions) has a child on American soil, this child automatically becomes an American citizen from birth. This approach to citizenship has been the de facto (though not de jure) approach to the issue of "anchor babies," the children of illegal aliens who come to the United...

After more than two decades of peddling disinformation and lies about its real agenda, the regime ruling South Africa, an alliance of the Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC), is finally dropping the mask. In a stunning policy document produced by the ANC's National General Council, the late Communist Party leader Nelson Mandela's successors praised Communist China's brutal dictatorship as a “guiding lodestar of our own struggle” toward government centralization and what the document celebrated as a “post-Western” “new world order.” The shocking document, which has been totally ignored in the Western press, also praises the regime...

There are a few existential questions which man has struggled but failed to answer conclusively, despite Sisyphean efforts, such as: Why are we here? What happens when we die? And why do kids go ape for "Frozen"? To these we may add another, which will go down as one of the great enigmas of modern American history: Why Trump? His rise -- and, more inexplicably, his durability -- has baffled even the most open-minded of us. But when man can't explain something, he settles for the next best thing: deciding who's to blame for it. To me, it's obvious. Trump...

Author’s Note: The following column is comprised of excerpts taken from my first lectures on the first day of classes this semester at UNC-Wilmington. I reproduced these remarks with the hope that they would be useful to other professors teaching at public universities all across America. Feel free to use this material if you already have tenure.Welcome back to class, students! I am Mike Adams your criminology professor here at UNC-Wilmington. Before we get started with the course I need to address an issue that is causing problems here at UNCW and in higher education all across the country. I...

Stop bellyaching about Washington. All the country’s best fascists are on your local city council. Not long ago, Colorado became a leader in the fight against religious freedom when its Civil Rights Commission, self-appointed ministers of justice and theology, decided that a shopkeeper who refuses to participate in a gay wedding ceremony must be smeared and fined out of business. A Colorado appeals court says this is kosher, finding that the brittle sensitivities of a cakeless couple outweigh the constitutional rights of Christian business owners. Now, in an effort to save everyone some time, the cultural imperialists at the Denver...

Why the Islamic Republic is readying for war not despite the Iran nuclear accord -- but because of it. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) announced today that she would be voting in favor of a resolution of disapproval against the president’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action becoming the 14th Democratic congressional lawmaker to buck Obama. Two Senators, Chuck Schumer and Robert Menendez, also announced their intention to vote in favor of a resolution of disapproval. In explaining her decision, Maloney quite accurately noted that even if Iran doesn’t cheat -- an unlikely prospect given the Islamic Republic’s record of deceit and...

The sad old pattern of embracing the indictments of haters. The Iran deal, by President Obama’s own admission, opens the path to Iran’s acquiring a nuclear arsenal, even as Iranian leaders continue to assert their determination to annihilate Israel. While the President has claimed at times that the agreement will prevent Iran from ever developing nuclear weapons, he has on other occasions acknowledged that, in fact, after fifteen years Iran will have a clear, short path to doing so. Israelis across the political spectrum oppose the deal, fearful of the existential threat it represents, and most American Jews share their...

Holier-than-thou liberals on the Denver city council are waging war on Chick-fil-A in the name of tolerance and diversity. Now, let me tell you what the squawking is really all about: It's a distraction, a feint, a mile-high smokescreen. Spiteful Democrats claim they are upholding progressive "Denver values" by delaying approval of an airport concession contract with the Christian-owned restaurant chain. But the politically correct storm over same-sex marriage (which Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy personally opposes) is convenient cover for the local government's serial mismanagement, bloated spending and shady contracting practices. Denver International Airport concessionaires raked in more than $322...

When insurers requested huge rate hikes for their 2016 ObamaCare plans, we were told not to worry because state regulators would force them down. But that's not happening. Death spiral, anyone?

On Wednesday, the Nevada Health Co-Op announced that it will go out of business at the end of the year. This is the third out of the 23 ObamaCare-created nonprofit health plans to fail, but it isn't likely to be the last.

"...Is Walker’s dive a temporary blip or a sign of deeper problems with the candidate? The case for calm is fairly strong. There are five months and five more debates left until anyone must settle on a candidate. Trumpmania has overtaken the entire GOP field, not just Walker...[who] continues to lay the groundwork for long-term victory:..Yuval Levin,a leading conservative reformer,called “the most substantively and politically serious conservative health care reform we have yet seen from a presidential candidate.” There’s still hope for Walker that when the dust settles he’ll be the candidate left standing who can unite a fractious party.......The...

What Six Years of ‘Reset’ with Russia Have Wrought by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER August 27, 2015 On September 5, 2014, Russian agents crossed into Estonia and kidnapped an Estonian security official. Last week, after a closed trial, Russia sentenced him to 15 years. The reaction? The State Department issued a statement. The NATO secretary-general issued a tweet. Neither did anything. The European Union (reports the Wall Street Journal) said it was too early to discuss any possible action. The timing of this brazen violation of NATO territory — two days after President Obama visited Estonia to symbolize America’s commitment to its...