Free Republic

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday found out what it's like to actually have to debate conservatives rather than the liberal media members he normally appears with on political talk shows. When he uttered the typical left-wing line on ABC's This Week about the need for more gun control in the wake of Friday's movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, Klein got a much-needed education from George Will and the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin (video follows with transcript and commentary): George Will and Jennifer Rubin Demolish Time's Joe Klein on Gun Control Laws GEORGE WILL: The killer in Aurora, Colorado, was...

A few millennia from now, when archaeologists from an ascendant Brazil or Turkey or wherever sift the shards of American civilization and find the ruins of the Big House in Ann Arbor, Mich., they will wonder why a 109,901-seat entertainment venue was attached to an institution of higher education. Today, the accelerating preposterousness of big-time college football is again provoking furrowed brows and pursed lips. But there probably were few of either among the 20 million who Saturday night watched Alabama's student-athletes play those of LSU. These teams' head coaches' salaries are $4.6 million and $3.75 million, respectively, and their...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, George Will -- this was during the roundtable discussion, George Will discussing Mitt Romney. WILL: It has a lot to do with Romney. He is rising as more and more Republicans come to the conclusion that the Republican Party has found its Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology. RUSH: Did you hear that? George Will characterizing Mitt Romney as the Republican Party's Michael Dukakis. Michael Dukakis, a Democrat loser running for office in 1988, one of the most famous things that Dukakis did was he...

WASHINGTON -- Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said. Today's near silence about crime probably is evidence of social improvement. For many reasons, including better policing and more incarceration, Americans feel, and are, safer. The New York Times has not recently repeated such amusing headlines as "Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling" (1997), "Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops" (1998), "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction" (2000) and "More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime" (2003). If crime revives as an issue, it will be through liberal complaints...

Two Democratic presidential candidates with national campaign experience are stumbling. A Republican candidate who has run only municipal campaigns is confounding expectations, calling into question some assumptions about Republican voters. Regarding the Republican race, for many months commentators have said that when the Republican base learns the facts about Rudy Giuliani's personal life (an annulled first marriage, a messy divorce, then a third marriage) and views on social issues (for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, in each case with limits), support for him will evaporate. But such commentary is becoming self-refuting. The insistent reiteration of it during Giuliani's...

This may be the most nation-shaping election since 1932, not only — or even primarily — because of the parties' foreign policy differences. Those differences, about sovereignty, multilateralism, preemptive war and nation-building, concern vital fundamentals. But 2004 may secure the ascendancy of one of two radically different ideas of the proper role of government and the individual's proper relationship to it. This will be the first election since candidate George W. Bush made explicit in 2000 what had become implicit in conservatives' behavior. As recently as the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans had triumphed by preaching small-government conservatism, vowing to abolish...

EAGER TO IMPROVE their town’s moral tone, Los Angeles city councilors are considering an ordinance to improve decorum at strip clubs: No lap dances — dancers are required to remain six feet from customers — no direct tipping, no private VIP rooms in clubs with full nudity. Advocates of the ordinance say such goings-on lead to prostitution. Opponents of the ordinance, including the dancers, deny that prostitution flourishes at the clubs. And they call the ordinance an unconstitutional abridgement of free artistic expression. But a federal appeals court upheld a law in Washington state requiring dancers to stay 10...

Will, who once taught political philosophy at Michigan State, said he is “still a Spartan who takes equal pleasure from good MSU football seasons and dismal ones in Ann Arbor,” referring to the University of Michigan. Connie Rzemien, whose daughter, Katie, was among those graduating, told The Detroit News she thought Will was not the right choice. “I believe it is contradictory to what they are doing here to have somebody with such an insensitive view of rape to speak today,” she said. “I think it’s insulting to young women.” The U.S. Education Department this year revealed a list of...

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities. This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot”...

This story begins almost four months ago, when Washington Post columnist George Will challenged the Obama administration’s attempts to use debunked data to push a narrative of an epidemic of sexual assaults on American college campuses. Will also criticized the expansion of the term “sexual assault” to a nearly meaningless definition, and the demand by the White House for colleges to use a minimal standard of evidence to “convict” the accused. For being one of the first to call foul on the Department of Education’s efforts, Will earned the ire of progressives and activists, and one newspaper stopped carrying...

-SNIP_Of the five Senate contests in purple states — Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado — this is currently the closest: The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows a tie (Ernst ahead by 0.2 percentage points as of Friday). Which should make Republicans anxious as they try to take control of the Senate and as they contemplate the 2016 presidential landscape. Although Iowa has voted Democratic in six of the last seven presidential elections, the Ernst-Braley contest should not be this close. Only 38 percent of Iowans approve of Barack Obama’s performance. Braley, a past president of an...

he Islamic State is a nasty problem that can be remedied if its neighbors, assisted by the United States, decide to do so. Vladimir Putin’s fascist revival is a crisis that tests the West’s capacity to decide. Putin’s serial amputations of portions of Ukraine, which began with his fait accompli in Crimea, will proceed, and succeed, until his appetite is satiated. Then the real danger will begin. Suppose Ukraine is merely his overture for the destruction of NATO, the nemesis of his Soviet memory. Then what might be his version of the Gleiwitz radio-station episode 75 years ago?

George Will gave a surprisingly isolationist view on Fox News Sunday this morning when he said that if Iraq’s neighbors can’t take out ISIS with all their military might, then we shouldn’t either. Watch below: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO...

As per its common dictionary definition, theft is described as “..the taking of another person’s property without that person’s permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.” To commit a theft a person or entity must act in a state of mens rea or guilty mind and with full intent to deprive the victim of property rightfully belonging to him or her. For thousands of years those in power have taken what does not belong to them and given it to others with no claim to such property in order to boost their own ego...

In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, conservative columnist George Will had some harsh words for those who insist that the waves of migrant children crossing the border from non-contiguous nations in search of asylum. “We ought to say to these children, ‘Welcome to American, you’re going to go to school and get a job and become Americans,’” Will insisted. He seemed to suggest that those who advocate for the deportation of South and Central American minors underestimate America’s power to assimilate foreign-born populations. “We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county,” he added. The...

On Fox News Sunday, Republican writer George Will said that America should let all of the illegal immigrant juveniles from Central America remain and ensure they are allowed to "go to school and get a job." "My view is that we have to say to these children, 'Welcome to America. You're going to go to school and get a job and become Americans,'" Will declared. "We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county. The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous." Will was asked to respond to Republicans...

What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in the United States than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his...

MSNBC somehow hit another new low all over again. Filling in as host on The Ed Show, Michael Eric Dyson accused George Will of being a "rapist" and "re-raping" women by writing his opinion in the Washington Post. No. Seriously. Mr. Will stated that colleges have become a haven of progressivism, where so-called "vicimizations" are "ubiquitous." Mr. Will writes that empty buzzwords like "triggers" and "micro-aggressions" are now thrown around colleges to the point of ubiquity. The passage that Mr. Dyson took offense to was one in which Mr. Will stated that, at times, "sexual assault" accusations that are put...

<p>“Candidates are constantly asked, ‘Where will you take the country?’ My answer is: ‘Nowhere.’</p>

If our government has any obligation to fulfill its many promises on health care, it should be first and foremost to the men and women who served in our armed forces. But the scandal over hidden waiting lists at a growing number of veterans’ hospitals (seven so far) — wherein dozens of veterans died while waiting months for vital treatment, and the VA covered up the lengthy wait times — should make everyone wonder whether we can place our trust in a government-managed health-care system. The Dayton Daily News reported on Sunday that its investigation of a database of...