Free Republic

What did you do Sunday evening? I watched the gaudiest pageant ever performed on television, interspersed with a football game. The football game was serious, dare I say, dignified, adult entertainment. Yet what came with it was typical American excess. Lights flashing, deafening noise, hundreds of people marching, and I believe there were cartoon figures parading around the field. I worried that it was going to be another siege of the Capitol, but then I got hold of myself. Our Capitol building was hundreds of miles to the north. Yet if the Super Bowl game had been held in Washington,...

I’ve been very lucky in my life to meet some really interesting, smart, and nice famous people. It wasn’t their fame that made them any of the other things, and a lot of the famous people I’ve met were literally none of those other things, but a few were all of them and more. One such person was Christopher Hitchens, who became a friend in the final years of his life. Another such person is Tucker Carlson. That’s why I can’t sit by silently while progressive fascists try, yet again, to destroy him. These modern fascists are Democrats, ideological brethren...

In the midst of one of our nation’s most sobering episodes, an episode that has forced tens of millions onto the unemployment rolls, rendered nearly the entire nation on some form of shelter in place order, and seen wartime powers enacted to support the rapid production of critically needed equipment for healthcare workers; activists on the left have chosen to file frivolous litigation against the very people speaking truth—Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Fox News more generally. Is it really too much to ask, given the stark reality facing our country, that Americans from all ends of the...

It's nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence. So, I thought I'd begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity. According to the Oxford Dictionary, diversity is "the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc." The definition gratuitously adds, "equality and diversity should be supported for their own...

I recently wrote about the controversy over removing Confederate era statues from public places, and in my column I acknowledged the concerns of those who don't want to honor or celebrate men who fought, at least in part, to preserve slavery. But then I asked a question: Where does it end? "Is taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or Jefferson Davis enough?" I wondered. Or after we scrub them from history do we have to move on to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two presidents who owned slaves? I failed to mention Christopher Columbus in...

We need to sell more rhino horns, quickly. That may be the only way to save rhinos from extinction. Today, rhinos vanish because poachers kill them for their horns. Businesses turn their horns into ornaments or quack health potions. Some horns sell for $300,000. No wonder poachers risk their lives for one. How do you fight an incentive that strong? Flood the market! That's a solution suggested by Matthew Markus. Markus's biotech company can make artificial rhino horn in a laboratory that's virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Put enough of that lab-grown horn on the market and supply and...

Has there ever been this level of resistance/interference by a prior administration to the incoming in U.S. history? Haven't we always prided ourselves on our smooth and peaceful transitions of power from one elected administration/party to the next? If we didn't know better and understand that this cannot happen in America, the level of organized and criminal interference and obstruction against the duly elected President Trump being put up by former President Obama himself and his new socialist organization, the entire democrat party, the GOP establishment, the entrenched holdovers throughout government, the liberal activist judges and the liberal media might...

Time.com's Zeke Miller tweeted yesterday that a "reporter" asked recently declared presidential candidate Marco Rubio of Florida the following question: "Is 43 old enough to be president?" Meanwhile, two weeks ago, a column at Time.com claimed that Hillary Clinton is "biologically primed to be a leader." Seriously. Since he either can't or won't tell us who asked the question, we're unable to determine if the "reporter" to whom Miller referred was asking the question because he or she doesn't know the Constitution or was trying to bait Rubio into giving an answer implicitly or explicitly criticizing other candidates. It would...

Some wonder why conservatives get the impression that many leftists are not patriotic. Well, how about their belief that the ideas of nationalism and patriotism are noxious? We told you! As you've probably heard by now, Associated Students of the University of California, Irvine voted to ban the American flag from an "inclusive" space on campus. Don't you just love loaded liberal words, such as "inclusive," which mean the opposite of what they imply? Is the American flag includable there? The language of the bill, passed by a vote of 6-4, with two abstentions (some real courage there), asserts that...

The Maine People's Alliance, a progressive group, has come under fire for a leaflet aimed at Maine State Rep. Dale Crafts (R-Lisbon Falls). The leaflet resembles a prescription form, and "diagnosed" Crafts as having "no heart" and "no spine" as he "failed to stand up to Gov. LePage." Crafts is confined to a wheelchair following a spinal injury sustained in a motorcycle accident 26 years ago. Democrats in the state were quick to condemn the language in the leaflet and to distance themselves from the Maine People's Alliance. “We’ve only been out of the session two days. And it’s not...

On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a one-paragraph order in Little Sisters of the Poor et al v. Sebeluis et al. It told the Sisters that for the case to continue with no enforcement of the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, they need only to inform the government in writing "that they are non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services." That's easy, because that's what they are, and that's their position. As a result, the government has been "enjoined from enforcing against the applicants the challenged provisions of the...

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather.) “Fidel Castro is one hell of a guy! “You people would like him!” (Ted Turner to a capacity crowd at Harvard Law School during a speech in 1997.) “Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly—even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (Andrea Mitchell.) “Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding.” (Barbara Walters.) “Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Jesse Jackson while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.) "Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and...

The city of Chicago agreed to pay the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Friends Service Committee a combined $12,500 after Chicago police sent at least one undercover officer to infiltrate meetings held by the Quaker-based activist group in 2002, the ACLU announced today. The settlement comes following a 2005 petition filed in federal court by the ACLU and AFSC against the city, alleging it violated the activist group’s 1st Amendment rights and “unduly stigmatized and damaged the reputation of the AFSC,” according to court documents. The city has denied those allegations.

Aug. 9, 2005 | Cindy Sheehan, the angry 48-year-old mom from Vacaville, Calif., whose son died while serving in the Army in Iraq and who has been staging a lonely bring-the-troops-home vigil outside President Bush's ranch beneath the baking Texas sun, has clearly become a thorn in the president's vacationing side. Putting a public and empathetic face on the war's toll in America, Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed in April 2004, has posed a very simple request to Bush: Come out and talk to me about Iraq and why my son died. ......... Taking peculiar pleasure in trying to...

Article 14 September 2004 by Brendan O'Neill In the docu-blockbuster-cum-human-experiment Super Size Me, released in British cinemas over the weekend, New York filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald's meals three times a day for a month. He's won widespread praise for pushing his body to the limit - he goes from fit to fat, gets bad skin, has mood swings, and in one scene, having spent 22 minutes eating a Super Size Double Quarterpounder Meal, pukes it up out of his car window - all for the apparently worthy cause of showing Americans 'the real price they are paying...

Will Kerry's supporters stop at nothing? The cover of the new anti-Kerry book, Unfit for Command, set to hit shelves soon, has been given an alternative, pro-Kerry cover at the Barnes & Noble online store. The title of the book has been changed to Fit for Command, and the cover image has been changed from a close-up of a finger-pointing Kerry to a picture of Kerry in uniform with other Vietnam veterans. (The book currently sits at #7 on the Barnes & Noble Top 100 and at #2 on Amazon.) The book, which challenges the "war hero" status of John...