Free Republic

John Walsh, the host of CNN's new primetime series "The Hunt," looks set to replace Piers Morgan as the cable network's in-house gun control advocate. "We have a serious problem with guns in this country, and we refuse to address it," Walsh, the creator and host of "America's Most Wanted," told reporters on Monday. "The NRA solution to arm every grammar school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous." Walsh also said that Vice President Joe Biden had agreed with his claim that politicians are “scared s--less” of the NRA.

Former America's Most Wanted host John Walsh is hosting a new show on CNN on which he vows to keep the push for gun control and the war on the NRA alive. According to The Wrap, Walsh said: I'm the father of a murdered child. I've done nothing but track violence in America since my son was murdered. We have a serious problem with guns in this country... and the NRA solution to arm every grammar-school 80-year-old teacher with a gun is absolutely ludicrous. He claims the NRA has gotten so big and financially powerful through relationships with gun manufacturers...

Because when President Barack Obama was blaming every problem under the sun on his predecessor President George W. Bush, he just wasn’t go back far enough. Via RCP: WARREN: I grew up in an America that was investing in kids. It was investing in public universities. It had a higher minimum wage. It was an America that said every kid would get a fighting chance. And that’s how we built America’s great middle class. Then starting in about the 1980s, we turned in a different direction. COLBERT: You mean when Reagan came in and it was morning in America. The...

Ed Schultz was in seventh heaven, lionizing Elizabeth Warren [new first name 'Sheriff'] for the way she grilled financial regulators for failing to take big banks to trial. Just one teenie-weenie factoid Ed failed to mention: those two regulators he showed Warren scalding during his MSNBC show tonight were appointed by, yup, President Barack Obama. View the video here.

New host, same loopy logic. Ed Schultz is gone from his weekday MSNBC slot, but the show's name lives on until Chris Hayes comes onboard next month. Sitting in for Schultz tonight was the never-at-a-loss-for-words Michael Eric Dyson. Discussing Elizabeth Warren's latest Senate hearing stunt, on the minimum wage, Dyson gushed "wouldn't that be great" if the minimum wage were raised to $22 per hour? Yeah, great . . . if you'd like unemployment to soar into the stratosphere, as lower-skilled workers were priced out of the market. African-Americans would be particularly hard hit. View the video here.

Things got testy between Joe Scarborough and Howard Dean on today's Morning Joe over the issue of the Dem party moving left. In a particularly unkind cut, Scarborough accused Dean of spouting "Carl Bernstein nonsense," while Dean tried to shut Scarborough down, bleating "blah, blah, blah." Adding spice to the mix, Mika Brzezinski made clear her great regard for lefty Senator Elizabeth Warren, saying she'd make a "formidable" presidential candidate. The fracas was detonated by a discussion of a Wall Street Journal op-ed by a centrist Dem group called "The Third Way," which argued that following proposals from Warren and...

In her continuing campaign to promote Elizabeth Warren's presidential prospects, Mika Brzezinski has attempted to recruit an unlikely ally: Steve Rattner. Rattner--President Obama's former "car czar"--is an investment manager and what passes for a moderate in the modern Dem party. The notion that he would support leftist Elizabeth Warren in a Dem primary is far-fetched to say the least. But Mika told Rattner he would "root" for Warren "because you will do that for me." A compliant Ratter replied that he would "do anything" for Mika. View the video here.

Bill Maher said he would “love” to see Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) run as part of a 2016 presidential ticket with Hillary Clinton, calling the potential duo “a granny ticket.” Speaking on Ora.tv’s PoliticKING with Larry King, the liberal comic called Warren one of the “most gutsy” people in politics. When asked by King whom he thought would be able to lead the country to address climate change, Maher said: “I think someone like Elizabeth Warren, one of the most gutsy people I’ve seen in politics in a long time. She’s somebody, I think, who would really say what she...

In the immediate aftermath of the multiple explosions that rocked the Copley Square area of Boston during this afternoon’s marathon, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof took to Twitter to say that the tragic events are a “reminder” of how Senate Republicans blocked the appointment of a new director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). “[E]xplosion is a reminder that ATF needs a director. Shame on Senate Republicans for blocking apptment,” he tweeted with a link to a Washington Post article on the Senate GOP’s threats to put a hold on President Obama‘s nomination for a...

Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution? At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no. The Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 33 percent of the public believes “Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” and 26 percent think there is not “solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades.” Unsurprisingly, beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of...

Every Fourth of July, some Americans sit down to read the Declaration of Independence, reacquainting themselves with the nation’s founding charter exactly as it was signed by the Second Continental Congress in 1776. Or almost exactly? A scholar is now saying that the official transcript of the document produced by the National Archives contains a significant error – smack in the middle of the sentence beginning “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” no less. The error, according to Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, concerns a period that appears right after...

July 4, 2014 Revenge: Republicans to Strip $341 Million From IRS in Response to Scandals Pete Kasperowicz After months of frustration with the IRS over the targeting scandal and lost emails, House Republicans will exact some revenge next week by passing legislation that cuts the IRS operating budget by $341 million compared to current levels. GOP leaders plan to call up a spending bill for fiscal year 2015 that funds the IRS and other agencies, but singles out the IRS for the targeting scandal and other problems that have surfaced over the last few years. “The committee remains troubled by...

On the day before the Fourth of July, the New York Times went out of its way to show its disgust for Americans against illegal immigration in Murrieta, California who turned away buses of illegal immigrants for, of all things, waving American flags and chanting "USA!" "Nobody was even being released in Murrieta," the Times' editorial board wrote on Thursday. "But the mayor urged residents to complain, and in a pageant of ugliness, dozens took action: They waved flags, screamed 'U.S.A.!' and turned three buses back." The Times' editorial urged Obama to "go big" on executive actions by granting amnesty...

Bill Maher took on Hillary Clinton‘s big book tour/2016 pre-campaign and amid the mockery of Clinton downplaying how well-off her family is (he sarcastically sympathized with someone emerging “from the financial rut that is the U.S. presidency”), Maher had some advice for the soon-to-be-official presidential candidate: go away. Contrary to people saying that doing the book tour now will inoculate her from criticism in 2016, Maher said Clinton being constantly on TV and in the news will give way to a different result; namely, “we’re sick of you.” And people will grow tired of her by 2016 anyway.

At the end of the Civil War, but before the pernicious reach of Jim Crow undermined the Union Army’s battlefield victory, former slaves and free blacks found themselves in possession of a most precious right -- the right to vote. It didn’t matter if a man had been a war hero in the famed, all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment or a house servant on a Southern plantation. All that mattered was that he was a man. To say that this development didn’t sit well with the progressive-minded women of this country is an understatement. Before the war, the abolitionist...

[This is] what ISIS would like to happen, in their ideal world. Their ideas on this front are derived from late "al-Qaida in Iraq" founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's thoughts on creating "a vast war inside Islam" that would ultimately eradicate all Shiites: ...for Zarqawi and his network, savagery—particularly when directed at other Muslims—was the whole point. The break between ISIS and al-Qaida over the former's brutality is well-known; Wright's piece puts it in context of the two groups' views of history. Al-Qaida was fighting the West; ISIS is fighting Shiites, and a vengeance that goes back more than a thousand...

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.” This adviser continued: “Hillary told Obama, ‘Mr. President, that story isn’t credible. Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.’ But the president was adamant. He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.’”

In the face of the relentless dillydallying on the part of the Obama administration on the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada went ahead and starting exploring the potential of cutting deals with other markets in Asia — and yesterday, the Canadian government approved their own Northern Gateway pipeline to carry crude from the Alberta oil sands out to the Pacific Ocean for shipment via tankers. There has been some speculation about the possibility of the Obama administration approving the Keystone XL pipeline now that Iraq’s oil output is on seriously unstable footing (although, reality check: The Keystone XL pipeline by...

Barack Obama could use a little relief. The world is crumbling around him, much of it the result of his presidential misfeasance at home and abroad. The chickens coming to roost on Pennsylvania Avenue are neither ideological nor partisan. Evil men are bold and quick to take advantage of timidity and weakness. There’s a growing consensus, and it includes Democrats — the president is in over his head. He probably scares himself. Obama clearly needs a public-relations triumph. Fortunately for him, there’s a candidate at hand. A 27-year-old woman is languishing in a filthy prison in Sudan, together with her...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced during a New York Times interview that the Holy Bible is the book that made her who she is today. “If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?” asked The New York Times, in a book review questionnaire. “At the risk of appearing predictable, the Bible was and remains the biggest influence on my thinking,” Clinton said. “I was raised reading it, memorizing passages from it and being guided by it.”