Free Republic

Chicago already is one of the most expensive cities in the world -- No. 7, according to a report by financial firm UBS. But the cost of living soon could rise even more, if Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel gets his way. The Windy City mayor is pushing a $500 million property tax increase, the largest in the city's history, as a way to balance an almost $700 million deficit. On top of that, surrounding Cook County just raised the sales tax to the highest in the nation, at 10.25 percent, while considering a hodgepodge of other fees. And the state...

John Adams said, “The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God … anarchy and tyranny commence. Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” I am not a politician or public figure. I am one of many Americans whose property is under assault by government. I am a student of self-governance living in New Jersey. My state and local governments make a habit of redistributing privately held property among the private parties it chooses. This is absolutely forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. If it can happen here in my...

Trump is a response to the excesses of the extreme left, that have been enabled by the silence of moderate Democrats and the support of the permanent underclass. As I have written since the appearance of Ross Perot in an earlier presidential election, the left will push and push until typical middle class citizens, the defenders of the American way of life as they have known it, finally reach out to a fighter who speaks their language.

It would be so refreshing to hear President Barack Obama tell the truth, both about the way things really are and what that means to us. But rest assured, this will never happen. For Obama practices only deception, by telling us what he wants us to think and what he wants us to think it means. This man, I believe, considers the American people to be stupid; unable to think unless he directs the thinking process for us. It is intentional deceit on his part. Those who are familiar with Islamic Sharia Law understand the very significant role that the...

Most people don't know what a socialist is. Socialist sounds too much like "social." A socialist, I suspect, for most Americans means to be "social." Who could be opposed to that? Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. In reality, he's a theft using the respectability of the United States Senate as cover for his criminal views. Like all socialists, Sanders believes it's OK to steal from people if he can get enough votes and enough support from the people he will be stealing for -- the beneficiaries of his thieving ways. Of course, Sanders isn't the only socialist in Congress. Most...

When I grew up in the north suburbs of Chicago in the 1960s and '70s, Illinois was still a financial and industrial powerhouse. The Land of Lincoln had a low-rate flat income tax, the property taxes were reasonable, the state ran budget surpluses, and Illinois was the home of such iconic mega-employers as Caterpillar, Sears Roebuck and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The public schools were pretty good back then and a dedicated corps of teachers put kids first -- they didn't walk out on strike, and they didn't have the fat pensions they can get now when retiring at...

When it comes to garbage, the city of Seattle has launched a waste war. Nine full-time solid waste inspectors have been hired as part of a controversial program to check city trash to make sure people are recycling. Additionally, contracted waste haulers have been effectively deputized as trash police, given the authority to tag bins when people fail to recycle and compost enough. The program is now the subject of a lawsuit, as residents fume over what some call an intrusive government program. “I understand people have noble goals,” said Keli Carender, who got tagged two weeks in a row,...

"Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide," wrote James Burnham in his 1964 "Suicide of the West." Burnham predicted that the mindless magnanimity of liberals, who subordinate the interests of their own people and nations to utopian and altruistic impulses, would bring about an end to Western civilization. Was he wrong? Consider what is happening in Europe. Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia, small nations sensing they will be swamped by asylum seekers from the Muslim world, are trying to seal their borders and secure their homelands. Their instinct for survival, their awareness of lifeboat ethics, is acute. Yet they are being...

I identify as female. I am apparently a conventionally attractive student-athlete at UNC-Chapel Hill. I grew into my ears a few years back. I have lighter eyes and darker skin, and with the exception of a bit of an eyebrow discrepancy, my face is generally symmetrical. Writing this now, I feel my stomach drop. In a culture that regularly exploits sexuality, it’s ironically unacceptable when women openly acknowledge it themselves. But hear me. The following is a string of subtle and routine occurrences that make me feel less human and should take their rightful place among the larger narrative of...

Tuesday morning felt normal to Monica Foy, a junior and English major at Sam Houston State University. The first thing the 26-year-old, who lives outside Houston with her husband, did when she woke up was check her Twitter and Facebook feeds. Both were full of people mourning the loss of Darren Goforth, a Harris County Sheriff’s deputy who was murdered Friday night by a man named Shannon J. Miles, who came up behind him at a gas station, shot him in the back of the head, and then emptied every bullet in his gun into the officer. [Snip] Foy tweeted...

Full Title: No GoFundMe for Kim Davis: Crowdfunding puts the brakes on the disturbing bigots-get-rich-quick trend Subtitle: If the plan was to fundraise, more platforms aren't going to play along It’s a narrative so familiar by now that we can all recite the script. As Sarah Thyre laid it out Thursday: “1. Jail 2. Book deal/Fox News guest 3. jillion dollar @gofundme page w/donations from fellow bigots.” And with the developments this week in the case of Kim Davis, who was indeed jailed not for being a Christian but being in contempt of court, many presumed that this was the...

By Curtis Houck, an excerpt Commentary by John Velisek USN (Ret), CiR staff writer “In its ongoing coverage of the sheriff’s deputy from Harris County, Texas being shot Friday night outside a gas station, Monday’s edition of the CBS Evening News criticized the slain officer’s boss for making ‘controversial statements’ about the Black Lives Matter movement that ‘some have called…insensitive.’ Correspondent Omar Villafranca made the judgement after explaining the latest news concerning the murder investigation with Monday marking the first court appearance for alleged shooter Shannon Miles. What exactly was so ‘controversial?’ Here’s what [Harris County Sheriff Ron] Hickman stated...

Staff and students in the University of Tennessee Office for Diversity and Inclusion want people to think beyond the "he/she" pronouns and are encouraging use of gender-neutral pronouns such as "xe," "xym" and "xyr." Their suggestion hasn't quite caught on -- and some state legislators aren't impressed. Not everyone in society identifies on a strict male-or-female basis, according to diversity office staff, so they are asking people to be aware some may identify themselves with a name and gender that's not strictly male or female. It is not UT's policy. "We should not assume someone's gender by their appearance, nor...

Conservative luminaries have been warning that Donald Trump poses a threat to the Republican party and to the political future of conservativism. Charles Krauthammer has called him “political poison.” Fred Barnes says Trump has “made the GOP’s future dicey.” George Will thunders characteristically that “every sulfurous belch from the molten interior of the volcanic Trump phenomenon injures the chances of a Republican presidency.” All this may be true. Trump is indeed a braggart who goes out of his way to antagonize people — not a winning approach in electoral politics. And he’s shown little real commitment to conservative principles —...

I was trying to assemble Hillary's presidential platform off the top of my head. Expand open boarders Change religious beliefs Remove voting rules Free university education Abortion services Expand gun control Global warming laws Universal healthcare Women's rights Gay rights Black rights Illegal immigrant rights Minority rights [fill in taxpayer funded give-away] United Nations - global everything

It only took a matter of minutes for liberals across the board to begin demanding more gun control after the Roanoke shootings on live TV on Wednesday. Existing gun control laws didn't stop the mentally disturbed Vester Lee Flanagan from buying a Glock and killing two young journalists whose crime apparently was being white and heterosexual, so the natural liberal reaction is to create more laws to do the same thing. This time it will work! Remember the definition of insanity? In a brotherly effort to help liberals out without trampling on the rights of conservatives or libertarians, I'd like...

When one abandons eternal truth, there is virtually no limit to the extremeness and no end to the amount of folly that will follow. Modern liberalism again demonstrates this well. Because of his commitment to liberalism, which makes him unable to call the public display of women’s breasts that is occurring in Times Square what it really is (offensive, absurd, gross, and yes, wicked and sinful), New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has decided to wield one of the favorite tools of modern liberals: the dreaded “multiagency task force.”

"Liberalism is what smart looks like to stupid people." - Anonymous caller on Rush Limbaugh. Talk about getting right down to the nut, right quick...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a regulation on Thursday to stop referring to midget raisins as “midget” after an activist group called the term offensive. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) issued the proposed rule, announcing the U.S. “Standards for Grades of Processed Raisins” would eliminate all five times the word midget is used. Midget has long been used to describe the differences in sizes of California raisins.

For The Huffington Post, Steven Conn, W.E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, penned a fierce defense of Planned Parenthood's selling of fetal tissue, claiming it as a mark of "compassion" that is worthy of praise and thanksgiving. In the course of his meanderings, Conn harkened back to Ronald Reagan's presidency, attacking his ban on medical research involving fetal tissue -- research, he says, that could've offered the former president greater help as he suffered from Alzheimers. Conn said that during "the fake exposé released by anti-abortion zealot David Daleiden" revealing that Planned Parenthood engaged in...