Free Republic

  John Roberts is a liar. Acting as Obama's champion for the second time, The Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare. From the ruling: The argument that the phrase “established by the State” would be superfluous if Congress meant to extend tax credits to both State and Federal Exchanges is unpersuasive. This Court’s “preference for avoiding surplusage constructions is not absolute.” Lamie v. United States Trustee , 540 U. S. 526, 536. And rigorous application of thatcanon does not seem a particularly useful guide to a fair constructionof the Affordable Care Act, which contains more than a few examples of...

On the same day that Bobby Jindal announced he's running for president, The Washington Post published an article implicitly questioning why the Louisiana governor indentifies more as an American than an Indian American. Jindal's parents were born and raised in India before immigrating to the United States. "Yet many see him as a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots," Annie Gowen and Tyler Bridges reported from Khanpur, India. The article was reminiscent of Mark Halperin's interview of presidential candidate Ted Cruz in May. Halperin, of Bloomberg Politics, asked Cruz a series of questions seeking...

As our own Rick Moran reported yesterday, liberal media have used a new study by the New America Foundation to pretend that white Americans pose a bigger threat to national security than Muslim radicals. Rick explains that this conclusion can’t be drawn from the report at all: it’s only possible to say so when one ignores the failed terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists. If those are included, Islamists are far more dangerous than “white Americans.” However, that didn’t stop Mediaite from publishing an article blasting white Americans (as I wrote two days ago, white self-hate is now officially politically correct)....

NBC News is reporting that white people are the "biggest terror threat in the U.S." citing a study. Oddly, despite the headline, "White Americans Are Biggest Terror Threat in U.S.: Study," in the text of their quick article, NBC, does not actually say that white people are the biggest terror threat. Instead, NBC's article reads, "The New America Foundation found that twice as many people have died in attacks by right-wing groups in America than by Muslim extremists since 9/11." ...Besides the obvious problems with NBC's clickbait headline, there other tremendous problems with the "study." First, it specifically excludes September...

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself on the receiving end of a politically correct firestorm after speaking on race issues at a church in Florissant, Mo., near Ferguson. What caused the outcry? Three words: all lives matter.What do you think? While speaking at the United Church of Christ, Hillary said:What do you think? The truth is equality, opportunity, civil rights in America are still far from where they need to be. Our schools are still segregated. In fact more segregated than they were in the 1960s. Nearly 6 million young Americans between the ages of 16 and 24...

Lee Bright, a local lawmaker who is serving as the South Carolina co-chair for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), compared the calls to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol building in his home state to a "Stalinist purge." According to a spokesperson for Cruz, those comments don't conflict with the candidate's position on the issue. "What Senator Cruz has said is that this is an issue for the state of South Carolina and South Carolinians to sort out and I think that's what you're watching happen," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler said in a conversation with...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Medical marijuana has not been proven to work for many illnesses that state laws have approved it for, according to the first comprehensive analysis of research on its potential benefits. The strongest evidence is for chronic pain and for muscle stiffness in multiple sclerosis, according to the review, which evaluated 79 studies involving more than 6,000 patients. Evidence was weak for many other conditions, including anxiety, sleep disorders, and Tourette's syndrome and the authors recommend more research.

Medical marijuana has not been proven to work for many illnesses that state laws have approved it for, according to the first comprehensive analysis of research on its potential benefits. The strongest evidence is for chronic pain and for muscle stiffness in multiple sclerosis, according to the review, which evaluated 79 studies involving more than 6,000 patients. Evidence was weak for many other conditions, including anxiety, sleep disorders, and Tourette's syndrome and the authors recommend more research.

It’s unclear if the Clinton-Gore Confederate flag campaign button that has been prominent on social media was an official part of their 1992 presidential campaign. And Hillary Clinton isn’t clarifying, nor is her team responding to questions about her husband honoring the flag as Arkansas governor in 1987. TheBlaze left phone and email messages with the Clinton campaign Monday inquiring whether the button, and other similar designs sold on eBay, was part of the official campaign of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. TheBlaze also asked if the former Arkansas first lady opposed now or opposed then an act signed...

While some 2016 White House contenders are debating the propriety of the Confederate flag flying at the South Carolina state house, there's one candidate who won't join the fray. Speaking to NBC's Face the Nation Sunday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he won't become part of the argument because he believes it has nothing to do with running for president. "Everyone is being baited with this question as if somehow that has anything to do whatsoever with running for president, and my position is it most certainly does not," the Arkansas Republican told host Chuck Todd Sunday. "People want...

No actor or actress can match Meryl Streep’s 19 Academy Award nominations, and only Katharine Hepburn has bested her three Oscars for acting. So maybe it’s conceivable that Streep’s letter Tuesday to each member of Congress can somehow revive the Equal Rights Amendment, politically dormant since its high-water mark four decades ago. “I am writing to ask you to stand up for equality—for your mother, your daughter, your sister, your wife or yourself—by actively supporting the Equal Rights Amendment,” Streep writes. Each packet includes a copy of “Equal Means Equal,” a book by Jessica Neuwirth, president of the ERA Coalition....

Washington (CNN)—The first black Republican woman elected to Congress is returning $1,000 in donations from Earl Holt, the alleged white supremacist whose writings have reportedly inspired Charleston shooter Dylann Roof. A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mia Love said Monday that she would be returning the three donations Holt made to her campaign immediately, after being contacted by CNN. Love made history last November when Utah residents selected her as the first black Republican woman to serve in Congress. Holt, who is president Council of Conservative Citizens, donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum...

Chuck Todd aired a racist video featuring all black shooters on Meet The Press, and in the face of a mounting public backlash refused to apologize. Before the video aired, Todd tried to deflect away the obvious problem with what he was about to air, “The circumstances you are about to see are very different from the racist violence in Charleston. In this case, the inmates are African American that you’re going to hear from. But their lessons remain important. We simply ask you to look at this be a colorblind issue, as about just simply gun violence. If the...

"The Values Voter Summit, a four-day orgy of people fundamentally opposed to orgies" (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Stephen Colbert ripped into the ninth annual Values Voter Summit, last night on “The Colbert Report.” Very few were spared. ”There were so many great speakers,” Colbert said. “Also Sarah Palin.” But the speeches were just part of the Values Voter Summit. It also holds the first large straw poll for presidential candidates....

The New York Times totally threw shade at Bill and Hillary Clinton's son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky. Matt Goldstein and Steve Eder wrote an article in The New York Times suggesting that Mezvinsky —who is married to Chelsea Clinton —had been able to gain access to investors with ties to the Clintons for the hedge fund he cofounded that has had "underwhelming returns."About a month ago, The Wall Street Journal published a report about the fund's underperformance since its inception. The Times' report focuses primarily on Mezvinsky and his role in fund-raising and strategizing for the fund. Back in 2011, Mezvinsky, now...

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) discussed the fatal shooting of nine parishioners inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC and blamed the shooting on a “right-wing drift in the country” that has “gone too far.”

Witnesses say the white gunman who killed nine people at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., was quite vocal about his motives: He wanted to kill black people. Sylvia Johnson, whose cousin the Rev. Clementa Pinckney was one of three ministers killed in the church, said a survivor of the horror told her the shooter muttered, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." In Charleston, a slaughter in the sanctuary In Charleston, a slaughter in the sanctuary Facebook photos and other evidence suggest...

Why the senator’s brand of foreign policy is dangerous. The Republican Party is divided on foreign policy. There are “interventionists” like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who want America to more aggressively wage war—either directly or via proxies—in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and beyond. And there are “isolationists” like Rand Paul who worry that if America tries to fix the world’s problems through the barrel of a gun, we’ll become a bankrupt empire rather than a prosperous republic. Then there’s Ted Cruz, who unites both factions by embodying the worst of each. Take Cruz’s position on ISIS. Like McCain...

From immigration and the “Latino registration machine” to the GOP’s apparent inability to recognize the racial aspects of the Charleston church shooting, Real Time host Bill Maher had a field day with his panelists on Friday night’s show. Yet it’s the “Overtime” segment’s extra nuggets that made for some of the most WTF-worthy viewing, especially for this reaction from MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Of all the possible conversation topics, what could have triggered such a reaction from Reid? Oh nothing, really — just guest Ann Coulter‘s funny-but-serious answer to Maher’s question about “which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning...

WASHINGTON — In February 2008, an aide sent a news article to Vice President Dick Cheney reporting that former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell might vote for a Democrat for president. Sections were highlighted in yellow, and someone had circled a quotation from Mr. Powell in which he said America had lost “a lot” of prestige around the world. Mr. Cheney recorded no reaction, but one can imagine some consternation at what the vice president presumably deemed disloyalty to the administration that both of them had served. Mr. Powell had been the vice president’s chief internal adversary during President...