Free Republic

In the final weeks of his presidency, Barack Obama downplayed the idea that he would criticize his successor from the sidelines. Noting his appreciation for the way George W. Bush stayed silent during his own presidency, Obama said he would try to extend the same courtesy to Donald Trump. He made it exactly 10 days before giving in to the irresistible impulse to jump back into the fray. After protests erupted as a result of President Trump’s executive order on immigration, Obama released a statement through spokesman Kevin Lewis: “President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place...

Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson reportedly met privately in a storage closet Thursday night in Greenville to try and cool relations between the two campaigns ahead of the primary here. But the clandestine meeting allegedly did not go well. Cruz called the meeting, The Daily Beast reports, to smooth over what has been a contentious public spat with the Carson campaign ever since the Iowa caucus. Carson accused Cruz of using dirty campaign tactics after one of Cruz's staffers saw a CNN report and told voters Carson was dropping out of the race right before voting started in Iowa....

The Hillary Clinton campaign is out with an ad highlighting her record as an advocate for LGBT rights. The spot includes images of gay couples kissing each other. The liberal website Slate praises Clinton for including same-sex kissing in her campaign ad, saying, "Given the distressingly puritanical rules that govern gay PDAs, it's both impressive and heartening that Clinton includes gay kisses in her official campaign spots." "The ad forces viewers to confront images that might make them feel slightly uneasy, then encourages them to view such affection as a normal, healthy manifestation of adult intimacy."

Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday delivered the strongest speech in support of gay rights in the 2016 presidential race on Saturday, promising that ending discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people would be a central pillar of her administration. “I see the injustices and the dangers that you and your families still face,” she told hundreds of gay activists at the annual meeting of the Human Rights Campaign. “I’m running for president to stand up for the fundamental rights of LGBT Americans.” She added: “That’s a promise from one HRC to another.” The statement marked a remarkable evolution for Clinton,...

I am concluding that Glenn Beck has either lost his mind, or is slowly becoming a leftist. Today on his site are two rather disturbing videos. The first in which he continues his crusade to support GLAAD, comparing Russia's law protecting minors from homosexual propaganda to the Holocaust, and blowing up incendiary comments made by a Russian actor for no apparent reason other than to help push the narrative of permanent victimhood that the homosexual lobby thrives on. Here, we can be treated to Glenn engaging in left wing obfuscation more likely to be used by Al Sharpton than any...

A prominent Catholic and gay blogger, Andrew Sullivan, has renewed speculation that the outgoing Pope Benedict may be secretly gay, a report has said. The Dish's Andrew Sullivan wrote a post titled Two Popes, One Secretary, after it was announced that Benedict will not go into hidden retirement but will instead continue living in the Vatican with trusted secretary Archbishop Georg Gaenswein. "So Benedict's handsome male companion will continue to live with him, while working for the other Pope during the day," Sullivan wrote. "Are we supposed to think that's, well, a normal arrangement?" he added According to the Huff...

LAKE MARY, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35 News) - Thursday, Governor Crist vetoed the controversial teacher merit pay bill, breaking with conservative ranks. Then the head of the Republican U.S. Senate Re-election Committee issued a warning to Crist telling him his career is over if he tries to run outside the GOP. Dr. Foglesong said, "A person I know in the Charlie Crist campaign has told me Charlie Crist would veto the merit pay bill, and he did. Further, he said he would announce tomorrow, that's Friday, that he would run as an independent."

I recently did some posts noting a developing split in the Democratic party ranks -- a split likely to be greatly accentuated if, as expected, President Barack Obama announces hefty troop increases for a surge-but-we-won't-call-it-that in Afghanistan. But there signs of cracks in the GOP's wall as well -- and here's one of them: Little Green Footballs, long considered one of the conservative mega-sites in terms of its big readership, has a post "Why I Parted Ways With The Right." It's in the form of a list which you can read in full here....

MSNBC's David Shuster said he wanted to "vomit" after the conclusion of Donald Trump's announcement that Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, will keep her title. Shuster said the decision represents "everything that is wrong with the superficial nature" of pageants. "Donald Trump seemed to be saying lying is okay," he added.

Treasury Department Can Help Fight Global Warming, Says Paulson Tuesday, January 13, 2009 By Josiah Ryan, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Treasury and other finance ministries around the world should play a major role in fixing climate change, outgoing Bush administration Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Monday at an event sponsored by the environmental group Resources For the Future. The discussion was titled, "How Markets Can Help Address Climate Change and Other Major Environmental Problems." Paulson, who once served as chairman of the Nature Conservancy and co-chair of the environmental group Asia-Pacific Council, has long been involved in fighting...

On Tuesday, I launch Big Hollywood, a big group blog that will feature hundreds of the big minds from the fields of politics, journalism, entertainment and culture. Big Hollywood is not a “celebrity” gabfest or a gossip outpost - it is a continuous politics and culture posting board for those who think something has gone drastically wrong and that Hollywood should return to its patriotic roots. Big Hollywood’s modest objective: to change the entertainment industry. To make Hollywood something we can believe in - again. In order to give millions of Americans hope. Until conservatives, libertarians and Republicans - who...

FIGHTING WORDS Barack to Reality Obama's victory didn't magically eliminate America's problems and enemies. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, Nov. 10, 2008, at 11:30 AM ET Yes, yes, yes. I, too, took pleasure in standing in line and in exchanging pleasantries and greetings with the amazingly courteous staff at my polling station and the many citizens of my delightfully diverse Washington neighborhood. I, too, am still wearing my lapel sticker, with the jaunty words "I Voted." And I found it pretty easy to cast a vote that told the Republican Party, for which I recommended a vote last time, not...

Living in the DC area, Chris Matthews has surely been stuck in traffic more than once behind someone sporting the classic NRA bumper sticker: "If Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns." Was Chris was listening too intently to NPR to consider the the truth of that pithy aphorism? You might think so, considering his anti-gun rant that seemed to assume that criminals, rather than law-abiding citizens, will obey restrictions on gun ownership. On this evening's Hardball, riffing off Mitt Romney's Second Amendment defense during last night's GOP debate, Chris took aim at National Review's Deroy Murdock, a Giuliani...

It seems flabbergastingly improbable that President George W. Bush learned of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iranian nuclear ambitions only a few days before the rest of us did, but the haplessness of his demeanor suggested that he might, in fact, have been telling the truth. After all, had the administration known for any appreciable length of time that the mullahs had hit the pause button on their program in late 2003, it would have been in a position to make a claim that is quite probably true, namely, that our overthrow of Saddam Hussein had impressed the Iranians in...

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor, all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion. Politics was for me a way to secure the crowd's approbation while maintaining a busyness that obfuscated the desires of my heart. Despite being a moderately liberal governor, my stance on marriage was: "between a man and a woman." The position, in my mind, created a tension with the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community that affirmed my bona fides as a "straight." Only after the...

Say what you will about Christopher Hitchens—his views on Israel, most exhaustively rendered in a book he co-authored with the late Edward Said, leave much to be desired—but he is the most eloquent and passionate opponent of Islamic jihadism writing today. He is also a passionate critic of all forms of religious hucksterism, and offers the most concise and devastating rebuke of Al Sharpton in the current issue of Vanity Fair: “A man who proves every day that you can get away with anything in this country if you shove the word ‘Reverend’ in front of your name.” Anyone who...

"U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and his wife Elizabeth appear on the "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" with host Jay Leno (R) during a taping of the show at NBC Studios in Burbank, California, June 25. 2007."

Prominently featured on John Edwards' presidential campaign Web site is a video of conservative commentator Ann Coulter insulting him. And with just a mouse click you can hear the invective and get a chance to donate at the same time. On Friday, Coulter, a writer and columnist known for provocative remarks, told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I -- so kind of...

When Martha Freeman moved back into the home of her estranged husband in February 2005, she didn't return home alone. Instead, she secretly brought Rafael Rocha-Perez, her lover and the man who would ultimately kill her husband with her assistance, a Nashville prosecutor said in the pair's murder trial Tuesday. "The evidence will show you she had Mr. Perez there secluded away in another bedroom," Davidson County prosecutor Katy Miller told jurors in her opening statement. "It took two people to orchestrate this, and it will be clearly shown that those two people were Martha Freeman and Mr. Rocha-Perez." Miller...

Whispers about John Travolta’s sexuality that have blown through Hollywood for years are getting louder now that the actor was caught kissing another man here in Canada. In photographs published in the newest issue of the National Enquirer, Travolta is seen planting a kiss on the lips of an unidentified man on the steps of his private plane at an airport in Hamilton, Ontario. Travolta, 52, has been flying his Boeing 707 in and out of Hamilton as production gets underway in Toronto on the remake of Hairspray, in which he plays Edna Turnblad. The tabloid noted that Travolta, whose...