Free Republic

There are terrorists in our midst and they arrived here using legal means right under the noses of the federal law enforcement agencies whose mission is to stop them. That is not due to malfeasance or lack of effort on the part of these officers; it is due to the restrictions placed on them by the Obama administration. I was a firsthand witness to how these policies deliberately prevented scrutiny of Islamist groups. The two San Bernardino jihadists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, may have benefited from the administration's closure of an investigation I initiated on numerous groups infiltrating radicalized...

Jihadists, Yes, Pro-Israel Jews, No. If you're a member of a Islamic terror group, you can and will get security clearance. If you're working at Fort Hood, you can run slideshows supporting terrorists and handing out Soldier of Allah business cards, and there's no problem. But if you're an elderly Jewish dentist volunteering at a Naval clinic, it's another story, as Bret Stephens reports. When Gershon Pincus turned 60, he decided he wanted to give something back to his country. The Brooklyn-born father of four had maintained a successful private dental practice in New York City for 35 years. As...

The political establishment's condemnation of Trump's proposal was instantaneous and predictably consisted of single phrase epithets, ad hominem and empty invective: "prejudiced and divisive" (Clinton), "xenophobia and racist" (Sanders), "fascist" (O’Malley), "unhinged" (Bush), "offensive and outlandish" (Rubio), "outrageous divisiveness" (Kasich), and the list could go on. Noticeably absent from the initial torrent of Republican vitriol was any substantive discussion of Trump's actual proposal. Which made it especially satisfying a week later to watch the December 15 Republican debate. Given a week to read the polls and reflect a little, hysterical adjectives and sanctimonious hyperventilation had disappeared from the arsenals of...

Last week’s Crystal Ball repeated its refrain that Donald Trump is very unlikely to get the Republican presidential nomination. However, it issued the caveat that “[i]t would be easier to make our argument if we could explain precisely how and by whom the real estate tycoon will be dethroned.” Who can and will defeat Trump? The answer is obvious, but also not obvious because the question seems to beg the name of another candidate. The “who” that will defeat Trump is not another candidate but is most likely to be the Republican voters who actually turn out in Iowa, New...

<p>The American people will have to absorb higher deficits, greater debt, less economic liberty and more corporate welfare. Congress cannot seem to help itself in bending to every whim of special interests. How can they face their constituents when they continue to burden our children and grandchildren with debts they will never be able to repay? Our government is failing us, so we must do something about it. Who knows how bad things will be when the next administration comes in and has to pick up the pieces?</p>

This is the type of Islam modeled after the communist Soviet Union; with the goal of establishing a totalitarian state in which a small intellectual, or religious, elite is in control of the laws, economy, culture, and thoughts of its citizens; the kind of country the radical Islamists [sic] of today seek to establish world wide.

Each of the Republican presidential candidates brings something good to the race for the GOP nomination and some things not so good. In the fifth and final GOP debate of the year, the candidates on the main stage, and even a few on the "undercard," presented ideas and positions that many Republican voters would consider far better than those we have now under the president we have now. Donald Trump continued to channel Republican voter anger on several issues, including the feeling that the U.S. is no longer "great," a word Trump does not define, but which resonates with the...

We often hear it said that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and reject violence. That proposition is worth examining because if it's not true there is cause to worry. Of course, you should be worried already. Even if only a small percentage of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are prepared to use violence, that still works out to a large number. However, if the vast-majority thesis doesn’t hold up, you might want to order a Kevlar vest from Amazon, or, if you’re the accommodating type, you could start practicing the Shahada - the Islamic declaration of faith.There...

IT'S TIME FOR THE OTHER 13 CANDIDATES TO DROP OUTDecember 16, 2015 At what point in Donald Trump's inaugural address do you figure the GOP establishment will finally grasp what's been happening? The establishment -- not "elites," because they're mostly bland functionaries who went to third-rate schools -- have thrown absolutely everything they have at Trump. I've never seen so many Republicans featured on MSNBC. At least no one will be able to say the Republican National Committee didn't give it the old college try (and, again, that would be third-rate colleges). Trump is a runaway hit with Americans for...

Michel Houellebecq is a sardonic and iconoclastic French novelist, winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, and subject of considerable controversy in Europe these days. He deserves to be controversial here in the United States as well. He calls his most recent novel a work of "political fiction." Titled "Soumission" (in English, "Submission," in Arabic, an accurate translation would be "Islam"), it is set in the near future, in France, "a Western civilization now ending before our very eyes." Coincidence No. 1: "Soumission" was published in France the same week jihadis attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, slaughtering as many members...

Every Obama event somehow has to offend Christians and Jews. Could Obama pull it off for Chanukah? Yes, he could. I already wrote about Susan Talve's bizarre pre-Menorah lighting rant at the White House Chanukah party. Then, not satisfied with having made a disgrace of the Chanukah ceremony, Susan Talve declared, "I stand here to light these lights to say no the darkness of Islamophobia and Homophobia and Transphobia." Talve babbled about insuring "justice for Palestinians" and began gleefully chanting, "Ins'Allah, Ins'Allah". Or "Allah Willing".

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is calling for a federal investigation into whether the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has ties to terrorism. In a policy proposal released on Tuesday outlining his call for a declaration of war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Carson said the State Department must investigate the Washington-based nonprofit group as an alleged "supporter of terrorism." "The Department of State should designate the Muslim Brotherhood and other organizations that propagate or support Islamic terrorism as terrorist organizations, and fully investigate the Council on American-Islamic Relations as...

When it comes to selling copy, it’s a good bet that sex trumps multilateral finance. That’s an axiom of human nature. It would be asking too much to expect that the media, or its customers, would be as fascinated by the in-house diplomacy of the International Monetary Fund as all concerned have been by the scandal surrounding the recently handcuffed and dethroned IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Most eyes are now on the prosecutor’s cratering case, the curious past of the maid who alleged the sexual assault, and the media now analyzing its own coverage of these sordid events. But...

Charges of unlawful assembly and use of uniform in public were brought against 11 members of a group trying to enforce aspects of strict Islamic Sharia law in the North Rhine-Westphalia city, a spokeswoman for the Wuppertal police told The Local. Officers stopped the 11-man group on the street on Wednesday. Some were wearing orange vests bearing the words 'Shariah Police', in violation of federal German law, the spokeswoman said. The group has been stopping young people at local drinking and gambling establishments and urging them to abstain from activities deemed to be ungodly according to Islam. The Wednesday incident...

Police in Moenchengladbach have arrested infamous Salafist Sven Lau on suspicion of supporting a terrorist group. [...] In a statement, the prosecutors said that Lau, 35, had been arrested on suspicion of acting on behalf of "Jaish al-mujahirin wa-l-ansar" (army of emigrants and helpers, or Jamwa). That could make him culpable of supporting a foreign terrorist organization, a serious crime that carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in jail. ...

GOP candidates debate for first time since terror attacks.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reveals that following the San Bernardino terrorist attack, 70 percent of Americans now believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction and only 43 percent approve of Barack Obama’s job performance as president. About 71 percent of Americans say that the “shootings and random acts of violence that took place this year in Charleston, S.C., Oregon , Colorado, and the terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, California — are now are now a permanent part of American life.” Domestic terrorism and national security have more than doubled this year and now are the...

President Obama made a pitch Tuesday for Americans to remember their immigrant roots, describing the U.S. as the traditional home for refugees fleeing the world's worst troubles. He compared today's climate of fear over immigration and terrorism to what he called some of the darkest days of the country's immigrant history, such as when black Africans were brought in the slave trade, when Irish and Chinese faced discrimination and when Japanese were pushed into internment camps during World War II. "In the Syrian refugee of today we should see the Jewish refugee of World War II," the president said as...

— Terrorism has emerged as the top concern among Republican primary voters, and Donald Trump is seen as the candidate best equipped to combat it. This is the main reason Trump has popped in the polls since his call last week for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration into the United States. A fresh Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 38 percent of Republicans name terrorism as the single most important issue, compared with 29 percent who name the economy and just 6 percent who highlight immigration. “Asked to choose which candidate among the top five they would trust most...

The Islamic State issued a fatwa condemning to death children with Down's syndrome, according to the Facebook page Mosul Eye, which says it reports news from within Islamic-State-occupied Mosul. "The Shar'i Board of ISIL issued an 'Oral Fatwa' to its members authorizing them to 'kill newborn babies with Down's Syndrome and congenital deformities and disabled children.' [Snip] Mosul Eye claimed to have recorded 'more than 38 confirmed cases of killing babies with congenital deformities and Down's Syndrome, aged between one week to three months.'