Free Republic

On this date in 1865, Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The 16th president died the next morning.

Last week, as radical Islamists slaughtered 148 Christian students at a Kenyan university, America’s faithful celebrated Easter and Passover in tranquility, demonstrating why religious liberty is not the eccentric uncle in the human-rights family — it’s the matriarch. Yet with demonic evil spanning the globe, and religion a life-and-death matter, punishment for defending one’s faith is now acceptable in America. Our “live and let live” ethic is increasingly imperiled. Witness the firestorm after Indiana became the 20th state to enact its version of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In our morally upside-down world, we accommodate the nuclear ambitions of...

Secrets of the White House butlers revealed in new book: Staff saw Bill Clinton and Lewinsky cavorting for years, heard Hillary 'throw a lamp' at him - and even walked in on John F Kennedy swimming naked with his secretaries They have a unique - and fascinating - insight into the private lives of America's First Families. Now, former White House butlers and other staff members have revealed their secrets about daily life inside the six-floor mansion, which features a whopping 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms and 28 fireplaces. The dedicated professionals, also including maids, cooks, florists, doormen and engineers, have...

Thomas Jefferson, Patron Saint of American Liberals, would not recognize his spiritual offspring in today’s liberal President Obama and his handling of the Middle East. Jefferson, as a trade commissioner and then ambassador in Paris for six years (1784-90), faced almost daily the tragedy of American hostages enslaved by violent Muslims and his own frustrating inability to liberate them. However, what he learned served him well as the leading hawk for war a decade later when he became president and went to war against belligerent Islam.

In 1998, the Washington National Airport in Arlington, VA was renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport – and local Democrats are still bitter about it. The Washington Post recently conducted a survey of Washington, DC area residents, asking them what they prefer to call the busy airport. The results show that while younger people tend to call it by its current title, Reagan National, older, liberal commuters refuse to utter the name of the conservative president. In total, 72 percent of Republicans surveyed said they refer to it as 'Reagan' or 'Reagan National,' while only 35 percent of Democrats acknowledged the airport by that name. Survey participant Jason West's eloquent explanation...

As state legislatures throughout America struggle with requirements to balance their state budgets, let us pause to remember that one-quarter of the budget is dictated by Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose damage to state budgets lives on 42 years after his death. As president, LBJ pushed for Medicaid -- free health insurance for poor people. This was a boon to the medical industry, particularly hospitals, doctors, sellers of wheelchairs, and nursing homes. But Medicaid comes at the expense of schools, highways, prisons and others state services because it requires states to pony up some of the money in this federally mandated...

“With malice toward none; with charity for all…” It was a civic gesture as unexpected then as it is needed now. One hundred and fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln stood on the eastern portico of the U.S. Capitol and delivered a few words—703, to be precise—at his Second Inaugural. The speech remains the most celebrated inaugural address in our history. Fredrick Douglass, not always an admirer of Lincoln, called it a “sacred effort.” Lincoln himself acknowledged it was filled with “lots of wisdom” and predicted it would “wear as well as—perhaps even better than—any thing I have produced.” From...

President Roosevelt to Congress

Obama should really pick up a history book sometime, and read about how one of his predecessors, and one of our nation’s Founding Fathers, handled the threat posed by radical Islamic jihadists, way back in 1801. (Read about how Thomas Jefferson responded to radical Islamic kidnappings, beheadings, and extortion)

DECEMBER 6, 2014 BY JOHN HINDERAKER Did the Kennedy Administration Try to Drive Reagan Off the Air? Ronald Reagan apparently detested Bobby Kennedy, another sign of Reagan’s good judgment since Kennedy was an awful human being. But this is something I hadn’t heard before: Michael Reagan says that Bobby leaned on General Electric to get Reagan off television: [A] few months after [subpoenaing Reagan before a grand jury], Kennedy tried to get him fired from General Electric Theater. Or, at least, that’s what Reagan believed. “Dad told us he had just lost his job with GE,” Reed recalls Reagan son...

On October, 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation about the Thanksgiving holiday: BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A PROCLAMATION Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; And whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of...

Ben Stein—lawyer, Nixon speechwriter, and erstwhile actor known for his turn as Ferris Bueller’s economics teacher—stopped by Fox News on Sunday with some choice words for the Obama administration. “This president is the most racist president there has ever been in America,” he told Fox News. Most racist? Plenty past presidents could challenge Obama for that title. Here are some strong contenders: you be the judge.

NEW YORK, Oct. 12 (UPI) -- Vocativ recently decided to do a study of the sophistication of presidential speeches, from George Washington to Barack Obama, and found they've become less sophisticated over time. They analyzed over 600 speeches using the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, which judges speech by assigning it to a grade level. All of their conclusions were analyzed by former Bill Clinton speech writer Jeff Shesol.

Former President Jimmy Carter said President Barack Obama "waited too long" to go after ISIS and criticized what he described as the president's changing foreign policy. "First of all, we waited too long. We let the Islamic State build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria," Carter told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in an interview published Tuesday. The 39th president was in Texas working on a Habitat for Humanity project. "Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn't object to their being there and about a third of the territory in...

Former President Jimmy Carter claimed Wednesday that he would have been re-elected and beaten Ronald Reagan in 1980 if had been more “manly” in his dealings with Iran. Interviewed by the show "CNBC Meets," Carter repeated his belief that the failed mission to free American hostages held in Tehran killed his chances, but then added that had he gone to war, America would have rewarded him with a second term in 1980. “I could've been re-elected if I'd taken military action against Iran, shown that I was strong and resolute and, um, manly and so forth,” said the former president,...

'The CIA plotted twice to assassinate President Richard Nixon during the years before the Watergate scandal because the agency was angered when 'Tricky Dick' turned dovish and began to withdraw troops from Vietnam, according to an explosive book from a longtime Nixon confidant due for release on Monday. One hit was planned to occur at Nixon's Key Biscayne, Florida vacation house. A second plot to kill him was to culminate during a Miami speech in 1972. When both plots failed, writes best-selling author Roger Stone in 'Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the...

During his farewell remarks in the White House East Room on August 9, 1974, President Richard Milhous Nixon told the truth. Nixon remains a controversial and tarnished historical figure. But his impact on America was significant. Only Franklin Roosevelt’s name appeared on as many national ballots (five). His presidency, though now remembered by many for the way it ended, was actually filled with great achievement and success in many ways. Nixon was a brilliant visionary. But he also had a weakness. It was a failure to tell the truth that became Nixon’s undoing. The highly publicized tapes of what he...

On the occasion of this week's 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency, The Washington Post sponsored a reunion featuring Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporters who "brought down" the 37th president. In fact, Nixon committed political suicide. He thought he could get away with what other politicians had done, but forgot the rules are different for Republicans. The Post event resembled a celebration with much laughter and stories about how Publisher Katharine Graham and Executive Editor Ben Bradlee had told the newsroom "no gloating" when it became apparent Nixon would resign. But gloat they did...

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the...

In a Quinnipiac University poll released today, Americans rated Ronald Reagan as the best US President since World War II, while the current White House occupant, Barack Obama, was listed as the worst. The same revealed that for the first time since his term began, Americans consider former President George W Bush to have done a better job than President Obama. The poll also provided Obama with some of the worst approval ratings of his presidency, and an overwhelming number of Americans believe the nation would be better off had Mitt Romney won the election of 2012. Only 40 percent...