Free Republic

Circling the Drain in Baltimore Commentary for 3 May 2015 The NSA has made a coloring book for kids. Why not? Our intelligence community has been catering to adult children for the last fifty years. Political correctness at the NSA, as with the CIA, long ago reached a level incompatible with national security. The NSA even has an Earth Day mascot/cartoon character. As a provocation, political correctness is a scheme for neutralizing and discrediting America’s most important institutions. Long ago James Burnham explained that latter-day liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide. And who, in the end, will fight for...

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who is putting a lot of emphasis on Iowa in his presidential campaign, is continuing to notch endorsements from some well-known activists in the state. Former Secretary of State Matt Schultz told the Quad-City Times on Wednesday he is endorsing Cruz for president. "I’m looking for somebody who’s going to stand up and fight for our country, and he gives me hope we can turn things around," said Schultz, who is now the Madison County Attorney. "He's not going to back down from a fight." In a letter to two dozen members of the Cruz...

"When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship." Red or Blue?

<p>Interesting, not because it’s a surprise that Ron Paul’s son feels this way — remember this? — but because this is a subject that every Republican in the field, Rand included, would probably prefer to avoid during the primaries.</p> <p>Or am I wrong about that? Could this be a smart play for Paul, especially given how it’ll make Jeb Bush squirm?</p>

Republican Sen. Rand Paul is standing by his statement that most vaccinations should be "voluntary," telling CNBC that a parent's choice not to vaccinate a child is "an issue of freedom." In an interview with the network Monday, Paul said that vaccines are "a good thing" but that parents "should have some input" into whether or not their children must get them. And he gave credence to the idea - disputed by the majority of the scientific community - that vaccination can lead to mental disabilities. "I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound...

A group of zealous supporters of Sen. Ted Cruz’ (R-TX) 2016 presidential run is planning to launch a ‘Ted Cruz Air Force’ (TCAF) in the coming months prior to the Republican primaries that begin in less than a year. According to TCAF, “Ted Cruz clearly has the support of the grassroots. He will also have air support.” TCAF says its most prominent air feature will be the “Ted Cruz Blimp,” but it also plans on recruiting “antique aircraft, towed aerial banners, light sport aircraft … [and] parachutes.” Member of TCAF Jerry Collette says he’s going to do everything he can...

Rand Paul has cast himself as a Diogenes for the modern era, a truth-seeker who can't seem to find an honest man — or woman — no matter where he shines his lamp in Washington. That's why his willingness to say almost anything about himself and other Republicans, regardless of whether it's true, poses an existential threat to his brand. It's only a matter of time before the offended start punching back publicly, and that will surely start with fellow Republicans. Many of them had a right to be aggrieved after Paul's speech this weekend at the First in the...

9/11 COVER-UP? The latest claim isn’t from conspiracy theorists--it’s from a former top US Senator. He says documents prove Saudi Arabia helped pull off the attacks, and that the FBI hid the truth. Shep has details:

“The difference is purely in implementation. If you had a philosophical discussion on what the world should look like, there would be no difference.”(AUDIO-AT-LINK) Rand Paul’s brother says that when it comes to ideology, there’s “no difference” between his brother, the Kentucky senator and Republican presidential candidate, and his father, the former congressman and three-time presidential candidate. Ronnie Paul, the eldest son of the former congressman and sometimes-surrogate for his brother, was speaking with libertarian podcaster Israel Anderson. He said that both his brother and father held the same beliefs, there’s just a difference in the implementation of how to...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul split with senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to vote for a healthcare bill Tuesday night that will add about half a trillion dollars to the national debt over the next several decades.Paul sided with the overwhelming majority of senators and representatives who voted for the bill, in a decision almost certain to come up in the primary race, where he is currently joined by Cruz and Rubio.The “doc-fix” bill solves a recurring problem in the way Medicare payments are made to doctors, extends a children’s health insurance program, and requires higher-income seniors to pay higher...

If Ron Paul weren’t Ron Paul, I’d assume this denunciation was just a stunt orchestrated by him and Rand to put some foreign-policy distance between them before the primaries. Are you a mainstream conservative worried that President Rand would be too much like Ron in office? Well, here you go. Let your conscience be eased. The nation’s most famous isolationist thinks his boy’s a bit of a warmonger. But c’mon. With the possible exception of his vote for the Afghanistan AUMF in 2001, has Ron Paul ever endorsed a position that he didn’t sincerely hold? Of course he thinks the...

AUSTIN - Well, this could make for an awkward conversation at Thanksgiving dinner. Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as...

Sen. Rand Paul’s campaign for the presidency is not more than a few days old and already his mercurial father, former Rep. Ron Paul, himself a former presidential candidate, is starting to make trouble for his son. According to a Saturday story in the Houston Chronicle, the elder Paul called the famous letter that 47 Republican senators, including the younger Paul, sent to the Iranian mullahs “a joke.” The letter informed the Iranian leadership that any agreement that they reached with President Obama concerning Iran’s nuclear bomb program would not outlast the Obama presidency lacking congressional ratification.

AUSTIN ...Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on Saturday dismissed as a "joke" the demand by U.S. senators of his party that they must approve a potential agreement over the Middle East country's nuclear capabilities. "I strongly disagree with the motivation of that statement made by so many members of Congress, especially in the Senate," Paul said at a conference on liberty at the University of Texas at Austin, presumably referring to an open letter senators sent to Iranian officials describing any deal not approved by them as informal..... "They're out to stop peace," he said. "They're terrified that peace...

Riddle me this, fellow Republicans. An NBC survey April 9 reports that a huge majority (70%) of Americans doubts that Iran will abide by any agreement to limit its nuclear arms–but a majority (54%) still thinks Obama will do a better job than the Republicans in dealing with Iran! A majority of Americans – 54 percent – trust Barack Obama to do a better job handling an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, compared to 42 percent who say they trust the Republicans in Congress. But nearly 7 in 10 Americans say that Iran is not likely to abide...

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The other night as my wife Kelsey and I were getting ready for bed, we were talking about the 2016 presidential race and discussing how things would shape up for the first-in-the-nation caucus state – our home state – of Iowa. We had both heard that Ted Cruz was set to announce his candidacy at midnight, and were keeping a finger on the pulse of the reaction within our liberty-heavy political circles. My wife’s phone buzzed, and then I heard her groan. Another of our friends had asked her who we would be supporting for president in the state where...

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Rand Paul kicked off his first public appearance in the Hawkeye State since launching his anti-establishment presidential campaign with a question that was meant as a rallying cry. “Do we have any liberty lovers here?” he asked a crowd composed mostly of University of Iowa students, who sported Rand stickers and responded with cheers and whistles. But if Paul’s going to have any chance of contending for his party’s nomination, he better hope their nonlibertarian-leaning parents feel the same way. The Iowa caucus will, of course, be the first major test for the entire GOP field—but the first-in-the-nation...

In a relentless stream of Rand Paul-talk in the past 48 hours, three bits stood out for width of their perspective or freshness of their data. McKay Coppins at Buzzfeed reads the Paul campaign strategy as trying to be everything to everyone in his Party for maximal potential appeal. Some points from Coppins: On one side, there are those in Rand world who argue his best bet is to unite his core base of libertarian activists with elements of the GOP establishment and traditional donor class. In the other camp are advisers who say conservative evangelicals — many of whom...

It is a genuinely interesting topic, if you are at all interested in Rand Paul, since his rise to political prominence was so dependent on his father Ron Paul, and his success since them at becoming a fully normalized and mediagenic hot property has to some degree been dependent on his not being his father. A bevy of sources on the eve of Rand's presidential campaign becoming officially official wonder: how is he going to deal with dear old dad? First, the New York Times, which quotes me explaining why things like dual personal appearances are probably not going to...