Free Republic

Jacobin, a new socialist magazine, has published an essay advocating destroying the U.S. Constitution. The magazine, which was launched in 2011 and is published four times a year, is the creation of Bhaskar Sunkara. Sunkara, 26, is the son of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago. He lives in Brooklyn. …

The nation is spending about $46 billion less than what it needs to keep up its school buildings, according to a report Wednesday that pointed out disparities in state support for infrastructure. The report by a trio of school facilities groups said the country needs to keep better track of the state of its schools and find new funding sources for their upkeep so that local districts that now bear the heaviest funding burdens don’t have to divert money from instruction. “U.S. public school infrastructure is funded through a system that is inequitably affecting our nation’s students and this has...

A former Bush Administration official said Wednesday that single-issue Republican voters, who plan to select a candidate based on their foreign policy, should consider likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton if Donald Trump is her opponent come November. "If you care about that bucket of social issues, pro-life, what not, you can't make the leap to Hillary Clinton," Nicolle Wallace, who served as President George W. Bush's communications chief and a senior adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign in 2008, told MSNBC in an interview Wednesday morning. "But if foreign policy is how you vote, if that is your central concern,...

The president of the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC rebuked of Donald Trump on Tuesday, scolding him for his harsh comments about President Obama. “Last evening something occurred which has the potential to drive us apart, to divide us,” AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus said during the final day of the organization’s annual policy conference in Washington. “We say, unequivocally, that we do not countenance ad hominem attacks and we take great offense against those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage.” “While we may have policy differences, we deeply respect the office of...

GOP presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that as president, he would consider nominating D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick. “Well, you know, he received overwhelming support, I think even from Senator Hatch. So, of course we’d think about it,” Kasich said when asked if he would “take a look” at Garland if he were president. […] “I don’t care about their peccadilloes 30 years ago, but, yes, we have a process. I have appointed over 100 judges in Ohio, including a woman that, fortunately,...

Society is undergoing a change of mind about the way religion and people of faith intersect with public life. That is, there are intensifying perceptions that faith is at the root of a vast number of societal ills. Though it remains the nation’s most dominant religion, Christianity faces significant headwind in the court of public opinion. The decades-old trend that Christianity is irrelevant is increasingly giving way to the notion that Christianity is bad for society. A new major study conducted by Barna Group, and explored in the new book Good Faith, co-authored by Barna president David Kinnaman, examines society’s...

In his weekly address released today, President Barack Obama said that Supreme Court Justices are supposed to apply “the principles written into our founding documents.” “The men and women who sit on the Supreme Court safeguard our rights,” Obama said. “They ensure that ours is a system of laws, not of men. And they’re given the essential task of applying the principles written into our founding documents to the most challenging questions of today.” …

The official number of illegal aliens in the state of California is nearly 3 million. We can estimate the number to be more than double this amount in reality. Over half of all drivers license issued in California were given to individuals who are here illegally and the state automatically registers those with a driver’s license to vote. In 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill giving full voting rights to illegal aliens. This gives them the right to vote in all elections from a local level to national elections, including that of choosing who will become President. The...

The scene was violent and chaotic: protesters being forcibly removed from a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The image reinforced a common complaint that police can be callous toward the free-speech rights of demonstrators when seeking to preserve order. […] … A large gathering mixed with the natural political friction of an election season, or any event that draws crowds in the thousands, can be a volatile brew. Any such event, from a political rally to an NFL game, needs police present, said Jon Shane, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New...

Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois on Friday became the first Republican senator to call for an up-or-down vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, saying on a Chicago radio show that his colleagues ought to “just man up and cast a vote.” That Kirk would be first to break with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other GOP colleagues, who believe the next president should pick the replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, is not particularly surprising: Kirk was already one of two Republican senators, with Susan Collins of Maine, to call for hearings.

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) posted a video Friday marking the anniversary of when the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq and says that “everybody has to be eligible between 18 and a reasonable age” for Selective Service, including women. “We”re now going through the 13th anniversary of the Iraq war,” Rangel says in the video. “Guess what? War has never been declared.” …

New York State appears ready to throw as many as 200,000 people out of work by imposing a $15 an hour minimum wage statewide. The New York Post reports: Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan is close to a “Faustian pact’’ with Democratic Gov. Cuomo to raise the state’s minimum wage to a national high of $15 an hour — boosting union power and possibly costing New York hundreds of thousands of jobs. A source close to Flanagan said the deal would involve Cuomo agreeing to do “little if anything’’ to help Senate Democrats, now just one vote shy of...

Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s CEO Andy Puzder has people all in a huff over his idea to automate restaurants. But why be upset with Puzder? This is an inevitable consequence of massive minimum wage hikes by the government. “I want to try it,” CEO Puzder said. He’s looking at something “where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person.” Is he heartless? No. Just responding to the government’s foolish plans to jack up the minimum wage and put restaurants, hotels, bars and other service industries...

President Obama’s outreach to communist-ruled Cuba risks “legitimizing the deeply entrenched Cuban regime,” Cuban human rights and opposition groups warned Wednesday, days before Obama is scheduled to become the first sitting president to visit the island nation in almost 90 years. “We would never imagine that the democratic world would legitimize the Castros,” the Forum for Rights and Freedoms and the Resistance Assembly wrote in a letter to Obama. “These individuals have destroyed the well-being of our nation. From firing squads and political assassinations to political imprisonment, thousands of Cubans inside and outside the island have had their lives taken...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has no problem calling himself a feminist, but that every time he mentions it, the “Twitterverse explodes.” […] The 44-year old Liberal leader says that calling himself a feminist simply means “I believe in the equality of men and women.” But he says that whenever he makes the claim, he’s asked about it by the media. …

President Barack Obama says Donald Trump's rallies pale in comparison to the crowds his own drew — including a Missouri event that drew 100,000 — during his first run for the White House. "Sometimes you hear folks say, 'oh, that rally is big,'" Obama said at a Democratic gathering in Texas last Saturday.... SNIP "I say, I don't know. We had some pretty big rallies. In 2008, we had rallies with 50,000, 80,000, 100,000 people. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying we had some big rallies," he said, the Examiner reports. "I'm just saying."

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he was deeply disturbed by the “vulgar and divisive rhetoric” directed at women and minorities as well as the violence in the 2016 presidential campaign, a swipe at Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Without mentioning the GOP candidate by name, Obama used a unity luncheon at the Capitol to express his concern with the political discourse and the protests that have escalated to attacks at the Trump rallies. The candidate has spoken of barring Muslims and deporting immigrants living here illegally. …

The head of UN Women said Monday that world leaders attending an annual meeting on the status of women have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to better the lives of women and girls by implementing U.N. goals approved by world leaders last year. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, speaking at the opening of the 60th Commission on the Status for Women, said the theme of this year’s meeting is the link between women’s empowerment and development. She urged members to implement the 17 broad goals and 169 specific targets endorsed last year, saying it is crucial to advancing equality for women and girls around the...

The Environmental Protection Agency, not satisfied with the damage their regulations are doing to the nation’s fossil fuel industry, has awarded $300,000 in grant money to a tech company that will alert American office workers that they are using too much energy. The company, Lucid Design Group, is in the midst of developing technology that will track electricity and water use in commercial office buildings. “Through this project, Lucid is focused on reducing energy consumption in commercial buildings by influencing people’s behavior,” said a press release from the EPA. “With this award, it will further develop, test and commercialize low-cost...

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday that people mistakenly believe he is proposing free college for all, when in fact he is proposing free tuition at public colleges and universities. […] “Like you, I came from a family that didn’t have a lot of money, first generation to go to college, but I want every kid in this country who is in the sixth grade or the fourth grade to understand that if he or she studies hard, does well, they will be able to go to college regardless of the income of their family, and we...