Free Republic

For years I’ve been sounding the alarm about an impending social, cultural, and spiritual crisis, and for years critics have compared me to Chicken Little, discounting my warnings as the ravings of a hysterical, religious fundamentalist. Well, it’s a little late for that now. Ten years ago, I charted this progression and made this prediction: · First, gay activists came out of the closet · Second, they demanded their “rights” · Third, they demanded that everyone recognize those “rights” · Fourth, they want to strip away the rights of those who oppose them · Fifth, they want to put those...

BRIDGEPORT -- A Moroccan national who allegedly plotted to turn a radio-controlled model airplane into a drone-like flying bomb and crash it into a school and a Connecticut federal building was arrested Monday by FBI agents. Wires and tools were found in the High Ridge Drive apartment where El Mehdi Semlali Fahti, 27, had been living since January with an individual he met while incarcerated in Virginia, according to the FBI. It was not known if any explosives were found. Fahti told an undercover agent in five recorded conversations that he studied the bomb attack operation for months, and had...

The genius of teaching the educated professional class to be “socially liberal, economically conservative” for the last 20 years was that the economically conservative part came for free during the Great Boom from 1983-2007.  When the economy looked good forever and everyone's 401(k) was increasing, the professional class could easily be persuaded to look down on -- and actually fear! -- the bigoted Religious Right and vote for Democrats. Candidate Obama's remark about bitter clingers captured the meme perfectly. But now that gay marriage is a fact and the junior inquisitors from the gay Holy Office have shifted from the...

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros hopes the U.S. goes to pot, and he is using his money to drive it there. With a cadre of like-minded, wealthy donors, Mr. Soros is dominating the pro-legalization side of the marijuana debate by funding grass-roots initiatives that begin in New York City and end up affecting local politics elsewhere. “The pro-legalization movement hasn’t come from a groundswell of the people. A great deal of its funding and fraud has been perpetrated by George Soros and then promoted by celebrities,” said John Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the future of the Republican Party depends on what the Republicans do to expand its appeal among Hispanic voters and show them that the GOP is not “just the party of deportation.” “I’ve been saying over and over that the Republican Party cannot win until it’s more diverse, until it looks like the rest of America,” he said. During a Tuesday symposium hosted by the Media Research Center (MRC) and the American Principles Project (APP), the Kentucky Republican and potential 2016 presidential candidate said that if the GOP wants to appeal to minority...

At the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin this weekend highlighted a video of Rand Paul speaking in 2012 about sanctions on Iran. In it, Paul disparages the notion of use of force, and for some reason claims the United States was partly to blame for World War II! “There are times when sanctions have made it worse. I mean, there are times .. leading up to World War II we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I, which may have encouraged them … some of...

“Maybe we can reach a point of reconsideration” on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Kerry said during a forum at the State Department. The Ugandan president committed to meeting with American “experts” on homosexuality to try to change his mind about the Anti-Homosexuality Act signed into law last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday during a forum at the State Department moderated by BuzzFeed. Museveni claimed to have signed the law, which imposes up to a lifetime prison sentence for homosexuality, after being convinced no one is “born gay.” “I talked personally to President Museveni just a few...

Chris has a gay son. He neglected to mention that when I met him at a business event the week before last, when we talked a little politics, when he invited me to join him and his buds for their weekly golf game. All was amicable on the golf course. As it turned out, two of the guys were fellow conservatives. And two others happened to be members of my church. But things got twisted when our two foursomes sat down for post-round libations and conversation. That’s because Chris, a social liberal, an Obama-loving Democrat, insisted on talking politics. And...

Via WaPo, compare and contrast. Here’s Mitch Daniels four years ago: Beyond the debt and the deficit, in Daniels’s telling, all other issues fade to comparative insignificance. He’s an agnostic on the science of global warming but says his views don’t matter. “I don’t know if the CO2 zealots are right,” he said. “But I don’t care, because we can’t afford to do what they want to do. Unless you want to go broke, in which case the world isn’t going to be any greener. Poor nations are never green.”And then, he says, the next president, whoever he is, “would...

When asked to relate the results of the Constitutional Convention of 1789 to a citizen as he left Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin is reported to have replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” As the annual Conservative Political Action Conference ended last weekend, one might reply similarly to an observer that the future of the GOP is bright, if we can keep it. In 1975, Ronald Reagan, not yet one of conservatives’ most beloved presidents, sat down with Reason magazine for an interview about his thoughts on the future direction of the GOP. “The basis of conservatism is a...

It was difficult to miss Ian Jacobson at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Known as Rooster, he was 33, with an ample beard, earrings and a towering orange-and-aqua spiked Mohawk haircut. But he also sported a pinstriped suit, French cuffs and a natty contrast collar. Mr. Jacobson’s sartorial contradictions matched those of his politics: He is among the young Republicans who are pro-free market on fiscal issues and libertarian on social ones. While his views represent a potential growth wing for a party that is losing among other demographic groups, they also show an emerging tension with the older social...

The use of heroin has risen over the past few years in the Hudson Valley. In part one of News 12's special report "Hooked on Heroin," Tara Rosenblum speaks with parents who have lost children to the drug. After Renee Hustins lost her son Benjamin to an overdose three months ago when he was 23, she met other parents who have lost children to heroin. The parents now all rely on each other for support. The parents Rosenblum spoke to all say they never would have expected their children to become addicted to heroin. Some of them also shared their...

There may be no way for the United States to reverse the Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. The Obama administration still has the opportunity to send a strong message to Russian President Vladimir Putin to punish Moscow for this aggression in response to the ouster of one of their stooge in Kiev by a popular uprising. Indeed, he would do well to listen to the advice of Senator Marco Rubio who outlined eight steps the U.S. should take in response to the crisis. But whether or not the president acts appropriately now, it’s probably too late to preserve the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)DENVER — Colorado welfare recipients are using ATMs located inside marijuana retail shops to withdraw cash. The money was given to them by taxpayers to help their families survive, but an exclusive Fox31 Denver investigation found some cash benefits most likely going toward marijuana purchases. FOX31 Denver asked the Colorado Department of Human Services for its “Quest card” database of Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cash transactions for the month of January, 2014. That is the first month in which Colorado marijuana dispensaries were regulated and open for recreational sales. The FOX31 Denver investigative team matched the addresses of EBT cash...

The permanent political class in D.C. won't listen. So, let's start putting our efforts behind good new candidates who will go to Washington not to line their pockets, but to help restore our country. It's time to put inspiration, ingenuity, and integrity over incumbency in the GOP.

Please enjoy my pithy posts from Facebook. They’re brilliant, or reasonably insightful, or at least not stupid in most cases. If a male politician found a sugar mommy to pay his way through school, and to accept and raise his children as her own without him, he wouldn't dare make heroic single daddy-hood the centerpiece of his identity and campaign. If he tried, the media would slaughter him. If he were a Republican, anyway. Liberals think people are too flawed to make it in life without paternalistic restraints and controls. Conservatives think people are too flawed to be trusted with...

It is Super Bowl week; Time for a football analogy to politics: The best defense is a good offense. Yep. Perhaps the most successful head-fake tactic of the left has been political correctness and I think that it is high time that we got our defense off the field and start throwing some play-action post routes of our own. The leftist playbook includes instructions to accuse the right of being cruelly unfair in response to every assertion of a conservative standard. Reducing taxes is to “fund the government on the backs of the poor.” Opposing Obama’s takeover of health care...

Mr. Norris, with Washington and Colorado recently legalizing pot smoking and their football teams (Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos) being in the Super Bowl, some have asked whether there is going to be added marijuana use during this year’s Super Bowl. And President Barack Obama recently said that he doesn’t think marijuana is as dangerous as alcohol. What do you think, Chuck? Is it? – “Trying to Make Sense of Sensimilla” in Seattle I understand the arguments for the legalization of marijuana: It can generate tax revenue. It can reduce illegal supply and demand. It can strip power from cartels...

From at least the time of the 1980’s, the Republican Party and the “conservative movement” have been dominated by, not conservatives, but neoconservatives. The so-called “libertarian” influence in the party is growing—and neoconservatives are none too pleased by it. Libertarians, neoconservatives assert, are “isolationists,” “naïve,” even sophomoric, idealists whose detachment from reality borders on being “unpatriotic,” for libertarians threaten to compromise national security, making citizen and soldier alike unsafe. After all, when his own country is in the midst of a protracted, bloody war, a person who uses his considerable influence to convince large numbers of Americans that their country...

A few times each month, a couple dozen House Republican lawmakers gather in a meeting room in a building adjacent to Capitol to discuss ideas and legislative proposals that focus on limited government, reducing the debt and maintaining individual rights. The group considers itself conservative with a libertarian emphasis. They call themselves the Liberty Caucus and believe that in order for the GOP to win more elections in the future, the party must begin embracing their libertarian-minded philosophy because voters are beginning to demand it, particularly in the wake of government data collection revelations that some believe infringe on privacy...