Free Republic

Somebody save Rand Paul from himself. At a time when champions for liberty are in short supply, someone has apparently convinced the original “wacko bird” that the road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue isn’t “stand with Rand,” but “where does Rand stand?” Because, you know, it worked so well for President Romney or something. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Ambitious Republican wants desperately to be president, so he begins what amounts to a nationwide pandering tour. To show he’s not like all those other “spiteful conservatives” that inhabit his party, he pre-emptively apologizes for what his base believes,...

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum dismissed Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s 2016 presidential ambitions, claiming “the Republican Party is not a libertarian party” and suggesting few GOP voters would be swayed by Paul’s small government message. Santorum swiped at the senator Monday during an appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire,” where he told left-wing host Van Jones that Republicans “need a positive agenda” to win in 2014 and 2016. “So positive agenda,” Jones replied. “Rand Paul, who now seems to be everywhere. He’s the frontrunner in your party. Do you agree with his ideas, are you going to support Rand Paul?”...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) admitted Friday it’s “difficult to turn the clock back” on ObamaCare, but proposed making the law voluntary as a possible fix for consumers. “I think it’s going to be difficult to turn the clock back. People get assumed and accustomed to receiving things, particularly things that they get for free,” he told a crowd of students at Harvard’s Institute of Politics on Friday. Paul’s comments echo those of other Republicans who have admitted it will be difficult to fully repeal the law after some of its more popular provisions took effect. The potential 2016 presidential candidate...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he believes some type of amnesty legislation could pass this year. Appearing at Harvard's Institute of Politics, Paul again said that he voted against the Senate's immigration bill because there were not enough visas for construction and farm workers and said he still thought "something could be passed this year" on immigration. Legislation has stalled after Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) blasted the House GOP leadership's "immigration principles" as amnesty. Paul then told the Harvard students that about 40% of illegal immigrants came to the country legally. Though many of these now...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) believes the country's illegal immigrants should be given work visas and be allowed to remain in the United States. The potential 2016 presidential contender spoke at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago on Tuesday and told David Axelrod, President Barack Obama's former top adviser who now heads the institute, that he did not vote for the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. He did not do so because it did not grant enough work visas in the agricultural and construction industries. The Congressional Budget Office determined that bill would lower the wages of American...

In 2013, freshmen senators Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) seemed like two peas in a pod. Both railed at the NSA, backed the government shutdown, opposed intervention in Syria and championed the tea party faithful. But 2014 has been a different story. Cruz has become a serious, vocal proponent of a tough foreign policy and harsh critic of President Obama’s approach to Iran and Russia. He gave serious speeches on the importance of standing up to Vladimir Putin and on the folly of expecting Iran to give away its nuclear weapons program without stringent sanctions and/or the threat...

Cliven Bundy's standoff with the BLM is over a paltry monthly grazing fee. But it's also over more - the idea of the public interest.Perhaps the most remarkable feature of American democracy is the magnificent estate of public land that it reserved from the very beginning for the use of all citizens, rich or poor. There is nothing like it in the democracies of Europe, which came into being with nations already carved up into private fiefdoms. The Great Idea that hundreds of millions of acres of forests, deserts, rivers and prairies should be owned by, and managed for, the...

Sen. Rand Paul says potential White House rival Jeb Bush was inarticulate when he described immigrants who come to the United States illegally as committing an "act of love." In an interview that aired Sunday, Paul said that those immigrants "are not bad people" but added the United States "can't invite the whole world" inside its borders....

Republicans, I come in peace.Until very recently, Rand Paul’s project of insinuating himself comfortably within the Republican Party, and positioning himself as a plausible presidential nominee, had gone along with remarkable ease. Yes, the author of his campaign book turned out to be an unreconstructed neo-Confederate. That was a speed bump. (Who among us has not entrusted the explication of his worldview to a man who has cheered on the assassination of President Lincoln?) Paul had staged a masterful piece of political theater with his marathon Senate speech denouncing the Obama administration’s drone policy. He has assembled a top-tier campaign...

Sen. Rand Paul claimed in 2009 that former Vice President Dick Cheney exploited the 9/11 attacks in order to lead the United States into war in Iraq to benefit military contractor Halliburton, where Cheney had been CEO before heading to Washington, a video unveiled by blog Mother Jones' writer David Corn shows. In the video unearthed of a speech given at Western Kentucky University, Paul argues that Cheney opposed the first Bush administration's plans but changed his mind over Halliburton, Corn reports. "He's being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and he says it would be...

Nothing surprising here but the quotes are oh so tasty. Including one that comes, secondhand, from Paul himself. Is that what the last month of Russia-bashing and Tomahawk-praising was all about? Is Rand … “evolving” on foreign policy? The [Republican Jewish Coalition] conference brings together some of the biggest names — and wallets — in Republican politics, most notably billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. At a private dinner for VIP donors in an Adelson-owned aircraft hangar holding one of his pair of Boeing 747s, Bush was asked about the growing isolationist wing of the Republican Party and replied there was...

With an eye on 2016, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton is stepping up his Super PAC game. The former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations raised over $800,000 in 2013 and is looking to make a big splash in the second quarter of this year when he'll announce endorsements. “We had a very, very good March,” Bolton said in an exclusive interview Monday, referring to fundraising numbers that still aren't public. “We've got criteria and we're evaluating candidates to support,” he added. The hawkish Bolton isn't exactly coy about where this is headed. “I don't rule...

THE COMMON wisdom holds that the GOP 2016 presidential race will boil down to a joust between the “establishment” and the “insurgents.” The former will allegedly be more moderate and the latter more conservative. Since most polls for two decades have shown that around two-thirds to 70 percent of self-described Republicans call themselves conservative, this elite narrative will focus on just how much the establishment candidate will need to be pulled to the right in order to fend off his insurgent challenger. And since the Tea Party has clearly become a vocal and powerful insurgent element in the GOP, the...

WASHINGTON, March 9, 2014 — The third and final day of CPAC brought everything full circle. Most of Radio Row leaves after Friday, and the vendors pack up early Saturday afternoon. Yet all is not quiet on the CPAC front. Two events conclude the event, one meaningful and one meaningless. The meaningful event is the keynote speech. In recent years, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have brought the crowd to its feet with rousing closing remarks. This year offered Sarah Palin as the grand finale. The meaningless event is the straw poll, won virtually every year by retired congressman and...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Darren Wolfe gave this presentation at the Citizens for Liberty meeting on August 20, 2013 near Norristown, Pennsylvania. Below are links to source material so readers can do their own research and come to their own conclusions. Many of the quotes used in the presentation are parts of essays or speeches that are well worth reading start to finish. This first series of quotes is from John Trenchard's 1697 book “An Argument Shewing, that a Standing Army is inconsistent with a Free Government, and absolutely destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy” (http://www.reformation.org/john-trenchard.pdf): And if we enquire how these...

In 2011, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nev.) went before a joint session of the Nevada State Legislature to call for “an adult conversation” about prostitution in the state. “Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment – not as the last place where prostitution is still legal,” he said in a speech delivered to the Nevada Legislature. “We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do,” Reid continued. “If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Thursday that the Obama administration will not be releasing any more information about the controversial use of drones to kill American citizens. Carney’s remarks, via the White House’s transcript of the off-camera press gaggle: “This is not an open-ended process. This is a specific and unique accommodation in this circumstance. The fact is, when it comes to public disclosure, we have been — not with the kind of attention that’s been given it this week — but we have been publicly discussing these matters at the highest levels of government for the...

Journalist Jeremy Scahill and filmmaker Oliver Stone believe that, on issues of civil liberties and warfare, President Obama has entirely abandoned his 2008 rhetoric. And they see MSNBC and stars like Bill Maher as the biggest cheerleaders for such abrogations. The two well-known men of the left appeared Saturday at the 2014 Students For Liberty Conference (ISFLC), on a panel entitled “Imperial Overreach and the National Security State,” sponsored by the libertarian Future of Freedom Foundation. They were joined by Stone’s co-author Peter Kuznick, with Newseum vice chairman Shelby Coffey moderating. While lamenting the “expanding warfare state” in America, both...

I realize that all presidential polls this far out from election day are hot garbage but there’s no way I’m missing an opportunity to troll my Huck-hating readership as golden as this one. Two words, my friends: Huckabee/Christie?Although Huck’s now technically the GOP frontrunner, he’s not the pol with the highest favorable rating among Republicans. That’d be Sarah Palin, who’s at 70/20 and has the highest numbers among both women and men. PPP didn’t offer her as an option in its presidential polling, presumably because they think she’s unlikely to run. Following the controversy over his ‘Uncle Sugar’ speech Mike...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Neal Boortz, subbing for Sean Hannity on his radio show on the day after Christmas, took the opportunity to unload a heap of libertarian wrath upon social conservatives, saying that Republicans will not win another election if they continue ”screaming and yelling about abortion, about gay rights, about prayer in school.” Boortz spat the words “social conservative Republicans” into the airwaves as he railed against (some unnamed) Republicans who, apparently “obsessed” with social issues, are running around the country raging against the forces trying to take prayer out of school. Boortz seemed particularly upset with Republicans who want to peer...