Free Republic

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand. The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully...

"Lawmakers release transcript of testimony from former FBI Director James Comey; reaction from Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican member of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees." The Judge reams out Jordan and totally DUMPS on PRyno.

One of the faux scandals to have emerged in this crazy past week was the revelation that in December, President Trump allegedly asked his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, “Are you on my team?” Opined a trio of reporters from CNN, presumably with a straight face, “The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key.” Obama White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes was not directly referencing these reporters when he told...

The mediasphere is boiling after the New York Times ran a piece on Ben Rhodes, Obama's foreign policy guru, a failed writer who openly boasted about manipulating the media. It was full of quotes like this... Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. Former Democratic President Woodrow Wilson may be purged from his alma mater, Princeton University. The old “Schoolmaster of Politics”, as he was known for his academic background at Cornell, Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan and finally president of Princeton U, has been thrown under the bus by its current president for being a politically incorrect progressive. Also known as a plain old racist. Woody was indeed a racist. Though even on his worst day he was still about 40% less racist than...

Spike Lee Ridicules Herman Cain: ‘Negro, Please’ Posted By John Nolte On October 19, 2011 @ 3:22 pm In Celebrity News, Politics | 147 Comments The New York Times piece Lee refers to here is the most appalling piece of race-baiting I’ve read in years. You can read my write-up about it at Big Journalism [1]. The reaction the Times was looking for is exactly this kind of thing from Spike Lee.

Gen. Khalifa Haftr, the self-proclaimed commander of the Free Libyan Army, does not dress for battle. On a recent day after his forces had reclaimed much of the territory they had lost, the commander was wearing a pinstripe suit and a black turtleneck sweater. Haftr, who lived in Fairfax, Va., until recent weeks when he returned to join the rebellion against Moammar Gadhafi, was appointed to lead the rebel army earlier this month. His top aides appear to be his sons. It is difficult for the media as well as the Obama administration to determine who, if anyone, is in...

Live from the Oval Office! It's Barack Obama and the State of the Sham Wow, Gulf Oil Spill edition!Starring TOTUS as Barack Obama! Featuring: Robert Gibbs in a special YouTube after the speech infomercial.

If I had my druthers, the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine would be but a small news brief in American newspapers. But since we police the world, we must always monitor our global police scanner, where not only Israel's conflicts, but those of North and South Korea, the nation of Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, and pretty much everywhere else is the United States' business because we insist on making it so. What many Americans bizarrely consider national "defense" is actually an aggressive and enduring offense, and yet we are always surprised when other nations get offended. Last week,...

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport in Connecticut has filed a federal lawsuit following assertions by a state official that rallying church members at the Capitol in Hartford constitutes a violation of lobbying law. Six weeks after 4,000 Catholics in Connecticut rallied in opposition to a proposed state law known as Bill 1098, which dictated local parishes reorganize their governing structures to substitute lay leaders for priests in oversight of finances , the Diocese of Bridgeport received a letter from Connecticut's Office of State Ethics informing it that an investigation was underway to ascertain if the diocese had violated state...

Reid: We Did Not Rubber-Stamp the Stimulus @ 2:24 pm by Michael O'Brien The stimulus package passed by Congress last week was not a "rubber-stamp" for the Obama administration and contained significant ideas from both parties, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) argued in a speech before the Nevada state legislature. "Despite our affection for President Obama, and the strong Democratic majorities in Congress, we did not simply rubber-stamp the president's plan," Reid said in his address before a joint session of state lawmakers. "Democrats and Republicans engaged in a serious and vigorous debate, and ideas from both parties were...

Obama's Afghan Audacity Illinois Senator's Record Of Inaction Leaves Him DiscreditedAs Chairman Of The Subcommittee With NATO Oversight, Obama Has Failed To Hold Any Hearings On Afghanistan: Obama Has Served As Chairman Of The Subcommittee On European Affairs From 2007 - 2008. (U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Website, www.senate.gov, Accessed 7/10/08)The Subcommittee On European Affairs Has Jurisdiction Over The Countries Of Europe As Well As NATO Activities. "Jurisdiction: The subcommittee deals with all matters concerning U.S. relations with the countries on the continent of Europe...and with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the Organization for Security and...

As Congress takes another pass at immigration, its supporters hail it as an all-American phenomenon. President George W. Bush calls it therapeutic: "Immigration helps renew our soul... Snip The bigotry of immigration opponents is a familiar shadow in our civic myth, like the devils and tempters in a medieval morality play. In 1798 John Adams signed the Alien Act, which gave the President the power to expel "dangerous" foreigners. Harrison Gray Otis, an Adams supporter in Congress, singled out "hordes of wild Irishmen" as particularly unwelcome. Other Congressmen mocked the French accent of Representative Albert Gallatin, who was born in...

Againt Know-Nothingism By Rich Lowry Monday, June 4, 2007 Supporters of a lax immigration policy love to hurl the charge of "Know-Nothingism" against their critics. But, oddly enough, it is the Senate immigration bill that duplicates a key element of the 19th-century Know-Nothing platform. Those long-ago nativists wanted to make immigrants wait 21 years to become citizens. The Senate bill effectively creates a comparable waiting period. In Sunday's Democratic presidential debate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said it would take about 13 years under the bill to become a citizen -- as a kind of point of pride. President...

This was a name applied to a movement in American politics which attracted a large share of public attention during the period from 1851 to 1858. It was the revival or re-appearance under a new name of the Native American movement which, during the preceding quarter of a century, had made various organized efforts to engraft its principles upon the legislation and policy of the American government. These principles briefly stated, were the proscription of those who professed the Roman Catholic faith and, the exclusion of foreign-born citizens from all offices of trust and emolument in the government, whether federal,...

The late Steve Irwin liked to flirt with danger.It was ,of course,his undoing. There are some of our countrymen - on both sides of the immigration issue-who are also flirting with danger: danger to our Republic.

In this sixth year of the 21st century, one might argue that the American unipolar moment has ended, or that unipolarity has been revealed to be not at all identical with omnipotence. In either case, many Americans now feel less safe than they did ten years ago. The anxiety has many sources, all of them with an international component. There are the continuing wars in Central Asia and the Middle East, the ever more alarming terrorist threats, the relative decline of US manufacturing, the uncontrollable fluctuations in petroleum prices, the demographic transformation arising from Latin American immigration; and, an as...

Pat Buchanan says illegal immigration from poor and developing countries will overwhelm the United States and other Western countries in the next 50 years unless something is done. "We've already won the battle with the public," Mr. Buchanan tells The Washington Times. "The question is, when will the government respond?" In his book, however, Mr. Buchanan saves his strongest criticism for President Bush, writing: "Concerned about his legacy, George W. Bush may yet live to see his name entered into the history of his country as the president who lost the American Southwest that James K. Polk won for the...

It's widely been reported that illegal aliens comprise upwards of 27 percent of the U.S. prison and jail population. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection--two agencies within the Department of Homeland Security--claim in several reports that they've apprehended over 100,000 criminal aliens whose offenses go far beyond violation of immigration laws and regulations. That figure doesn't include llegal aliens arrested and incarcerated in state and local penal institutions. Sadly, only about 25 percent of expenses for imprisoning criminal aliens is reimbursed by the federal government to state and local governments. This creates a hardship for taxpayers in...

In a July 3 article on Townhall, columnist Michael Barone laments the possibility that Congress may not pass any immigration “reform” legislation this year. However, he pins some hope on a proposal being advocated by Representative Mike Pence (R.-IN). Ostensibly, the Pence proposal would incorporate the “best” of both worlds, including provisions from both the Senate’s recently passed guest worker/amnesty bill, along with the House version that focuses on immigration enforcement and border security. Unfortunately, the Pence bill would ultimately constitute no less a “sellout” on immigration than that attempted by the Senate, albeit this effort would be spaced out...