Free Republic

The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. This all started when Hillary Clinton reversed what Barack Obama had started four years earlier in a debate with Mitt Romney who actually stated the Russians were a problem. The only thing is that she stated that all 17 intelligence agencies agreed that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Though technically correct there are “17” intelligence agencies, Ms. Clinton knows that these agencies “agreeing” is a hoax. My initial reaction to the statement was a logical and rational one. I stated Mr. Trump should have replied to her: “Why...

In the words of Michael Corleone, “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in.” The “they” in this case is now former President Barack Obama (damn, it feels good to write with the word “former” preceding it). I’d hope to be done writing about him, at least in current terms, but one last time he’s done something that requires addressing. Obama’s magic pen was busy in his last days signing pardons and granting clemency to drug dealers, terrorists, and traitors alike. If you destroyed lives, Barack Obama wanted to set you free. Setting aside the idea of...

There is a cynical expectation, at least among the global punditry, that wise politicians employ any expedient rhetoric to win elections and that, once victorious, do precious little to unsettle a cosy consensus. There was a quiet expectation in some quarters that the 45th President of the United States would do precisely that. Even after he made a joke of the entire polling industry and beat Hilary Clinton on November 8, there was a belief that Donald Trump should be allowed his indulgences -- such as engaging with Taiwan and describing NATO as 'obsolete' -- till his inauguration on January...

If human nature weren’t as it is, I’d be perfectly content with tearing apart America’s educational system, root and branch, and starting over from scratch. Compulsory schooling? Gone! Federalized K-12 standards? Fini! Stafford Loans? Kaput! But, given the fragility of such deep-seated things, I’m wont to hold back, arguing for cautious reform toward a more prudent position. I guess that makes me a Burkean. Maybe a sucker. Perhaps both. Anyhoo, a recent piece in the periodical National Affairs got me reconsidering why our education system is such a mess, and what it means for America’s future in the age of...

I spent a good chunk of the holiday break in a cabin with a spectacular view of a bay just off the Pacific Ocean outside the tiny town of Inverness north of San Francisco. It reminds me of the view from the cabin I grew up with in the American heartland, outside the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Looking out over the natural beauty of this amazing country of ours helped me think through the tumultuous past year with a big-picture, more timeless perspective. It helped me get clear about what lies ahead. The Brexit vote in England and then the...

Inauguration Day 2017 has placed the U.S. on a new political and economic trajectory. President Donald Trump won the votes of the so-called Rust Belt, where workers and their children and grandchildren, who have been dispossessed and displaced by the economics of globalization, turned blue counties into red counties. Thus, in a legitimate sense, Trump's appeal to the "forgotten man" – so similar to Franklin D. Roosevelt's appeal to the same symbol – is valid. FDR's forgotten man was a composite of all those who were unemployed in the Great Depression who were "forgotten" in the sense that their plight...

The print edition of Friday’s Washington Post, on the last page of the A Section, contained a full-page advertisement featuring a “painting” of an arresting Muslim woman in an American flag hijab. The image appears to be the work of Shepard Fairley, the artist who created the now iconic (if illegally copied) Obama Hope picture of 2008. It is a clever and insidious piece of leftist/Islamist propaganda put out by a far-left organization called the Amplifier Foundation, which obviously hopes it will become as well known and popular as Fairley’s Obama image. It is worth examining for its tricks and...

As rioters trashed streets, smashed and burned property and attacked police just blocks from the securely cordoned off National Mall, the Inauguration of President Donald J. Trump took place. He gave a bold speech, reiterating his campaign promises. He would secure our borders, promote and protect U.S. interests, and revive an economy made moribund by the regulatory overreaching and policies of Obama and his Administration. How refreshing it was to hear a crisp, muscular defense of our native land by a man who used “we,” not the incessant “I” and “me” of his predecessor. No more loopy faculty lounge locutions...

It’s already become a cliché, but this is one reason why we have President Donald Trump. As Trump supporters celebrated the eve of the inauguration with a dance at the National Press Club (called “The DeploraBall” as a play on attacks on their character), Trump’s opponents gathered in the street outside to protest, and … events played out exactly as one would have guessed. NBC Washington’s Shomari Stone reported from the scene after smoke bombs got thrown by the crowd, which then complained that police used pepper spray to disperse them:(video at link) A weekend of protests over the inauguration...

On Jan. 13, a judge in Houston, Texas, sentenced Alexandria Vera to 10 years in prison. Her crime? The 25-year-old teacher at Stovall Middle School struck up a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student -- having sex almost every day, she said, for nine months -- but with the parents' approval. She could be eligible for parole in five years. Prosecutors alleged Vera groomed the child and his family, moving the teen and his father into her home and pretending she was dating the father. She also bought groceries for the boy's family and paid the phone bills. She even...

Now that his time as president has come to an end, it’s time to ask what Barack Obama has done to the country, and how he has been able to do it. Obama is the most left-wing president in American history. Never mind his speech at the 2004 Democrat National Nomination Convention, or during the run-up to the 2008 election, when he was presenting himself as a moderate. Someone scrutinizing Obama’s history, including his early years in and out of the U.S., his time in school, his stint as a Chicago community organizer, his law school experiences, and his political...

How can conservatives stop the Democratic Party’s drive to dismantle the constitutional foundations of the nation and reshape its social order? To answer this question, Republicans and conservatives first need to know exactly who their adversaries are. That means not just Hillary Clinton or Tim Kaine or Bernie Sanders but the progressive movement they have committed their political lives to advancing. What are the motivations of the millions of Americans who are part of this movement? What is their agenda? In the first place, it is not just a matter of specific policies and programs. It is a matter of...

On Friday, January 20 at 12 o’clock noon, Donald J. Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. Rarely in modern times has a presidential succession generated such polarized division, though I can imagine that the advent of Thomas Jefferson in 1801, Andrew Jackson in 1829, and especially Abraham Lincoln in 1861 might rival the national atmosphere today. The situations are, of course, so comparable. Thomas Jefferson led the first peaceful handover of power in the new Republic to the opposition party. Abraham Lincoln faced a Republic on the threshold of Civil War. Perhaps the closest approximation to today’s...

Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States Friday at noon in much the same way he was elected. Entertainers will largely boycott the inaugural festivities. So will dozens of Democratic members of Congress. Protesters will rage. The media coverage will be more critical than when his predecessor Barack Obama first took the oath of office, and will be more sympathetic to the demonstrators. Much of official Washington has yet to get over its shock. All this was true during the campaign too, and none of it stopped Trump from reaching this point. "We...

The impending implosion of the Clinton Foundation and the looming layoff of 22 staffers due to the closure of the Clinton Global Initiative are the result of Breitbart News and its Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer’s book Clinton Cash. Clinton Cash revealed the worldwide nexus of shady deal-making between Clinton Foundation donors, the six-figure speeches given by Bill Clinton, and the corresponding actions approved by the U.S. State Department while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Perhaps no political tome did more to expose and explain the web of corruption at Clinton, Inc., which is why the New York Times described Clinton...

Students at Independence High School in Williamson County, Tennessee, will not be allowed to watch President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration during class on Friday. Senior Olivia Roberts was so surprised by the ban she decided to write a Facebook post that has since gone viral: “To preface this, I am not one to post or debate anything political on Facebook but wanted to hear thoughts on this: I go to public school and we are not allowed to watch the inauguration tomorrow... Teachers are banned to show it. Teachers are also not allowed to discuss anything about politics or religions which...

The prevailing political discourse seems to be consumed with the bromides of social justice, carefully tended by political and intellectual classes claiming special knowledge of its demands. Friedrich Hayek, perhaps the greatest intellectual of the past century, was famously critical of the concept. “Justice is an attribute of individual action,” Hayek said. “I can be just or unjust towards my fellow man. But the conception of a social justice … is not only a meaningless conception, it’s completely impossible.” Hayek argued everyone talks about social justice without knowing what it means, and he reasoned the idea of social justice puts...

Some years ago a friend of mine wrote a book titled "The Seven Last Words of the Church, or, We've Never Tried It That Way Before." It is about what he regarded as the entrenched bureaucracies in his denomination that are reluctant -- even hostile -- to change. The same opposition to change exists in government and the media. As in some denominations, entrenched bureaucracies are reluctant to give up power and influence for something untried, or for something that differs from what they have been doing for years, even when their approach has failed. I thought of my friend's...

“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”These were the infamous words President Barack Obama used to scold congressional Republicans just three days after his inauguration in 2009, foreshadowing how he would approach policymaking for the next eight years.Rather than listening to and trying to work with Republicans, Obama governed through brute force—with his “pen and phone” more often than with the consent of Congress—guided by the dictates of his progressive ideology rather than the interests of the American people.In virtually every policy area—from health care and immigration to the deployment of American troops and the...

Donald Trump, in his first press conference since being elected president, savaged a number of worthy targets. Blasting the increasingly Gawker-esque tabloid click farm known as BuzzFeed, and summarily dismissing CNN as fake news, were moments that rightly deserve the cheers of conservatives (and, for that matter, intellectually honest people) everywhere. Further, Trump’s hyperbolic but deserved strike at the politicized CIA for endeavoring to assert control of American politics was a relieving moment both for believers in civil liberties, and for those who are tired of seeing the bureaucratic Deep State in Washington cut off any attempt at reform.But...