Free Republic

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump's emphasis that the guiding principle for foreign policy under his administration will be "America first" has made some of our European allies nervous. Germany's foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier characterized Trump's stance as "arrogant and selfish. To put America first is offensive to my ears. He is denying our equality and our right to participate in determining what America must do to protect all of our mutual interests. If this kind of self-centered viewpoint had prevailed in an earlier era my country and perhaps all of western Europe would today be run by fascists or communists."...

Civil Rights Group Says Park Rangers’ Uniforms Are ‘Threatening’ To Latinos For ABSURD Reason By Jeff Rainforth A coalition of lawmakers and civil rights groups has a message for the National Park Service: your uniforms and vehicles are “very threatening” to Latinos. Maite Arce of the Hispanic Access Foundation delivered the “really tough” message during a press conference on Thursday: “It’s such a shame that something as simple as the uniform and it’s similarity to the border patrol’s uniform — in the coloring — could be very threatening to certain segments of the Latino population. So a discussion about that...

Thursday, April 28, 2016 The Unexpected Snake Posted by Daniel Greenfield The Farmer and the Snake A Farmer walked through his field one cold winter morning. On the ground lay a Snake, stiff and frozen with the cold. The Farmer knew how deadly the Snake could be, and yet he picked it up and put it in his bosom to warm it back to life. The Snake soon revived, and when it had enough strength, bit the man who had been so kind to it. The bite was deadly and the Farmer felt that he must die. “Oh,” cried the...

Sunday, May 01, 2016 Big Green's Dirty Power Big Green is big business. The global renewable energy market is estimated at over $600 billion. Obama’s stimulus boondoggle alone blew around $50 billion on green energy. Annual spending is somewhere around $39 billion a year and that’s just the tip of the Big Green iceberg. California carbon auctions are climbing into the billions. And the endgame is a national and a global carbon tax that will allow Big Green to take money out of the pockets of every single human being. Environmentalism isn’t a hippie with a cardboard sign. It’s multinational...

The triumph of the federal convention of 1787 is that in raising a standard to which the wise and honest could repair, it also raised one that met the threefold test of legitimacy, popularity, and viability.* One reason the federal convention was able to strike the right balance between the urge to lead the people and the need to obey them, and between the urge to be noble and the need to be practical, was the disposition of most delegates to be “whole men” on stern principles and “halfway men” on negotiable details. Another was the way in which it...

There is a parallel conservatism shared by the framing era Anti-Federalists and today’s Article V opponents. Conservativism in this sense is the tendency to hold on to what is known and to resist change. We take it for granted, but thirteen heterogeneous societies joining in common defense was not inevitable. By 1787, both Federalists and Anti-Federalists foresaw approaching dissolution of the union under the Articles of Confederation (AC). A decade of experience with state constitutions had revealed their defects or weaknesses, and induced among many Americans an inclination toward change. Either the independent republics must join in a more perfect...

Though subjected to a “Borking” as harsh and unfair as that experienced by any political figure in America over the past decade, Knight’s long record of success and a lifetime of loyalty to his friends enabled him to relocate to Lubbock, Texas, where he now coaches the Red Raiders of Texas Tech. And, just as he had at IU, Knight took a wounded basketball program and revitalized it dramatically, producing a winning season with a team that had finished at the bottom of the Big 12 Conference the year before, while filling arenas all over the country and earning an...

Image courtesy accesswdun.com by Rob Moore On April 5th, the City Council of Demorest, Georgia voted to restore the right to bear arms to city employees.  From accesswdun.com: DEMOREST — Demorest officials say they have passed a groundbreaking personnel policy amendment believed to be the first of its kind in Georgia. Tuesday night, the city council voted unanimously to amend the city's personnel policy to allow city employees with a valid concealed carry permit to carry their weapons during the workday. The policy may be the first for a city in Georgia, but it is a growing trend in...

Sultana was a Mississippi River side-wheel steamboat. On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. An estimated 1,800 of her 2,427 passengers died when three of the boat's four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee.

I see in a few counts that there are "Superdelegates" assigned to Cruz this evening. Where did I miss this ? Does the Republican party have superdelegates now ? Am I missing something ?

How a 19th century "human transcribing machine" inspired generations of linguists. A 1900s-era bicycle—Edmond Edmont's tool of the trade. (Image: Public Domain)Back in 2013, millions of Americans spent a few minutes clicking through this dialect survey. They threw their lots in with "crayfish" or "crawdad." They marveled at the number of words for rubbernecking. At the end, they likely received their geographic diagnoses with pride. Despite coming out on December 20, this quiz was the New York Times's top-trafficked story of that year. A decade earlier, when linguist Bert Vaux wrote the questions that inspired the quiz, he was thinking about...

Before presidents were the standard, a variety of American figures could be found on our banknotes. Twenty dollar bills, soon to be updated. (Photo: selbstfotografiert/CC BY-SA-3.0)This week, the U.S. Treasury announced a number of changes to the banknotes’ designs, most prominently changing the face featured on the $20 bill from Andrew Jackson to Harriet Tubman. The makeover—the first change to the portraits featured on banknotes since 1928—incorporates numerous women and African-Americans from US history, such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. While the currency overhaul seems novel to us, banknote portraiture has changed frequently enough that 53 individuals...

Assembly Bill 2459, sponsored by Assembly Member Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) would institute such draconian regulations on firearms vendors that most, perhaps all, would be driven out of business. This is okay by McCarty, though, because "it would draw a distinct line between the duly authorized and armed police and the outlaws who possess guns." "Let's say that all legitimate gun dealers shutdown," McCarty speculated. "There would be no legal way for a law-abiding citizen to obtain a firearm. The only available source would be an illegal street purchase. In one fell swoop, my bill would convert everyone with a gun...

There is no question that American Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was murdered in Benghazi. The question I have been dealing with in two previous posts is whether or not Stevens was placed in Benghazi so he would be killed much like Israel’s King David ordered his general to have Uriah the Hittite assigned to a place in a battle where his death was virtually certain.

John Kerry, our Secretary of State, has been talked about by three former Obama Secretaries of Defense who have expressed grave concerns about the lack of respect displayed by both Kerry and Obama for members of the American military. And Kerry has expressed contempt for American men at arms on more than one occasion. During his run for President, it was Kerry who said young people needed to go to college or remain stupid and go into the military. Such are the views of the self-described “winter soldier;” the treacherous soldier that attempted to throw his brothers in arms under...

Sunday, April 24, 2016 From Slavery to Freedom Posted by Daniel Greenfield As another Passover begins, the echoes of "Once we were slaves and now we are free" and "Next year in Jerusalem" resound briefly and then fade into the background noise of everyday life. We can board a plane tomorrow and fly off to Jerusalem. Some of us are already there now. But will that make us free? Since Egypt we have become slaves again, lived under the rule of iron-fisted tyrants and forgotten what the very idea of freedom means. And that will likely happen again and again...

Image from ABC News The above chart, created by ABC News, illustrates the trajectory of support and opposition for policies promoted by media elites that have no actual basis in fact or logic.  New media allows a significant, underdog, method to distribute facts about the policy.  The chart is a little misleading.  It starts in the middle of 1994, when the elite media control was near its height, and at the end of a blitz of media efforts to push the "Assault Weapon Ban" policy. These sort of policies, that rely on emotion, have to be enacted quickly, before...

Can free government be reestablished in a corrupt republic? Is there enough virtue remaining in America 2016 for renewal? For insight, I can’t help but return to a favorite read, Niccolò Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy.* In this discussion, Machiavelli assumed the republic in question was extremely corrupt, due to either a lack of laws or institutions sufficient to check universal corruption. While he doesn’t explain exactly what he means by institutions, it is clear from context here and the rest of his work that the term encompasses the totality of society and government. In modern parlance, institutions include academe, government,...

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” – The 16th Amendment, Ratified 1913 The birth of the income tax! Prior to 1913, the constitutionally limited responsibilities of the federal government were generally covered by import tariffs. Occasionally, temporary taxes were imposed to pay for wars, but were to be apportioned by the states and could not be direct, personal taxes, according to the Constitution in Article I, sections 2 and 9. W. Cleon Skousen wrote a very...

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my...