Free Republic

Reflections on the Panthers A look back at what the Black Panthers did to deserve Beyoncé's rousing tribute at the Super Bowl. February 10, 2016 John Perazzo Beyoncé Knowles. Everyone knows her simply as Beyoncé, the multi-talented superstar wife of music-industry legend Jay Z. She's also the glamorous and magnetic "Bey," as President Barack Obama affectionately calls her. She's held fundraisers for the President, performed at the White House, and cultivated a warm friendship with both Mr. and Mrs. Obama. Beyoncé often turns up at NBA basketball games, where she and her hubby can typically be seen in their...

Plenty of Palestinian Passes The heavy cost of ignoring or rewarding Palestinian hostility and hate. February 10, 2016 Noah Beck Reprinted from InvestigativeProject.org. Activists who genuinely want to see peace between Israelis and Palestinians need to internalize a memorably alliterative warning: plenty of Palestinian passes perpetuate the impasse. The more global opinion ignores or rewards irresponsible behavior by Palestinians, the more likely renewed violence (rather than peace) becomes. There are enough instances of unfair and counterproductive "Palestinian passes" to fill a tome, but here are some recent examples.PASSING ON HAMAS BELLICOSITY Probably the most important pass currently given to...

While a TSA agent pawed my hair bun this weekend, presumably on high alert for improvised explosive bobby pins, I pondered the latest news on the Somalia airplane terror attack. Intelligence officials released video footage of airport employees in Mogadishu handing a laptop to a jihadist suspect before he boarded Daallo Airlines Airbus Flight D3159 last week. The device allegedly contained a bomb that exploded on the plane, which created a massive hole out of which the bomber was fatally sucked. Two other passengers were injured in the blast before the pilot successfully made an emergency landing. Several airport workers...

As I was saying at the dawn of this day: 1) Trump; 2) Kasich; 3) Rubio; 4) Bush; 5) Cruz. Number One and Two were correct, and at this hour Numbers Three, Four and Five are all jostling together at 11 per cent, but with Cruz third and Rubio fifth. On the Democrat side I noted the midnight vote tallies from Dixville Notch, Hart's Location and Millsfield: Sanders 17 Clinton 9 [snipped text about Dem race] On the Republican side, Trump won yuge: 35 per cent in a nine-man race, and more than twice as many votes as the second-placed...

Despite Donald Trump's victory in New Hampshire, what is the chance that Republicans will nominate Ted Cruz and that he will go on to win the presidency? The website ElectionBettingOdds gives Cruz a 14.5 percent chance of winning the nomination -- his victory in the Iowa caucuses and what looks like a third place showing in New Hampshire notwithstanding. It puts his chances of actually winning the presidency at 4.3 percent. But let's say Cruz beats the odds and wins the nomination. One of the most conservative members of the Senate, Cruz would test the argument made by leaders of...

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Donald Trump may have come out of New Hampshire with the victory, but Sen. Ted Cruz has emerged as the Republican front-runner. Though Trump's victory in New Hampshire was no doubt impressive, the electorate of independent voters and super high turnout was tailor-made for him, whereas Cruz didn't put substantial effort into winning the state - where very conservative candidates don't typically do as well. He is currently in position to win third here, with votes still outstanding. As the race moves to South Carolina, however, Cruz has a ground game in place and the electorate is...

There are already several theories circulating to explain the gap between Sanders and Clinton when it comes to young women. Feminist luminary Gloria Steinem said just last Friday on Bill Maher’s show (then somewhat un-said Sunday) that young women are just going where “the boys” are. Author Jill Fillipovic followed up with a riff on Steinem’s thinking in Cosmopolitan, arguing that, “In this primary, Sanders is the guy stuff. Clinton is the girl stuff.” She argued that young women often feel pressured to make a show of liking cool guy stuff instead of lame girl stuff. Democratic National Committee Chair...

So, I was driving along somewhere in New Hampshire on Monday, the day before the storied primary. It was snowing, just as the cliches of the New Hampshire Primary dictate: It is always snowing in New Hampshire. (Really, though, it actually was snowing). The email came in from an editor in New York at around 4 p.m. Subject line: "Hillaryworld." Body content: "What do you make of the supposed looming implosion?" What supposed looming implosion? Or, to be more precise, which supposed looming implosion? Isn't Hillaryworld always on the verge of one? [...] We've been here before. This is how...

resident Barack Obama presented a budget to Congress on Tuesday that if enacted would add nearly $10 trillion to the national debt, according to the White House's projections. The president's final budget, widely considered to be dead on arrival due to the Republican-controlled Congress, projects the nation would face a $27.4 trillion debt in 2026.The budget set the actual total debt for 2015 at $18.1 trillion, projecting an increase of $9.3 trillion. When President Obama took office the debt stood at $10.6 trillion.The White House budget for fiscal year 2017 includes old and new items of the president's agenda, including...

Tonight, Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the women of New Hampshire to "have fun burning in hell" after it was clear she had lost the state's Democratic primary election to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Clinton's remark referenced a statement made last weekend by former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright that "there's a special place in hell for women that don't help each other." "Well, the women of New Hampshire can have fun burning in hell after supporting Bernie Sanders over me. Bernie Sanders is an old White Jewish guy,...

This seems to be turning into something of a pattern for Dr. Ben Carson. After sagging in the polls in Iowa, he headed out of town rather quickly, but his departure from New Hampshire will apparently preclude his showing up to spend time with his supporters after the polls close. Yep… Ben Carson won’t be around for the speeches this evening. (Politico) Ben Carson will be notably absent from his New Hampshire primary party on Tuesday.The retired neurosurgeon will instead fly to South Carolina in the afternoon, his campaign said. Following Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, South Carolina Republicans...

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, I asked this question: "We know she was reckless in her handling of national security secrets, but she's assiduously protective of whatever she said in those speeches. Why?" The assumption is that rather than corroborating her implausibly revisionist characterizations of what she said to those elite bankers who paid her six-figures per speech (her typical fee), the hidden transcripts would reveal a very chummy posture toward her supposed mortal enemies, or whatever. Such a revelation would further undermine her credibility among the Democratic base's rabidly anti-Wall Street base, buttress one of Bernie Sanders' central lines of...

George Orwell said, "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Gore Vidal elaborated on that insight, saying, "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate." And John Milton predicted, "When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation." These observations bear heeding about how sloppy language is corrupting our society. The Atlantic magazine reported that public schools are nearly as segregated in 2012 as they were in the late 1960s. An Education Next series commemorating the 50th...

Senior citizens remember the Associated Press as a pithy, objective wire service, not a shop that sounds like a Starbucks circle of liberal editorial writers. On Sunday, AP ran a story headlined “Cruz embraces supporters on fringe of GOP.” Even as socialist Bernie Sanders wanders the hustings polarizing our politics by saying Wall Street is “based on fraud,” AP reporters Scott Bauer and Steve Peoples devoted an entire dispatch to Cruz’s fringy backers:  B-listers, Bernie Sanders has Sarah Silverman, Lizz Winstead, and Susan Sarandon. Hillary Clinton has Lena Dunham and RuPaul. Can we bet AP will drag out the most...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We're starting with Randy in Findlay, Ohio. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hi. CALLER: Hi, Rush. Conservative vegetarian dittos to start out with. RUSH: Well, thank you very much, sir. I trust as a conservative vegetarian you're not militant about it. CALLER: Exactly. RUSH: Good, good, good. CALLER: What I wanted to ask was what evidence is there for Trump supporters to think that he would have any more respect for the Constitution than Obama does? I mean, they're both progressives. And Trump has seemed to change his mind on so many things lately,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm just gonna tell you right now, I want to prepare you, because if Jeb Bush finishes in second place tonight and if this Emerson poll is right, then you are not going to recognize the news tomorrow. You are not going to recognize the Republican primary. You are going to think you have been asleep and tomorrow you have just awakened, and nothing that's happened up to tomorrow will mean anything. If Jeb Bush comes in second place tonight, Jeb Bush is going to be treated as the winner, particularly if Trump's margin is not 15...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. The Drive-By Media obsessed with me, again, yesterday and last night. ABC's World News Tonight, David Muir, the anchor, talking with their correspondent, Tom Llamas, about Marco Rubio. Rubio in the Saturday night debate. MUIR: Tom Llamas joins us tomorrow tonight from a Rubio rally. And, Tom, some prominent conservatives are coming to Senator Rubio's defense tonight. LLAMAS: That's right, David. Rush Limbaugh acknowledges the debate was not Rubio's finest moment, but he says the line that Rubio kept repeating is a winning strategy for Republicans. Rush saying that President...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I got an e-mail this morning, "Could you tell me why you are endorsing Rubio?" I said, "I'm not endorsing Rubio. I haven't endorsed anybody. I haven't endorsed Trump, I haven't endorsed Cruz, I haven't endorsed anybody." "Well, okay, why are you...?" Is it really that complicated, folks? What I happen to be supporting is: When people say something that I think needs to be said, I'm going to amplify it. To me, all of this is about ideas, and it certainly matters who wins. And it certainly matters the ideas that they have. Now, if Rubio...

Scores of dead white men glared back at them from the walls of the college dorm. The thought that some of those esteemed alumni could have actually owned their ancestors apparently haunted the dreams of some of the privileged, elite students at Yale so much that they took to the yard in protest. The dorms at Yale, they have declared, are no longer a 'safe space' for black students. Not far away from Yale's New Haven, Connecticut campus, in rural York County, Pennsylvania, a twelve year old kid is dealing with the usual cruelties meted out by middle school kids,...

Get this: Wealth, fame and success don't make us happy, but strong relationships do. That's according to a 77-year-long Harvard Study of Adult Development that I read about in The Independent. The study began in 1938 with 724 men from two distinct groups. The first group included 268 sophomores from Harvard. The second group included 456 16-year-olds from an impoverished area in Boston. At the beginning of the study, the subjects were given medical examinations and researchers interviewed their parents to gain "a deep understanding of their lives." Then, every two years, researchers surveyed their lives and "explored their attitudes...