Free Republic

The Republican National Convention's rowdy chants about Hillary Clinton -- "Lock her up!" -- have caused liberal journalists to get extremely distressed. In its lead editorial on July 21, The Washington Post fulminated that team Trump's "descent from standard red-meat partisanship to unprecedented accusations of criminality displays contempt for the rule of law and a startling disinterest in fact and reason." That's strong brew. It's too bad for them that it's completely false. Somehow, the Post writers are acting like they were born yesterday, or slept through the last Republican presidency. They've chosen to overlook that their liberal friends in...

After two decades of drastic crime reduction, homicides in America’s 50 largest cities increased by 17% in 2015. Following two decades of employing proactive police techniques whose greatest beneficiaries were residents of poor minority neighborhoods, officers suddenly started to face new obstacles. When working in inner cities, cops found themselves surrounded by jeering crowds whenever they attempted to make an arrest or simply interview citizens. Predictably, officers then began to retreat from proactive policing techniques. Rather than questioning a suspicious person who appeared to be hiding a gun they let an armed robbery take place. They began reacting to crimes...

Below are Donald Trump's remarks accepting the Republican nomination as delivered. Where text is in bolded, it denotes a place where Trump's comment deviated from the original draft that leaked to the press. Friends, delegates and fellow Americans: I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States. USA! USA! Who would have believed that when we started this journey on June 16th of last year we – and I say “we” because we are a team – would have received almost 14 million votes, the most in the history of the Republican Party, and that...

Make America great again. Regardless of one’s view of the politics and personality of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, the power of the message he captured with that slogan cannot be denied. It encapsulates the view held by a large segment of our population, if not a majority, that America has fallen precipitously during the tenure of the current president. There is a visceral concern among many of us about our country’s financial stability, our physical security, and our nation’s long-term viability. As significantly, there is an inchoate sense that the people running our government are not similarly concerned about...

Donald Trump thinks she would make a fine vice president. One conservative cites her as one of the reasons to vote for Trump. Ivanka Trump, 34, wife, mother of three, fashion entrepreneur, advocate for women’s empowerment and an executive vice president in her father’s real estate empire, has eschewed an official role in his campaign. But she’s a critical adviser and perhaps the unorthodox campaigner’s most important surrogate, especially with his wife, Melania, seemingly more comfortable on the sidelines. It will be Ivanka who introduces her father to the nation Thursday as he delivers what could be the most important...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go back even further to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Hits, audio sound bites. This is August 12th, 1980, in New York City at the Democrat National Convention and Teddy Kennedy. KENNEDY: I congratulate President Carter on his victory here. I am confident that the Democratic Party will reunite on the basis of Democratic principles and that together we will march towards a Democratic victory in 1980. For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here's another thing, folks, do not forget. They're gonna go back here and analyze Trump versus Cruz in the battle of the wives. Who got that started? You remember? And what did they do? That's right. A Cruz super PAC. And of course the candidates are not allowed any contact with the super PACs at all, never. It doesn't happen. Ahem. A Ted Cruz super PAC published photos of a scantily clawed Melania Knauss when she was a model back before she -- maybe even after she had married the Trumpster. And so that page got flipped...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: By the way, folks, here's another just a little throwaway question. Does it surprise you that somebody saying "vote your conscience" would be booed practically out of an arena? Vote your conscience. Boo! Vote your conscience. Boo! Leave! Get out! I mean, I know I'm not including context here, but just stop and think of this for a second. Cruz's message is vote your conscience, and all hell rained down on him. Now, the context is that vote your conscience, I know, happens to be a rallying cry for many of the Never Trumpers. And further context...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So I wonder if Ted Cruz is just kicking himself today, saying it would have been better if he'd have just plagiarized the Michelle Obama speech. Maybe he'd be in less trouble if he had done that. So all of you people who complain about how boring these conventions are, how there's never any drama, now you got a little drama, now you got a little unexpected, and everybody's having a cow. Greetings, my friends. It's great to have you here, Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Our telephone number, if you want to be on...

Wouldn’t it be pretty to think all we had to do to stop black people from killing cops was put a few leaders of Black Lives Matter in jail? That is what Donald Trump recently told Bill O’Reilly: “Everybody is free to say what you want to say up to a point," Trump said. "But when you are calling death to police and to kill the police, essentially -- which is what they said -- that's a real problem, Bill. That's a real big problem.” True enough. But Black Lives Matter is the tail, not the dog. The dog is...

I have been on the road the last several days so I have not had the chance to watch the Republican national convention. From what I have read, however, I get the sense that the media are troubled that Melania Trump might have lifted a phrase or two from Michelle Obama. Michelle seems an unlikely source of inspiration. As the late Christopher Hitchens once said of Michelle's Princeton thesis, “To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn't written...

This guy gets it. 8 minute video, but well worth watching. http://www.downvids.net/this-video-will-help-end-the-blm-movement-if-it-goes-viral-854709.html

When Ted Cruz refused to endorse Donald Trump in his Republican National Convention speech, he channeled his ideological opponent, Ted Kennedy, whose bitter primary fight with Jimmy Carter made him dodge the opportunity to raise hands with his opponent. It cost Carter the 1980 election, and might do similar damage to Trump.

Thursday on Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski made a prediction about the presidential debates forthcoming this fall: Hillary Clinton will “slaughter” Donald Trump. The liberal host said this only moments after she expressed desire for a “nice, peaceful convention” for Democrats next week in Philadelphia, contrasted with the current Republican convention in Cleveland that she believes has been consumed with “horrible, despicable things.” Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd began with a prediction of his own, that the DNC in Philadelphia is going to be “boring” and wondered what the Clinton folks are going to do “to make a little...

The first news bulletins raised the wildest hopes: In a once familiar pattern, Turkey's military would again step forward to make that country part of the West, complete with free elections and the rule of law. Back when the Ottomans ruled, Turkey was known as the Sick Man of Europe, but now it would become a healthy democracy again. Its reigning sultan these days, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had long been saying that a military coup was in the offing, which was his excuse for continuing to tighten his grip on power. The first announcement from those officers heading the coup...

When Twitter banned Milo Yiannopoulos, a blogger for the conservative news website Breitbart.com who used the Twitter handle Nero, Yiannopoulos reacted with characteristic modesty. He told The New York Times the ban launched "the beginning of the end for Twitter." Oddly, Yiannopouolos may be right. In February, the social media platform announced its "Trust and Safety Committee." With Orwellian overtones, CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, "Twitter stands for freedom of expression, speaking truth to power, and empowering dialogue. That starts with safety." The San Francisco startup invites all comers to post their thoughts by name or anonymously. The more outrageous the...

Words -- and the left's hypocritical relationship with them -- have been in the news quite a bit of late. The most recent tempest-in-a-teapot is the speech given by the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Monday night. Although 93 percent of Trump's speech was original, a couple of passages were virtually identical to those in a speech given by Michelle Obama in 2008: "you work hard for what you want in life"; "your word is your bond"; "you do what you say"; and "you treat people with respect." There was an additional sentence in Melania Trump's...

WASHINGTON -- When Great Britain's Boris Johnson was forced out of the running to replace David Cameron as prime minister by an act of the utmost treachery, the civilized minority on both sides of the Atlantic knew that we had only one candidate left to deliver us amusement and a dramatic shift to good government, Donald Trump. He is entertaining, good natured and possessed of sound ideas to break the logjam in Washington. The Brits are just going to have to be patient. After all, Johnson is not completely out of government. Cameron's successor, Theresa May, has just made him...

The Congressional Budget Office recently released its long-term budget outlook. There isn't much new there; we are still in the red, and it will only continue to get worse. Considering the extent of the problem, you would think someone on the campaign trail would pay attention. Yet no presidential candidate really is. First, CBO projects that the federal public debt-to-GDP ratio will go from its current 75 percent (up from 39 percent in 2008) to 86 percent in 2026 and 141 percent in 2046. On the deficit side, CBO projects that by 2020, our deficit level will reach $1 trillion,...

In 1926, speaking about the Declaration of Independence on its 150th anniversary, President Calvin Coolidge noted the unique philosophy behind the creation of the United States: "We cannot continue to enjoy the result, if we neglect and abandon the cause." Speaking at a news conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, following the murder of three police officers and the wounding of three others, East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said, "...this is not so much about gun control as it is about what's in men's hearts. And until we come together as a nation, as a people, to heal as a...