Free Republic

There are problems with the debate over healthcare and “reforming” it. The first is that the Progressive Left has defined the terms under which we discuss healthcare. The second is that the GOP is terrible at messaging their solutions. Examine the CBO claim that 24 million people will lose health insurance coverage under the American Health Care Act (AHCA). The only way that people lose their coverage is if the government is giving it to them. Let this sink in. That logic may be true for the greater than 50% of healthcare already being provided through Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, VA...

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The left has done a 180 since its free speech heyday of the 1960s. What used to be anything goes, and protecting the First Amendment right to say controversial things, has morphed into a treacherous map of what you can and cannot say. Universities, which were once a bastion of free speech, have now become the most hostile areas of all. If you do not agree with the left — even if you are on the left — expect to be savagely targeted. You could lose your job, your career, and reputation over just one social media post. Not to...

Education: President Obama had a great idea back in 2010: nationalize the student loan program, and its problems would soon go away. It didn't happen. Instead, more people are refusing to pay their student loans than ever before. In a study released last week, the Consumer Federation of America found that millions of people were in arrears on $137 billion in federal student loans in the first nine months of 2016, an increase of 14% from 2015. All told, the federal government's portfolio of student loans now stands at a whopping $1.3 trillion. As the Washington Post notes, "What's striking...

For conservatives, the election of Donald Trump, while not ideal, represents the first chance in a long time to take the country back from the infestation of liberal ideology, and especially one world government globalism. If the first two months of the Trump administration has taught us anything, it is that until liberalism is completely eradicated, it matters little who sits in the White House. Leftists have succeeded in infiltrating America like a locust plague, through our education systems, media, Hollywood, politics, churches, and the judiciary. On one hand, we see activist judges at every turn opposing Trump’s honest attempts...

Health Reform: Critics of the Republican's ObamaCare replacement plan — and many moderate Republicans as well — complain that it will result in millions losing insurance. What nobody asks is whether we have too much insurance today. Insurance, after all, is supposed to make health care more affordable. But what if it's making it less so? University of Michigan economist Mark Perry recently compared inflation rates for health care with price increases for cosmetic surgery. What he discovered was illuminating. From 1998 to 2016, the overall inflation rate was 47.2%. But for medical care services, prices went up 100%. And...

President Trump observed at his Inauguration, "What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people." His victory forced members of the D.C. establishment to face the reality that they are resented and opposed by about half the country, the half that brought Trump to the White House.At best, past Republican presidents just settled for slowing the increases.Moving from words to action, President Trump is challenging his incoming team to pursue actual spending cuts as high as 10% and staffing cuts to 20%.His “landing teams” in Cabinet agencies have called...

“Quiet voices” that became an “earthquake” is how President Trump explains his populist win in America—and today similar voices in France threaten the world’s most potent globalist structure: the United Nations.France is the world’s fifth most popular travel destination and sixth largest economy. Not too shabby for a country roughly the size of Texas. Despite these successes, the French people are growing increasingly unhappy with their political system. In April and May, French voters will elect a new president. Marine Le Pen is the National Front party candidate gaining popularity for her fresh and daring policies.“If anything, I’m to the...

Can you feel the pulse-pounding sense of excitement that’s sweeping the nation in the wake of the sudden rise to media prominence of superwoke everywoman Chelsea Clinton?I sure can, but then I’m a conservative Republican. I totally support the Democrats making Chelsea the face of their party. Please, please, please make her the face of your party.Let’s be clear – Chelsea is not an embodiment of malignant evil, as is her harpy mother. I am aware of acts of great kindness she has personally performed; she does not appear to be a morally bankrupt monster like her parents. Nor do...

Following a recent foreign policy dust-up between the White House and Britain over unfounded allegations of spying, the liberal media took it upon themselves to speculate the future of the long standing relationship. And during ABC’s This Week the network’s chief foreign correspondent, Terry Morgan mocked the Trump administration and argued that all of Europe was laughing at the expense of the United States. “He got an agenda in the world which is disruptive, like his agenda at home. They want to come to terms with it,” Moran stated, as he noted that Trump was sent by the American...

These activist judges are determined to stop President Trump from protecting Americans. They don’t care how many violent jihadis come in to the United States as “refugees.” They don’t care how many Americans die. This anti-American judicial tyranny has to be stopped.

Russia is an easy country to enter. Procedures at Moscow's airport including passport control allow passengers a speedy departure from the airport, and the hour-long journey to the center of the city and hotel passes quickly along the six-lane highway. Similarly, the reception is pleasant at the hotel, and the imperfect facilities in the room are of little account. The first surprise is the availability in the hotel of various foreign newspapers or mimeographed versions of them, including those in English such as The New York Times, Le Figaro, and The Wall Street Journal, as well the local Moscow Times,...

The so-called “two-state solution,” to subdivide the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea between independent Israel and independent Palestine, fails the tests of logic and history. And it ignores the Kingdom of Jordan – whose participation is required for any stable, long-term arrangement. There are presently three “states,” or at least three governments, west of the Jordan: Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Gaza. Pro-Israel “two-staters” think Gaza and the West Bank territory should become one state with Israel as the other, assuming-for-no-reason that it is Hamas that will disappear. Hamas vociferously disagrees. Assuming-for-no-reason that a single...

In 1993 I was studying law at Cambridge University in England. Of course, we visited the Inns of Court in London, power-central for British jurisprudence. At lunchtime, a bit heady from the obligatory sherry-for-ladies-pre-prandial, I wandered a bit and came upon, of all things, the sepulcher of a Crusader. I knew what it was immediately. I am Catholic, and although quite unregenerate at that time, still, the old stories and pictures were there. Besides, you couldn't mistake it; the period was right: a knight in stone effigy, on the grave, decked out in the very latest warrior garb of the...

While the Democrats have abandoned the counterfactual claim that the Russians interfered with the election to help President Trump into office, Trump’s claim that U.S. officials surveilled him still has legs. Eli Lake reports: On March 1, the New York Times reported that in the final days and weeks of the Obama administration, White House officials rushed to preserve and distribute intelligence on connections between Russia and Trump’s associates throughout the government. In practice this meant that raw intelligence was processed into analytical reports and classified at a relatively low level. “As Inauguration Day approached, Obama White House officials grew...

In the Constitution, you will find liberty right up front in the Preamble. You will not, though, find any mention of a free market, regardless of how much you search. Free Market emphasis is an aspect of a philosophy supported by Libertarians and nouveau Conservatives called “Free Marketers." Many talk show conservatives repeat the Free Market dictum ad nauseam, and rant against any government-involved system, always claiming that what the central government does, the Free Market can do better. They repeat this mantra in spite of the fact that we have had a state capitalism economic system for more than...

Recently, I joked about political diets, noting that actress Lena Dunham complained that the “soul-crushing pain and devastation and hopelessness” of the new Trump presidency had caused her to lose weight. On the other hand, Barbra Streisand and others in Hollywood claim their unease about President Trump is triggering them to overeat and gain weight. Then, I compared these Trump-inspired diets to the “Maduro Diet.” The Maduro Diet, you ask? That’s the namesake of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the socialist successor to the late Hugo Chávez. Maduro is presiding over the complete economic collapse of what, prior to socialism, had...

I recently wrote a column about a law that California put into force on January 1, 2017, that requires certain small business owners to acquire workers’ compensation insurance that most or all will never use. This is an added cost for the small businesses that will only inure to insurance companies and in the end drive up costs to consumers. After publication of this column, I learned more about the passing of the law which was fascinating to me and hopefully will be fascinating to you.The bill, AB 2883, sailed through the legislature with virtually no discussions and near unanimous...

There is an interesting phenomenon that happens among red state Democrats in the Senate every six years. They suddenly start sounding conservative when their re-election bid approaches. They talk more conservatively. They act more conservatively. They vote more conservatively, at least until they get re-elected and can go back to holding the Democratic Party line in the Senate. The same phenomenon happens in the Republican Party. Only last year, the American people called their bluff, put them in power, and now expect them to do what they promised. Republicans are terrified at the prospect. Politicians are quite good at...

The Senate has scheduled confirmation hearings for President Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch, to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court to begin on Monday — almost exactly a year after President Obama nominated Merrick Garland for the same post. What difference a year makes. President Obama held a Rose Garden press conference on the morning of March 16, 2016, to announce his choice of Garland, the centrist chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Two out of three voters (65 percent) told Pew Research Center last summer that Supreme Court appointments were “very important”...