Free Republic

How do you spell "sidesplitting chutzpah"? In New York's 22nd congressional district, it's spelled: R-I-C-H-A-R-D H-A-N-N-A. He's the liberal GOP incumbent trying to cling to public office by smearing the Marine mom, small-business owner, lawyer and conservative state assemblywoman poised to take his seat next week. Claudia Tenney is as rock-solid of a Republican as they come: pro-life, pro-limited government, pro-Second Amendment, pro-entrepreneur, pro-American worker. As one of New York's top conservative legislators, Tenney has been unafraid to challenge the powers that be in both political parties. As an attorney, she has fought valiantly against cronyism and corruption. She has...

They don't care." As Obama administration officials pivot like haywire jewelry-box ballerinas to divert attention away from the nationwide Veterans Affairs disgrace, a reader who has been fighting the system urged me to urge Capitol Hill and the American public to stay focused. This former Special Forces soldier and medic served his country for 25 years. He worked in the health care field managing military field medical clinics. "I know how health care is supposed to run, even in austere or low-budget environments," he says. And in his nightmarish, ongoing experience, the VA is an epic, deadly, monstrous failure. He...

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but Michelle Malkin no longer appears on Foxnews. I've also noticed that the emails I get from her no longer have links to any videos of her appearing anywhere on TV. Has something happened to drive her off the air, sort to speak? I've noticed that this all began last year around the October time frame. I'm concerned because I loved watching her and now, poof, she's gone. I'll sit back and see what you all have to say. Thanks.

June 17, 2014 Stay focused: One VA victim’s plea Michelle Malkin ‘They don’t care.” As Obama administration officials pivot like haywire jewelry-box ballerinas to divert attention away from the nationwide Veterans Affairs disgrace, a reader who has been fighting the system urged me to urge Capitol Hill and the American public to stay focused. This former Special Forces soldier and medic served his country for 25 years. He worked in the health-care field managing military field medical clinics. “I know how health care is supposed run, even in austere or low-budget environments,” he says. And in his nightmarish, ongoing experience,...

Five years ago, I publicly raised questions about Bowe Bergdahl’s desertion from Blackfoot Company, 1-501 Infantry (Airborne), 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division.A few weeks after his so-called “capture” in late June 2009, three conflicting accounts had surfaced: U.S. officials told the Associated Press Bergdahl had “walked off” the base with three Afghans; the Taliban claimed on its website that “a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison” and into their arms; and Bergdahl claimed in his Taliban “hostage video” that he had “lagged behind a patrol” before being captured.I asked on my blog: Were the...

My prayers are with the family of Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier seen on the Taliban abduction video released this weekend. The Jawa Report has the full clip. All Americans should hope and pray for his release from jihadi custody. There’s one question I have, though, about strange details initially reported on the case — details which have been deleted from later wire dispatches.

Like millions of other American parents, my husband and I received a warning letter from the BMI police last week. Our active, healthy 8th-grade daughter is "very lean," according to her school-administered "Fitnessgram." The national student body monitors think this is a public health problem. The obesity report card lectured that because our daughter's body-mass index is "very low," we "should make certain" that she "is eating a healthy diet that includes the appropriate number of calories." Thanks, geniuses. We had no idea such measurements were taking place, and we wondered whether we were alone in objecting to this unsolicited...

A bunch of aggrieved women led by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg launched a high-profile "public service campaign" this week to "ban" the word "bossy." Sandberg, Beyonce, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham and first lady Michelle Obama have joined femme forces to combat this phantom menace. In their rarefied world, it's a "very negative experience" and a crippling act of gender discrimination to be called bossy. "This isn't a word we should use," Sandberg complained on National Public Radio. To which I say: Oh, buck up. The key to female empowerment doesn't lie with wheedling word police. It lies with girls and...

A government that fails to secure its borders is guilty of dereliction of duty. A government that fails to care for our men and women on the front lines is guilty of malpractice. A government that puts the needs of illegal aliens above U.S. veterans for political gain should be prosecuted for criminal neglect bordering on treason. Compare, contrast, and weep: In Sacramento, Calif., lawmakers are moving forward with a budget-busting plan to extend government-funded health insurance to at least 1.5 million illegal aliens. In Los Angeles, federal bureaucrats callously canceled an estimated 40,000 diagnostic tests and treatments for American...

All politics is local. So Republican politicians with national ambitions better pay attention to what grassroots parents are saying and doing about the federal education racket known as Common Core. In bellwether Indiana this week, anti-Common Core activists won a pair of pivotal electoral victories against GOP Gov. Mike Pence. Pence’s attempt to mollify critics by rebranding and repackaging shoddy Common Core standards is fooling no one. Tuesday’s Republican primary elections in the Hoosier state resulted in the landslide defeat of two establishment incumbents running for statewide re-election. Pence had endorsed GOP State Rep. Kathy Heuer over challenger Christopher Judy....

When Obamacare operatives aren't busy trashing the private health insurance market and squandering billions on useless technology, they're busy ... being idle. File the latest example of government health care profligacy under "Caution: Your tax dollars not at work." According to at least one Obamacare paper-pusher, employees at an application-processing center in Wentzville, Mo., are getting paid to sit around and do nothing. Investigative reporter Chris Nagus of the St. Louis television station KMOV News 4 spoke to the whistleblower. "They want to hire more people even though we still don't have work to keep the people that we have...

Hollywood is sick, sick, sick. Behind its curtain of holier-than-thou progressivism, the entertainment world's top A-list stars have engaged in the most depraved sexual abuse against vulnerable children and teens, according to a growing number of victims. After years of cover-up, the institutional scandal is exploding. Finally. The latest alleged atrocities involve "X-Men" director Bryan Singer and at least three other power players in the business: veteran television executive Garth Ancier, former Disney executive David Neuman and producer Gary Goddard. Last month, former child actor and model Michael Egan filed civil suits against the men, alleging that they passed around...

This weekend on “Fox News Sunday,” anchor Chris Wallace credited his guest, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, with leading the nation as the “first state to fall out of the Common Core national education standards.” If only it were true. Wallace didn’t do his homework. And presidential aspirant Pence was too busy daydreaming about 2016 to correct him. Reality check: Last week, Pence faced the anger of hundreds of Indiana parents, educators and activists at a public Indiana Business Roundtable meeting to discuss his phony charade. The protesters openly booed Pence’s derision of critics as out-of-staters and elitists. They roared...

The Obama administration doesn’t have watchdogs. It has whitewash puppies. The president’s Chicago bullies have defanged true advocates for integrity in government in D.C. from day one. So the latest report by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Operations Committee on corruptocrat Charles K. Edwards, the former Department of Homeland Security inspector general, isn’t a revelation. It’s confirmation. Investigators found that Edwards compromised the independence of his office by socializing and sucking up to senior DHS officials. “There are many blessings to be thankful for this year,” the sycophantic Edwards wrote to the DHS acting counsel on Thanksgiving 2011, “but...

Zeituni Onyango, President Obama's illegal alien aunt, died this week of cancer and other complications. I hope she rests in peace. America, however, should be up in arms. Auntie Zeituni is an enduring symbol of all that is wrong with this country's immigration "policy" -- or rather, its complete lack of a coherent, enforceable system of laws and rules that puts the national interest first. She was a beneficiary of the welfare state run amok, enabled by bipartisan fecklessness. To the bitter end, she bit the hand that fed her with predictable ingratitude and metastatic entitlement. Zeituni's 14-year illegal overstay...

I have created a new species designation for the female Democrats who play hypocritical gender politics on behalf of Barack Obama. They're genderhawks. You remember the term "chickenhawk," don't you? During the Bush years, anti-war activists and journalists hurled the ad hominem epithet at anyone who supported military action against our enemies but hadn't personally served. I say let's give 'em a dose of their own tactical medicine. Genderhawks are feminist chickenhawks. They demand "equal pay" for women, practice militant identity politics based on chromosomes and purport to wage an all-out government war on gender inequity. Yet, they personally refuse...

Our great friend and Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin, offers a powerful testimony today in her column on marijuana legalization — and a surprisingly personal perspective. Sure, we all have fun with jokes at Colorado’s experiment with recreational approval, but the access it creates does more than just serve as easy access to intoxication. Michelle found herself in one of the pot shops that have opened to serve demand that comes from more than just fun and games, hoping to find help for her mother-in-law: It’s 9 a.m. on a weekday, and I’m at the Marisol Therapeutics pot shop. This is...

Back in September, our family received an Obamacare-induced health insurance death notice. We joined millions of other Americans whose individual market health plans died after Democrats lied about our ability to keep the plans and doctors we liked. President Obama tried to "fix" the mess he created. But as usual, the federal government's solutions have made things even worse. Confusion and chaos reign not just in our household, but across the country. As I reported last fall, our letter from Anthem BlueCross BlueShield of Colorado informed us that we could no longer keep our high-deductible PPO plan with a wide...

I need to pick someone's brain on a Firefox question and on what happened to Michelle Malkin. First, I can't keep Firefox from automatically updating. I have tried everything I can find on the Internet about ensuring Firefox doesn't automatically. I have version 24 and 25 and I don't want to update any further, but no matter what I try it still continues to do so. I've told Firefox not to update under the Tools/Options/Advanced/Update tab. I deleted the Maintenance Service. I've gone into about:config and deleted the update URL. AND NOTHING WORKS!!!!!! Anyone else out there got any ideas?...

Michelle Malkin doesn’t run away from fights, she runs toward them. And she’s running faster than ever headlong into the 2014 Republican primary battles on behalf of upstart conservative candidates who are mounting insurgent challenges to the GOP old guard. Twitter is Malkin’s weapon of choice. Battles with her almost always devolve into wars, and those who follow the conservative social media scene know she has a proven formula online: Taunting quips from foes bring out the full force of her Twitter arsenal, with snappy replies, catchy hashtags and the mobilization of a legion of energized followers. Malkin, 43, says...