Free Republic

It’s now clear that the end of the Soviet Union heralded an era of democratic complacency. Without a rival system to test them, democratic governments have decayed across the globe.... [....] The answer is to use Lee Kuan Yew means to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level. At the national level, American politics has become neurotically democratic. Politicians are campaigning all the time and can scarcely think beyond the news cycle. Legislators are terrified of offending this or that industry lobby, activist group or...

Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi was downright benevolent compared to the Lunch Nazi: Sounding a new aggressive tone, first lady Michelle Obama vowed in a private conference call Monday to fight industry efforts at rolling back healthy school-lunch standards, an issue that could come up for a vote on Capitol Hill this week. It isn’t just “industry” that doesn’t want the national menu dictated by the Bitter Half. The kids who have to eat the widely caboosed authoritarian’s notion of healthy meals don’t like it either. Even liberal New York City dropped her school lunch scheme after determining it to be a...

Don’t like your school’s food menu? Does it waste way too much money in discarded food? The kids complaining a lot about the lousy flavor or miniscule servings? Well, the House of Representatives is about to vote this week on a new bill that will provide school systems with a possible way out of Michelle’s mandatory nutrition standards. The Congressmen and -women have been listening to schools, teachers, students and parents and have authored legislation that, with proper qualification and documentation, will allow each school system to regain control of their food programs. If a system can show they sustained...

“There can be no aspect of your daily life that’s removed from politics,” Jim Treacher writes at the Daily Caller, “Now you will be monitored by your own children for expressing unapproved opinions. You’d better watch what you say at the dinner table, Mom and Dad.” Jim links to this post at The Blaze: First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made. The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas,...

Left-wing extremism has a home at PBS – and that home, to be specific, is the set of Moyers & Company. Host Bill Moyers kicked off Sunday’s episode with a flashback to the previous week’s broadcast, in which scientist and environmental activist David Suzuki had announced that he believes society should literally punish politicians who don’t believe in global warming. [Video below. MP3 audio here.] This is what Suzuki told Moyers:(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Our politicians should be thrown in the slammer for willful blindness. If we are in a position of being able to act, and we see something going on and...

In an interview with Bloomberg News [URL at link], Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland had meetings with the Ukrainian neofascist group Right Sector in Washington DC. The Right Sector has been involved in numerous killings including the burning of pro-Russian supporters in Odessa. ... Whether Nuland met with Artyomenko or any other representative of the Right Sector to help with fundraising and support is unknown. What is known is that the US is supporting the gang in Kiev's "interim government" which includes Svoboda an openly neofascist party...

IMPERIAL, Calif. — Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor. The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed. “United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with...

A new Fairfax County, Va., zoning proposal takes direct aim at the right to assemble in the privacy of one’s own home. This proposed “Group Assembly in Residential Dwellings” zoning ordinance amendment not only poses a grave and fundamental violation of the U.S. Constitution but smacks of the worst type of government overreach. The ordinance would limit the number of people one could have in their home to 49 a day, and to exceed that limit more than 3 times in any 40-day period would be a violation of law. I never imagined hosting a Bible study in my home...

On Tuesday’s All In, host Chris Hayes and his guests tackled a chilling and politically loaded subject: which beliefs should disqualify someone from holding public office. Among other things, the group decided that global warming “denialism,” opposition to same-sex marriage, and opposition to a “robust” Voting Rights Act should put a politician outside the mainstream and ruin their chances of holding public office. Hayes seemed excited that politicians might be branded with a figurative scarlet letter for holding beliefs that run counter to his own far-left vision. In fact, he claimed the act of disqualification based on certain beliefs is...

Under a new program implemented by education czar Arne Duncan, employees from the federal department of education will be placed in schools throughout the nation to oversee their operations and ensure they’re following federal guidelines and procedures. This doesn’t sound so horrible, until you remember that the federal government isn’t supposed to have any hand in education and they’re continually telling us that their role is ‘limited’.

After successfully bringing more than 30% of the U.S. economy — the health care and financial services industries — under political control during his first term, President Obama made it clear last week that a priority of his second term is to go after the energy sector — another 10.5%. The purpose of the White House's orchestrated release of the National Climate Assessment on May 7 was to set the stage to drive energy markets and fossil fuels under the heel of more government regulation. Most Americans would celebrate knowing that the U.S. is on the cusp of oil and...

Another day, another witch hunt — this time in duplicate. “Twin brothers David and Jason Benham,” CNN reports, “have lost their opportunity to host their own HGTV show.” On Tuesday, the pair was gearing up for their new role; by sundown the next day, the network had announced tersely that it had “decided not to move forward with the Benham Brothers’ series.” And that, as they say, was that. HGTV’s mind was allegedly changed by a post on the blog Right Wing Watch, where the duo was described as being “anti-gay” and “anti-choice.” That post, David Benham told Erin...

A devastating new McKinsey & Co. report finds that Obamacare's purported purpose – providing coverage for the previously uninsured – has failed. The report concludes that 74% of Obamacare enrollees at the end of the first open enrollment period already had insurance; just 26% reported being previously uninsured. Of those who were previously uninsured, the figure drops to only 22% when considered alongside whether the individual has activated his plan by paying his first month's premium. According to the Associated Press, at least 4.7 million Americans had their health insurance plans canceled due to Obamacare. Many of those individuals simply...

RIALTO: Holocaust assignment prompts Museum of Tolerance visits Eighth-graders in Rialto Unified School District, who were assigned in February to argue whether the Holocaust really happened, now will take a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the school board decided Wednesday evening, May 7. Board President Joanne T. Gilbert read a joint statement for the board announcing the field trip after a closed-door session. Earlier, eight speakers protested the assignment that asked eighth-graders to write an essay about whether the Holocaust occurred or if it was “merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the "economy of exclusion" that is taking hold today. Francis made the appeal during a speech to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major U.N. agencies who met in Rome this week. Latin America's first pope has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity, though his predecessors have voiced similar concerns. On Friday, Francis called for the United Nations to promote...

America’s founders, largely distrustful of centralized power, created several checks and balances into the U.S. Constitution to help ensure that one person, or one group of people, would not be able to unilaterally exert his or their will over the American citizenry. First, the federal government itself was divided into three separate and distinct branches–each holding the capability (and responsibility) to check the power of the other. Second, the Bill of Rights was made part of the Constitution for the protection of individual liberties. Third, the “free and independent states” of the nation retained their sovereignty and independence after the...

Would like your opinions...but consider this: Saudi Arabia has treated women and homosexuals like sub-human beings for DECADES....and the Hollywood elite has said virtually NOTHING. BUT now, suddenly they are concerned about Islamic views in these issues? I am not certain they are REALLY interested in this particular hotel....rather, I suspect they are using this as a "test case" in order to attack Christian-owned businesses that do not celebrate infanticide, abortion, or homosexuality. Am I wrong, wearing a tin foil hat?

Israeli rabbi Michael Finkel says the Jewish community is on high alert because of the influence of the neo-Nazi's within Kiev's temporary government. "This is Right Sector. This is the peole who are marching in Nazi uniforms with SF on their arms and on their military uniforms," Finkel says. According to the rabbi, it is possible that Ukraine could turn into a country similar to Lebanon. "In Lebanon, there's an official government and there is Hezbollah, which is a terrrorist organization linked to the government. They're members of the parliament, and there's a Hezbollah militia over thre, a separate army,...

Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media's exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight. “I think that there are impulses in the government every day to second guess and look into the editorial decisions of conservative publishers,” warned Federal Election Commission Chairman Lee E. Goodman in an interview. “The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's move on to the White House now and the reestablishment of climate change and global warming as a new primary impetus of the White House because it offers the president opportunities to be dictatorial. Executive orders and executive actions. Now, John Podesta was dragged out yesterday to all of a sudden make some comments about this. John Podesta was Bill Clinton's chief-of-staff, and he's over at a think tank. I think it's The Center for American Progress. I get 'em confused. Think Progress, Center for American Progress, Advanced Liberal -- (interruption) Center for American Progress, yeah....