Free Republic

Proving that communism has worked no better for students at a University of California-San Diego cooperative living space than it did for the billions of citizens of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the aptly-named “Che Cafe” is quickly running out of cash. In the cleverly titled article, “In the Red,” The UCSD Guardian noted that the Che Cafe–a student-run co-op named after mass-murdering dictator Che Guevara and governed by the communist philosophy–has become a “money pit consistently plagued with safety issues.”

Does Sean Penn party down with the new socialist owners of Globovision? The upside is that, while discussing Thomas Piketty's tome on income inequality, they can relax in the luxury of one of their South Florida mansions. While the citizens of oil rich Venezuela reap the benefits of Chavista socialism by standing on long lines for hours to buy toilet paper and other basic commodities, if the bare store shelves do not empty out first, Penn and the Globovision owners can sip on fine wine purchased at exclusive Miami boutiques they have picked up while driving around town in one...

The nation shouldn’t be debating the nation’s health-care system or the successful jihadi attack in Benghazi in 2012, President Barack Obama complained at a May 19 fundraiser in Maryland. “Yes, we can have a legitimate debate about does every government program work… [but] the debate we’re having right now is about, what, Benghazi? Obamacare?” Obama told his donors in the wealthy Potomac district of Maryland. “It’s not serious [and] is not speaking to the real concerns that people have,” Obama insisted.

Half a Billion Dollars. That’s how much the California Teachers Association and the powerful Service Employees International Union have spent on California politics since 2000. The unions’ return on that “investment”? A legislature totally beholden to them for political support and campaign contributions. Here’s another mind-boggling number: Half a Trillion Dollars. That’s an estimate of the unfunded public pension liabilities racked up by California’s state and municipal governments due to overly generous pay and defined benefit pension plans lavished on unionized government employees. If you thought the bankruptcies of Stockton, San Bernardino, and Vallejo were entertaining, break out the popcorn...

Victim of Ceausescu’s totalitarian, brutal regime, Death of 100 million other innocents who died at the hands of Bolsheviks, Stalinists, Maoists, Castroists, other Marxist dictators

Senate Democrats said Wednesday that the Supreme Court has stretched the First Amendment too far when it comes to campaign finances, and vowed to hold a vote to amend the Constitution and undo a number of landmark decisions. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat and chairman of the Rules Committee, said he will push a constitutional amendment to the full floor later this year that would give Congress the power to impose strict limits on campaign finance. “It will draw to a fine point where we are at — and that is, the First Amendment is sacred, but that...

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race. That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising race as an issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda. There seems to be a shift in recent days, however. Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both. Is this partly about activating minority voters during a midterm election year in...

Liberals and progressives (LPs) like to control and micromanage other people’s lives. They consider themselves the ultimate arbiter of every facet of our existence. You could say they are the proverbial busy-bodies. You can ignore the busy-body down the block. But, if you ignore liberals and progressives who have the power of the HOA, of violent protests, of boycotts, of the law, of the purse, and of the police behind them, you do so at your own peril.

Spanish-Style Riots Coming To A Country Near YouJames GuzmanDollar Vigilante BlogApril 15, 2014 Screams and sirens pierce the air as rocks, firecrackers, and sharp glass go flying in every direction. Police try to beat back the hordes of protesters by smashing indiscriminately into the crowd with their billy clubs. This was the scene recently in Madrid, Spain, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to fight against the budget cuts and tax increases put into place by Mariano Rajoy, the current Prime Minister of Spain. The protesters chanted “no more cuts” as they demolished storefronts and threw...

Seven months after being subpoenaed by Congress, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy conceded that her agency does not have - and cannot produce - all of the scientific data used for decades to justify numerous rules and regulations under the Clean Air Act.

Two House GOP moderates—Reps. David Joyce (R-OH) and Mike Simpson (R-ID)—made comments this week that are sure to infuriate the House GOP conference. In an interview published on YouTube as part of a series called “Solon Speaks” in Solon, Ohio, hosted by Terry Dean, Joyce said Obamacare is the law of the land—and here to stay: "The Affordable Care Act, like it or not, is the law of the land. The Supreme Court passed it. Now we’re struggling to implement what is the law of the land. In the last Congress, they put up 23 odd bills that tried to...

Sen. James Inhofe (R- OK) is taking a stand against the steady stream of job-killing, price-raising regulations coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency. Inhofe says he'll force Congressional review of any new EPA regulations relating to the Clean Air Act from going into effect until the agency conducts a full review of these policies and their impact on the American economy.

There is a pastime among liberal pundits — the latest is Nicholas Kristof — to quote a new center left global ranking (with unbiased titles such as “The Social Progress Imperative”) and then to decry that the United States is behind its major industrial competitors in things like “Internet Access” and “Ecosystem sustainability.” The subtext of these rants is that an illiberal, reactionary U.S. does not spend enough on government entitlements to promote parity, equality and social justice among its citizenry. These pessimistic rankings increase the angst about the American condition when viewed from scowling perches in Washington or New...

President Obama was doing his favorite thing this week: talking to crowds of adoring young people who already agree with him while acting like he persuaded them about something. They also seemed to give Obama the impression that he’s a really funny guy. On Wednesday, he told a crowd of 1,400 at the University of Michigan that he visited a local deli, Zingerman’s. He proceeded to tell a long story about ordering the small Reuben sandwich, which he said was “killer.” That description got a good laugh. Then he explained how he thought the sandwich was too big, so he...

But now they’re baaaack. According to organizer David Swanson, “Awareness has grown, education has spread, and ideas have sunk in. People now know that we can’t lift up the poor without pulling down the plutocrats. It’s understood that we can have democracy or billionaires, not both. The notion of shifting priorities is even making headway; behind the screaming of ‘no cuts!’ and ‘less spending!’ there’s a steady, rising voice – ebbing and flowing like the ocean – insisting that we can move the money from the military and the oil corporations and the bankers to green energy and schools and...

Sinclair Lewis was wrong—when fascism came to America, it was actually wrapped in a rainbow flag and wearing an ascot. How else can one describe the ongoing left-wing commitment to the stamping out of free speech, whenever that speech contradicts the gay agenda, as well as other parts of the “progressive” platform? With the resignation of newly minted Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, the “progressive” Left, especially its social wing, has once again shown itself to be the enforcers a political correctness in speech and thought that ought to be chilling to any person who actually cares about individual liberty. It’s...

Agenda 21, the United Nation’s open plan for global sustainability, is widely understood to be voluntary. Critics of the scheme, however, insist the UN is engaging in double-speak, and that this so-called “volunteer” status is actually creating a world government through the interlinking of UN bureaucracies and international corporations. It is appears now they may be right, this time involving a place most households in the Western world cannot avoid, the grocery store. As it turns out, every item scanned at Wal-Mart, America’s top food reseller with an estimated 25% of market share, supports Agenda 21 through a little known...

“Common Core will be raising good little socialists, who are in tune with their feelings, not so much their critical thinking skills.” - Author unknown I have seen many educational fads come and go, trying to replace teaching methodology in our public schools with something so revolutionary and never tried before that would make teaching a “science” instead of an art and to place all children into a national standardized one mold fits all in spite of the human variability in intelligence, talent, aptitude, ability, and the desire to learn. All these fads were driven by the Department of Education’s...

A motto, a flag...and a frog? California has established an array of official state symbols, from its widely recognizable ursine flag to some state foods enshrined by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Now Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez, D-Coachella, is hopping on the state emblem game with a bill to name the red-legged frog California's state amphibian.

Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentine President Cristina Kirchner claimed Wednesday that the Falkland Islands serve as a nuclear base for the NATO alliance in the South Atlantic. Argentina, which calls the archipelago the Malvinas, claims the British overseas possession as its own, and fought a brief but bloody war for it in 1982. The islands, she said, "constitute a NATO military nuclear base in the South Atlantic -- this is the truth that they can't continue to hide." She alleged the archipelago is "among the most militarized areas in the world," saying some 1,500 soldiers and 2,000 civilian military personnel...