Free Republic

President Barack Obama used Washington’s grandest stage—the State of the Union speech—to announce negotiations with Europe aimed at creating the world’s largest free trade agreement. Just weeks later, there are signs that old agriculture disputes could be deal-killers. European Union leaders don’t want the negotiations to include discussions on their restrictions on genetically modified crops and other regulations that keep U.S. farm products out of Europe. But Obama says it’s hard to imagine an agreement that doesn’t address those issues. Powerful U.S. agricultural lobbies will do their best to make sure Congress rejects any pact that fails to address the...

There are those who support – whether enthusiastically or reluctantly so – immigration reform on compassionate grounds or out of a desire to fix our broken system (border control; greater enforcement; changing our evaluation methods for who gets in and who doesn’t, etc.). Fair enough. But let’s be blunt: political gain is the driving factor. It’s no surprise that the three Republicans most publicly discussing the issue are all 2016 contenders: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and Jeb Bush. We conservatives are told – by GOP strategists and consultants – that immigration reform is the key to winning the Latino vote....

Alcohol occupies a peculiar position in the culture of the United States. Like so much else besides, it is subject to the ongoing brawl between puritanism and libertarianism, two philosophies that have long jockeyed for dominance here. Americans have made many contributions to the bar — including the perfection and popularization of the cocktail. But puritanism has survived, enjoying a rich history of its own. Benjamin Rush’s inquiries into alcoholism spawned a variety of anti-alcohol movements at the outset of the new republic; in the 1850s, “temperance” overlapped uncomfortably with the Know Nothing movement’s distaste for secular principles; and...

Secret papers show extent of senior royals' veto over bills Court order reveals how approval of Queen and Prince Charles is sought on range of billsRobert Booth The Guardian, Monday 14 January 2013 The Queen was asked for consent on a range of bills, including those affecting her estates. There is growing concern in parliament at a lack of transparency over the royals’ role in lawmaking. Photograph: Sergeant Dan Harmer [...] The internal Whitehall pamphlet [...] shows ministers and civil servants are obliged to consult the Queen and Prince Charles in greater detail and over more areas of legislation than...

Except in a few neoconservative hideouts, the Iraq war is generally regarded as a mistake. The war has cost over $800 billion so far, with more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers killed and around 32,000 wounded. Hard to argue that the United States has acquired security gains commensurate with that sacrifice. So, why was the Iraq war a mistake and what lessons should be learned from it? The 10th anniversary of the initial invasion has occasioned considerable discussion of those questions. But most of the discussion is wide of the most important lesson to be learned. --snip-- George W. Bush told...

Colorado -–(Ammoland.com)- The United Nations is putting the finishing touches on their U.N. “Small Arms Treaty.” But the first shot in the battle to DEFEAT the treaty will happen in the U.S. Senate in just a matter of hours. Today, Senator Rand Paul will be offering a budget amendment that will make it more difficult for the implementation of ANY international treaty creating an international gun registry or gun ban. So it’s absolutely CRITICAL you pick up the phone and call your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121 IMMEDIATELY, and urge them to vote for Senator Paul’s budget amendment. You see,...

Snip The measure is believed to have no chance of clearing the Democratic-controlled Senate. The vote was 221-207.

So confused am I by what he’s saying in the clip below that I’m not sure I’ve summed up his position correctly in the headline. The Blaze, wisely, didn’t even try. Their own post on this is simply titled, “CNN Asked Rand Paul About Abortion Exceptions: This Is How He Answered.” Here’s what we know: Not only is Paul pro-life, he just introduced the Life At Conception Act in the Senate, which would overturn Roe via a federal statute aimed at protecting due process for a fetus per Congress’s power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. So far, so...

The Obama administration has no evidence to back up a claim by Syrian PresidentBashar al-Assad's regime that the U.S.-backed Syrian rebels used chemical weapons, the White House said Tuesday.

Social disruption, dramatic declines in mining and tourism and the Feb. 6 assassination of popular leftist leader Chokri Belaid, who was gunned down outside his home in the capital apparently by hard-line Islamists, known as Salafists, have all contributed to a darkened atmosphere inside the birthplace of the Arab Spring. There’s a sullen resentment at the failure of the Islamist government -- it is ruling with two secular center-left parties – to move the economy on.

National Review's Robert Costa reports from Washington DC that the GOPe are 'wary' of Sen. Rand Paul but are 'surprisingly open' to him

<p>WASHINGTON – Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the winner of the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll for 2016 only days ago, has told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce that there should be a path to citizenship for illegal aliens in the United States.</p>

Erica Werner of the Associated Press gives us a textbook example of why talking about immigration in the United States is so hard. She reads into statements things that are not there.The headline of her article is “Rand Paul endorses immigrant path to citizenship.” Giving her the benefit of the doubt that someone else wrote the headline, her first paragraph reads thusly: Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is telling a Hispanic business group that illegal immigrants should be allowed to become U.S. taxpayers and ultimately get a shot at citizenship. I have read the entirety of Rand Paul’s speech....

I have read the entirety of Rand Paul’s speech. I have spoken directly to the Senator. No where in his speech does he use the word “citizenship.” In fact, the word citizen is only used once, in reference to Rand Paul himself saying, “As a teenager, I was not always the model citizen that I am today.”

The Associated Press is standing by its report that Sen. Rand Paul intended to back a path to citizenship in his speech Tuesday to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, despite the fact that he did not do so, and despite claims from advisers that the AP's story is wrong. ... The AP obtained an advance copy of Sen. Paul’s remarks on Monday and reported that he would be "endorsing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants." That report led to headlines across news outlets ranging from Fox News to The Washington Post to the Huffington Post...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the winner of the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll for 2016 only days ago, is denying an Associated Press report that he supports a path to citizenship for illegal aliens. The AP’s Erica Werner reported Paul told a Hispanic business group that illegal aliens should be allowed to become U.S. taxpayers and ultimately get a shot at citizenship. However, Paul told the Washington Post, which carried the original story, the reporting was inaccurate. “I didn’t use the word citizenship at all this morning,” he said. “Basically what I want to do is to...

Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, filibustered the Senate vote on confirming John Brennan to be CIA director, because he was against the drone war in general and the targeted assassination of American citizens in the US in particular. He failed. Brennan became CIA director. But his filibuster was called "historic" by Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo, who quotes a talk show host at length: "There is a fear among (John) McCain, Lindsey Graham, and others who favor an interventionist foreign policy. Think of the neocons. Think of going into Iraq and not just securing Iraq, but building a democracy. Nation...

(Reuters) - The Free Syrian Army rebel command said President Bashar al-Assad's forces launched a chemical weapon attack on the northern town of Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on Tuesday using a long-range missile.

(CNN) -- The first Syrian rebels trained by U.S. military and intelligence officers in Jordan returned to Syria on Thursday, a senior rebel spokesman told CNN. About 300 rebel fighters received specialized training in Jordan in the use of various weapons, including anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other types of advanced systems, the spokesman said. More rebel fighters are currently undergoing training.

Now we are finally getting somewhere. Just like Obama is ineligible technically because his fathers British Nationality 'governed' his birth status in 1961, Ted Cruz is ineligible too. Fox News has confirmed it and rightly so. Sean Hannity made a huge blunder the other day and declared Ted Cruz a natural born citizen because he was born to a American mother in Canada. He was so wrong. Cruz is a 14th Amendment U.S. 'statutory' (not natural born) citizen which is something completely different than a Article 2 Section 1 Constitutional natural born Citizen which is explicitly designed only for the...