Free Republic

Progressives really, really, really wanted to hear from Hillary Clinton on the events in Ferguson, Mo., where an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer on Aug. 9, sparking days of unrest in that small city outside St. Louis and elsewhere. Al Sharpton said he wanted to smoke Clinton out on Ferguson and suggested that if she ran in 2016, he would be a thorn in her side on civil rights issues. MSNBC host Chris Hayes thought it was “bizarre” that Clinton hadn’t at least weighed in with a statement on the incident, even though...

Six years to the day after he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, President Barack Obama announced that he did not have a strategy to combat ISIS, which recently beheaded American photojournalist James Foley. “I don't want to put the cart before the horse,” Obama said of ISIS at a Thursday press conference. “We don't have a strategy yet.” After Obama accepted the nomination in front of Greek columns on August 28, 2008, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin asked, “But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium...

Nearly three weeks after an unarmed black teen was gunned down in a St. Louis suburb by a white police officer, sparking violent riots and a national conversation about race, Hillary Clinton finally broke her silence about the ongoing tension in Ferguson, Mo. "Watching the recent funeral for Michael Brown, as a mother, as a human being, my heart just broke for his family because losing a child is every parent's greatest fear and an unimaginable loss,” the former Secretary of State said Thursday at a technology conference in San Francisco. "Behind the dramatic, terrible pictures on television, there are...

What do the midterm elections have to do with the killing of black 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.? Ask CNN contributor and former Democratic National Committee vice chairwoman Donna Brazile. The politicization of Ferguson in the small world of cable news has been limited to liberals claiming the incident was racially motivated and conservatives leaping to the defense of Darren Wilson, the white officer who shot Brown. That was until Tuesday, when Brazile began encouraging her followers to use Ferguson as inspiration to vote in the November midterm elections. “We have to be passionate about the upcoming election,” Brazile...

Wilcox for Congress In a close primary duel, Arizona congressional candidate Mary Rose Wilcox targets her opponent's support for Stand Your Ground.Could the 2012 killing of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin prove a deciding factor in an Arizona Democratic congressional primary? Former Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox certainly hopes so. Seeking to gain an edge over her rival, ex-state Rep. Ruben Gallego, in the weeks leading up to Tuesday's primary, Wilcox's campaign has invoked Martin's shooting and her opponent's past support for a controversial Stand Your Ground law. "America doesn't need more Trayvon Martin tragedies," read a mailer distributed by...

How the same right allows for both same-sex marriage recognition and refusing to sell gay couples wedding cakes.How can a libertarian support gay marriage but also the right of businesses to decline to provide goods and services such as cakes, wedding dresses, and photographers for gay weddings? For many libertarians, it makes perfect logical, philosophical, and legal sense. But from the outside perspective, it often does not. As a result, critics looking for an opportunity to throw shade on the increased media and public interest in libertarian ideas can focus on just a piece of this mentality. We saw the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) CHRIS WALLACE: Karl. Attorney General Holder visited Ferguson this week and very pointedly said, I understand -- not that I condone or agree with, but I understand the mistrust you have in the police department, and he talked about some cases where he had been profiled. Afterwards he met, you can see here on the screen, with Captain Ron Johnson of the state highway patrol, who is in charge of the police effort, who said that he thought that Holder and the fact that the grand jury was beginning to hear actual evidence, were the two major factors in...

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf,” Bush said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them.” “And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong message,” Bush said.

Is the political indictment of Gov. Rick Perry already backfiring on Democrat governor hopeful Wendy Davis? Gov. Perry’s official courthouse portrait immediately became the Mugshot Seen ‘Round the World. Instead of becoming a liability, it became a badge of honor. It will probably be on campaign T-shirts, mugs and shot glasses (the Rick Perry “MugShot” is irresistible) before long. Perry followed that visit up with a trip for ice cream, sealing the win on what the Democrats hoped would be a terrible day for him and the beginning of the end of the Perry era. The case itself is already...

Jesse Jackson and other liberal activists are rolling out voter registration efforts as part of a coordinated left-wing push to sign up voters during the wave of violent protests engulfing Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting. Racial activist and former Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson met with St. Louis clergy Monday to plan a formal Ferguson voter registration drive. “Five thousand new voters will transform the city from top to bottom” Jackson explained during a stop at a Ferguson McDonald’s, where he discussed voter registration with local denizens. Liberal activists — including from the George Soros-funded...

As Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown in the fall of 2013, Rep. Paul Ryan looked around at fellow Republicans who were agitating to shutter national parks, federal agencies and Head Start programs. “This can’t be the full measure of our party and our movement,” Ryan writes of that moment in his new book, released Tuesday. “If it is, we’re dead and the country is lost.” Such moments of raw frustration pepper Ryan’s “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea,” a book as much about his front-row seat as Republicans’ favorite budget wonk as it is about his political future....

And if they’re right, they’ll keep the Senate this fall. Buchanan, in an interview with the Daily Caller today, predicted that the violence in Ferguson and the perceived enabling of race hustlers and leftist revolutionaries there will generate a massive negative reaction by America’s “silent majority” at the polls in November.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Buchanan might be right, but of course his perspective is that of a veteran of the Nixon administration. Richard Nixon was elected in a massive rout in 1968, following months of roiling civil unrest in America’s cities. Nixon spoke of that silent majority not taking to the streets thanks...

The party of the next guy has no next guy. For more than two generations, the Republican presidential nominating process has had an immutable internal logic to it: The next guy in line gets the nomination. That’s how every Republican president of the post-Eisenhower era has won his party’s nomination and how just about every GOP presidential nominee since Thomas E. Dewey (1944 and 1948) got to the top of the ticket. It’s certainly how Barack Obama’s two opponents, Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney, were nominated. But just as the Republican Party is going through one of...

Rand Paul and Ted Cruz’s differing tone in response to the Ferguson riots could provide clues for the divergent trails they're forging to woo libertarian voters in 2016. Both the Kentucky and Texas Senate Republicans urged that civil liberties be protected in statements following unrest in Ferguson, Mo.. After an officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18 year old African American teen, last weekend, riots have erupted and police have been criticized for using overly-aggressive force against protesters and reporters calling for answers. Strategists say Paul struck a more provocative tone against in his TIME op-ed, calling for the...

I seriously admire one thing in particular about most tea party members. If you ever wonder how a relatively small group of people have so much impact on state, local and national policy, the answer is simple: They show up. They outwork most other groups. They go to meetings, study the issues and rally the faithful to the cause. They make sure their voices are heard (and man, are they heard). ItÂ’s also easy to say they make the most noise, but thatÂ’s because theyÂ’re often the only outside voice in the room when issues are being decided. In short,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)"Rand Paul is right," Rev. Al Sharpton said on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Friday after the Kentucky Senator empathized with African-Americans who believe their rights were threatened by police officers. Paul published a TIME op-ed on Thursday discussing the issue of the "militarization" of the police force and what it meant in the showdown between police officers and protestors in Ferguson, Missouri reacting to the shooting death of Michael Brown. "Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them," Paul wrote, after criticizing the racial...

Hollywood director and liberal activist Rob Reiner told talk-show host Larry King that the Tea Party is like the terrorist group Hamas, because apparently both groups are extreme and cannot be negotiated with, and the only solution is to make them go away or “eliminate” them. “[Y]ou can’t negotiate with that, you have to say either Hamas goes away and the Palestinian authority takes over all that region and deal with some kind of honest broker here, and create the two-state solution,” said Reiner. Drawing a parallel with the Tea Party, he said, “anytime you’re dealing with an extreme group,...

The past few years have shown us that our political system is operating like a well-oiled machine, assuming that machine's primary purpose is to function horribly while producing nothing of value.. Stubbornness and disagreement have been raised to art forms, and the American people have made it clear they rate Congress only slightly more favorably than "scorpions in pants." The president isn't viewed much better, with an approval rating hovering around a dismal 40 percent. There's ample blame to go around — leftward, rightward, centerward (which isn't a word, but should be) — but a new poll homes in on...

Rand Paul may be gaining measurable traction among young, liberal voters for his clear admonition of the “militarization of local police precincts” in Ferguson, Missouri, and around the nation, but International Business Times has surfaced a video of him at a 2010 rally that tells a different story: one that tempers his scathing criticism of growing, public armies with his fervent support of private ones. “There’s a fellow in the White House who says you’re clinging to your religion and your guns,” began the Kentucky junior senator to a gathered crowd at an Open Carry rally in Frankfort, Ohio, on...

Even as criticism of Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and other prominent politicians began to mount for their lack of comment on the ongoing crisis in Ferguson, Mo., Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul penned a thought-provoking op-ed on the situation in Time magazine. "If I had been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off," Paul writes. "But, I wouldn't have expected to be shot." He goes on to make the case for a demilitarization of the police in America within the framework of a broader criticism...