Free Republic

RUSH: Did you see where Hillary Clinton wants victims of gun violence to be able to sue gun manufacturers now? She is promising that if she's elected president she's going to use executive orders to get rid of guns or do something. She's going to use executive orders to manifest some kind of sweeping gun control legislation. Now, following the logic of allowing the victims of gun violence to sue the gun manufacturer, should Babe Ruth have been allowed to sue Hillerich & Bradsby every time he struck out? They're gonna regret that analogy. I guarantee you. Or, try this....

RUSH: Let's move on to the Trump stuff. We go to the audio sound bites, and first up, Stuart Stevens. This is last night on CNN. The program is The Lead with Jacob Tapper. He spoke with Stuart Stevens, who is a former Mitt Romney campaign strategist. And of course they're talking about the Trumpster and the Trumpster's presidential campaign. And Tapper says to Romney's campaign strategist -- and these people know about losing, so they might be the ones to ask. "You don't think Trump's gonna make it, eh, Stu?" STEVENS: I don't think he's gonna be on the...

The largest Muslim civil rights group in the U.S. may have violated the federal tax code when its executive director last week called on retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson to drop out of the presidential race because of his comments about Muslims. ... In calling for Carson to end his White House bid, Awad argued that Carson’s comments were in violation of the Constitution which states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust of the United States.” But Fox News’ Megyn Kelly reported on Tuesday that Awad’s statement may put...

Donald Trump at this point is probably just days away from calling Papa John’s and ordering a dozen pizzas to be delivered to the headquarters of each of his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination – with a promise of payment in cash, of course. Trump’s presidential campaign looks increasingly like a piece of performance art designed to gauge the Republican voter base’s tolerance for a candidate utterly divorced from the idea that a presidential election is a serious national conversation about policy ... Pause for a moment and consider that the man currently in the lead in the race...

When two people look at the same issue and come to different conclusions, it’s usually because one of them is wrong. Like Obama is wrong about Roseburg. Before the bodies were out of the building, he had pulled his pre-written speech out of the drawer and was angrily denouncing guns and the people who own them. He ripped the Republicans and he ripped the NRA – I happen to belong to both organizations, by the way – and he said that America was a screw-up nation. Somehow, he said, we’re dumber than the rest of the developed nations and only...

By Monday, interestingly enough, the Russian invasion of Syria was receding as a topic of public concern. Apparently there no longer seemed anything explosive in the tidings of Vladimir Putin's slam-bang entry into that remote theater of conflict. This was notwithstanding those Russian airstrikes against the anti-Assad rebels whom the United States, supposedly, has been encouraging. When President Obama went before the TV cameras late last week, it was chiefly to flog anyone unable to fall in with the Absolute Necessity of Common-Sense Gun Control. "Russian planes, what Russian planes?" our Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader might as well have said....

This is Part 2 of The Hungary Games. You should be getting this on Tuesday morning. I'll send Part 3 Tuesday afternoon. Parts 4 & 5 will go out tomorrow, but on Thursday we'll do a regular Mullings dealing with domestic politics. The series will conclude on Friday. Thank you, all, for your nice comments about Part 1. Part II This business of Hungarian police harassment came home to roost when we traveled to a border crossing on at a motorway in Latenye. There were four in our travelling party. Aside from Tim and me, we had our driver/producer/translator/fixer a...

After left-wing media went crazy over Dr. Ben Carson's comments about whether or not he'd vote for a Muslim president a few weeks ago, and he gained 100,000 new Facebook "Likes" as a result, I decided to begin tracking how many new Facebook followers each of the GOP candidates were attracting weekly. What I found may surprise you. Candidates perceived as part of the "establishment," such as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham, and George Pataki had surprisingly few followers considering their name recognition and experience. My initial research revealed Jeb Bush had the most followers amongst the...

After America learned of the latest mass shooting at an Oregon community college, President Barack Obama delivered remarks in which he lamented the loss of good, innocent people and then added: "Somehow this has become routine. ... We've become numb to this." By the next day, Obama had a remedy: "Be a single-issue voter." If you want to stop mass shootings, Obama argued, don't vote for candidates who oppose federal background checks and "gun safety laws." Nine adults who should be alive today are not, while the 26-year-old shooter got what he wanted -- to leave this earth in what...

More than once in the last few years I’ve asked myself the question, “Has the whole world gone mad? Has everyone in our society lost the ability to think clearly? Are people no longer able to process facts and information? Are they so dominated by their emotions and by sound bites that truth and logic don’t seem to matter?” I remember vividly talking to a young man at a rally in Charlotte, NC a few months ago. The rally was surrounding the so-called “bathroom bill” that would have made all of the city’s public bathrooms and locker rooms gender-neutral. This...

Having established a base on the Syrian coast, Vladimir Putin last week began air strikes on ISIS and other rebel forces seeking to overthrow Bashar Assad. A longtime ally of Syria, Russia wants to preserve its toehold on the Mediterranean, help Assad repel the threat, and keep the Islamic terrorists out of Damascus. Russia is also fearful that the fall of Assad would free up the Chechen terrorists in Syria to return to Russia. In intervening to save Assad, Putin is doing exactly what we are doing to save our imperiled allies in Baghdad and Kabul. Yet Putin's intervention has...

On the assumption that there are good and bad people on both the right and the left and that everyone is horrified by mass shootings, how is one to explain the great divide between right and left on the gun issue as it relates to these mass murders? Why does the left focus on more gun control laws, and why doesn't the right? One reason is quintessentially American. Most Americans believe that it is their right -- and even their duty -- to own guns for self-protection. Unique among major democratic and industrialized nations, Americans have traditionally believed in relying...

Hurricane Joaquin dumped large amounts of rain on the East Coast, but another "force of nature" flooded the country with so much rhetoric it was difficult for most people to keep up. Before barely any facts were known, there was President Obama on camera (when isn't he?) making a 12-minute address -- a relatively short time for him -- about the school shootings in Roseburg, Oregon. The president referred to himself 28 times, according to Grabien.com, again proving that whatever happens in this country, or the world, it really is all about him. He talked about the need for "common...

On Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced he would be stepping down after nearly seven years on the job. This makes it a good moment to assess Duncan’s legacy, especially since his tenure has been shrouded by more than its fair share of puffery and overheated PR. This was predictable when it came to the usual Obama cheerleaders (Tom Friedman wanted Duncan to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state). But it also showed up at times as generous, even fawning, laurels tossed by the likes of David Brooks, Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Lamar Alexander. ... Duncan —...

And why the catastrophes are so consistent. Russia’s armed intervention in the Syrian civil war is but the latest foreign policy disaster of Barack Obama’s tenure. Yet Obama has been nothing if not consistent. What many see as bungling, naiveté, or evidence of a plot to destroy America is simply the consequence of a particular view of interstate relations he has openly and frequently endorsed. Obama came into office chanting all the mantras of idealistic internationalism. In contrast to the caricature of George W. Bush as a unilateralist cowboy disdainful of diplomacy, Obama promised to “rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and...

By now the reader is well-aware of the recent school shooting that took place at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Another mass shooting, another excuse for the left-wing vultures to prey on the carcasses of the dead. Another opportunity for Pres__ent Obama to grandstand and huff and sigh and affect an air of righteous indignation. Another occasion for left-wingers to roll their eyes and complain about how even after this shooting, those dastardly right-wingers still won't support "common sense gun laws." The reason we don't, of course, is because the left-wingers are still making the same old, nonsensical, discredited...

The United States should threaten to retaliate if Russia does not stop attacking U.S. assets in Syria, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in a Financial Times op-ed published Sunday, urging "strategic boldness," with American credibility in the Middle East and the region itself at stake. Moscow's apparent decision to strike non-Islamic State targets and those of Syrian rebels backed by the Central Intelligence Agency "at best" reflects "Russian military incompetence," and worst, "evidence of a dangerous desire to highlight American political impotence," wrote Brzezinski, the national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter and a strong supporter of...

In his speech on the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon last week, President Obama sounded more upset about America's gun laws than about the horrific massacre. We barely had the preliminary facts about the shooting, the shooter and the victims, and he was already lecturing the nation again on gun control. Instead of calling the nation to prayer, he said we would learn about the victims in the coming days and then "wrap everyone who's grieving with our prayers and our love." Those words out of the way, he immediately pivoted to complaining that "our thoughts and prayers are...

Remember the much-maligned Tea Party movement? These were the patriotic Americans -- millions of them -- who took to the streets and the town halls across America and revolted against Bush's corporate bailouts, Obama's stimulus spending blowout and Obamacare, and the Fed's policy of tossing trillions of dollars out of helicopter windows (figuratively). Good news: They helped change and maybe even slightly fix America. The latest budget deficit numbers -- for the fiscal year that just ended -- find that the deficit has fallen by $1 trillion since Obama's tragic first term. The deficit is still near half a...

Not all important public policy reforms come from Washington. Really lasting reforms can percolate from the bottom up, brewed by citizens with a grievance pushing state and local governments to act. Consider the case of Right to Try legislation. These are state laws that allow doctors to prescribe investigational medicines being safely used in clinical trials for patients diagnosed as terminally ill. You may not have heard about these laws. But you may have heard a lot if a loved one or Facebook friend is facing advanced cancer or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and cannot obtain medicine that might alleviate...