Free Republic

A former small-town Pennsylvania police chief who posted online videos of himself ranting obscenely about liberals and the Second Amendment while shooting automatic weapons secretly fed information on people he considered militia members, anti-government extremists and so-called "sovereign citizens" to the FBI and state police, according to documents he showed to The Associated Press.

Facebook blocked a page calling for a demonstration in support of one of President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics after being pressured to do so by Russian Internet regulators.

Time Magazine warned of a growing threat to cops nationwide in September 2010. The nationally renowned publication argued that sinister individuals would launch targeted attacks against police officers and even ambush them in their patrol cars. Time alerted readers that these groups and individuals have a disturbing hatred of cops and that there was a real threat of “lone-wolf” attacks. Who are these groups that present such a threat to police? Right-wing militias, according to Time. [Snip] “Scores of armed antigovernment groups, some of them far more radical, have formed or been revived during the Obama years, according to law-enforcement...

I hate Republicans. I can’t stand the thought of having to spend the next two years watching Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Ted Cruz, Darrell Issa or any of the legions of other blowhards denying climate change, thwarting immigration reform or championing fetal “personhood.” This loathing is a relatively recent phenomenon. Back
 in the 1970s, I worked for a Republican, Fred Lippitt, the senate minority leader in Rhode Island, and I loved him. He was a brand of Republican now extinct—a “moderate” who was fiscally conservative but progressive about women’s rights, racial justice and environmental preservation. Had he been closer to...

The leader of a group hoping to improve liberals' fortunes at the state level revealed on Friday plans to start tracking conservative state legislators based on the assumption that "someone’s going to say something about black people" or women. The comments came at the first ever conference of the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), the Left’s attempt to counter conservative policy successes that have followed Republican victories at the state level. “We’re working with David Brock and Media Matters and American Bridge who have trackers that we can send out to monitor the debate on some bills that you all might...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Attention Dr. Blake Armstrong of South Texas College: here’s why your comparison of the Tea Party to the Nazis is inaccurate The Blaze recently reported:Prof. Tells Students Not to ‘Tell Anybody’ About His Vexed Tea Party ‘Analogy’ — He Didn’t Know It Was Already Caught on VideoDec. 8, 2014A psychology professor at South Texas College in Weslaco, Texas, was seemingly caught on video last month comparing the tea party to the Nazis of the 1930s in Germany.He then told his students not to “tell anybody” about his remarks — but one of his students had already...

Who is a hero? In today’s America, it is someone who chooses a military career, puts on a uniform, and prepares for war. Placing soldiers and veterans on this kind of pedestal is a relatively new phenomenon. Past generations of Americans saw soldiers as ordinary human beings. They were like the rest of us: big and small, smart and dumb, capable of good and bad choices. Now we pretend they are demi-gods. One reason Americans have come to view soldiers as our only protectors is that we have accepted the idea that our country is under permanent threat from fanatics...

The Benefits of Being Politically Correct By Anna North November 10, 2014 1:20 pm 30 Comments When people bring up political correctness, they’re often talking about how much they hate it. Unlike, say, “diversity” or “inclusion,” the term is perhaps most frequently used by those who object to what it stands for, who feel that calls to change the way they speak harm them or society in some way. These objections inspired Jack Goncalo, a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell, and his team to study the actual effects of political correctness. They’d heard “this idea that the effort to...

The Internal Revenue Service, which claims to be so understaffed that it can’t bother to collect unpaid taxes, or search backup tapes for Lois Lerner’s “missing” emails, apparently has plenty of time to read the comment threads on conservative blogs that have been critical of the agency (Hi there, IRS agents!). William Jacobson, one of the best-informed and most effective critics of the agency, writes on Legal Insurrection: Hey, remember the Reader Poll we did about whether it was okay to follow and try to interview Lois Lerner in her neighborhood? Do you approve of media confronting Lois Lerner in...

This year, several Russian lawmakers called for an investigation against Mr. Gorbachev, charging him with having caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. To accuse someone of having brought about the end of a state responsible for the murder of millions, the imprisonment of tens of millions and the oppression of hundreds of millions is a bit like accusing someone of having brought down Nazism. But the people who run post-Soviet Russia don’t see it that way. Mr. Putin saw a regime – the regime he served – unwilling to maintain power by force. Unlike the Chinese communists, who in...

".......Gruber’s comments have been much-remarked-upon, particularly on the right, not only for confirming what Obamacare critics have said for five years but also for capturing at least in part the ethos of modern progressive liberalism: smarter-than-thou zealotry masquerading as for-the-greater-good pragmatism. (That he did it at sound-bite length is simply an added perk.) But for a movement that touts its stratospheric intelligence, the response to Gruber’s comments from his longtime supporters, both on Capitol Hill and in the media, reminds observers of something else: that liberalism tends to handle its PR nightmares with an iron first. Consider what is happening...

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO (Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. … So it’s written to do that,” Gruber said, suggesting “it would not have passed” if the law “made it explicit” that healthy people would “pay in” and the sick would get money. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber continued. “Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass. I wish...

Via Newsbusters, after yesterday’s unpleasantness and the Halbig “speak-o” fiasco of a few months ago, I see Democrats (plus independents in name only like King) have finally reached the “Jon who?” stage of their Gruber problem. This is the game we’re playing now, eh? KILMEADE: They just lied about a health plan to the American people, called the stupidity of the American voter and bragged about the lack of transparency. KING: This is one guy. I don’t know who this guy was. All I know is that it’s important for people to have health insurance. And if you guys are...

The University of Pennsylvania which had originally posted this has now pulled down the video from their site. But this is an attempt on the part of Jonathan Gruber and company to pull their pants up after they got caught. I think it's comical that these people still believe they can say whatever they want in public, but then flip out if anyone quotes them. It also appears that the Snopes.com mafia has been called in to cast doubt upon the incident as conservatives have reported it. They call this claim a Mixture of true and false. Here's their lame...

This is liberalism at its finest. Get really angry with someone who holds views different from your own, and then berate that person with hyper-emotional drivel. In this case, the victim was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who received sexually explicit questions from Dartmouth's student body regarding anal sex during a visit to the college. Perry is a social conservative. According to the Dartmouth, the student newspaper, Perry was there to discuss the midterms, border security, energy initiatives and foreign policy. There was a Q&A session–and that’s when things devolved. Both presidents of the College Democrats and Republicans condemned the actions of...

jimmy fallon @jimmyfallon Utah made history by electing Mia Love to Congress. She is a black female Republican Mormon. Even Unicorns said "Not buying it." #FallonMono

In the spring of 2006, midway through George W. Bush’s second presidential term, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz published a piece in Rolling Stone that posed a provocative question: Was Bush the worst president ever? He said the best-case scenario for Bush was "colossal historical disgrace’’ and added: "Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history." The Wilentz assessment was probably a bit premature. It is difficult to judge any president’s historical standing while he still sits in the Oval Office, when political passions of the day...

In a new campaign to reportedly raise awareness of "privilege," the University of San Francisco is handing out fliers telling anyone who is white, straight, Christian, or "able-bodied" that they are privileged and need to "check their privilege." The campaign was put together by three professors at the college and Student Life. The fliers also claim that if you believe that your gender identity and biological gender are the same (that is, if you consider yourself a male and you are biologically male), you are privileged as well. No matter who you are, no matter what your situation in life,...

A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer. In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.

Former Secretary of Labor Bob Reich, on behalf of MoveOn, warns Democrats what will happen if Republicans take control of the Senate: they may use a “tricky, little-known maneuver” to “ram through” their “right-wing policies” with only 51 votes, instead of the 60 votes “usually required” in the Senate. Here he is:Reconciliation