Free Republic

Sen. Rand Paul, the tea party favorite and possible 2016 presidential candidate, is raising money for a conservative gun rights group that’s targeting fellow Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. And when one congressman complained, the message from Paul’s camp was: too bad. The Kentucky Republican has lent his name to fundraising pitches for the National Association for Gun Rights, a group that says the National Rifle Association is too willing to compromise on gun rights. The group has blitzed the districts of Virginia Republicans Cantor and Rep. Scott Rigell with $50,000 worth of TV and radio ads accusing...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the Tea Party favorite and emerging 2016 GOP presidential star, on Wednesday showed he is looking to broaden his and the Republican Party's base far beyond white males to include African-American youths. In a speech to Howard University Wednesday morning, Paul reached out to blacks, arguing that the Democrats and President Obama has failed African Americans, but admitting that the GOP has a long way to go before blacks see Republicans as their guide to success. "Some have said that I'm either brave or crazy to be here today. I've never been one to watch the...

Libertarianism goes mainstream By: James Hohmann April 7, 2013 06:50 AM EDT Stereotyped for decades as pro-pot, pro-porn and pro-pacifism, libertarians are becoming mainstream. Fair or not, Ron Paul epitomized to a swath of voters the caricature of a goofy grandpa who invests in gold, stockpiles guns, sees black helicopters whirling overhead and quotes Friedrich Hayek. His ride into the sunset — combined with an evolving electorates’s move away from hot-button social issues — gives a new libertarian guard the opportunity to rebrand their governing philosophy as more reasonable, serious and compatible with the Republican Party. Led by Sen. Rand...

Riding shotgun in a red minivan, his foot propped on the dash, the Republican Party's man of the moment zips down the back roads of southern Kentucky. Rand Paul is on his way to a meeting with Christian leaders in Somerset, a conservative stronghold where locals couldn't buy alcohol until last year. It's his third event in as many hours, and he looks tired; his voice nearly gave out the day before. But social conservatives have rarely enlisted in the libertarian army, and Paul is trying to build a new coalition that can revitalize a deflated GOP. "A new Republican...

The CIA is notorious for its disastrous, damaging failures. In the 1950s, the CIA’s meddling in Iran politics led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979, creating a nation that is our implacable enemy. In the 1960s, the CIA carried out the embarrassing Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. In the 1980s, the CIA it was responsible for the Iran-Contra scandal that nearly wrecked Reagan’s presidency. In the 1980s, the CIA entirely missed the fact that the Soviet Union was collapsing. And in 2001 it was as surprised as anyone by the 9/11 attack. One would think that, with this track...

WASHINGTON – While he doesn’t exactly make the lame walk, Senator Rand Paul excels at getting them to talk, and to answer difficult questions essential to the life and liberty of all Americans. The Senator’s most recent principled stand, voiced during his epic filibuster, targeted the Obama Administration’s policy on dishing out the same quick and hasty deaths without charge or trial here at home as they have been overseas. Daring to challenge Attorney General Eric Holder to a duel of wits instantly endeared Senator Paul to countless concerned Americans who are fed up with politics as usual, feel betrayed...

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.— In a ruling issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Burlison v. Springfield Public Schools, the court deemed a Missouri school district’s policy of imposing a “lockdown” of the school for the purpose of allowing the local sheriff’s department, aided by drug-sniffing dogs, to perform mass inspections of students’ belongings to be a “reasonable procedure to maintain the safety and security of students at the school,” and not a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of students. Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute had challenged the school district’s practice of conducting random lockdowns and...

Published: February 6, 2008 Pentagon Aide's Invitations Contradicted U.S. PolicySteven EmersonAt the urging of a subordinate, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England scheduled at least two meetings with foreign emissaries in direct contradiction of U.S. policy at the time. The meetings date back to 2005. They involved a Lebanese ambassador considered a proxy for the Syrian government and a leading member of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood.U.S. policy at the time was not to engage in talks with either man, because they represent groups with whom the United States was not to communicate. The meetings were organized by England's special assistant for...

The truth is, the Tea Party anger that boiled over in response to the President Obama’s healthcare plan had been brewing for years due to conservative disappointment with George W. Bush’s policies. Bush created record-breaking deficits, embraced Congressional earmarks, gained passage of an enormous expansion of Medicare entitlements without funding it, nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and backed McCain-Kennedy comprehensive immigration reform. Principled conservatives like Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity spoke out against the direction of the party, to their credit. Conservatives must be careful not to abandon their principles out of blind hated for President Obama....

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Monday that Republicans can win in New England and on the West Coast if they’re willing to drop a “we need to bomb everybody tomorrow” foreign policy. “I think one of the problems we face, as a Republican party, is that we’re behind the eight-ball to begin with,” Paul said on CBS’ “This Morning.” “We’re not winning the West Coast. We’re not winning New England. Maybe we need to embrace more Ron Paul Republicans, more libertarian Republicans. … It means people who are little bit less aggressive on foreign policy. They believe in defending the...

Regardless of the electoral outcome, the possibility of civil unrest should not be discounted.Our societal divide has become a widening and deepening chasm to the point that regardless of who wins the presidential election civil unrest seems increasingly likely. I wrote here about the Civil War of 1861 - 65 and here about the constitutional implications and causes of that war. Should violence follow the November election, the conflagration and its context will be very different. It will have less to do with North versus South or with our few remaining States' rights. It may be influenced by the...

Ron Paul cooperates with no one, checks his voice for no one and doesn't much like the GOP establishment types. This would include the GOP's likely nominee, Mitt Romney, template maker in Massachusetts for all things nefarious accomplished by Barack Hussein Obama but brought to a national audience. Paul has declined to endorse Romney, but given the army of organized pitchforks he has attracted over the course of a run or two at the party nomination, the man has won a seat at the convention table. USATODAY.com reports that room will be made for Ron Paul in the convention, and...

But Obama has had a committed group of electeds aiding and abetting his treasonous assault on our freedoms and it’s not ipse dixit when I say that. John Boehner, Mitch McConnell in the Senate, the RNC, and Karl Rove are as responsible for our decline as the Socialist Leftists and Barack Obama, if not more so. And I will tell you why.

The desperate search for an acceptable Republican Party presidential candidate continues. Republican leaders apparently are pushing New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who previously said no, to jump into the race. The GOP's frustration is palpable. Mitt Romney has been running for four years but generates little enthusiasm. Rick Perry was an instant front-runner before losing much of his support after unimpressive debate performances. Michelle Bachmann briefly streaked across the political firmament but now barely registers in the polls. Newt Gingrich committed political seppuku shortly after announcing his candidacy. Ron Paul's support is fervent but limited. However, the real Republican problem...

Steve Jobs is dead. I'm saddened. Besides the grief his family and loved ones must feel, his death brings a loss to the world. He was a true innovator. Apple products and the technologies derived from them have reordered our way of living. While Jobs did not invent either the personal computer or the graphical interface operating system, the PCs and personal digital devices he created implement these in a way that has had an impact on society equal to that of the automobile, telephone, and antibiotic drugs. I used Apple products exclusively throughout my thirty years as a graphic...

It's tempting right now to say President Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents ever to dis-grace the White House. But is that fair, or even accurate? Historian renderings of a legacy are often at odds with fluctuating public opinion polls that gauge the heat of the moment. Take Truman. The man had a 22 percent approval rating toward the end of his presidency--due in large part to a highly unpopular Korean War--yet he's among the most popular presidents in history. I'm going to play the devil's advocate and argue that it is at least in the...

By Michelle Malkin  •  August 20, 2008 11:52 AM It’s your Fence In Name Only alert. Remember all that talk of how the Secure Fence Act allowed DHS to speed up construction with a special waiver process? Well, the waiver process — like the non-existence fence — is full of holes. And it’s another Bush administration agency that’s standing in the way: Work on “virtual fences” planned for Arizona’s stretch of the U.S.-Mexican border has been brought to a halt.The Interior Department has not granted the Homeland Security Department permission to use the land for constructing the surveillance towers that form...

EXETER (PA)– As people question why a police sergeant shot and killed a snapping turtle last week, a municipal police training commission recommends the sergeant be placed on administrative leave or administrative duty while an investigation is conducted. Police Chief John McNeil says that’s nonsense. “It’s like if an officer decides to shoot a deer hit by a car, it’s his decision.” McNeil, who was at a conference for the Police Chiefs Association in Valley Forge this week, said he does plan to review Sgt. Len Galli’s report but will not put him on administrative leave. “I was absent during...