Free Republic

Republican presidential candidates. who have had to seek contributions from a handful of wealthy contributors, want to cut Social Security. Average Americans love the program; the superwealthy don’t. Something strange is happening in the Republican primary — something strange, that is, besides the Trump phenomenon. For some reason, just about all the leading candidates other than The Donald have taken a deeply unpopular position, a known political loser, on a major domestic policy issue. And it’s interesting to ask why. The issue in question is the future of Social Security, which turned 80 last week. The retirement program is, of...

It was particularly revealing when David Axelrod explained that, of all his accomplishments in Barack Obama’s White House, he was proudest of the fact that “there hasn’t been a major scandal.” The qualifier “major” lays the burden on shoulders of the press to define what constitutes a serious scandal, and political media had thus far reliably covered the administration’s ethical lapses as merely the peculiar obsessions of addlebrained conservatives. Surely, much of the political establishment in Washington nodded along with Axelrod as he patted himself on the back. A mere seven months later, though, and it is clear now that...

On Friday, The New York Times published an article clearly aimed at portraying conservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas as an unoriginal thinker, if not an outright plagiarist. But a closer look at the statistics cited in the piece, entitled “Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice of Few Words, Some Not His Own,” indicates that The Times grossly overstated its case.In the article, Times reporter Adam Liptak cites three studies that used linguistic software to measure what percentage of justices’ opinions use words cribbed from briefs submitted to the court.According to Liptak, Thomas used words from those briefs at an “unusually high” rate compared...

It is tempting to dismiss the latest anti-choice salvo from Ohio lawmakers, which would criminalize abortions based on a fetal diagnosis of Down syndrome, as a blatantly unconstitutional ploy that would never be enforced. That would be a mistake. The bill stands a disturbingly good chance of approval this fall by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature A similar bill passed in North Dakota in 2013 bans abortions on the grounds of fetal genetic anomalies, including Down syndrome. The law has not yet been enforced — under existing Supreme Court precedent it is hard to see how it could be — but...

ITHACA, N.Y. — A 20-month waiting period for a pistol permit in Tompkins County is too long to wait for a gun and doesn't keep anybody safer. That's how long it will take me — a person with no criminal history and no mental illnesses — to get a permit. I probably come to the table with a perspective different than most New Yorkers. I'm a Texas girl from a primarily conservative family who considers going to a gun range and grabbing lunch a wonderfully spent Saturday with my relatives. I don't think my background, however, changes the fact that...

FROM THE ARTICLE, HERE ARE COMPARISONS TO THE CLINTON CRIME FAMILY - His infamy made international legend. He was the symbol of the ultimate in American lawlessness. Capone won great wealth; how much, no one will ever know, except that the figure was fantastic. He remained immune from prosecution... By the end of 1925 Capone was riding high. He had a magnificent home on Prairie Avenue,... The fat man from Chicago, blazing with diamonds, assumed an air of injured innocence. He was turned out with the rest because all the other witnesses, like himself, related that they did not happen...

Suzanne Young, a mother and New York Times best-selling author of “young adult novels,” took to Twitter to protest the Gilbert Public School District’s decision to express its support of adoption over abortion and abstinence as the “most effective” way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Take a look at the sticker: This. THIS is a sticker my son's public high school just forced all students to put in their science books: pic.twitter.com/MmVM1xu0Xf — Suzanne Young (@suzanne_young) August 19, 2015 The wording of the text falls in line with Arizona law on the matter: “In view of the...

The defense secretary has an incredible opportunity to usher in the end of legalized sex discrimination in the military. As tens of thousands of women have proved over 13 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, women are capable of the combat skills necessary to fight alongside their male counterparts. The question now is whether to give women the opportunity to compete for coveted combat arms assignments, such as infantry and special forces. Since the Pentagon formally rescinded the combat exclusion policy in 2013, well over 100 women have successfully passed the Marine Corps’ enlisted infantry school and two female...

IT was snowing in Maine on Jan. 9. I’d been to the dentist’s the day before. The staff there were pleasant enough when I changed genders 12 years ago. “We’ll just change your forms,” the receptionist had said, cheerfully. “It’s no problem.” That day, Papi Edwards, 20, a transgender woman of color, was shot to death outside a hotel in Louisville, Ky. If you’d told me in 2000, as a transgender woman just coming out, that I was a person of privilege, I’d have angrily lectured you about exactly how heavy the burden I’d been carrying was. It had nearly...

In a sign that the uproar was threatening not only his reputation but also his business dealings, Dr. Dre, who has previously spoken dismissively or vaguely about the allegations [including criminal charges, that Dr. Dre physically abused women], which are decades old, confronted them on Friday in a statement to The New York Times,” Joe Coscarelli reports for The New York Times. “While he did not address each allegation individually, he said: ‘Twenty-five years ago I was a young man drinking too much and in over my head with no real structure in my life. However, none of this is...

The heads of the Manhattan elites who run the New York Times editorial board collectively exploded on Thursday evening in response to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s detailed immigration reform plan that would put Americans first over foreigners and special interests.

Finally! Something from a New York Times reporter you can absolutely, positively believe: that no matter the mounting evidence, he will not condemn Hillary Clinton for her email malfeasance. On today's Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough repeatedly tried to get Jeremy Peters to state whether he agreed with the federal judge who yesterday declared that Hillary had not "followed government policy" regarding her email. After haplessly trying to do anything but answer the question, an exasperated Peters finally sputtered: "you want, you want me to indict and damn Hillary? I'm not going to do that." View the video...

Before Donald Trump, Republican presidential candidates could deflect tough questions on immigration with vague promises to secure the border and oppose all “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Not anymore. Mr. Trump has offered a plan to “take back our country” from what he calls the rapist-murderer-job stealers being exported from Mexico. He is full of ideas. He would expel 11 million immigrants, and their families, and let only “the good ones” back in. He would restrict legal immigration, and impose a national job-verification system so that everyone, citizens too, would need federal permission to work. He would build a 2,000-mile border...

Donald J. Trump continues to overheat the Republican Party’s speech on immigration. What is his latest protest against political correctness? “Anchor babies.” [Snip] The phrase is as offensive as the word “illegals” for many immigrants who come to America.

In a New York Times article exposing the horrific barbarism of ISIS in its systematic rape of Yazidi girls and booming sex trade, you might think that America’s original sin would go uncommented upon. But then you would be underestimating The Grey Lady. Behold the paper of record in its full morally relativistic glory:

You are what you eat, and so were your ancient ancestors. But figuring out what they actually dined on has been no easy task. There are no Pleistocene cookbooks to consult. Instead, scientists must sift through an assortment of clues, from the chemical traces in fossilized bones to the scratch marks on prehistoric digging sticks. Scientists have long recognized that the diets of our ancestors went through a profound shift with the addition of meat. But in the September issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology, researchers argue that another item added to the menu was just as important: carbohydrates,...

WASHINGTON -- In the first paragraph of The New York Times' front-page story on Sunday, the Times said that because Megyn Kelly "questioned him forcefully at the Republican presidential debate," Donald Trump said she did it "because she was menstruating." He did not. Whether the Times was perpetrating a lie on its gullible readers or simply confused, I cannot say. In the next paragraph, readers can see for themselves what Trump actually said. He said, "You could see there was blood coming out of (Kelly's) eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," when she rather bluntly questioned him on indelicate...

RUSH: You ought to see some of the stories in the Stack. There is a story about... Get this. Now, keep in mind as I go through these that climate change exists in only one place: Computer models. Climate change exists in predictions based on computer modeling alone. There is no data, there is no evidence. It used to be freezing. Then it was global warming. Now it's "climate change" so that any apparently abnormal weather event can be attributed to climate change. Be it a tornado, be it a two-inch rainstorm, even a hailstorm that damages a jetliner can...

MERRY HILL, N.C. — Under a blistering sun, Nicholas M. Luccketti swatted at mosquitoes as he watched his archaeology team at work in a shallow pit on a hillside above the shimmering waters of Albemarle Sound. On a table in the shade, a pile of plastic bags filled with artifacts was growing. Fragments of earthenware and pottery. A mashed metal rivet. A piece of a hand-wrought nail. They call the spot Site X. Down a dusty road winding through soybean fields, the clearing lies between two cypress swamps teeming with venomous snakes. It is a suitably mysterious name for a...

ATLANTA — Jeb Bush, who has fought the perception of conservatives that he is not one of them, journeyed into the lion’s den on Saturday. While he may not have converted every skeptic at the RedState Gathering, a conclave of anti-establishment Republicans, he persuaded more than a few to give him a second look. After Mr. Bush’s solid but largely unmemorable outing Thursday in the first Republican debate, where he was overshadowed by the pyrotechnics around him, he came across in Atlanta as having tamed his wonkiness, and as being confident in defending positions he knew were unpopular with many...