Free Republic

"Combat Effectiveness" Being Degraded by Obama's Military Policies By evaluating an overwhelming amount of evidence that has been building for 6 ½ years, the obvious conclusion personnel with extensive military experience will come to, is that Obama’s military policies have been degrading the finest US military fighting force in history. Over the last 6 ½ years, the US Armed Forces has been hollowed out by Obama, his Social Experiment On Diversity has severely fractured unit cohesiveness, his “Politically Correct Policies” have negatively affected unit morale, and the “Combat Effectiveness” of the US military is being degraded. Tip of the spear...

President Barack Obama on Sunday night will deliver a rare Oval Office address about terror threats in the aftermath of the San Bernardino, California, shootings that claimed 14 lives. CNN and other networks will broadcast it live at 8 p.m. ET. The White House says the president will provide an update on the investigation. Federal authorities have said the attacks are being investigated as an act of terrorism. "The President will also discuss the broader threat of terrorism, including the nature of the threat, how it has evolved, and how we will defeat it," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest...

...in a demonstration of how bizarre modern American politics really are, these two nearly identical shootings [religious terrorism] somehow are seen as entirely different in the context of partisan politics.... The FBI has announced that it's investigating the San Bernardino shooting as a terrorist incident. Newly uncovered evidence suggests that Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik had a religious terrorism motive behind their massacre at Farook's own holiday office party at the Inland Regional Center on Wednesday. While witnesses say Farook left the party, possibly in a tiff, and returned with his wife to shoot the place up, killing 14...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Friday vowed to protect the gun rights of Americans as he made a campaign stop at an Iowa shooting range. "It's these constitutional rights that keep us safe," Cruz said. "You don't stop bad guys by taking away our guns. You stop bad guys by using our guns." "When I'm elected president," Cruz began to say to laughter and clapping, labeling it as a "Freudian slip," "we will change the policy so that we will allow every service man and woman to keep and bear arms to protect themselves." The Republican presidential candidate used the...

Lots of celebrating by Trump fans and despairing by Trump critics on social media today over this poll. It’s December, notes Philip Klein, and this guy’s now fully 20 points ahead nationally. And not only does he have a big lead, his lead’s gotten bigger: He’s up nine points since CNN last surveyed the country, thanks mainly to the decline of Ben Carson and Jeb Bush. His overall average in RCP’s tracker has now reached a new high of 30.8 percent. Trump critics have been sitting in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, i.e. Trump’s supposedly inevitable slide...

Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump has not faded in the fall, as Republican professionals hoped, but has his biggest lead yet and support from more than a third of GOP voters, according to a CNN/ORC poll released just 58 days before the Iowa presidential caucuses. Trump has 36 percent support, 9 percent higher than he had in October more than double the 16 percent backing for ultraconservative Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, his closest competitor. In particular, Trump is a runaway choice of GOP voters surveyed who do not have college degrees, his support rising above 40 percent. Ben Carson...

Hillary Clinton's campaign is emboldened by the rise of national security as an issue in the presidential race. The threat from international terrorism has become a huge issue since last month's deadly attacks on Paris that killed 130 people, with fears of terrorist attacks in the United States fanned further by Wednesday's mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., where 14 people were killed. Team Clinton has noted the shift in the public mood, and Clinton has sought to underline her national security credentials - a point she emphasized at the Democratic debate held the day after the Paris attacks. "Clearly...

Two Republican senators are demanding that the Obama administration hand over the immigration history of the alleged attackers in Wednesday's shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., that killed 14 people. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is running for president, and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Thursday sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and Secretary of State John Kerry asking for the history of Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, who were killed during a shootout with police. "In our struggle against terrorism, we are dealing with an enemy that has shown it...

Filmmakers sometimes hit the exact correct symbol to represent an idea.That's true of John Ford in the final scene of his masterpiece, The Searchers. Ethan Edwards, frontiersman and Civil War veteran, has succeeded in his years-long quest to rescue a young girl kidnapped by Indians and return her home. He brings her to the cabin, the family fusses over her, and all of them rush inside... All except Edwards, who remains alone, framed by the open door. With an almost childlike gesture,one arm gripping the other at the elbow,he turns away as the door,as if by the hand of God,is...

In the wake of the attack by Islamist terrorists - jihadis as they call themselves - on the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California demonstrated once again the existential threat Obama's open borders policy holds for America and the idea of constitutional liberty. But as Senator Jeff Sessions pointed out in comments emailed to CHQ and a news release posted earlier this week, unless GOP leaders in Congress—the party controls both chambers, the House and the Senate—do Sen. Jeff Sessionssomething to pull back on Obama's "blank checks" for potentially-ISIS-connected Syrian refugees and other potential terrorists, there's no way to...

When the Redlands Tea Party Patriots objected to the resettling of Syrian Muslim migrants in their community, CAIR accused them of "paranoia and phobia is rooted in a combination of ignorance and bigotry." But "paranoia and phobia" are the modern condition that the free world has found itself living in. Islamic terrorism can strike anytime and anywhere from a Paris concert hall to a San Bernardino County facility where disabled children were being helped. It's ignorance to ignore that and bigotry to defend it. "What will be done to ensure the safety of our community? Our biggest concern is the...

Texas on Wednesday sued the Obama administration and an organization that resettles refugees over plans to bring six Syrian refugees to the state later this week. In a filing, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission accused the two of violating federal law with its plans to bring the family to Dallas on Friday. The state asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to block the resettlement and to order the defendants to "comply with their statutory and contractual duties to the state." Instead of working with the state to resettle refugees, as the law declares,...

The Syrian refugee crisis is the only issue many people in the media are talking about today, and many on social media are crying, "If you don't let the terrorist in, the terrorists win."But does the United States really have a refugee crisis, or has the Obama administration created this controversy? Over the past 100 years, America has often served as the watchdog for freedom in the world, but is acting as the world's police officer really the right course of action in these troubled times, or are we too unstable ourselves? How can we help others if we can't...

Two top Republican senators have written directly to Secretary of State John Kerry and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about possible leaks from their departments on the review of Hillary Clinton’s emails that left the wrong impression that two “Top Secret” messages were not that sensitive. Fox News has confirmed the letter was sent by Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who heads the powerful Intelligence Committee, on November 13. Copies were sent to the intelligence community and State Department watchdogs, known as the Inspectors General. The IGs were asked...

onald Trump sided with Marco Rubio over Ted Cruz in a debate over U.S. government surveillance, saying he would "err on the side of security." The Republican presidential front-runner on Tuesday told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would support the reauthorization of U.S. bulk collection and storage of phone metadata. "I assume that when I pick up my telephone, people are listening to my conversations anyway, if you want to know the truth. It's pretty sad commentary," Trump said. "But I err on the side of security." The National Security Agency on Sunday ended its bulk phone metadata collection,...

They connect via online services — especially Twitter — and in everyday life. Their ages range from 15 to 47, and their roles range from cheering attacks to plotting violence. And curbing their growth is a dynamic challenge without a simple solution: There are currently 900 active investigations into ISIS sympathizers in every American state. Those are some of the findings of a new study that glimpses life "inside the bubble of American ISIS sympathizers, a diverse and diffuse scene that the FBI estimates include hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals." Titled "ISIS in America: From Retweets to Raqqa," the...

The best part is when she asks the obvious follow-up -- is a path to legalization "amnesty"? -- and he won't even make eye contact. There's a spectrum of answers to this question on the right, of course: 1. Amnesty is citizenship without preconditions. That's the strictest definition, and naturally the one preferred by Beltway Republicans like Marco Rubio in his Gang of Eight days. (Marco Rubio circa 2010 had a different view.) As long as you're forcing illegals to jump through some sort of hoop, be it learning English, paying back taxes, going to the back of the line,...

Last year I was a panelist at the National Security Summit in Washington. Frank Gaffney was the moderator and our topic was based on a poll that showed the #1 issue for Americans today is national security. Not too long ago, people were most concerned about providing for their families, having food to eat, and being able to send their children to college. Today, Americans are worried that there could be a terrorist attack in their towns and cities.My personal fears were put to rest this August when I heard Senator Ted Cruz speak at the Nessah Synagogue in Beverly...

By Col. Tom Snodgrass (Ret.), Right Side News Syrian Refugees And The Paris Jihadist Massacre The concurrent Islamic-sponsored atrocities occurring in Syria and Paris have finally focused an intense level of attention from the U.S. media and public on the peril of importing Islamic jihad in the persons of Muslims claiming “refugee” status. Obama and the Democrats are defying common sense in their desire to bring Syrian Muslims who cannot be vetted to this country. To quote the FBI Director, James Comey: The challenge we’re all talking about is that, we can only query against that (data) which we have...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, left, speaks at a campaign event on Nov. 28, 2015, in Iowa as U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, far right, looks on. (Photo by Patrick Svitek) LAMONI, Iowa — Ted Cruz and his campaign are offering their harshest and most extensive criticism yet of Marco Rubio since the U.S. Senate colleagues began clashing over immigration and national security issues.Speaking with reporters before a town hall here, Texas' junior senator repeatedly pushed back on a TV ad airing in Iowa that suggests Cruz "voted to weaken America's ability to identify and hunt down terrorists." The spot was produced...