Free Republic

It was always going to be a seamless transition from John Boehner to Paul Ryan. These men are cut from the exact same cloth, which is worshipping at the altar of crony capitalism. They talk a good game about about “free markets” and “entrepreneurship,” but at the end of the day, are both staunch defenders of statist, centrally planned economies, as long as the subsidies go to mega-corporations. David Dayan, who’s excellent work I’ve covered many times here at Liberty Blitzkrieg, just published an article at the Fiscal Times outlining the plethora or Wall Street giveaways recently added onto the...

It seems bizarre that financial policy would get decided in a bill to repair roads and bridges and mass transit, but that’s the whole point of the Christmas tree strategy: If a bill is deemed “must pass,” then adding ornaments to it comprises a good strategy for getting things into law that otherwise might not receive a vote. Ryan touted this process as a positive example of new leadership. In recent years, House bills written in secret sped to the floor without the ability for alterations. But on the highway bill, over 80 amendments got a vote on the House...

Until now, Donald Trump and Ben Carson have been content to co-exist as the two Republican “outsiders” dominating the presidential campaign scene.Together, the bombastic billionaire real estate executive and the eerily soft-spoken former neurosurgeon have shared about half of the overall Republican support in the presidential sweepstakes while the other candidates have languished with single digit showings in the polls. But as Trump and Carson prepare for another crucial Republican presidential debate in Boulder, Colorado on Wednesday, the gloves are definitely coming off.With two new polls showing Carson surging ahead of Trump in Iowa, Trump has begun lashing out with...

Donald Trump boasts, “I’m the most militaristic person there is,” and that he’d build a military force so robust “no one is going to mess” with the U.S. Yet at his core, Trump is a businessman. So when the Republican presidential frontrunner looks at the Defense Department’s multi-billion dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, he sees a lousy deal. During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, the real estate mogul said he has received briefings on the fighter jet effort and that it has “big problems.” “I’m hearing that our existing planes are better. And one of the...

For the past six weeks, an overarching concern for the Republican Party has been the impact that Donald Trump might have on the GOP primary election — particularly the damage he could do on the debate stage by turning an already unmanageable 10-candidate forum into a full-on circus. On Sunday, though, Trump himself gave one of the clearest examples yet of why his candidacy is doomed to fail, and why, if handled properly, the debate stage could be his Waterloo. Trump called in to CNN's State of the Union on Sunday morning to speak with host Jake Tapper. Much of...

For the past six weeks, an overarching concern for the Republican Party has been the impact that Donald Trump might have on the GOP primary election – particularly the damage he could do on the debate stage by turning an already unmanageable 10-candidate forum into a full-on circus. On Sunday, though, Trump himself gave one of the clearest examples yet of why his candidacy is doomed to fail, and why, if handled properly, the debate stage could be his Waterloo. Trump has staked much of his campaign on his promise to solve what many of his supporters see as a...

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, national security correspondent David Martin chronicled the seemingly never-ending list of problems with the Pentagon’s next-generation F-35 fight jet, from cost overruns of $160 billion to technical problems that have plagued the plane’s development. When asked if the F-35 program, which is expected to cost some $1.5 trillion over the four-decade life of the program, is now under control, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall, said, "Yes, it is." But that commitment came with a warning. “Long gone is the time when we're going to pay for mistake after mistake after mistake," said...