Free Republic

US De Blasio Removes Paintings Of Founding Fathers, Replaces Them With More Diverse Artwork Emma Colton Contributor New York City’s de Blasio family reportedly trashed paintings of founding fathers in the mayor’s mansion and replaced them with more diverse historical figures. According to the New York Post, the Big Apple’s mayoral family junked a handful of paintings depicting George Washington and other unspecified founding fathers from the historical Yellow Parlor in the Gracie Mansion for more diverse artifacts that will reportedly better represent the history of America. The Yellow Parlor, where guests of New York’s mayor have been entertained for...

Dear Martians by Gavin McInnes October 09, 2015 Dear Martians Last week, NASA confirmed that there is water on Mars. This could be some kind of cross-promotional hullabaloo for the movie The Martian, which came out this week, or it could mean there’s life on Mars. If it’s the latter, it behooves us to provide a welcome letter for Martians to get acquainted with our planet. Greetings, Welcome to America. We are members of a cultural group called “The West” and it’s generally understood the West is the best. America is known as the best of the best. We’re the...

Editor's Note: The following column is satire.To the limited extent they actually do, have you ever wondered how so-called “progressives” think? The progressive mind – let’s call it, “Progressy” – collectively hovers, like the Hindenburg, in that fantastical realm, that manmade utopia in waiting, that “fundamentally transformed” world that might only be, if … Hitler got it mostly wrong, Stalin, somewhat right, and Mao, with his “Great Leap Forward,” warmer still. Marx and Engels were red-hot-close, but, they, too, missed the mark, if only by an inch. Today’s hipper, gentler, more progressivish progressives are confident that, if we’d only give...

Nothing says “election season” quite like politicians dumping their long-held policy stances overboard in a desperate gambit to gain votes, but you have to hand it to Hillary Clinton. With her recently-announced opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, she’s making one of the more brazen flip-flops in recent political memory. What’s so amazing about Clinton’s newfound opposition to the highly controversial deal is the jaw-dropping transparency of the move. It’s such an open ploy to counter both the rise of staunch TPP critic Bernie Sanders and the possible entry of TPP supporter Joe Biden that it’s almost refreshing in...

Activists are hoping to draw 10,000 people from a variety of organizations and causes for a march on the same day as the Republican presidential debate at the University of Colorado this month. The Oct. 28 demonstration, called "Our Future, Our Choice: March for Civic Engagement," begins at the Glen Huntington Bandshell in Boulder's Central Park and ends at the Coors Events Center, where Republican candidates will be sparring with each other during a live television broadcast. The activists are planning to use CU's Business Field, which is across Regent Drive from the arena, for post-march activities and displays. Gary...

This is not the America I know. Our culture that has always been a shining beacon for the world has been toppled, broken, crushed. It started long ago with a loss of pride in our country and a loss of individual responsibility. Those in our country with a lack of moral clarity bordering on the criminal have been allowed to overtake our institutions from academia to politics. The economic and moral support given to the charlatans has been given by an underclass whose sole purpose is to take from others and those of us who are going about our day...

Because it doesn't fit the narrative If Thursday’s victims had been singled out because they were black, every left-wing talking head on the planet would be using the Umpqua Community College shootings as evidence of America’s deep-seated racism. If Thursday’s victims had been singled out because they were Muslims, they’d be blaming Bush, American xenophobia, and anti-Islamic paranoia. If they’d been targeted because they were Women, Democrat pundits would be screaming about the war on women and the misogyny inherent to our Neanderthal culture.

<p>Progressives will tell you that food stamp fraud is basically a problem that doesn’t exist. At best they’ll admit that, perhaps, there are a few instances where a store sells something to a customer that shouldn’t be covered by the SNAP program - but they’ll claim those minor transgressions are extremely isolated cases. They’ll regale you with tales of the hard-working poor who hold down two jobs and receive welfare just to make ends meet.</p>

One of my favorite political stories comes from my friend Michelle Steel, an Orange County Supervisor and formerly a member of the State Board of Equalization in California (BOE). When on the BOE, which oversees much of the tax structure in California including sales tax, she served with Judy Chu who is now a Congresswoman (D-CA). In the eight years that Steel served on the BOE, she could only remember Chu voting in favor of the taxpayer once. But every time she went out somewhere with Chu, she would tell a story about her support for the taxpayers and tell...

When it comes to considering the arguments of newly resurgent Christian progressives, we hold these truths to be self-evident: Jesus was not a socialist, the Bible is not an economics textbook, and while scripture commands believers to help the poor, it also commands the poor to help themselves. As Pope Francis gains rock-star status on the economic left, Christians would do well to remember not just scripture, but the economic reality of recent world experience. This morning, the pope addressed Congress with relative restraint. Rather than decrying the perceived excesses of global capitalism — calling it, as he once...

"STUNNING ADMISSION: Hyper-Progressive Cardinal Danneels Admits Being in Mafia Dedicated to Unseat PBXVI" Pride goeth before the fall. The modernists are apparently feeling very powerful and secure, because they are starting to open their mouths and crow about both their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI, dropping hints they played a role in his abdication, as well as quite possibly illicitly organizing to elect Pope Francis. Further serious concerns are being raised about Cardinal Godfried Danneels, one of the papal delegates chosen to attend the upcoming Ordinary Synod on the Family, after the archbishop emeritus of Brussels confessed this week to...

Today, Salon gave a platform to a self-confessed pedophile to explain his urges in sympathetic terms. “I’m a Pedophile, But Not A Monster” reads the headline. It’s a long, self-pitying screed that ends with a call to be “understanding and supportive” of adults who crave sexual intimacy with children. Forgive me if I’m not first to start the standing ovation. In fact I’m pretty sure most people will find the existence on Salon’s website of this post both shocking and distasteful. The timing of Nickerson’s post, barely a week after multiple high-profile progressives rallied around progressive activist Sarah Nyberg, couldn’t...

Maybe we shouldn’t expect anything much from a president who gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod filled with his own speeches, and who gave former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of American movies on DVDs that didn’t work in the U.K. But the way this White House is choosing to “welcome” Pope Francis is appalling. When Francis arrives at the White House on Wednesday for a welcome reception, his greeters will include “Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop who’s now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think-tank with ties to the...

Most people don't know what a socialist is. Socialist sounds too much like "social." A socialist, I suspect, for most Americans means to be "social." Who could be opposed to that? Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. In reality, he's a theft using the respectability of the United States Senate as cover for his criminal views. Like all socialists, Sanders believes it's OK to steal from people if he can get enough votes and enough support from the people he will be stealing for -- the beneficiaries of his thieving ways. Of course, Sanders isn't the only socialist in Congress. Most...

The Progressive Crime Wave Grows Murder, murder, everywhere, but Obama's not to blame. September 7, 2015 Matthew Vadum    Murder rates are skyrocketing in large U.S. cities, but President Obama's progressive pro-crime policies and endless racial provocations have nothing to do with it, the New York Times predictably declared in a recent article. Nowadays Americans are being killed and maimed explicitly because of their race. Execution-style cop killings are becoming distressingly common. Killings and vicious assaults based on the skin color of the civilian victim are also becoming common. That any of this is happening shouldn't surprise anyone who...

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the fictional Oceania government imposed a truncated English upon its people. The purpose of the new language, termed Newspeak, was to help the regime in its effort to eliminate thoughtcrime. “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc [the state ideology of Oceania], but to make all other modes of thought impossible,” Orwell said. But now Newspeak is transforming from fantasy to reality at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The taxpayer-funded university recently issued a new guideline for...

How come: 1. A white racist kills 9 blacks in a church and everyone screams to ban the Confederate flag, but a gay black man kills two white reporters and nobody wants to ban the rainbow flag or the African liberation flag? 2. Hillary Clinton compares Republicans to ISIS and nobody bats an eye, but Curt Schilling compares ISIS to the Nazis and everyone has a conniption (and Schilling gets suspended)? 3. A few hundred Black Lives Matter people march in Minnesota and they get plenty of media coverage, but over 20,000 march in Birmingham in Restoring Unity, retracing the...

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally, you live in a country run by idiots. If you have to get your parent’s permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion, you live in a country run by idiots. If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor or check out a library book, but not to vote who runs the government, you live in a country run by idiots.idiots...

Apparently all of that “anti-imperialist” rhetoric from Caracas was just a farce for public consumption. As Venezuela’s economy implodes amid skyrocketing inflation and crippling shortages of practically everything, Socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro (shown) has a new plan to prop up his imploding regime: annex two thirds of neighboring Guyana’s territory and almost one third of its population. The area eyed by Maduro’s autocracy is especially noteworthy now that potentially lucrative oil deposits have been discovered offshore. Unsurprisingly, a powerful alliance of the region’s socialist strongmen and their allies has sided with the regime in Venezuela. Talk of war is escalating....

It’s the law of the jungle in Venezuela, as shopping for groceries becomes an increasingly dangerous activity. As the shortage crisis worsens, more and more angry mobs are raiding the nation’s supermarkets, looting whatever basic goods they can find.+ During the first half of 2015, the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict (OVCS) registered no fewer than 132 incidents of looting or attempted looting at various stores throughout the country. In addition, Venezuelan consumers staged over 500 protests that condemned the lack of available products at state-run grocery stores, markets, and pharmacies.+ The OVCS has documented at least 132 incidents of...