Free Republic

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who stirred up controversy after saying that there can be "thousands of exceptions" to a ban on abortion, has clarified that he is still a pro-life politician."What I would say is that there are thousands of exceptions," Paul told CNN on Tuesday."You know, I'm a physician and every individual case is going to be different and everything's going to be particular to that individual case and what's going on with that mother and the medical circumstances of that mother," he stated.The senator has introduced a "Life at Conception Act," which upholds traditional religious beliefs that human life...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) thinks there’s still hope for immigration reform this year, but only if Democrats are willing to negotiate. “People have to acknowledge that the Democrats, if they want it passed, have to make more of a compromise,” he said in a talk to students at Harvard's Institute of Politics on Friday. Paul envisions that compromise as some sort of legal status — “status and a place for people here so that they can come out of the shadows, let them begin paying taxes, let them not be locked up and having them run from the authorities,” he...

Whenever I find clever political humor, I like to share with readers. And because I’m confident in the superiority of liberty over statism, I’m even amused when I find jokes that target my libertarian philosophy. After all, only dour people are unable to laugh at themselves. Indeed, I’m actually disappointed that I rarely find any good jokes about advocates of small government. I haven’t found any good anti-libertarian humor since this cartoon last January. I can gladly report, though, that the drought has ended. Writing for The New Yorker, Tom O’Donnell has some fun at the expense of libertarians. He...

I have wondered about Beck for a while, but loved his exposure of the communist network in the US. Since he left FOX...he seems to have changed...and the immediate disregard to the Bundy situation really made me sick. Beck didn't even give the guy the benefit of the doubt and touted the NYT version. I know he has risen to fame since 2001, ghost written several books, had rallies, etc....but to have a network, now? A base in NY....a major website (so buggy and full of cookies it puts me off). Does anyone else find this strange? And claims to...

Republicans are still months away from kicking off the presidential race – and that's a good thing for front-runners like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who could use the extra time to hone their messaging. In four years, the Kentucky leader has won over plenty of fans for his solid record on a whole range of issues, including life. But today, it isn't his record that's concerning people – it's his rhetoric. Wednesday, in a sit-down with former Obama insider David Axelrod, Sen. Paul surprised a lot of conservatives with his nonchalant attitude on abortion and his role in ending it....

Polling numbers and political maneuverings are increasingly confirming what I first reported months ago. The tea party movement is no longer the large dominant force in the GOP that it was in 2010 or even 2012. But just because the "tea" might be a bit weaker, Republicans hoping to hang on to their elected positions or who seek to claim elected office need to understand that the political atmosphere might still be lightening up. In the South, which has been the hotbed for the tea party cause, many big contested GOP nominations that were expected to go to candidates "they"...

Businessman Curt Clawson won the Republican nomination for U.S. House in Florida's 19th district Tuesday, a giant step toward becoming a member of Congress in the heavily conservative district. Clawson, who loaned his campaign nearly $2.7 million of his own money through early April, defeated three other candidates in a special primary election: State Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benacquisto, businessman Michael Dreikorn and former state representative Paige Kreegel.

Casual marijuana use may come with some not-so-casual side effects. For the first time ever, researchers at Northwestern University have analyzed the relationship between casual use of marijuana and brain changes—and found that young adults who used cannabis just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important brain structures. The study’s findings, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, are similar to those of past research linking chronic, long-term marijuana use with mental illness and changes in brain development. …

The oil-services company Halliburton is an old obsession of the anti-Bush Left, and evidently of Kentucky senator Rand Paul. The libertarian standard-bearer and almost-certain Republican presidential candidate suggested to audiences a few years ago that Vice President Dick Cheney’s views on the Iraq War were influenced by his time as CEO at Halliburton. Cheney had opposed going into Iraq during the Persian Gulf War under the first President George Bush; then, after a stint at Halliburton, he supported going into Iraq under the second President Bush. Q.E.D. Asked about the Halliburton charge on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Paul...

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...