Free Republic

Old habits die hard. The media are so enamored of the continuing (and largely contrived) story about the great Republican civil war that they fail to appreciate that the real internecine fight is being waged on the other side of the aisle. I grant that there’s a lot of shouting today among Republicans. But it’s a ritual skirmish over whether a government shutdown would force the president to withdraw a signature measure — last time, Obamacare; this time, executive amnesty. And it will likely be resolved with the obvious expedient of funding the government through next year, except for a...

It’s not exactly the Ems Dispatch (the diplomatic cable Bismarck doctored to provoke the 1870 Franco-Prussian War). But what the just-resurfaced Gruber Confession lacks in world-historical consequence, it makes up for in world-class cynicism. This October 2013 video shows MIT Professor Jonathan Gruber, a principal architect of Obamacare, admitting that, in order to get it passed, the law was made deliberately obscure and deceptive. It constitutes the ultimate vindication of the charge that Obamacare was sold on a pack of lies. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” said Gruber. “Basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter...

Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News tonight that amnesty via executive order is an "impeachable offense."

Krauthammer: [Obama] played as the puzzled observer. He was asked about the meaning of the election, and he said “I’ll leave to others the reading of tea leaves.” Was this really a subtle result? Was this sort of complicated and nuanced? This was the worst wall-to-wall, national, unmistakable, unequivocal shellacking that you will ever see in a midterm election, and it happened on just about every level. You’ve got in the House the Republicans now have the largest majority since 1929.

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer projected a big win for the Republicans in November, giving them a 70 percent chance of winning the Senate.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) “If the GOP can’t win back the Senate in a climate like this, maybe the party ought to look for another country,” he told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly Tuesday. Krauthammer explained why he thinks the climate is ripe for the win: "The reason is this is essentially a referendum on Obama. In 2010 it was a referendum on his ideology. The overreach with Obamacare, the stimulus, cap and trade, and now, six years in, it’s referendum...

The president is upset. Very upset. Frustrated and angry. Seething about the government’s handling of Ebola, said the front-page headline in the New York Times last Saturday. There’s only one problem with this pose, so obligingly transcribed for him by the Times. It’s his government. He’s president. Has been for six years. Yet Barack Obama reflexively insists on playing the shocked outsider when something goes wrong within his own administration. Charles Krauthammer writes a weekly political column that runs on Fridays. View Archive RSS The IRS? “It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am...

What was the Islamic State thinking? We know it is sophisticated in its use of modern media. But what was the logic of propagating to the world videos of its beheadings of two Americans (and subsequently a Briton) — sure to inflame public opinion? There are two possible explanations. One is that these terrorists are more depraved and less savvy than we think. They so glory in blood that they could not resist making an international spectacle of their savagery and did not quite fathom how such a brazen, contemptuous slaughter of Americans would radically alter public opinion and risk...

Krauthammer: "Obama Clearly A Narcissist," "Lives In A Cocoon Surrounded By Sycophants" CK: Oh, you’re not young enough. Actually, I probably got it second-hand, for all I know. But that’s a real abuse. Psychiatrists, doctors and others who use their science, or even the global warming folks, you know, you have your expertise, and some people just use it to try to bludgeon other people with their authority. So I decided when I left psychiatry never to use my authority. But let me just say as a layman, without invoking any expertise, Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific...

On April 5th, 1996, Charles Krauthammer gave his reasons for supporting the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapon Ban.   The column was called "Disarm the Citizenry.  But Not Yet." in the Washington Post.   Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquillity of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United...

Are you familiar with Candide - Voltaire’s satirical treatise on the foolhardiness of perpetual optimism at the expense of reality?The truth is, we really can’t afford much more optimism in the Age of Obama. There comes a point when not allowing reality to intrude on your version of the world, when preferring the unfounded optimism of Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss borders on absolute delusion. It seems our own Dr. Krauthammer - a Doctor of Psychiatry not Philosophy – agrees. He has diagnosed our semi-retired President as suffering from just that: “The image of a man in denial on the verge of delusion....

<p>The Obama administration is highly exercised about “inversion,” the practice by which an American corporation acquires a foreign company and moves its headquarters out of the U.S. to benefit from lower tax rates abroad.</p> <p>Not fair, says President Barack Obama. It’s taking advantage of an “unpatriotic tax loophole” that hardworking American families have to make up for by the sweat of their brow. His treasury secretary calls such behavior a violation of “economic patriotism.”</p>

Krauthammer On Obama's Foreign Policy: 'The Strategy Is To Do Absolutely Nothing' August 28 Charles Krauthammer ripped President Obama's foreign policy Thursday on "Special Report with Bret Baier," blasting the president for holding a news conference at which he said, "we don't have a strategy yet" for dealing with ISIS in Syria. "The president of the United States, in the middle of a real crisis, a few days after the beheading of an American...gets in front of the world and says, I don't have a strategy," the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. "If that is true, don't say...

President Obama is impatient. Congress won’t act on immigration, he says, and therefore he will. The White House is coy as to exactly what the president will do. But the leaks point to an executive order essentially legalizing an enormous new class of illegal immigrants, perhaps up to 5 million people. One doesn’t usually respond to rumors. But this is an idea so bad and so persistently peddled by the White House that it has already been preemptively criticized by such unusual suspects as (liberal) constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley, concerned about yet another usurpation of legislative power by the...

Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel–Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows Hamas’s proudly self-declared raison d’être: the eradication of Israel and its Jews. Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? There is not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli in Gaza. Does no one remember anything? It was less than ten years ago that...

John Kerry is upset by heavy criticism from Israelis — left, right and center — of his recent cease-fire diplomacy. But that’s only half the story. More significant is the consternation of America’s Arab partners, starting with the president of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas was stunned that Kerry would fly off to Paris to negotiate with Hamas allies Qatar and Turkey in talks that excluded the PA and Egypt. The talks also undermined Egypt’s cease-fire proposal, which Israel had accepted and Hamas rejected (and would have prevented the vast majority of the casualties on both sides). “Kerry tried through...

<p>John Kerry is upset by heavy criticism from Israelis — left, right and center — of his recent ceasefire diplomacy. But that’s only half the story. More significant is the consternation of America’s Arab partners, starting with the president of the Palestinian Authority. Mahmoud Abbas was stunned that Kerry would fly off to Paris to negotiate with Hamas allies Qatar and Turkey in talks that excluded the PA and Egypt.</p>

The president’s demeanor is worrying a lot of people. From the immigration crisis on the Mexican border to the Islamic State rising in Mesopotamia, Barack Obama seems totally detached. When he does interrupt his endless rounds of golf, fundraising, and photo ops, it’s for some affectless, mechanical, almost forced public statement. Regarding Ukraine, his detachment — the rote, impassive voice — borders on dissociation. His U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, delivers an impassioned denunciation of Russia. Obama cautions that we not “get out ahead of the facts,” as if the facts of this case — Vladimir Putin’s proxies’ shooting down a...

Fox News panelists A.B. Stoddard and Steve Hayes argued Wednesday that Obama brought on his plummeting approval ratings by giving Americans the impression that he has given up on his job.In a new Quinnipiac poll, Obama came in first as the worst president since World War II.“The president is giving Americans the sense that, as he gives up on Congress, he’s kind of giving up on his job,” The Hill’s Stoddard said. “They know he’s bolting from the building to go to Starbucks and Chipotle. He’s getting bored in the cocoon, he’s planning his post-presidency.”Free Beacon editor Matthew Continetti made...

BILL O'REILLY: How do you secure the border, Charles? CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Alright, here's what I've been on for years. You start with a fence. It's very simple. People say, 'Oh, fences don't work. You make a ladder.' Well, then you build two fences, triple strand fences. San Diego did that in the mid 90's and within a decade, the illegal immigration rate at that point was reduced by 90% and people ended up going through other places like Arizona. If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House? If they don't work, why is it that the...

On Tuesday's broadcast of "The O'Reilly Factor," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer gave his solution to the crisis at the southern United States border: a fence. He argued that securing the border with a fence is a proven method and he pointed to other places where it has worked, including at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. "Alright, here's what I've been on for years," Krauthammer said. "You start with a fence. It's very simple. People say, 'Oh, fences don't work. You make a ladder.' Well, then you build two fences, triple strand fences. San Diego did that in the...