Free Republic

If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation’s second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice. It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising reveornue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” The ACA passed the Senate on a...

On Fox News Sunday, George Will was asked about the significance of the Benghazi memo. Specifically, host (Chris) Wallace asked about remarks by Charles Krauthammer comparing the discovery of the Rhodes email to discovery of the Nixon tapes. […] “Rather less (significant) than the Watergate tapes, which showed a President at the heart of a crime wave suborning perjury and raising hush money and all the rest. …”

Legendary conservative columnist George Will says he is an atheist. […] “I’m an amiable, low voltage atheist,” Will explained. “I deeply respect religions and religious people. The great religions reflect something constant and noble in the human character, defensible and admirable yearnings.” “I am just not persuaded. That’s all,” he added. …

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court declared Obamacare's penalty to be a tax, it doomed the healthcare reform act as an "unconstitutional violation of the origination clause," columnist George Will says. This Thursday, the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, the nation's second-most important court, will hear arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act adheres to the Constitution's "origination clause," which declare that "all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills," Will writes in his column in The Washington Post Saturday. Will points...

Video linkGeorge Will, Ron Fournier, and Charles Krauthammer.

In a 2006 interview, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Constitution is “basically about” one word — “democracy” — that appears in neither that document nor the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is America’s way of allocating political power. The Constitution, however, was adopted to confine that power in order to “secure the blessings of” that which simultaneously justifies and limits democratic government — natural liberty. The fundamental division in U.S. politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of...

Tomorrow is Tax Day, and millions of Americans — myself included — will see a large drain from our bank accounts to satisfy our obligations to Uncle Sam. So far, though, we have not seen Uncle Sam fulfill his obligation to drain the apparent political corruption at the IRS, even with two Congressional investigations into the targeting of the administration’s critics in the tax-exempt department under Lois Lerner. Barack Obama claims that there isn’t “a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS, but the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward scoffed at that defense on yesterday’s Fox News Sunday. “There’s obviously something here,”...

In an interview with TheBlaze in connection with the release of his new book, “A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred,” we spoke with columnist and author George Will on all things baseball and his unified theory of beer, and then moved on to the arguably more important topic of the state of the union, touching on everything from the American founding, Will’s affinity for the Tea Party, to 2016, to immigration. Among other explosive comments, Will told us that he is “quite confident that we’re going to rebel against this abusive government…sooner or...

On "Fox News Sunday," Washington Post columnist George Will criticized Attorney General Eric Holder who claim racism is behind his political adversaries' attacks: “Liberalism has a kind of Tourette Syndrome these days," Will said. "It's constantly saying the words racism and racist. There’s an old saying, 'If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table.' This is pounding the table. There’s a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960s, except Obamacare, and the...

"Andre Dawson," Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully once said, "has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. Aren't we all?" Yes, so use some of your remaining time constructively by identifying the player or players who: (1) Won three batting titles by at least 44 points (two players)...

The Earth hasn’t warmed in 17 years. The Arctic ice cap haven’t melted by 2013 as Al Gore suggested in 2007. Instead like the Antarctic ice cap it has grown. Nearly every computer model created by global warming scientists has turned out to be a massive exaggeration if not outright false. Despite all of this the UN has doubled down on their extremist global warming/climate change theories. Meanwhile Adam Weinstein of Gawker wants to imprison “climate change deniers.” Rather than have a spirited scientific debate, Weinstein wants the matter declared settled science. As George Will mused several months back, when...

Many “Downton Abbey” watchers are nostalgia gluttons who grieved when Lord Grantham lost his fortune in Canadian railroad shares. There are, however, a discerning few whose admirable American sensibilities caused them to rejoice at Grantham’s loss: “Now perhaps this amiable but dilettantish toff will get off his duff and get a job.” This drama’s verisimilitude extends to emphasizing that his lordship had a fortune to squander only because he married an American heiress. By battening on what they disdained, this republic’s commercial culture, many British aristocrats could live beyond their inherited means — actual work being, of course, unthinkable.

by John Urban | Top Right NewsIt was a remarkable -- and disturbing -- catch. Not fruit-pickers. Not landscapers. Not roofers or housekeepers. Not "hard-working immigrants" performing "an entrepreneurial act" by crossing the border, as elitist tool George Will described illegal aliens to Laura Ingraham this past Sunday. Not quite. In just three days last month, Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector recently re-arrested more than a dozen convicted felons, including two MS-13 gang members, most of whom were not supposed to be in the United States, officials said. A majority of the felons were sex offenders convicted of...

Conservative commentators Laura Ingraham and George Will can usually be counted on to agree on most issues, but on “Fox News Sunday,” the two sparred over immigration reform, an issue threatening to rip apart the uneasy alliance between the traditional and libertarian wings of the Republican Party. Fox host Chris Wallace began the discussion — which also included AP reporter Julie Pace and liberal commentator Juan Williams — by noting that Republican leadership seems to be rethinking the wisdom of partnering with President Obama on comprehensive immigration reform. Many conservative bulwarks — including the Wall Street Journal — argued that...

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham battled the rest of the Fox News Sunday panel over immigration, arguing that immigration reform and current enforcement of immigration laws were weakening the American workforce, even as her fellow panelists countered that reform would bolster the economy. “I think what we’re seeing here is a split inside the Republican Party between two staunch conservatives,” host Chris Wallace said, going on to ply Ingraham with a Wall Street Journal editorial that called flinching on reform “de facto amnesty.” “As far as I can tell, the Wall Street Journal is on the side of Nancy Pelosi,...

Someone you probably are not familiar with has filed a suit you probably have not heard about concerning a four-word phrase you should know about. The suit could blow to smithereens something everyone has heard altogether too much about, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter, ACA). Scott Pruitt and some kindred spirits might accelerate the ACA’s collapse by blocking another of the Obama administration’s lawless uses of the Internal Revenue Service. Pruitt was elected Oklahoma’s attorney general by promising to defend states’ prerogatives against federal encroachment, and today he and some properly litigious people elsewhere are defending a...

<p>Oklahoma is at the center of one of the major lawsuits being brought against the Affordable Care Act, other wise known as the ACA or better still, ObamaCare. Attorney General Scott Pruitt is waging a war against the law, with good reason and cause. It is based on four words that were carefully considered and included in the language of the bill. George Will has a good description of what is going on.</p>

I’ve posted hundreds of charts over the past several years, including on favorite topics such as tax code corruption and counterproductive government spending. But arguably the most powerful and compelling chart I’ve ever shared is on the topic of education. Prepared by my Cato colleague, Andrew Coulson, it shows that massive increases in spending and bureaucracy (which accompanied increasing federal involvement and intervention) have had zero impact on educational performance. Keep that chart in the back of your mind as we consider what George Will has to say about President Obama’s scheme – known as Common Core – to expand...

Viewed from Washington, which often is the last to learn about important developments, opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative still seems as small as the biblical cloud that ariseth out of the sea, no larger than a man’s hand. Soon, however, this education policy will fill a significant portion of the political sky. The Common Core represents the ideas of several national organizations (of governors and school officials) about what and how children should learn. It is the thin end of an enormous wedge. It is designed to advance in primary and secondary education the general progressive agenda...