Free Republic

We have a royal class in America. They are those who trot around as if they were billionaires, with security, administrative staffs, special meals, wonderful trips -- and unspoken disdain for the rest of us. They are the growing number of elected officials, from the local level all the way up to the White House, who we first elected when they were "humble citizens" asking for our votes. Add to that many of the bureaucrats who fill local, state and federal governments. Trust me, this concept of a "political elite" is not only alive, it is in full bloom. Between...

Don’t you hate it when your honest clarification question is mistaken for the start of a fallacious argument? Almost every time in the last year I’ve talked with pro-choice students at a pro-life outreach, I’ve had an exchange that goes something like this: Pro-Choice Student: The fetus isn’t even a person. Tim: We agreed earlier that a newborn is a person. Do you think a fetus is a person right before birth? Pro-Choice Student: *sigh* I know where you’re going with this, you’re going to try to trap me by asking if it’s a person right before that, or right...

Activists Plan to Burn American Flags in New York City Ahead of Fourth of July A group calling for the immediate disarmament of the New York Police Department plans to burn American flags in a Brooklyn park on Wednesday, just days before the Fourth of July holiday. “Disarm NYPD” announced the “Burn the American Flags” event on Facebook, inviting individuals to join the organization at Fort Greene Park to “set fire to this symbol of oppression.”

RUSH: There wouldn't be social issues if there weren't angst and misery and unhappiness. And make no mistake: That's what's driving all this, folks. You may think this is all political, but it's angst and misery. It's unhappiness. It's people seeking a mysterious... You can read it in Kennedy Supreme Court ruling. You know that Supreme Court decision that Kennedy wrote is basically all about self-esteem and dignity. That's why Scalia openly wrote, he would be embarrassed to sign his name to a majority opinion such as that written by Anthony Kennedy on the gay marriage business. Esteem and dignity...

Monday’s big election law news came from the Supreme Court’s penultimate decision of the term upholding Arizona’s congressional districts. But before handing down its last three decisions, the court made voting-rights advocates happy by deciding not to review a different election case. “Arizona citizens can continue to participate in voter registration drives without worrying about not having proof of citizenship documents,” Shirley Sandelands, of the League of Women Voters of Arizona, said in a statement Monday. The case, Kobach, et al. v. Election Assistance Commission, et al., was about whether Arizona and Kansas could require voters to prove their citizenship...

Memphis Mayor Wants to Literally Dig Up Confederate General and Move Him by Alex Griswold Memphis Mayor A C Wharton has called for the removal of the grave of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest from a city park, along with an attached memorial. “These relics, these messages of this despicable period of this great nation, it’s time for those to be moved,” Wharton said in a press conference Thursday. Most historians believe that Forrest was also the first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, although he later distanced himself from the group as they became more violent. “This is...

San Francisco will close borders to talented and artistic teens looking for a free and prestigious arts education at the city’s Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, a decision derided by many students, parents and teachers, yet unanimously approved by the school board Tuesday. The decision ends the long-standing practice of allowing transfer students from other school districts to audition and gain admission to the high school, considered among the region’s most elite public art schools. The new policy will apply to admission for fall 2016. Current out-of-town students would be allowed to complete high school there, as well as...

Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is, we are informed by all the best people, insufficiently ethnic. Governor Jindal, born in Baton Rouge, is Punjabi in the sense that your average Philadelphian with a surname ending in a vowel is Italian: ancestrally, trivially. Governor Jindal’s speech, culture, mannerisms, politics, religion, habits, and affect are as far removed from Chandigarh, the north Indian city where his parents met, as they are from Bogota or Stuttgart. The governor insistently rejects the tossed salad model in favor of the melting pot: an American is an American is an American, in his view. For his political...

**SNIP** Now here is the kicker, as the writer articulately brings to light: “By using the Constitution in such a manner, the Court argues that the Due Process Clause extends “certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy” accepted in a majority of states across the state lines of a handful of states that still banned the practice. The vast majority of states are “shall issue” on the matter of issuing concealed carry permits, and enjoy reciprocity with a large number of other states. My North Carolina concealed carry permit, for example, was recognized yesterday as being valid in...

My Friend, Today, the Supreme Court just upheld Obamacare yet again. This is the direct result of President Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress. They forced ObamaCare on the American people with false promises and a totally partisan vote. My new Democrat opponent, Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick, is one of the strongest ObamaCare supporters in Washington. She even said her vote for ObamaCare was the one she "was most proud about." We all know ObamaCare has been a disaster, resulting in rising costs, lost jobs, and reduced health care choices for the people of our state. If you agree with...

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is, we are informed by all the best people, insufficiently ethnic. Governor Jindal, born in Baton Rouge, is Punjabi in the sense that your average Philadelphian with a surname ending in a vowel is Italian: ancestrally, trivially. Governor Jindal’s speech, culture, mannerisms, politics, religion, habits, and affect are as far removed from Chandigarh, the north Indian city where his parents met, as they are from Bogota or Stuttgart. The governor insistently rejects the tossed salad model in favor of the melting pot: an American is an American is an American, in his view. For his...

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is not a fan of anyone who disagrees with him about man-made global warming. And at an event hosted by environmentalists, he made it clear just how much he doesn’t like skeptics. “But, this vast denial apparatus that propagates the false doubt, that props up the phony science, that gets these yahoos who can’t survive … peer-reviewed scrutiny onto Fox News, onto the cable shows, saying that their scientists, they create an artificial conflict about this and that’s why I think there’s doubt,” the Rhode Island Democrat told attendees at a League of Conservation Voters event in...

A House Republican on Thursday proposed forcing the Supreme Court justices and their staff to enroll in ObamaCare. Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said that his SCOTUScare Act would make all nine justices and their employees join the national healthcare law’s exchanges. “As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it’s important that these six individuals understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people,” he said. “That’s why I introduced the SCOTUScare Act to require the Supreme Court and all of its employees to sign up for ObamaCare,” Babin said. Babin’s potential legislation would...

Virtually all crime today is the result of the philosophical/moral disorder known as "liberalism." Left has completely undermined the moral fabric of Western civilization “Take it down! That symbol must go!” We hear these cries in the wake of the Charleston church shooting in reference to the Confederate battle flag, which still flies above the South Carolina Capitol. As you know, one criminal who committed a heinous act had sometimes sported the symbol, so, the thinking…er, feeling…goes, it should be sent to cultural Siberia. But the flag should remain—especially right now. This is precisely the opposite of the fashionable view,...

If seeing the new and diabolically repulsive ways the Islamic State commits murder with movie-studio quality production values doesn’t erode your sense of humanity as a basically “good” species, then you either don’t know what “good” is, or you’re hopelessly callow. I feel as if we’re living in the age of Tomás de Torquemada, where there is no Christopher Columbus to discover new worlds to conquer or flee the carnage, but there’s plenty of Youtube to promulgate the Inquisition and its horrors. ISIS used multiple camera angles, underwater videography, high production-value editing, studio lighting, and talented directors to produce the...

That didn’t take long. Earlier this month, in reference to the Department of Education’s $3.5 billion bailout for Corinthian College students, I observed at NRO, “What’s especially worrisome here is the frontal attack the administration is mounting on notions of students’ responsibility.” The fear was that sensible attention to student debt would change into an excuse for borrowers to default and stick taxpayers with the tab. That moment has already arrived. Just last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a report that found that co-signers have a rough time getting released from their promises to repay private student loans....

So some selfish little moron has blown away nine people in a church in South Carolina. And predictably every blood-dancer from Barack Obama to Stephen King has already gone on a crusade to blame the gun. Never mind that the murderer was such a sociopathic creep that he killed those innocents despite observing that they were nice to him in the hour he sat praying with them. Never mind that the murderer was a racist pig. Never mind that he was a criminal with an existing record (nature of which is so far unknown). We’re about to be plunged into...

Following last week’s shooting in Charleston, White House press secretary Josh Earnest implied during his daily press briefing that Americans don’t need to own weapons that aren’t used for hunting. “You don’t need an assault rifle to go hunting,” Earnest said. “It’s not part of your family heritage.” SNIP------------------------------------- For starters, I’m not sure Earnest understands what an assault rifle is. The term “assault rifle” is not a catch-all to describe any gun you think is scary; it actually has a very specific meaning. The term “assault rifle” is almost always used to describe a selective fire weapon designed for...

I saw an interesting headline at Weasel Zippers today. It dealt with a writer at Huffpo who has been on an interesting journey. Ali Michael went through a traumatic period in her youth where, as a white woman, she wanted to avoid the possibility of giving birth to white children who might biologically spread the contagion of white privilege. Her inspiration, of course, was Rachel Dolezal. I definitely experienced this. There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors… and my descendants. I remember...

With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods. Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies. There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story. Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic...