Free Republic

Pete Alexander celebrated the news that a federal court in California had thrown out this state’s strict requirements for obtaining a concealed-handgun permit — among the toughest in the nation — by calling the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to apply for a permit he had long wanted. “I’m a gun enthusiast,” said Mr. Alexander, a construction contractor who lives in Fullerton. “Crime is encroaching on our neighborhood, and I don’t feel as safe as I used to. This is adding to the police force.” Mr. Alexander turned out to be the beginning of a flood. In the two months since...

STURTEVANT, Wis. — Scott Walker is nothing if not consistent. From his time as a local official in Milwaukee a decade ago to his explosive first year as governor of Wisconsin in 2011, Mr. Walker, a Republican, has deviated little from a platform to spend less, tax less and rein in the power of public sector unions. Again and again, Mr. Walker has shown a rare aptitude for recognizing and seizing ripe political opportunities, and he has advanced himself in ways that have him being mentioned with Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio and...

The curious need not wait till "The Grand Budapest Hotel" comes out as a DVD to watch a between-the-wars farce done in high mitteleuropäische style, complete with comic-opera uniforms, foreign intrigue, transparent guile and enough layers of nostalgia for an imagined past to reduce any plot to some unreal dimension where violence is only playacting and tragedy becomes broad comedy. Wes Anderson, the movie's director/producer/auteur, has a talent for depicting the slightly strange, that is, reality. But even he could not outdo the homicidal drama now being produced in Ukraine, as it was in Georgia and Chechnya before that. This...

The NYT is on an anti-human exceptionalism crusade. Other than columnist Ross Douthat, when was the last time the “paper of record” allowed arguments to be made in favor of the unique dignity of human life in its pages? I can’t recall a single time in recent years. But take actions to subvert our belief in the unique dignity of human life and the NYT is at your service! It has published columns arguing for “pea personhood,” that plants are the most “ethical” life form, and in last Sunday’s Magazine, a tribute to the Dark Mountain Projects’ push for “uncivilization.”...

(CNSNews.com) - Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy made his offensive remarks about blacks and slavery on Saturday, but it took four days for his remarks to finally appear in the New York Times. According to the April 24 New York Times article, Bundy promised to continue holding a daily news conference, even after his standoff with federal agents ended: "[O]n Saturday, it drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters, discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the abuses of welfare and...

Theses photos [at URL] purport to show the same bearded Russian soldier (circled) in operation in Georgia in 2008 and Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in 2014 Photos released by the Ukranian government as "proof" of Russian soldiers on the ground in Donetsk leave many questions to be answered... The low-quality, annotated images were handed to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on 16 April, as evidence that Russian "sabotage-reconnaissance groups" had been working with separatists in the Donetsk towns of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. According to a NYT article, the photos and their descriptions were "endorsed by the Obama administration"....

The Times led its print edition Monday with an article based in part on photographs that the State Department said were evidence of Russian military presence in popular uprisings in Ukraine. The headline read: "Photos link masked men in East Ukraine to Russia." ... The Times has published a second article backing off from the original [link at URL] and airing questions about what the photographs are said to depict, but hardly addressing how the newspaper may have been misled. ...

Rob Astorino, the Republican candidate for governor of New York WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY, April 23, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Rob Astorino is in his fifth year as county executive of Westchester County, New York. And he says he's the right man for the job of governor of New York State, a position currently held by Democrat Andrew Cuomo. Astorino, who was recently in Washington to solicit support and fundraising dollars from the Susan B. Anthony List, defended the right to life in an interview with LifeSiteNews. He also criticized Cuomo, who said in January that conservatives "who are right to life...

A collection of photographs that Ukraine says shows the presence of Russian forces in the eastern part of the country, and which the United States cited as evidence of Russian involvement, has come under scrutiny. The photographs were submitted by Ukraine last week to the Organization for Security and Cooperation, an organization in Vienna that has been monitoring the situation in Ukraine. Some of the photographs were also provided by American officials to Secretary of State John Kerry so he could show them when he met in Geneva last Thursday with his counterparts from the European Union, Russia, and Ukraine....

According to experts cited by The New York Times, President Barack Obama's eventual decision on the Keystone XL pipeline -- last week, the administration once again postponed a decision -- "will have a marginal impact on global warming emissions." The global economy releases lots of greenhouse gas -- 32.6 billion metric tons of carbon in 2011. The Keystone XL pipeline would add 18.7 million metric tons. In the global greenhouse gas picture, it won't make a dent. To the working men and women of America, however, the project represents "a lifeline to good jobs and energy security," according to Terry...

Past the towering tridents that survived the World Trade Center collapse, adjacent to a gallery with photographs of the 19 hijackers, a brief film at the soon-to-open National September 11 Memorial Museum will seek to explain to visitors the historical roots of the attacks. The film, “The Rise of Al Qaeda,” refers to the terrorists as Islamists who viewed their mission as a jihad. The NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who narrates the film, speaks over images of terrorist training camps and Qaeda attacks spanning decades. Interspersed with his voice are explanations of the ideology of the terrorists, rendered in...

Republicans need to win six Senate seats to take control of the upper chamber, and most scenarios for victory include the Southern seats up for grabs. A poll out today from the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that may be tougher than first thought. Mark Pryor, considered to be one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the midterms, has a ten-point lead over his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton: The survey underscores a favorable political environment over all for Republicans in Kentucky, North Carolina, Louisiana and Arkansas — states President Obama lost in 2012 and where...

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. Its conclusion: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it, but we can still fix it if we decide to work together. But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars. That finding was highlighted in last week's premiere of Showtime's climate change docu-drama...

SIMFEROPOL, Crimea — After Russia annexed Crimea practically overnight, the Russian bureaucrats handling passports and residence permits inhabited the building of their Ukrainian predecessors, where Roman Nikolayev now waits daily with a seemingly mundane question. His daughter and granddaughter were newly arrived from Ukraine when they suddenly found themselves in a different country, so he wonders if they can become legal residents. But he cannot get inside to ask because he is No. 4,475 on the waiting list for passports. At most, 200 people are admitted each day from the crowd churning around the tall, rusty iron gate. “They set...

People misunderstood New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he said conservatives “have no place in the state of New York,” the Democratic governor explained Wednesday. “I was not saying anyone should leave the state, right? And anyone who heard the comments knows that’s not what I was saying,” Cuomo said when asked about his comments at a press conference. “To the extent people want to have a political dialogue, that’s what it is.” Cuomo came under fire from conservatives last month when he said “extreme conservatives, who are right-to-life, pro-assault weapon, anti-gay … have no place in the state of...

If it’s Friday on PBS, it’s time for “conservative” pundit David Brooks to bash the real conservatives. One of his favorite targets is Sen. Ted Cruz. On Valentine’s Day, PBS anchor Judy Woodruff announced “We watched this drama play out this week, David, in Congress, which ended up in the Senate with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas essentially hanging some of his fellow Republicans out to dry. What was he trying to accomplish, and did he -- did he do it?” Brooks shot back: “Nothing says Valentine’s Day like Senator Ted Cruz, our national aphrodisiac.” Then he said the conservatives...

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.”

Does David Brooks even pretend to be a conservative anymore? Can we finally acknowledge that this man isn’t even remotely interested in what motivates outside the Beltway - or even inside the Beltway - conservatives? Here’s what Brooks had to say in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic: [Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But...

--snip-- A plan to honor a Harlem cop killed by Nation of Islam radicals is drowning under a flood of racial tensions created more than four decades ago, but no one wants to throw it a lifeline — not even the NYPD’s new top cop. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is distancing himself from the controversial push to get the street in front of the 28th Precinct renamed in honor of Officer Phillip Cardillo, who was shot and killed inside a mosque run by Louis Farrakhan in 1972 — noting that the community should make the final decision.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt established Social Security, he created generations of loyal Democrats. When Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law, he built on that legacy, particularly with older Americans. And when George W. Bush instituted a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare, it helped reclaim elderly voters for Republicans. But President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the $1.4 trillion effort to extend health insurance to all Americans, is challenging the traditional calculus about government benefits and political impact. Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those...