Free Republic

Shepard Smith, a Fox News anchor since 1996, revealed last week that he had no intention of opening up about his sexuality the way he did during an April speech at his alma mater.Speaking at a conference, Smith was tapped to talk on a panel titled “It Starts With MEek,” one that was meant to promote inclusivity and diversity. According to a report made by the Clarion-Ledger, Smith changed his speech at the last minute to reflect the crux of the conversation and decided to tell his own story of inclusivity and diversity.“It wasn’t until seven, or eight, or nine...

Take yes for an answer The Democrats and the liberal media are still pushing their dishonest rhetoric about what’s not in the Republicans’ American Health Care Act, and the damage it’s supposedly going to do to people. All lies! As I wrote on Sunday, pre-existing conditions are taken care of through a high-risk pool funded to the tune of $130 billion over 10 years. But the liberal media and Democrats keep pushing the lie that they are not covered. Scare tactics 101!

Counter the narrative The left/media narrative on people with pre-existing conditions is one of the most dishonest I’ve ever heard. To listen to them, you’d think everyone who is sick will be tossed off their insurance by the AHCA. Here’s the truth: First, the concern about pre-existing conditions deals solely with people who don’t currently have insurance and want to get it. That is a very small subset of the overall population of people who have some sort of health issue. If you already have insurance, and you’re sick or you get sick, nothing changes for you. The problem is...

The stupidity of the American voter. If you spend any time following politics, you’ll run across idiotic arguments. When backed into a corner, those who operate in the political sphere often employ a “throw anything at the wall” defense where they desperately hope to wriggle their way out of a tight spot with some outlandish claim. It rarely works. Usually, they just end up sounding like morons. That said, I have NEVER heard someone try something as utterly and completely asinine as what ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber tried yesterday. I mean, the following clip is so astonishing in both its...

Anyone can be an activist during life. True woke-ness belongs to those willing to turn their own carcass into a political statement. Right now you’re thinking, “AP, there is no ‘GOP health-care law.’ There’s a GOP health-care bill that’s already deader than the people it’s supposedly going to kill.” True, but clickbait has its own logic and slacktivism takes many forms. One man’s “Bring Back Our Girls” hashtag is another man’s “FedEx-ing my ashes to Paul Ryan.” Incidentally, don’t try to FedEx your dead body to anyone. As HuffPo notes, federal law makes the U.S. Postal Service the exclusive carrier...

To the list of culprits allegedly responsible for the 2016 election results—Russians, Wikileaks, Comey, misogyny—House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) added pro-lifers. "We're kind of between a rock and a hard place on the abortion issue," Pelosi complained. "On the one hand, do we stand by progressive values and support a woman's inalienable right to terminate a pregnancy? Or do we take the politically expedient course of waffling on it? Many Democrats, including me, have successfully straddled the issue by proclaiming our personal opposition to abortion while still supporting it as a matter of public policy. I mean, I've never...

Single payor health care is coming, like it or not. Your hernia operation will have to wait a few months One way or another, we will have socialized medicine in this country. Politicians have raised and nurtured generations of people that expect something for nothing in exchange for votes. We have imported, legally and illegally, millions of uneducated, unskilled workers that can’t afford a band-aid. We have millions of students ‘graduating’ high school that can’t read, thus, unable to get a good job with health insurance. We have a health care system where the middle class is strapped with not...

Part 1: Single-payer does not protect people with pre-existing conditions Ben Stein appeared on “Your World with Neil Cavuto” Wednesday to discuss late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s touching monologue that included ill-informed statements about health care. Instead of trying to correct Kimmel’s assertions, though, Stein just added to the confusion. Regarding the future of our health care system, Stein said, “At the end of the day … it’s going to be single-payer. And the taxpayers are going to have to pick up the tab, and we might as well face that fact as soon as possible. I don’t like...

The House passage of the American Health Care Act, the GOP's alternative to Obamacare, was labeled a "death sentence for millions" by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), "people will die." Warren's view was bolstered by the lamentations of individuals who now fear for their lives if the AHCA becomes law. Mega-celebrity Cher expressed her dismay that the AHCA may not cover her asthma therapy. "How will I get my medicine without Obamacare?" she demanded to know. She dismissed the suggestion that as a millionaire many times over she could easily afford to pay out-of-pocket as "unfair. It is the government's obligation...

Liberals can preach to me from their secular pulpits all they want about how Islam is a peaceful religion. This is yet another example of how it’s not. Chechnya has become a place of open genocide, particularly against the gay community (LGBT). According to the Daily Mail, Chechen authorities have told parents of gay children: “Either you kill them, or we will.” We constantly have to listen to the incessant meanderings of liberals of how evil the U.S. is toward gay people, but when you bring up the atrocities being perpetrated on gay populations in places such as Chechnya they’re...

The dwindling respect for human life reached a new low this week with the announcement that a jewelry company is now fashioning pendants out of the ashes of “leftover” embryos from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics.Newsbusters broke this appalling story about an Australian company named Baby Bee Hummingbirds that produces keepsakes for new mothers that contain breastmilk, placentas, teeth, cord stumps, hair, and the ashes of loved ones. The company has now added a new category to the list – “embryo ash.”“It’s special because the embryos often signifying the end of a journey, and we are providing a beautiful...

On Thursday’s All In with Chris Hayes, MSNBC guest and Boing Boing co-editor Xeni Jardin broke down sobbing over the House passage of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) as a “devastating” event that’s not “the American that I love” and promising to “fight for every single one of you, America.” Hilariously, the liberal simultaneously demanded that “[e]very single cell in this country, every single person in this country deserves life” but must have realized her far-left mistake as she later emphasized that “[t]he America that I love cares about my right to life, even though I’m 46 years past...

I watch two cable television shows because most of cable news is a crapfest of yelling, screaming, and stupidity. Two exceptions (for me anyway) are ‘Morning Joe’ on MSNBC and ‘The Five’ on Fox News (Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld are two Fox News personalities that don’t parrot Trumpism). Today I was watching Morning Joe and getting livid when Democrats made comments about the Republican legislation that repeals some of Obamacare and replaces it with other options. Democrats continue to repeat a false claim that came out of the CBO scoring of the first American Healthcare Act Congress drafted earlier...

The American Health Care Act (HR 1628) passed by the House today reduces taxes on the American people by over $1 trillion. The bill abolishes the following taxes imposed by Obama and the Democrat party in 2010 as part of Obamacare: -Abolishes the Obamacare Individual Mandate Tax which hits 8 million Americans each year. -Abolishes the Obamacare Employer Mandate Tax. Together with repeal of the Individual Mandate Tax repeal this is a $270 billion tax cut. -Abolishes Obamacare’s Medicine Cabinet Tax which hits 20 million Americans with Health Savings Accounts and 30 million Americans with Flexible Spending Accounts. This is...

In what could've been a regularly scheduled event held by the American Legion or an attempt at damage control, the Washington D.C. VA Medical Center was the site of a town hall meeting where veterans could let air their comments to the new acting director, Lawrence Connell, regarding the recent and damaging IG report on that facility.

Although the Trump administration's new healthcare bill has yet to pass the Senate, Hollywood stars have already vowed revenge on the GOP. On Thursday afternoon, the House voted narrowly (217 to 213) to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the American Health Care Act. Immediately, celebrities condemned the "felons," accusing them of "entitlement," "fraud" and "hypocrisy." Many urged resistance, while actor Ron Perlman even threatened California's Republican House members.

Nail biter? I’m thinking it will be close no matter what, but last time around they never even got to a vote because support was tanking right up to the time it was supposed to happen, and finally Paul Ryan pulled the bill because the failure was going to be monumental. This time? Do they know for sure that they’ve got the votes? And if so, what did they do to the bill to get there? Thursday suddenly got tense, friends: The latest iteration of the GOP bill would let states escape a current requirement that insurers charge healthy and...

The US press is aware that medically caused death is the third leading cause of death in America. But nothing happens in their elite corner of the “information age.” For years, I’ve been pointing out that the medical apparatus is best-protected structure in the US and the world. One piece of evidence for that statement: we haven’t had, symbolically speaking, a medical Edward Snowden. Indeed, if you go to WikiLeaks or some other source that routinely exposes leaks, you’ll be hard pressed to find anything substantial about the inner workings of what I call the medical cartel. And when I...

Are you in the career you imagined as a child? Maybe you thought you'd be an astronaut, or a ballerina. If you're like most adults, you're probably doing something far different, but your job likely isn't as bizarre as these unique positions. Here's a look at some of the craziest careers through which people make their money. 1) RODEO CLOWN Income: $100 to $500 per gig Running around in silly clothes teasing an 1,800-pound animal is one of the cool jobs in the rodeo circuit. But the job's not all fun and games. A rodeo clown must distract a bull...

Pledges on Immigration, Pledges on Tax Reform, Pledges on Obamacare The contents of chief White House strategist Steve Bannon’s whiteboard have been published online. During a visit to the White House, conservative broadcaster Rabbi Shmuley Boteach posed for photographs with Bannon and in the background of those pictures many of the policy priorities on the whiteboard can be observed, the Telegraph (UK) reports.