Free Republic

One hundred years ago Wednesday, on Aug. 2, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died inside San Francisco’s Palace Hotel—an opulent place for visiting dignitaries, then as now. Or so the historical record says, anyway. According to the House of Shields, among the oldest and most regal bars in San Francisco and directly across New Montgomery Street from the Palace, Harding snuck out of the hotel via tunnel and died at the bar in the company of his mistress. Officially, House of Shields will neither confirm nor deny the existence of any subterranean passages, but Harding was a well-known philanderer with...

Despite the hate spewed by the radical left, grassroots donors rallied to the side of Florida Rep. Joe Harding, R-Ocala, the main sponsor of The Parental Rights in Education Act. Last week Harding tweeted that he raised “over $70,000 in March from an unprecedented 3,700+ donors.” That averages out to less than $20 per contribution.

Near 20 minutes of original film footage from the presidency of Warren G Harding, the 29th President of the United States. Mr. Harding was president from March 4, 1921 - August 1, 1923 when he died. Harding is poorly ranked by most historians, but I regard him as badly underrated. Harding's accomplishments... * Reduced taxes from 77% under Wilson to 56%. * Inaugurated the first interstate highways. * Strongly supported civil rights after the racist Wilson years. Supported a Federal anti-lynching bill that passed the GOP lead House but died under Democratic filibuster in the Senate. * Made some excellent...

The grandson of U.S. President Warren G. Harding and his lover, Nan Britton, went to court in an effort to get the Republican's remains exhumed from the presidential memorial where they have lain since 1927. James Blaesing told an Ohio court that he is seeking Harding's disinterment as a way "to establish with scientific certainty" that he is the 29th president's blood relation. The dispute looms as benefactors prepare to mark the centennial of Harding's 1920 election with site upgrades and a new presidential center in Marion, the Ohio city near which he was born in 1865. Blaesing says he...

The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...

It's lonely at the top. That's what the Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, discovered when the only other store in the world -- located in Australia -- announced it was closing. Although Sandi Harding, the general manager of the Oregon Blockbuster, is excited that hers is the last Blockbuster on the planet, she expressed her condolences for friends at the Australia store. "We all have a kinship with the other Blockbusters," Harding told CNN. The Oregon location has been open for more than 20 years. It offers customers the newest movie releases, but Harding says the classic older titles are the...

Congressional investigations into the Trump dossier have so far been focused on the FBI and Justice Department. They still are, but now investigators are also looking into a possible Obama State Department role in the collection and dissemination of sensational and still-unverified allegations against candidate Donald Trump gathered by a former British spy working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In addition to having contacts in the Obama Justice Department and FBI, that former spy, Christopher Steele, was also well-connected with the Obama State Department. A book published in November by a correspondent at the Guardian, "Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money,...

In any primary, there are a thousand questions to ask, but the first one – yes, the primary one – must be this: What year is it? No, not just “is this a presidential year or a midterm election,” though that’s important too... But what year is it, historically? That is, is it most analogous to a year we’ve seen before, or is it unlike any prior election, so we shouldn’t bother to see if we can learn from parallels? It is often said that there is nothing new under the sun, that we’re always fighting the same war, that...

The aura of scandal that has plagued Warren G. Harding, our 29th president, has almost obliterated the substance of the man as a senator and as president. Breaking news that DNA testing may now prove that Harding fathered a child with one of his paramours, Nan Britton, will no doubt play to the stereotype of Harding as a womanizer and reinforce his already miserable reputation as president — a reputation that regularly lands him at the bottom of historians’ lists of our worst leaders. That’s a shame because, unlike the DNA samples from the Harding and Britton families, the reputation...

Woodrow Wilson. Here's Why. If you wanted to identify, with confidence, the very worst president in American history, how would you go about it? One approach would be to consult the various academic polls on presidential rankings that have been conducted from time to time since Harvard’s Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. pioneered this particular survey scholarship in 1948. Bad idea. Most of those surveys identify Warren G. Harding of Ohio as the worst ever. This is ridiculous. Harding presided over very robust economic times. Not only that, but he inherited a devastating economic recession when he was elected in 1920...

The menacing tendency of the present day is not chargeable wholly to the unsettled and fevered conditions caused by the war. The manifest weakness in popular government lies in the temptation to appeal to grouped citizenship for political advantage. There is no greater peril. The Constitution contemplates no class and recognizes no group. It broadly includes all the people, with specific recognition for none, and the highest consecration we can make today is a committal of the Republican Party to that saving constitutionalism which contemplates all America as one people, and holds just government free from influence on the one...

"The math is the math. You can't lower (tax) rates and raise revenues."- Barack Obama, December 11, 2011When I heard the President make the above statement to Steve Kroft during an interview on the CBS News program 60 Minutes…well, I thought of Ronald Reagan. No, not because Obama seemed Reaganesque, as he would want us to believe, but because Ronald Reagan believed just the opposite, and proved that he was right.And, I thought of Presidents Harding, Kennedy, and George W. Bush, too. All Presidents that had lowered tax rates that stimulated more economic activity – and increased the total revenue...

Three reasons why 0bama is the Worst President. The Worst President:Has more scandals than Warren G. HardingHas a longer enemies list than Richard M. NixonIs more incompetent than James E. Carter.

Change isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. That’s what most of us have come to realize in recent years, whether the change proposed came from Pres. Barack Obama or the Tea Party movement. Still, most haven’t quite reached the point where we oppose change and fight for stability. Maybe we ought to: Maybe sometimes it is the time for no change. That, at least, was the position of Warren Harding. Warren who? On the presidential roster, Harding is POTUS 43. No, that doesn’t mean he’s replaced George W. Bush: Harding’s “43” is his aggregate rank among presidents. Since...

Glenn Beck, bless him, has opened the gate for American conservatives to finally appreciate and learn from a man who should have been one of their greatest heroes; President Obama needs to learn from that great man too. I am of course referring not to the vastly overrated Theodore Roosevelt (If he’d been President in 1914, at least 2 million American boys would have been sent to useless deaths in World War I - but more on that another time.), but to the sainted Warren G. Harding. American conservatives revere Calvin Coolidge, but are embarrassed by his predecessor. Yet Coolidge...

We have forgotten what money is. Money is really easy to understand, but most people have no idea what it is. We all understand that barter is an inefficient way to foster economic growth and money is a good thing for the economy. But money isn’t a piece of paper. Let me create a kind of fable to illustrate this. Please bear with me here. Think of this as an amusing weekend read. (snip)

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's second choice for transportation security chief has withdrawn from consideration because of questions over his background as a defense contractor. Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding took himself out of the running Friday night as head of the Transportation Security Administration, another setback for Obama after his first choice withdrew in January. Harding said the distractions caused by his work as a defense contractor would not be good for the administration or the Homeland Security Department. The TSA is part of that department. Harding has extensive intelligence experience that Obama hoped to tap in shoring...

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. President Barack Obama has selected Army Maj. Gen. Robert Harding to lead the Transportation Security Administration, officials said. An administration official said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano would announce Harding's nomination Monday, CNN reported. "The TSA administrator is the most important unfilled post in the Obama administration," the official told CNN. "Mr. Harding has the experience and perspective to make a real difference in carrying out the mission of the agency. If there was ever a nominee that warranted expedited, but detailed, consideration in the Senate, this is it." If confirmed by the Senate, Harding would be...

The New York Times is doing their best to cover the spending tracks left by President Obama. The op-ed, titled "The Truth About the Deficit" could win gold in mental gymnastics. They bend, twist and contort the facts into a pretty little ball of "blame Bush." I showed you yesterday that George W. Bush was part of the problem, but Obama is pressing the accelerator. The Times claims that the deficit is the result of cutting taxes on the wealthy and they offer this stern warning: "The last thing the government should do is slash spending." History tells us that...

It is a cliché that if we do not study the past we are condemned to repeat it. Almost equally certain, however, is that if there are lessons to be learned from an historical episode, the political class will draw all the wrong ones – and often deliberately so. Far from viewing the past as a potential source of wisdom and insight, political regimes have a habit of employing history as an ideological weapon, to be distorted and manipulated in the service of present-day ambitions. That’s what Winston Churchill meant when he described the history of the Soviet Union as...