Free Republic

There’s a big battle brewing in the Jefferson County, Colorado, school system. The manufactured controversy over a proposed curriculum review is generating national New York Times headlines. But the fight is not about what misguided students and biased reporters say it’s about. “Censorship” is a red herring. The real issue is union control. Here’s the deal: Public school teachers in this Denver-area district walked out of their classrooms this week to protest the implementation of performance-based pay. The JeffCo school board approved the new compensation system last week, which rewards the most highly effective teachers with 4.2 percent raises, effective...

Fire From the Heartland,The Awakening of the Conservative Woman Fire From The Heartland Trailer - The first-ever film to tell the entire story of the conservative woman in her own words, "Fire from the Heartland" is a powerful statement about America at a crossroads and the women who have awakened to the crisis. With role models such as Clare Boothe Luce, Margaret Thatcher, and Phyllis Schlafly as inspiration, these women are the unintended consequence of the liberal feminist movement. Tracing the long history of the many conservative women who have been the backbone of this great nation, from the founding...

The most poisonous "-ism" now infecting Ferguson, Missouri, is not virulent racism. It's viral narcissism. Over the past two weeks, the impoverished St. Louis County suburb has become a magnet for self-absorbed publicity seekers of all colors and agendas. Perhaps the most repulsive species on display in Ferguson is the Journalisto Vanitatis. This breed of egotistical East-Coast reporters can be easily identified by its ever-present appendages: a smartphone and smart glasses. For the J.V., the story is all about "me, me, me!" Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly and Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery were among the first and most prominent...

The lofty motto of the Environmental Protection Agency is "protecting people and the environment." In practice, however, EPA bureaucrats faithfully protect their own people and preserve the government's cesspool of manipulation, cover-ups and cronyism. Just last week, Mark Levin and his vigilant Landmark Legal Foundation went to court to ask federal district judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA "for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages that may have helped document suspected agency efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election." The motion is part of a larger Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force EPA to...

Liberal groups already enjoy a tremendous structural advantage over conservative groups in terms of foundation support, bricks and mortars institutions and a steady pipeline of youngsters eager to shape mankind to their own image. There’s another often overlooked advantage enjoyed by the left: big law firms donating thousands and thousands of hours to help leftist causes far outside of the American mainstream. There is no counterpart donation of time and money for conservative causes. Big Law’s ideological “lawfare” completes the architecture for attacks on election integrity laws, springing free Al-Qaeda terrorists and even suing conservative new media pioneers like Andrew...

The American Dream is dying for tens of millions of unemployed, underemployed and long-term jobless citizens. But the White House has guaranteed that one sector of the U.S. economy will thrive for decades to come: Open-borders immigration lawyers. Don't believe the fibbing D.C. flacks. While the president's spokesman Josh Earnest promised that "most" of the illegal immigrant youths from Central America flooding across our borders will "likely" be deported, decades of reality expose the White House lie. Our deportation system is designed to fail.

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...

Panicked liberals and crony Republican elitists agree: Tom Tancredo would be bad for their Big Government and Big Business rackets. That’s exactly why I support him in Colorado’s June 24 GOP primary election for governor. A fear-mongering ad campaign by the left-wing group “ProgressNow,” which is funded by billionaire George Soros, hyperventilated last week that “Tancredo believes Obamacare is a scam.” Gasp! “Scam” is putting it politely, of course. Billions of dollars have been wasted on defunct and dysfunctional Obamacare health exchanges. Criminals, illegal aliens and con artists have been hired as “navigators” to sign up Obamacare enrollees (a.k.a. future...

In more cultured circles, Maureen Dowd is known as the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and columnist for the New York Times, who was once named woman of the year by Glamour and is regarded as one of the most influential left-leaning journalists in the country. On Twitter, she’s just another superparanoid stoner with a keyboard. Dowd’s half-baked odyssey began when she flew to Denver to immerse herself in some of the local culture. No, not hitting the slopes or visiting the rifle range. She had designs on getting high. You know, for one of her columns. So she went down to...

At least 40 American veterans are dead thanks to bureaucratic delays at Veterans Affairs clinics. But you wouldn't know it from VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki's bland and bloodless demeanor at a Senate hearing Thursday. He droned on like an apathetic office manager fielding complaints about the copier being jammed. Shinseki told the Senate panel he "can't remember" getting warnings from federal watchdogs last fall about ghost clinics and double-scheduling schemes. He said he was "not aware" of explosive book-cooking allegations like the ones at a Fort Collins, Colo., VA facility, where employees were ordered to make their records...

New York Times columnist David Brooks said Sunday that President Barack Obama has a “manhood problem” in the Middle East. “[L]et’s face it,” he said. “Obama, whether deservedly or not, does have a — I’ll say it crudely, but a manhood problem in the Middle East. Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like Assad, somebody like Putin?” “I think a lot of the rap is unfair, but certainly in the Middle East, there’s an assumption that he’s not tough,” Brooks added during a roundtable discussion on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Has Nancy Pelosi seen a newspaper lately? (Pro tip, hon: Like the Obamacare monstrosity, you have to read it to find out what's in it.) I'd love to see her face in the wake of the veritable epidemic of Democratic corruption now sweeping the country. Pelosi's blink count must be off the charts. I'm going to make it easy on Pelosi and put all of the latest cases in one handy rogue's gallery reference list. But let's not be naive. It's clear to me that the Barack Obama/Eric Holder DOJ is clearing the decks before the midterms. Prediction: The FBI's...

Attention, class: A Common Core mouthpiece wants to rap my knuckles with his Gates Foundation-funded ruler. In response to my column two weeks ago about the marketing overlords pushing the Fed Ed racket, Chad Colby of Achieve Inc. demanded corrections. Let's go to school. "I wanted to take a moment to highlight two points that were incorrect regarding Achieve," Colby complained. "Contrary to Ms. Malkin's assertion, Achieve employs no lobbyists and we never have." No? Never? Someone didn't do his homework. Mr. Colby, meet Patricia Sullivan. She's the founding executive director of Achieve and a career lobbyist who has bounced...

On August 20, I endorsed Christine O’Donnell for the Delaware Senate GOP primary race. As I said on Sean Hannity’s TV show last week in repeating that endorsement, she is certainly far from perfect (who is?). But I think nine terms are enough for duck-and-hide, cap-and-tax liberal Republican Mike Castle — and it looks like GOP primary voters in Delaware are coming to the same conclusion as the primary looms tomorrow. I repeat: Entrenched incumbency is not an argument for more entrenched incumbency. Castle’s campaign questions O’Donnell’s trustworthiness. GOP primary voters need to question Castle’s. He was just one of...

Unions are funding Republican groups to help push through amnesty for illegal immigrants. What do George Soros, labor unions, and money-grubbing former GOP representative Steven LaTourette all have in common? They’re control freaks. They’re power hounds. They’re united against tea-party conservatives. And they have all operated under the umbrella of D.C. groups masquerading as “Main Street” Republicans. LaTourette heads up the so-called Main Street Partnership, which claims to represent “thoughtful,” “pragmatic,” “commonsense,” and “centrist” Republican leadership. Reality check: The pro-bailout, pro-debt, pro-amnesty, anti-drilling group founded by former liberal GOP representative Amory Houghton of New York includes three liberal Senate Republicans...

Has Nancy Pelosi seen a newspaper lately? (Pro tip, hon: As with the Obamacare monstrosity, you have to read it to find out what’s in it.) I’d love to see her face in the wake of the veritable epidemic of Democratic corruption now sweeping the country. Pelosi’s blink count must be off the charts. to make it easy on Pelosi and put all of the latest cases in one handy rogues’-gallery reference list. But let’s not be naïve. It’s clear to me that the Barack Obama/Eric Holder DOJ is clearing the decks before the midterms. Prediction: The FBI’s GOP corruption...

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...

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...

Not so fast, Andrew Cuomo. We see what you did there. After publicly bashing conservative New Yorkers as "extreme" people who have no place in his state, the intolerant Democratic governor wants to blame the media for his unmistakable contempt for those who oppose abortion, support gun rights and defend traditional marriage. Newsflash: Crapweasel politicians can backtrack and scapegoat, but they can't hide. When he railed against socially conservative Republican candidates in a radio interview last week, Cuomo hyperbolically singled out those he called "right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay" citizens. Sounding unapologetically purge-tastic, the governor said these political opponents "have no place...

Conservative journalist and author Michelle Malkin is speaking out in support of Tamera Mowry, the former child star who said last week that she was subjected to hurtful racism online because she has a white husband. Mowry, who starred along with her identical twin on the '90s sitcom "Sister, Sister," is biracial and married Fox News correspondent Adam Housley in 2011. Speaking Friday on an episode of the OWN network's "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" the 35-year-old said she was shocked by some of the comments she read about her relationship online. "I get called 'white man's whore,'" she said...