Free Republic

There is no debate we’re a country in transition. The only debate is what we’re actually transitioning to, and whether we’ll be better or worse as a people for it. Such transitions challenge trusted traditions to prove they’re still relevant. Old alliances are tested. And folks tend to gravitate to new ideas quickly before they’re fully vetted, mainly because they’ve lost faith in the old ideas. In the political arena, nowhere will this attempted paradigm shift be more apparent than the foreign policy debate that could very well define the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Recently, Kentucky Senator...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sen. Rand Paul yesterday introduced S. 2644, the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment's role in seizing property without due process of law. Under current law, law enforcement agencies may take property suspected of involvement in crime without ever charging, let alone convicting, the property owner. In addition, state agencies routinely use federal asset forfeiture laws; ignoring state regulations to confiscate and receive financial proceeds from forfeited property. The FAIR Act would change federal law and protect the rights of property owners by requiring that...

President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal aliens via the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and other executive orders is a “magnet” for illegal immigration, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News on Tuesday. “All of that is a magnet and a beacon for people to come,” Paul said when asked about Obama’s executive immigration orders during a brief interview outside the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) headquarters. “You can’t have any kind of beacon without securing the border first. It really illustrates what conservatives have been saying all along, myself included: You can’t vote for immigration reform,...

In recent days the Weekly Standard and Washington Free Beacon have brought to light a now-scrubbed recommended reading list for students that had resided on Sen. Rand Paul’s website. Why the focus on a book list, and why was the book list scrubbed? The answer to the second question could lie in the answer to the first: the foreign policy recommendations in the reading list take a variety of controversial stances, suggesting that the U.S. is to blame for the rise of Islamic supremacism in the Middle East, that the “Israeli Lobby” controls U.S. foreign policy to America’s great detriment,...

Looking ahead to 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the odds on favorite against Vice President Joe Biden among Iowa Democrats for her party’s nomination. But, she would find a general election matchup against either Kentucky Senator Rand Paul or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie very competitive. Clinton edges former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and has an early lead over Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. There is a wide gender gap in these matchups. Although each of the potential Republican candidates has a more positive than negative rating with GOP...

It used to be that blaming America for crisis abroad was largely the province of liberals. That folk wisdom appears to be changing—just ask Ron Paul. In the days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the former House member has been quick to attack the West and President Obama for pointing any fingers in the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Former Congressman Ron Paul defended the Russian government on Sunday and slammed Western leaders for spreading "propaganda" after a Malaysian Airlines plane was allegedly shot down by Kremlin-backed separatists in Ukraine. "Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said," the former presidential candidate wrote. "While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event, there are a few things they will not report." One of those unreported things, Paul claimed in his weekly "Texas Straight Talk" column, was the...

While the RNC trolls Hillary Clinton with a squirrel, claiming there is ‘Hillary fatigue!’, reality bites them in the poll once again. Republicans have been trying to sell ‘Clinton fatigue’ for years now, but really amped up their efforts this past month. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus has been comforting himself over the GOP’s stale, tired 2016 line up with the fantasy that the country is tired of Clinton, and that it would be “nuts” to have another Clinton in the White House. “There’s Hillary fatigue already out there,” Priebus tried to sell recently on “Meet the Press.” To this end,...

Senator Rand Paul is in Silicon Valley, and the Republican lawmaker and Tea Party hero has reportedly met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel, according to reports. What does the GOP leader want? "Cash and geeks," according to TIME.com. Paul is hoping to fundraise among libertarian techies, whose political leanings are toward independence from government interference, meaning the red-blooded lawmaker has a shot in deep-blue California, observers say. He wants more of the $2.7 million Thiel donated to Ron Paul's 2012 presidential run, the website reported, and along with the cash, he's hoping for some tech...

Rand Paul has a little-discussed problem. Yes, he’s riding a wave. Yet another new poll brings happy tidings, putting him at the top of the GOP heap in both Iowa and New Hampshire (although still well behind “undecided”). He keeps doing these clever things that titillate the Beltway sages, like coupling with Democratic Sen. Cory Booker (ooh, he’s black!) on sentencing reform. All this, you know. He’s a shrewdie, we have to give him that. But here’s what you maybe don’t know. Paul is up for reelection in 2016. One assumes that he would want to hold on to his...

Event organizers of the 134th Fancy Farm Picnic are firming up the last of their speaking roster for this year’s event as the main attraction of Grimes versus McConnell has staff updating the venue, and guests are being warned to be respectful as a national TV audience descends upon the village of Fancy Farm. Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s staff confirmed that the senior Senator for the state will be at the event. McConnell’s Democratic challenger Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes will share the stage with McConnell in a repeat of last year’s showdown. Kentucky’s junior U.S. Senator Republican...

The issues of gender equality and women’s rights are being used by Democrats in the Kentucky U.S. Senate race to illustrate the disconnect between Kentucky U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and women voters as a pro-choice group begins to run ads in the state and a big name McConnell foe criticizes his stances. NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC, a group which has endorsed Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes and called her a “pro-choice champion”, released an ad Tuesday to run statewide in Kentucky for a week. The group says the 30-second ad, titled “Mitch McConnell Will Never Do the Right Thing for...

The Medicare claims from a budget plan proposed in 2011 are again at the center of the Kentucky U.S. Senate race as the campaign of Kentucky U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell released another ad on the topic Monday defending his record. The McConnell campaign released a new web ad Monday morning hitting Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes on her campaign’s first negative TV ad , which caused controversy because of claims made by Grimes. The ad, titled “Asked and Answered”, uses clips of news programs questioning the claims in the Grimes ad where a retired coal miner asks Senator McConnell why...

This Rand Paul versus Rick Perry GOP thunderstorm popped up pretty fast, didn’t it? It was a dark cloud on the horizon on Friday, when Governor Perry of Texas published an op-ed in The Washington Post that attacked Senator Paul as a foreign policy isolationist. Paul is reluctant to devote more US troops and weapons to Iraq, and Perry used that position to portray the Kentucky lawmaker as the reverse of Ronald Reagan, as someone who wants to hunker down at home rather than lead the world. ((snip)) Plus, Perry’s behind. It’s early yet, but as our colleague Brad Knickerbocker...

FULL TITLE Rand Paul Fires Back at Rick Perry: ‘Apparently His New Glasses Haven’t Altered His Perception Of The World’ Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Monday fired back at fellow Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who accused Paul over the weekend of standing for “isolationist policies” that “would only endanger our national security.” “There are many things I like about Texas Gov. Rick Perry, including his stance on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution,” Paul said. “But apparently his new glasses haven’t altered his perception of the world, or allowed him to see it any more clearly.” The new foreign...

The worst is judging the not-so-good: That’s what Attorney General Eric Holder would have you believe. Yes, the worst attorney general in our history contends that Sarah Palin wasn’t a very good vice presidential nominee. Mark one up again for the liberals war on women. “She wasn't a particularly good vice presidential candidate,” the AG told George Stephanapolous on ABCNews. “She's an even worse judge of who ought to be impeached and why.” We’ve known for a while that Holder knows little about the law, now we know that he knows little about politics too. He’s wrong on the law...

On Monday, Morning Joe played a game of “Fact or Fiction” and Joe Scarborough had a lot to say when they arrived at this prediction: Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will win the 2016 GOP nomination. “Fiction, fiction, fiction,” Scarborough declared. Scarborough admitted that if Paul runs he will probably do well in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but beyond that, “he will be his father’s son.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell said he “would have agreed” with Scarborough assessment, but does not know who on the Republican side has what it takes to beat Paul. “I have to continue to look...

We need a leader to speak out and make clear our intentions. With Israel again under attack, the situation in North Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe unsettled and bloody, it’s time for the grown ups to keep our rendezvous with destiny-- which has always been necessitated by the very best of reasons: America’s best interest. For the last 80 years America has managed to keep the peace world wide—mostly-- and at a historically small cost. But there are some on both the right and the left today who are tired of this American greatness, tired of protecting...

Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, came down firmly on the hawkish side of the Republican national security debate Saturday, saying "isolationist" figures like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., are "blind" to the threat posed by terrorism. "I can understand the emotions behind isolationism," Perry wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. "Many people are tired of war, and the urge to pull back is a natural, human reaction. Unfortunately, we live in a world where isolationist policies would only endanger our national security even further."

Flattus wrote: It's funny to watch Cons attempt to portray this disaster in Iraq as Obama's issue. Sorry, no sale. Thinking Americans know whose war this is. But it's not surprising to see you run from it. From Ron Paul's column today, referring to Necons:"They cannot admit they were wrong about the invasion being a ‘cakewalk’ that would pay for itself, so they want to blame last week's events on the 2011 US withdrawal from Iraq. But the trouble started with the 2003 invasion itself, not the 2011 troop withdrawal. Anyone who understands cause and effect should understand this."-- Welcome...