Free Republic

Fighting Bob Fest will return to Baraboo next month after taking place in Madison for the past three years. The political festival, set for Sept. 13 at the Sauk County Fairgrounds, was first held in Baraboo in 2002 to honor the legacy of the late U.S. senator and former Wisconsin Gov. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette. La Follette is considered one of the founders of the progressive movement and organizers say the intent of the festival is to honor his contributions and energize progressives by providing a forum for speakers, networking and camaraderie. The annual festival, which draws thousands, was...

A Martha’s Vineyard photographer quietly deleted photographs of President Obama dancing during a birthday party after they went viral online. Editorial and fine art photographer Elizabeth Cecil posted two photos of the president on her Instagram account from the party that was closed to the press. The photos featured President Obama dancing and one of him offering a birthday toast to Ann Jordan at a party at the Farm Neck Golf Club. The party included about 150 guests, including former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton. The photo of the president dancing was discovered on Instagram early Thursday...

Recess is in full force in Washington, D.C., as national lawmakers vacation around the country, but both political parties are fighting intense political battles on the ground in states nationwide as several statehouses are up for grabs in what’s shaping up to be a landslide pro-GOP election year. “Republicans, who had appeared to hit a high-water mark in control of statehouses in recent years, are seeking to pick off another half-dozen chambers this year, taking advantage of President Obama’s persistent unpopularity, anxiety about the economy, and a history of anemic turnout among Democrats in nonpresidential election years,” the New York...

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. Sir Walter Scott’s warning on the complications of dishonesty seems to apply to the recent travails of Hillary Clinton, who has spent the past week or so attempting to distance herself from the disaster of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. That’s a neat trick for someone who served as Secretary of State for four of the five-plus years of the Obama administration, and the White House and its supporters have already lashed out about it, if indirectly.How is the project working? So far, conservatives aren’t buying the...

New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, like so many others who call themselves "progressive," is gung-ho to solve social problems. In fact, he is currently on a crusade to solve an educational problem that doesn't exist, even though there are plenty of other educational problems that definitely do exist. The non-existent problem is the use of tests to determine who gets admitted to the city's three most outstanding public high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. These admissions tests have been used for generations, and the students in these schools have had spectacular achievements for generations. These achievements...

It's astonishing that an ideology which such an unbroken track record of failure has adherents who are so incredibly pleased with themselves. It's like a soda pop executive whose proudest achievement was thinking up New Coke. For the liberals who aren’t liberal solely because someone is handing them checks for plopping onto the couch all day instead of working, liberalism has become less an ideology than an attitude. It’s an attitude of serene superiority over everyone else based upon absolutely nothing more than liberals’ utter certainty of the rightness of their collectivist cause. That history shows that collectivism always leads...

There is much discussion these days of why the Media and liberals in general are so anti-Israel. It should be obvious to any casual but attentive observer that the media has a bias in favor of the Muslims and in opposition to Israel. Stories about the Gaza war have headlines like “Israel Resumes Gaza Strikes After Cease-Fire Lull - ABC News” or BBC News - Gaza conflict: UN accuses Israel over Jabaliya attack. In fact, a scan of the headlines suggest that Israel was and is the aggressor, while Hamas was minding its own business and only defending itself.

[Summary: Decline in American public schools is best explained by the far-left politics of our Education Establishment. These people prefer mediocrity.]-- Historically, Socialism and Communism were sometimes synonyms. But generally there was a sense that Socialism was softer. If you had enough power, you moved on to Communism, which was more coercive. One intellectual summed up the matter this way. Socialists persuade you with speeches. Communists persuade you with guns. In the days after the Russian Revolution, American leftists expended billions of hours trying to describe the perfect society. Fundamentally, all the debates turned on how much power the central...

Hi Andrew, I'm writing because I just can't deal with my father anymore. He's a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total [expletive] intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics. I'm more or less a liberal democrat with very progressive values and I know that people like my dad are going to destroy us all. I don't have any good times with him anymore. All we do is argue. When I try to spend time with him without talking politics or discussing any current events, there's still an underlying tension that makes...

They were the ultimate symbol of the lawlessness and blight of the 1980s and early 1990s — and now they’re making a comeback. Squeegee men are menacing motorists across New York City, including spots near the Holland, Lincoln and Queens-Midtown tunnels, as well as the Queensboro Bridge, The Post has learned. Residents and drivers who pass through the areas said the panhandlers are spraying and wiping windshields without permission to shake down drivers for cash. Benthins, who has also been seen with a squeegee near Times Square, was using a wadded-up copy of the amNewYork free newspaper as a rag....

The need for strong American foreign policy has never been greater. As the world burns, Barack Obama's White House tells us, "The world is less violent than it has ever been." Deaths in Ukraine and Gaza mount while anti-democratic terrorists attempt to suppress freedom and rain fire upon their enemies. This is happening in the most fragile places. Places that had more calm and resolve under the Clinton and Bush Administrations than they do under the Obama presidency. Even at home, Mexican refugees flood across the American border in historic numbers, amounting to the greatest humanitarian crisis since Hurricane Katrina....

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter takes to ForeignPolicy.com to argue that the key to ending the current war in Gaza is "recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political actor." Writing along with fellow "Elder" Mary Robinson (part of an "international group of elder statesmen"), the former president pins the blame for the current conflict on Israel's refusal to appreciate a "major concession" made by Hamas in April and to recognize the new Palestinian government formed by the Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation": This tragedy results from the deliberate obstruction of a promising move toward peace in the region, when a reconciliation agreement among...

MRCTV's Dan Joseph asks people to sign a petition to bring the unaccompanied minors at the border to Alexandria, VA. Once they sign he asks them to sign an agreement to house one. No one signs up for housing.

At his best Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., made short work of a Democrat-friendly law professor testifying before Congress, even offering him some “free litigation advice.” The former prosecutor turned congressman was surgical in his questioning of Professor Charles Tiefer, who was brought before the House Judiciary Committee as an expert witness by Democrats — Tiefer has a history of being of service to the Democratic Party, according to The Blaze. “Professor Tiefer, would you seat a juror who referred to your client as an obscene body part?” Gowdy asked in his opening question.

Dead bodies of illegal immigrants are turning up in south Texas as Central Americans pour across the U.S.-Mexico border, and a veterinarian who ranches cattle 70 miles from ground zero has the photos to prove it. Dr. Mike 'Doc' Vickers of Brooks County, Texas showed some of the grisly images to MailOnline, all of them far too grotesque to publish unedited. One picture shows a corpse propped up against a tree near his ranch in Brooks County, his eyes missing and dried blood cascading down his shirtless body. 'This guy, obviously, had to lay down up against that tree, and...

f the Modern Liberal is in fact as stupid as I believe him to be, then how is one to explain the fact that so many Liberals rise to the very pinnacle of their professions? If Nancy Pelosi is stupid, how did she become the Speaker of the House of Representatives? If Katie Couric is stupid, how did she become the most recent recipient of the Walter Cronkite award for “excellence” in television journalism. If Henry Gates and Ward Churchill are stupid, how did they become tenured professors? In this short video, I explain the otherwise

Stand-up comedian Evan Sayet, former writer for Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect and most famous for his stirring speech at The Heritage Foundation in 2007, has once again resurfaced with a brand new video on his website excoriating what he calls "modern liberals"...

How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA A new report was released today by the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, and it is damning. All this time that climate skeptics are accused of being in the employ of “big oil” is nothing more than a projection of their own greed. Some excerpts: Over 7.9 BILLION in funding between these groups.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Fusion TV's Jorge Ramos that part of the reason Hamas hides rockets in schools and civilian areas is "Gaza is small." "I'm not a military planner but Hamas puts it's missiles, it's rockets in civilian areas, part of it is Gaza is pretty small and its densely populated," she said as neglecting the question of whether or not Hamas should have rockets in area to begin with.

Liberals are forever struggling to understand the basic tenets of human nature that most other people just take for granted. You’d think they would have picked something up from the death throes of the Soviet Union, Greece, or Detroit, but as Talleyrand might say, “They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” Whether that’s some sort of genetic defect liberals are born with, ignorance, or just willful blindness is hard to say, but the results are the same in any case. Since it’s easier for light to escape a black hole than it is for a liberal to entertain a new...