Free Republic

A lot of conservative voters — especially those old enough to have lived through the high inflation of the 1970s — are convinced that America is currently suffering from an inflation problem. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) pandered to those voters in a recent Republican presidential debate, blaming the "loose money" policies of the Federal Reserve for raising the prices of various consumer products. But new data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that overall, prices aren't going up. At all. Between September and October, prices actually fell slightly. And over the past year, the inflation rate was...

What We Know So Far Hastert, the former Speaker of the House, was indicted Thursday on federal charges of evading reporting requirements and lying to the FBI The Illinois Republican allegedly agreed to pay an unnamed individual $3.5 million for previous misconduct Source: Investigators considered including a second alleged victim in the Hastert indictment, but ultimately chose not to do so. A source familiar with the investigation told BuzzFeed News that U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon considered but did not pursue additional charges against former Speaker Dennis Hastert, which would have included a reference to an Individual B, one of potentially...

Another nice catch by Andrew Kaczynski and BuzzFeed to go with the old clipping of Carson’s mother telling a newspaper in 1997 that the stabbing incident most certainly happened. Nothing’s going to prove that definitively, but knowing for a fact that Carson was telling this story before he had any reason to (when he had every professional reason not to) is the next best thing. And every time one of Carson’s biographical anecdotes is tested and checks out upon close scrutiny, the impulse to believe him among those who are already well disposed to him and see him as...

Mitt Romney has been mocked for suggesting he could have got an “E” letter grade. But according to a copy of his freshman year report card he could in fact have gotten an “E” letter grade.

(AUDIO-AT-LINK) Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York says Republican opposition to Loretta Lynch’s nomination as attorney general to replace Eric Holder is racially motivated. Rangel added that current Republicans have a “big a tradition out of hating slaves and black folks” because southern Dixiecrats changed parties and became Republicans. “Well first of all we only have one black over there, a Republican, so I don’t have to tell him what the country is all about,” Rangel said of the Senate, referring to Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is also black....

Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that conflicts with public census and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents. The story of her grandmother specifically immigrating is one Clinton has told before. Clinton’s sole foreign-born grandparent, Hugh Rodham Sr., immigrated as a child. “Her grandparents always spoke about the immigrant experience and, as a result she has always thought of them as immigrants,” a Clinton spokesman told BuzzFeed News. “As has been correctly pointed out, while her grandfather was an immigrant,...

Supporters of Al Gore have begun a round of conversations among themselves and with the former vice president about his running for president in 2016, the latest sign that top Democrats have serious doubts that Hillary Clinton is a sure thing. Gore, 67, won the popular vote in the 2000 election, and has been mentioned as a possible candidate in every contested Democratic primary since then. He instead spent much of the 2000s focused on environmental campaigning and business ventures. He has largely slipped out of public view more recent years. But in recent days, “they’re getting the old gang...

Donald Trump is a racist, sexist hypocrite who doesn't understand the economy (or basic math) and probably doesn't have anything resembling an inner life—but the man sure can put on a good show! Good enough that thousands of people who get off on the xenophobic, hate-filled subtext of his blathering will pack half a stadium to watch his combover blow in the wind. Which leaves one question for the sane among us: why is a television punchline appealing to people now? Andrew Kaczynski ✔ ‎@BuzzFeedAndrew Pro-Trump Twitter is such a weird place 11:30 AM - 23 Aug 2015 · Big...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is standing by his past support for universal health care. “I want people taken care of in the country, okay? You can call it anything you want, but I want — including people that don’t have anything,” The Donald told radio host John Fredericks in an interview Wednesday. “We gotta do that.” Trump said in 1999 — when he was flirting with a presidential rub on the Reform Party ticket — that the U.S. should make health care an entitlement and that coverage should be universal. “I would put forward a comprehensive health care program...

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was called out on French television for a tweet he sent about the deadly terrorist attack in Paris on Friday. The former speaker and presidential candidate had speculated in a tweet that citizens with concealed carry permits for guns would have stopped the deadly shooting at a Paris concert hall. Gingrich's tweet prompted France 24's Mark Owen to say he found capitalizing on crises to advance a political agenda to be shameful. "Newt Gingrich, shame on you," Owen said. "So he's using this atrocity to make his point that people should be able...

We live in a weary age of fable. The latest Hollywood mythology is entitled "Truth." But the film is actually a fictionalized story about how CBS News super-anchor Dan Rather and his "60 Minutes" producer supposedly were railroaded by corporate and right-wing interests into resigning. In reality, an internal investigation by CBS found that Rather and his "60 Minutes" team -- just weeks before the 2004 election -- had failed to properly vet documents of dubious authenticity asserting that a young George W. Bush had shirked his duty as a Texas Air National Guard pilot. The fabulist movie comes on...

Actual Title:President Obama has made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to pose for the cover of an LGBT magazine. Obama is on the cover of Out magazine’s latest Out 100 issue as the publication’s “Ally of the Year.” “The 44th President of the United States is our Ally of the Year—a president who came to office on a wave of euphoria, appeared to lose momentum halfway through, and has since rallied, helping us secure marriage equality, among other landmark initiatives that are transforming our place in America,” the editors of Out wrote in an article accompanying the...

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole has endorsed Jeb Bush for president and will serve as the former Florida governor's National Veterans’ Chairman, according to the campaign. Dole said that while almost all of the candidates are his friends, he believes Bush is the most qualified. Jeb has the proven leadership skills and executive experience needed to fix the problems facing our country from the anemic economy to America's weakened standing among world leaders, Dole said in a statement. Jeb's conservative reform agenda and forward looking vision on issues including 4 percent economic growth, defeating ISIS and taking care of our...

This is actually one of the least substantive points made by defenders of Hillary Clinton in the e-mail scandal, but Glenn Kessler's fact check makes a couple of important points. The media has often repeated the claim by Hillary and her team that the State Department has estimated that it could have found 90-95% of her e-mails by checking the server for those cc'd on the messages. Not only is that Hillary's estimation and not State's, it's demonstrably false in any case: First of all, the State Department is correct. The "90 to 95 percent" figure comes from the Clinton...

Kelly Riddell at the Washington Times has some shocking news which will doubtless send many of you to the fainting couch. If you check the number of journalists covering politics in America today who can be identified as belonging to one party or the other, the spread is actually nowhere near the breakdown you find among all the voters in the country. A mere 7 percent of journalists identify as Republicans, and when they do give money to political campaigns they usually donate to Democrats, lending evidence to Republican presidential candidates' claims that they are facing a hostile audience when...

So this is the world we live in now. Asked by the Huffington Post whether he would go back in time and kill baby Hitler, Jeb Bush said, "Hell yeah, I would! You gotta step up, man." But do you? Should you? Given certain assumptions, killing baby Hitler isn't a hard question. Assume that going back in time merely eliminates Hitler, and that the sole effect of that is that the Nazi Party lacks a charismatic leader and never takes power in Germany, and World War II and the Holocaust are averted, and nothing worse than World War II transpires...

Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) said in an interview Monday that he would personally kill an infant Adolf Hitler. “Hell yeah I would,” he told The Huffington Post when asked about killing the Nazi leader as a baby.

[T]here is NOTHING remotely conservative about Donald Trump and his candidacy. You have to give them a path, a path to citizenship. Where have I heard that one before? I know, Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham and of course every Democrat as well. He’s zero for one there. How about taxes? When Trump ran for president in 1999, he proposed a gigantic wealth tax on the American people, a 14.25% levy that he calculated would raise $5.7 trillion and wipe out the debt forever in one fell swoop—a wealth tax, going into your bank account and pulling out money from...

You can’t make this sh*t up. Hillary Clinton lists the reasons why thousands of people are fleeing Syria:”Because of terrible governance, because of corruption, because of conflict, because of climate change.” On Wednesday, a Clinton aide confirmed that the candidate meant what she said on the connections between climate change and refugee crises. “As experts have noted,” the aide said, “climate change is one of the factors that can contribute to displacement and exacerbate refugee situations.” Hillary Clinton, echoing the Marxist agitator Obama who has also said: “Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world,...

On Nov. 10, Bill Nye will release a new book titled “Unstoppable.” As only Bill Nye can, he uses the book to explain the science behind climate change, debunks popular myths, and asks readers to take action in their own lives to create a sustainable future. The book is shot through with optimism, but Nye has no illusions about what lies ahead. The message is simple: Climate change is real; humans are causing it; and we have no choice but to build a better and cleaner world. Salon spoke with Nye about his new book and about his broader intentions....