Free Republic

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...

It was 1970 and the leftist fueled anti-Vietnam War protests were in full swing. The anti-war protestors liked to show up and shout down their opponents much like the brownshirted thugs would go after adversaries of the Nazi Party in Germany around 1930. The anti-war crowd disrupted politicians of all stripes when they tried to speak. Just like the LGBT protestors of today call the religious conservative opponents of gay marriage "bigots", "Nazis" or "KKK" the anti-war crowd called their opponents "fascists" and "storm troopers" On March 19, 1970 the anti-war protestors came to Santa Barbara, California to disrupt an...

Everyone says President Obama is a feckless commander, weak in statecraft, especially compared to the great leaders of the Western world, such as Reagan and Churchill. I believe this does Obama a great injustice. It's so easy to react the way a great leader would. Sure, Obama could have left a small contingent of American troops in Iraq, preserved America's victory, and prevented the entire region from collapsing into chaos and terror. He could have refrained from issuing empty "red line" threats to Syria. He could call ISIS "Islamic." But anybody could do that -- even ISIS calls itself "Islamic."...

VENICE, Italy — President Reagan, who less than two years ago signed the most expensive farm aid bill in history, called Friday for the elimination of agricultural subsidies worldwide by the year 2000 as a way of promoting better world economic health.At the same time, Reagan said that the United States has made "real progress" in trimming its budget deficit, despite ongoing spending battles with Congress, thereby freeing for private investment abroad some of the foreign capital that has been tied up financing the U.S. debt.Reagan's remarks, made in a speech televised by Worldnet and provided to networks around the...

Make no mistake, Scott Walker is right about Ronald Reagan’s firing of the air traffic controllers, and the sobering impact this one decision – a domestic policy decision – had on the thinking of Soviet leaders. In short, Reagan’s decisive domestic leadership sacred the Soviet Union, which was not accustomed to an American President doing exactly as he said he would do. This decision by Reagan, made against the counsel of some of his senior advisors, had enormous implications for the Soviet Union – and theirs leaders knew it. While Walker’s media critics disparage the comment and Reagan’s onetime Soviet...

"If and when Congress votes on a new immigration bill -- whatever the "triggers," timetables or other provisos -- the real issue to be decided will be the same as it has been from the beginning. That issue is whether the Republican Party, dazed from a daily pounding by the Washington press corps, will agree to commit political suicide by enfranchising 11 plus million illegal aliens on U.S. soil, the vast majority of whom will soon be casting Democratic ballots." So wrote the great M. Stanton Evans, who passed away on Tuesday. Having been at the forefront of the movement...

Includes both his speech and questions from Sean Hannity. 24 minutes.

From a shining city on a hill and Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, to terrible deeds in the name of Christ and terrorists' legitimate grievances. The chasm between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama when it comes to their views of America and the world could hardly be wider. But on today's Up With Steve Kornacki, when the host asked the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart whether President Obama talks and thinks about America differently from Reagan [and Clinton and Carter], Capehart emphatically replied "No. Rudy Giuliani is lying." View the video here.

"......The more significant development was Scott Walker’s semi-public confab with the leading lights, such as they are, of supply-side economics. Last night, the Wisconsin governor attended a dinner in New York hosted by Stephen Moore, Arthur Laffer, and Lawrence Kudlow. This is a strong indication of the policy leanings of a candidate who probably stands as strong a chance as anybody of capturing the nomination. The backdrop to Walker’s meeting is that the Republican Party is undergoing the first serious effort to alter its domestic policy in a quarter century....... This has left a gaping void for a Republican candidate...

3:08 video: Governor Scott Walker’s Interview with Young America Foundation Reflects on Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” SpeechGov. Scott Walker: “You can give that speech [Ronald Reagan's "A Time for Choosing"] today, not tell people who it was, just play it, play the audio, and I think people would find it just as compelling today as it was the day he gave it.”[Oct 1964] .................." “President Obama and his allies tend to measure success in government by how many people depend on the government, how many people are on medicare, food-stamp, unemployment. We instead, we the conservatives measure success in...

These are not your Boys of Summer. These are the United States presidents born in February and perhaps we should toast them. At least that is always my inclination. Abraham Lincoln (born February 12, 1809) and George Washington (born February 22, 1732) are the headliners. In fact, they so eclipse the rest of the presidential ranks that it seems rather unlikely that the “average guy” on the street could even name another president born in this frigid, God-forsaken, groundhog scrutinizing, heart-shaped-candy-box-buying month. But ... nevertheless ... here we go. Even most die-hard Republicans probably don’t know that Ronald Reagan—the Great...

It’s the 104th birthday of Ronald Reagan, and since he was one of the most widely recognized world leaders, it’s not hard to find some interesting facts about the 40th president.Reagan had a long career as an actor and union leader before he became the governor of California in the 1960s and won the presidential election in 1980. Here are 10 facts about President Reagan you may not know. 1. Reagan really did enjoy jelly beans. According to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, his favorite flavor was licorice. Reagan started eating jelly beans in 1967 as he was trying...

The president was a conservative's conservative. He had campaigned on reducing taxes and made it his legacy. But when a gas tax increase was proposed, it was a different story. In his weekly radio address, he said, "We simply cannot allow this magnificent (highway) system to deteriorate beyond repair." That was 1982. The president was Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, the disrepair Reagan feared has come to pass. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents hasn't been raised since 1993, and the Highway Trust Fund is severely underfunded. A 10- to 15-cent a gallon increase would provide enough money to meet the...

A good, old-fashioned western tonight. Tennessee (John Payne) is a whiskey-drinking, high stakes gambling, all around rogue with few friends and plenty of enemies. His life begins to change when a good-natured miner named Cowpoke (Ronald Reagan) saves his life during an ambush. But will their budding friendship survive when Tennessee meets Cowpoke's bride-to-be (Colleen Gray), who may not be all she appears to be? Co-starring Rhonda Fleming and Leo Gordon.

During TCA’s winter press tour, FX CEO John Langraf revealed that Ronald Reagan will figure into the second season of the network’s hit anthology series. “It covers something that was referenced in the first installment by Lou Solverson, Molly Solverson’s [Allison Tolman] father,” Langraf said. “It’s a big sprawling, in some ways, more comedic [season], though at times, a very serious show. It’s set in the late ’70s against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for President of the United States. Reagan is a character in it.” After the panel, Landgraf confided to EW that Fargo will actually be...

Lou Cannon has a nice remembrance in RealClearPolitics of Martin Anderson, the economist and adviser to Ronald Reagan who died last week at 78. He touches on all of Anderson's accomplishments, from his successful advocacy in the Nixon White House to abolish the military draft to his unearthing, with his wife Annelise Anderson and Kiron Skinner, the handwritten drafts of Ronald Reagan's radio speeches, which show the impressive breadth of Reagan's reading and depth of his thinking. Let me add one more item to the list: Anderson's 1964 book "The Federal Bulldozer: A Critical Analysis of Urban Renewal 1942-1962." When...

Mario Cuomo will be laid to rest today. Odd. The son of a legal Italian immigrant somehow managed on his own to get an education, grow rich and become governor of the nation’s largest state – and  pass his legacy on to his progeny  - butt he wants the government to do for the next generations what he and his family did for themselves? I learned about our kind of democracy from my father. And I learned about our obligation to each other from him and from my mother. They asked only for a chance to work and to make...

My daughter asked me my opinion on an article she read in Vanity Fair attempting to debunk the presidential record of Ronald Reagan. I happily responded. The writer of the piece is veteran liberal commentator Michael Kinsley, who used to be a regular on William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" and CNN's "Crossfire." It's not as though he appeared out of nowhere, studied the evidence anew and shared a novel theory. He's been dissing Reaganomics for decades along with other Democrats and liberals, whose only recourse is to distort the Gipper's phenomenal record. Why is this even relevant, you ask?...

Would conservatives support a presidential bid by David Petraeus? The Iraq surge architect isn't a candidate. But for years prominent conservatives from Rep. Peter King to Andrew Breitbart have touted the soldier-scholar as a dream conservative candidate to take on Barack Obama. The question is, if Petraeus had run, would his service in the Obama administration -- first as head of U.S. Central Command, then as Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan and now as CIA Director -- have counted against him? It's safe to say conservatives wouldn't have re-purposed the old "General Betray-Us" moniker for the man who has...