Free Republic

The danger of a Republican bailout of Obamacare is mounting with every passing day. Moderate Republicans calling themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus are quietly negotiating with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to throw a multibillion-dollar lifeline to the Obamacare insurance exchanges. This bailout, of course, would be an epic betrayal by the Republican Party, which has promised to repeal and replace the financially crumbling health law. Obamacare's apologists object to the term "bailout" for this rescue package. The left prefers the euphemism "stabilizing the insurance market." They claim this is merely a payment to low-income families to help...

I spoke this morning with a friend who lives in Germany. Unsolicited, the friend (who assumed, as Leftists always do, given my socio-economic status, that I am a Leftist too) began to trash Trump. I got the usual litany: Trump will kill Americans because he refuses to save Obamacare; Trump will kill Americans and Koreans because he's threatening repercussions if Kim Jong-Un engages in an overtly aggressive act against the US or its territories; and Trump will kill the entire world because he withdrew from the (meaningless, but expensive) Paris Accords. How in the world could Americans elect the racist,...

Seconds after President Trump’s Monday remarks finally calling out the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists by name, CNN hosts and panelists made clear that there was nothing Trump could have said that would have satisfied them, excoriating him for not going far enough and announcing “policy in terms of addressing this.” Inside Politics aired during and immediately after the President’s statement and Bloomberg’s Margaret Talev got the first crack, slamming Trump for not doing “outreach to people not white or who might feel that they were on the victimized end of the message that the protesters were carrying.”Never Satisfied: CNN...

Appearing as a guest on Monday's New Day, liberal CNN political commentator Symone Sanders not only repeatedly smeared White House advisors Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka as "white supremacist sympathizers," but she even deceptively claimed that Gorka had characterized "brown people" as a problem. At 7:53 a.m. ET, as she debated former Virginia Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli over the issue of why President Donald Trump had not more explicitly condemned white supremacy ideology, Sanders took aim at Bannon for associating himself and Breitbart News in the past with the "Alt-right" movement: CNN's Sanders Falsely Claims Gorka Called 'Brown People'...

Journalistic integrity took another Monday afternoon on MSNBC, with another casualty in the liberal plot to paint President Trump as a closet neo-Nazi Klansman. Piling in on the liberal media frenzy following Saturday’s sad events at Charlottesville, MSNBC’s Chris Jansing anchored a segment with Trump critic Mark Potok, formerly of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Now Editor-in-Chief of the SPLC’s Hatewatch Blog, Mr. Potok is a mainstay within the liberal propaganda machine. But after witnessing the softball interview with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing, you’ll realize she seems to be as well. MSNBC’s Jansing Lets Lefty Potok Loose; Says Trump Is ‘An...

Whether it is a public policy idea whose time has come remains to be seen. But it is, in the least, worthy of serious study. But would Western Pennsylvanians embrace such a concept? We refer to word out of Eastern Pennsylvania that researchers will begin a federally funded $1.2 million study to investigate the viability of a mileage-based highway tax system to pay for highway infrastructure. What’s prompting such a study in the Keystone State, and what led to previous studies elsewhere, is two-fold. First, modern vehicles with better fuel mileage use less gasoline and diesel. Which means less money...

To say that people are gobsmacked by the overwhelming support by Christians for President Trump is an understatement. While I can understand why those from the party that booed God don’t get it, recent jabs by rightwing pundits are making it hard to differentiate between conservative purists and political snobs. A recent piece at Townhall.com by Bernard Goldberg shows he is baffled how “people of faith who supposedly admire civility and decency and detest abortion” could support Trump. National Review’s David French recently opined: “Moreover, the complete shock of Trump’s win (followed quickly by the Gorsuch nomination) forged a...

The white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville seemed to think that their movement is committed to taking America back. They are mistaken. They cannot take America back because it was never theirs in the first place. It's true that the legacies of slavery and centuries of legalized racism have long tarnished our nation's history. That reality has always stood in conflict with our nation's founding ideals of freedom, equality, and self-governance. For too many years, white Americans simply ignored the contradiction that they didn't want to see. That failure to confront evil allowed racists and white supremacists to continue their...

RUSH: I get this note: “Hey, Rush, it’s not the Russia thing. That’s been debunked. It’s now just the get-Trump thing.” Well, the Russia thing has not been debunked. It may be to you and me. Remember last week, ladies and gentlemen, I shared with you this epic piece in The Nation magazine? It was written by Patrick Lawrence. Leftist. And I guarantee you reading this thing just itself was a chore just by virtue of the way the man uses the English language. But he hired an investigative team of forensics to actually look at all the evidence, the...

RUSH: I’ll tell you what else let’s do. Let’s not stop at Robert E. Lee statues. Let’s ban Gone With the Wind. Let’s ban the book, and let’s make sure the movie can no longer be purchased, rented, or exhibited anywhere. We will get rid of not just Robert E. Lee. We’ll tear down anything that tells anybody where Gettysburg is and what happened there. (interruption) Well, now wait. No, Gettysburg will stand. Gettysburg will stand ’cause that’s where they had their lunch handed to them, so Gettysburg will stand. But we’ll go all the way back to Lincoln. We’ll...

RUSH: Here’s President Trump with his statement. Let’s join it and listen and hear what he’s got to say. THE PRESIDENT: We are renegotiating trade deals and making them good for the American worker — and it’s about time. Our economy is now strong. The stock market continues to hit record highs, unemployment is at a 16-year low, and businesses are more optimistic than ever before. Companies are moving back to the United States and bringing many thousands of jobs with them. We have already created over one million jobs since I took office. President Trump: "Racism is evil..." (C-SPAN)...

Solar energy is not always a fraud. If you live off the electric grid, and you have a reasonable amount of sunshine, solar power, backed up by batteries, can be a good option for getting a modest amount of electricity. It will not be cheap electricity. Solar is good for powering equipment in remote locations. It is excellent for powering spacecraft. It is good for direct heating of swimming pools. Passive solar in the form of buildings designed to utilize sunshine for warmth and light can save energy. But, do not think that it is advisable to put solar electricity...

EXCLUSIVE: President Trump may soon issue a pardon for Joe Arpaio, the colorful former Arizona sheriff who was found guilty two weeks ago of criminal contempt for defying a state judge’s order to stop traffic patrols targeting suspected undocumented immigrants. In his final years as Maricopa County sheriff, Arpaio had emerged as a leading opponent of illegal immigration. “I am seriously considering a pardon for Sheriff Arpaio,” the president said Sunday, during a conversation with Fox News at his club in Bedminster, N.J. “He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He’s a great American patriot and...

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. If a reactionary is someone who stubbornly opposes change, the State Department is a prime example of an institution mired in fossilized paradigms and narratives. Unable to discard received institutional wisdom in the face of historical facts both new and old, Foggy Bottom continues to live up to its moniker, blind to the historical realities and ideologies that should be determining our foreign policy. The State Department’s recently released, and suitably criticized, Country Report on Terrorism 2016 is filled with examples of rote adherence to exploded analytic...

Under the 3D Test, Waters qualifies as an anti-Semite. Rock and Roll “artist” Roger Waters is set to perform this week in Philadelphia at the Wells-Fargo Center. Along with his usual repertoire, known from his days with the rock band Pink Floyd, he may offer his poisonous “human rights” catalog of bigoted and downright anti-Semitic rhetoric. Waters, 73, has singled out the Jewish state in his alleged concern for human rights, out of 196 nation-states. The only people he seems to be rallying for are the Palestinian-Arabs. In a press release issued by StandWithUs (SWU), an International Israel educational organization,...

In Dallas, a black nationalist activist shot and killed 5 police officers at a Black Lives Matter anti-police rally. Instead of condemning BLM, Barack Obama defended a racist hate group whose role model is Assata Shakur, a wanted black nationalist cop killer, at the funerals of the murdered officers. The left killed civil rights and replaced it with black nationalism. The racial supremacism of black nationalism that killed those officers is everywhere. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi are lionized as brilliant thinkers instead of hateful racists, Amazon has ordered a black nationalist secessionist fantasy from Aaron McGruder and Showtime...

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to stop subsidizing cities which obstruct immigration law. Chicago filed suit in response. Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to continue collecting federal dollars while ignoring federal policy. Chicago is a “sanctuary city.” That sounds nice, kind of like Oskar Schindler protecting Jews from the Nazis. It actually means protecting illegal aliens who commit crimes from being punished and deported. When President Donald Trump took office, some 300 jurisdictions, including 106 cities, actively interfered with federal law enforcement. The Chicago case arose from a drunk driver and illegal alien. Shortly after completing probation for a...

Economics: Last year, the "Fight for $15" movement was said to have unstoppable momentum, driven by labor unions, left-wing politicians and a sympathetic press. Then reality struck. Too bad it didn't strike sooner. "This is a trend that cannot be stopped." "The political earth has shifted." "This movement continues to build." "Even economic experts who oppose the increased rate see it gaining momentum." That's what all the "experts" were saying last year. It was easy to make such assumptions. Protests and strikes were on the rise, hitting 340 last year. In 2015 alone, 14 cities and states approved $15 minimum...

On the protest in Charlottesville this past weekend, Pajama Media’s Roger Simon, a self-described “Jewish fella,” put it well: "[T]he types who surfaced in Charlottesville on Saturday are certainly human beings of the most repellent and disgusting sort, murderous too—pretty much violent, evil sociopaths. I wouldn’t mind if they were all rounded up, put in a space ship, and sent on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri." ... On President Trump’s condemnation of the violence in Charlottesville, Thomas Lifson at American Thinker offers some more perspective: "[The] critics [of President Trump’s condemnation] were going to slam the president no matter...

You’re in second grade, enjoying summer vacation, when a neighbor boy comes out of nowhere and thrusts his fist—hard—into your stomach. For seconds, you gasp for air. He’s no foe. In fact, you would have called him a friend until about three seconds ago. What just happened?Not all of us have been shell-shocked. But we’ve all had the air knocked out of us at some point. For me, it once happened in the way described above. (The little boy thought he was being funny, although his mother laughed at his joke by grounding him.) Well, last week, Google singlehandedly knocked...