Free Republic

Given the powerful grief and anger over the Boston Marathon bombing, Boston would seem to be a particularly hostile place for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to stand trial. But it might just be his best hope of escaping a death sentence. Opposition to the death penalty runs deep in liberal Massachusetts. In a Boston Globe survey in September, 57 percent of Massachusetts residents polled favored life in prison for Tsarnaev, while 33 percent favored execution. As Tsarnaev's lawyers weigh whether to attempt to move his trial out of town, away from those most deeply traumatized by the bombing, some legal experts say...

Democrats hate the military and are always working to undermine America’s defense so we have no protection from their international friends. When they are in power Democrats always act in ways that favor America’s enemies and insult our friends. Hearing Democrats say they are embarrassed to be American is common place from newsrooms to the highest offices of our government. Democrats have urged surrender in every conflict we have been in since Viet Nam. Immediately after a terror attack...

Republicans need to recognize an important fact: Liberalism is not driven by any real political philosophy but by resentment, bitterness, and anger toward mainstream society. Conservatives keep trying to patiently and politely point out where Democrat candidates are factually and logically wrong. That cannot work because liberalism is not about facts or logic. You can’t explain the Democrat Party (which liberals took over starting in 1968). What is happening to our country is not about issues. (But, a clarification: I am focusing here on liberal activists and leaders. Many ordinary individuals are just caught up in their rhetoric.) The Left...

I don't know how it works, I just know what the result is. No scientific models needed, just history.

For twenty years, Mr. Obama drank from a particular brand of religion—Liberal Christianity. To be sure, most Bible-believing Christians would not consider that brand to be Christianity at all. But liberal Christians would consider their brand to actually be the enlightened one. Over time, Liberal Christianity has developed a humanistic understanding of what the Christian faith is about. They claim that Christians who still believe the Bible is God’s perfect self-revelation are stuck back in the 1st century. Society has evolved, they say. And because society has evolved, God must be evolving also. After all, why else would He allow...

I am watching them take my country from me -- the Obamas, the de Blasios, the Holders, the generic Democrats with their imaginary sincerity and their simplistic complaints about income inequality. As if excellence and the ability to earn are wicked traits. In the meantime, Obama and his ilk are living pretty well. They are not sleeping in boxes on cold urban streets. Like thieves in the night, they try to steal the votes from the poor so that they can live even richer lifestyles. They pretend to identify with the middle class, as if their lifestyles and prestige even...

Virginia Democrat Jim Moran is a vile man. He is ending his political career with the current term and this is a good thing. Moran is an assailant; a wife beater; an influence peddler; a likely participant in a Democrat voter fraud scheme; and a putrid father. Moran is such an awful person that he is actually stands out among fellow Democrats who are a gaggle of loathsome creatures; a pretty tall order. Here are some of this low life’s antics. After a 1995 confrontation with a Republican Congressman Moran sneaked up behind the man and sucker punched him. In...

Animal Exceptionalism Morally Irrelevant The attack on human exceptionalism these days is unremitting–and highly ideological. The latest assault on our uniqueness comes from Edge.org, which asked the world’s supposedly most “brilliant minds” to come up with ideas that should be retired in science. Harvard professor (of course!) Irene Pepperberg–oh, so predictably–argues that the time has come to reject human uniqueness. Based on what? Pepperberg makes the obvious point that different animals also have remarkable capacities. From her essay (republished in the Guardian): Yes, humans do some things that other species do not – we are indeed the only species to...

I met my neighbor Rus Walton in 1974 before a financial disaster moved us from our lovely country home near Sacramento. We also enjoyed some of Governor Ronald Reagan’s staff. Rus gave me a copy of his new book, “One Nation Under God.” Rus ran The Plymouth Rock Foundation for many years and was a noted Christian speaker and prolific writer. People of faith have understood the principle of subsidiarity for a long, long time. It just means taking personal responsibility. When needed, the hierarchy of assistance offered or given begins with the family; then the community; the state; the...

Regardless of the culture a child lives in, corporal punishment may do lasting psychological harm, German researchers say. In a new study conducted in Tanzania, where physical punishment is considered normal, primary school students who were beaten by teachers or family members in the name of discipline tended to show more behavior problems, not fewer, the researchers found. "Parents aim to educate children through corporal punishment, but instead of learning good social behaviors, the beatings often have the opposite effect," said Tobias Hecker, a psychologist at the University of Konstanz, who led the study. "Some people still believe, despite an...

Saying that life is hard is kind of like saying the sun is hot, water is wet, or noting that politicians lie a lot. It's so obvious that anyone who's paying attention already knows that it's true. That being said, life's even harder when you're working under false assumptions that have been drilled into you by your teachers, college professors, Hollywood, and politicians in D.C. Much of what liberalism drums into the young skulls full of mush simply isn't true and millions of lives have been ruined by people finding it out the hard way. The good news is that...

It turns out that Senator Tom Coburn is a big supporter of Mark Levin’s new book The Liberty Amendments. When asked last night about this new 1000 plus page spending bill and the fact that the Senate will vote on it before anyone gets a chance to read it, Sen. Tom Coburn told Mark Levin that you can’t prevent this stuff from happening because all we have is a bunch of career politicians who only care about getting reelected. He says the only way to fix Washington is for the states to convene a Convention of the States and limit...

To celebrate the New Year a Californian who describes himself as a libertarian moved out of the state. In his frustration he has posted a list of just some of the ridiculous regulations he has suffered under at the hands of liberals who have been given unlimited power over the lives of everyday Americans. These are some of the regulatory nightmares he had to undergo. In order to merely remove a wooden deck that was condemned by Ventura County inspectors he had to pay for and secure SEVEN separate permits. In order to place a small concession trailer in his...

Here’s a New Year’s prediction guaranteed to last longer than your new gym membership: 2014 will be the year of the millennial revolt. It will be the year that a majority of millennials become disillusioned with their allegiance to today’s liberal movement and look elsewhere for political relevance. The shift is already under way. According to a December survey of millennials published by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, young Americans are turning on the president, his health-care law, the NSA’s domestic surveillance, and the political system in general. Only 41 percent of millennials approve of the job President Obama is...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans continue to be more likely to identify as conservatives (38%) than as liberals (23%). But the conservative advantage is down to 15 percentage points as liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992.The figures are based on combined data from 13 separate Gallup polls, including interviews with more than 18,000 Americans, conducted in 2013.When Gallup began asking about ideological identification in all its polls in 1992, an average 17% of Americans said they were liberal. That dipped to 16% in 1995 and 1996, but...

"The day after that conversation, my 12-year-old daughter took her toddler brother to a playground, only to return very soon and very shaken. This park is Harlem in miniature. There are two playgrounds, less than 300 yards apart, an old basic one and a new shiny one. In the new playground, well-dressed toddlers of different races, most of them minded by dark-skinned nannies, played together. At the old one, a few black kids played while their older siblings kept reluctant watch. A couple of drunken men loitered nearby. Apparently, one of them had lashed out at my daughter, calling her...

At nearly five years old, my firstborn routinely disputes rules with his mother and me. Cookies shall be served for dinner, he declares. Though he must ultimately yield to our authority, we cannot claim to have actually changed his mind. As far as he is concerned, cookies remain the first and best option. This tendency among youth to reject the thinking of their elders continues even into adulthood and leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by those who would use that trait to fulfill ulterior motives. “Do you always do what your parents say?” more than one tempter has asked.It’s that...

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry offered an apology to the Romney family on Tuesday after a panel on her show mocked the fact that one of Mitt Romney's grandchildren is black. On Sunday's "Melissa Harris-Perry" show, Harris-Perry led a panel in discussing the "Photos of the Year," which included a Romney family Christmas photo. In the photo, Romney is seen holding his adopted grandchild, Kieran, who is black. During the segment, guest panelist Pia Glenn sang, "One of these things is not like the others! One of these things just isn't the same," a reference to Kieran. "And that little baby,...

Our society is neutering boys of their maleness at a young age, while the lack of people with military experience in important positions is a recipe for disaster, claims Camille Paglia, the controversial lesbian author and social critic. Self-described ‘dissident feminist’ Paglia, 66, believes that attempts to deny the biological distinctions between men and women is to blame for the much that is wrong with modern society. 'What you're seeing is how a civilization commits suicide’ she told the Wall Street Journal. Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, is well known for her critical views...

Barack Obama’s administration is “the most rabid pro-abortion administration in US History,” according to the recent Christian Action News. As the 41st anniversary of Roe V. Wade approaches on January 22, the question is asked by the editors: “In a nation that regularly polls as majority pro-life, how on God’s green earth have we not been able to end the killings:” (1) Abortion is now the leading cause of death in the US, with 1,310,000 pre-born innocent human beings ripped apart in their mothers’ wombs either by hard cold scissors rammed into the back of their skulls or by burning...