Free Republic

Holy cow! Dairy farmers are balking at crazy climate change legislation that will rob America’s middle class of affordable dairy products.The Golden State used to be a place you could visit for a relaxing vacation filled with sunshine, palm trees and bayside avocado burgers—and then fly home to live a relatively free life—leaving California residents to cope with the “crazy” aspects of the state, like sky-high taxes. Not anymore. California is America’s largest milk-producing state. Thanks to new regulations from CA Gov. Jerry Brown, one thing is certain: if you love milk and cheese, significantly higher costs are coming your...

Here are two high profile, “outside-the-box,” get-your-attention picks for Donald Trump’s administration: Joe Lieberman and Ted Cruz First, forget Mitt Romney. Lose him like a bad case of the flu. Mitt is bad karma. He didn’t just not vote for Trump, he actively tried to humiliate and destroy Trump. He denigrated Trump. He was jealous, vicious and hateful towards Trump- a very bad combination. He called a press conference with one purpose: to bad mouth Trump. He called Trump a "con man, phony and fraud.” The millions of Americans who believed in Trump…who fought for Trump…who defended Trump against...

I reached peak Twitter this week when I was sucked into a tweet battle with a liberal dwarf. True story. Donald Trump’s victory had the militant munchkin fuming. I have to admit that I was a little short with her myself.But I should be smiling – we conservatives should all be smiling – because everything is going our way. For heaven’s sake, our next Secretary of Defense is going to be nicknamed “Mad Dog.” We just spent eight years being ruled by people who would prefer it be someone nicknamed “Hugs N’ Stuff.”The liberals are truly going nuts, and it’s...

There once was a time when China was afraid of offending us, but liberal pundits, politicians, and those human equivalents of the dodo bird, career diplomats, are aghast that President-elect Donald Trump took a congratulatory phone call from the democratically elected president of Taiwan Tsai-Ing-wen. Trump acted to “buck diplomatic protocol”, the chattering class harrumphed, and offended China, whose leader, President Xi JinPing, President Obama bowed to in 2014 at the APEC Economic Leader’s meeting in China. Trump’s hyperventilating critics forget that to accept a call from a foreign leader is not conducting foreign policy. President-elect Trump knows full well...

There's a reason why Republicans soon will control not only the presidency, but also the Senate, the House, 33 governorships and both chambers in 32 states. The reason can be found in the Dakota Access Pipeline case. With its elevation of identity politics above all else, its twisting of facts to accuse others of racism, its fanatic claim of being above the law and its wild exaggerations of environmental risk, the protest helps explain why so few Americans are willing to give the Left power. The protesters won an important battle on Sunday, when their efforts convinced the Obama administration...

The mainstream media and the Obama administration, like the media and governments in many Western countries, goes out of its way to excuse Islamist terror, and actively paints a picture of Muslims in the West victimized by supposed Islamophobia. This tendency is bolstered by the corresponding refusal to acknowledge Islamist terror for what it is, substituting euphemisms or generalities to cover what are clearly murderous acts done in the name of Islam. Most ludicrous of all, is the penchant -- particularly by Barack Obama -- to discourse theologically about the “religion of peace.” In fact, this refusal to accept reality...

Experience is the best teacher – or so says the conventional wisdom. In practice, the most common lesson is that too many folks never learn – especially those encumbered by ideology. Or as a philosopher might put it, "what we learn from history is that no one learns from history." Worse still, those who cannot, or will not, learn are prone to repeat mindless behaviors. Call it tone-deaf. Better still, call it political autism. Alas, while Western culture swirls in the crapper, Brussels and Washington political elites still insist on flushing. Social democracies are probative. In Europe, the left learned...

The U.S. government published the dark truth about K-12 schools in the famous "A Nation at Risk" report of 1983. Here is that truth: if a foreign country created the schools we have now, we would conclude that they were "an act of war" against our children. A Nation at Risk told us that the simplest way to understand the mediocrity and malaise so common in K-12. We shouldn't assume there is anything natural about this decline or anything mysterious. It's a man-made attack by a vicious enemy who infiltrated our schools and made them dysfunctional. But what country would...

THE HEART OF TERRORISM Pakistan named and shamed. Will it reform? At the Heart of Asia (HoA) summit which concluded on Sunday in Amritsar, Pakistan was well and truly cornered for promoting terrorism. Its isolation can be understood from the fact that for the first time, a HoA declaration named the Pakistan-based terror outfits, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as forces that are working to destabilise the region. This is a severe indictment of Pakistan, since not only do the two organisations operate from Pakistani soil but they also get overt and covert support from the establishment, especially from the Army there....

Last week, president-elect Trump sent a tweet that ought to alarm the majority of Americans who voted for another candidate as well as most of those who voted for him. Here’s what Trump wrote: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail!” The very last thing we need in America is more activism meant to punish people for thinking the wrong things. Our college campuses are awash in left-wing thought control, whereby students who say or write anything that hypersensitive students...

No one ever doubted Donald Trump’s talent for theater, a gift he is exercising with some flair in the matter of the Carrier air-conditioner company’s facilities in Indiana. Carrier had planned to move a furnace operation to Mexico and to shutter a plant in Huntington, Ind., where it manufactures electronic controls. After the intervention of President-elect Trump and Governor Mike Pence, Carrier has agreed to keep the furnace operation going in Indiana, albeit with several hundred fewer employees. It still will close the electronics plant and offshore those 700 or so jobs. It will move about 600 jobs from the...

People of color, particularly Black Americans, shouldn’t be surprised in the least by Donald Trump’s presidential victory. Although part of me feels like we shouldn’t be acting like we haven’t already survived, despite vicious attempts to destroy us, I can understand the shock. It’s the same thing as saying no matter how much one can prepare for death, you’re never really ready. We’ve been preparing for different forms of death for hundreds of years. And yet, here we are in fear, though our fears have morphed into realities time and time again through Jim Crow, lynchings, police brutality (which has...

Economy: President-elect Trump's deal with Carrier isn't important because it saved 1,000 jobs. It's important because of the message it sends to businesses everywhere: Help is on the way. The reaction to Carrier's decision to retain some of its employees after meeting with Trump has been amusing. On the one hand, Trump's critics say the deal was a mere trifle, since there are still so many people out there hurting. On the other hand, they claim that Trump is acting like a third-world despot. A few headlines paint the picture: "Trump's Carrier Victory Is the Economy's Loss" "Trump's Carrier deal...

In case you missed it, John Forbes Kerry went before some women’s group in Washington last week and said: “I am not going to go quietly into the night.” Quietly, loudly, nobody cares how you go, Liveshot, just as long as you go. He spoke for an hour — talk about cruel and unusual punishment for an audience. During the course of those 60 interminable minutes, Kerry claimed he hasn’t decided exactly what he’s going to do next, so let’s help him out with some suggestions. How about opening an Iranian restaurant? He could call it The 12th Imam —...

President-elect Trump may not have a popular vote mandate, but he possesses raw political assets that are even more powerful: superior communications skills, a highly energized, devoted and organized grassroots following, and true fearlessness. A master entertainer; he has captured America’s attention, with friends, foes and those in-between on the edge of their seats wondering what he’ll do next. Trump deployed these assets for maximum impact to win the nomination and the Presidency. Yet the political chattering class continues to underestimate the Donald. Here’s a news flash for Official Washington: President Trump could be one of the most consequential chief...

Unlike our president-elect, I don’t know one Corinthian, but I am familiar with Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and in recent days some of his words have whisked me back to my earliest years. “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

President-elect Trump's brief telephone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen drew a stronger reaction from the American mainstream media than it did from Beijing. The official China Daily entitled its editorial yesterday "No need to over-interpret Tsai-Trump phone call," writing: For Trump, it exposed nothing but his and his transition team's inexperience in dealing with foreign affairs. If he could make the unusual action due to lack of proper understanding of Sino-US relations and cross-Straits ties he will have to recognize the significance of prudently and appropriately addressing these sensitive issues after being inaugurated. Is Beijing just trying to put...

President-elect Trump is quickly assembling his Executive cabinet. Key leaders in Congress are ready to repeal Obamacare and the disastrous Iran deal. But on immigration, legislators in Congress are already moving against his long-term plans--and the will of the people. It’s not so much that I’m surprised, as astonished—at the rank stupidity or suicidal arrogance of some elected officials—Sen. Lindsey Graham specifically—and he’s at it again. During the primary, Trump punked Graham by releasing his phone number to the public. Undeterred, Graham desperately tried to break into the first-tier. He cut one commercial: 18 Ways to Destroy Your Phone, or...

During the last election campaign all of a sudden I kept hearing about the Alt-Right. Since I thought I was pretty well read and had never heard of them, I considered them to have the same social relevance as a Miley Cyrus song. I decided to investigate this supposed social phenomenon as soon as the election was over and I was done writing about real issues important to the campaign. I started by sending emails to mainstream Republicans asking them if they knew anyone who considered themselves members of the Alt-Right. The answer was a universal no. Then I sent...

Two agents from U.S. Homeland Security’s ICE unit arrived at my door in September looking for a Polish lady — not a person, but a painting: Melchior Geldorp’s “Portrait of a Lady.” She had, they informed me, been looted by the Nazis from the National Museum in Warsaw. Unsure if these gentlemen were indeed who they claimed to be, I didn’t invite them in. But I knew exactly what they were seeking: My partner, David, and I had purchased this very portrait — ostensibly the work of a different artist — a decade earlier from a major auction house in...