Free Republic

<p>Donald Trump says a lot of things. We've become all too used to that now. Some of these things should probably be taken with a grain of salt - "Only Rosie O'Donnell" comes to mind - but some deserve to be analyzed more closely.</p>

Abraham Lincoln told an 1864 audience that "the world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.'" Different people can define liberty in different, even contradictory ways, so that both sides in a conflict can claim to the mantle of liberty. That was exactly the situation in the Civil War: Slaveholders defined liberty in such a way as to make themselves the guardians of liberty... The South's liberty was the liberty to hold other people as chattel slaves. What the slaveholders called liberty, the North quite rightly called tyranny; namely, the systematic deprivation of the natural rights of...

This piece will borrow liberally from a pair of previous occupants of this space, in which (1) it was prophesied that Hillary Clinton will not ultimately be that party's nominee and (2) Mike Bloomberg will be allowed to ride in and purchase that party lock, stock and barrel. Now that those prophecies no longer reside deep in left field, that is.

There was a time in my life when I was a campaign communications consultant, responsible for helping political campaigns come up with new and intriguing ways to engage voters using digital media. There is a reason I don't do it anymore, and that reason is, because no matter how many times I or any of my colleages explained that most Republican consultants had the pop culture knowledge of 80 year old men and couldn't find a connection to Millennials if they were accosted by an entire room of Urban Outfitters employees, they still produced things like this. Though, in fairness,...

deral Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation will recommend that the Justice Department bring criminal charges against Hillary Clinton and various of her aides, and soon. The evidence consists of materials that the Bureau has gathered in the course of its months-long investigation of Mrs. Clinton's personal server. The recommendations will come very soon. The charges will consist of some of the following: 1. Improper disclosure or retention of classified information. 2. Destruction of government records. 3. Lying to federal agents. 4. Lying under oath. 5. Obstruction of justice. All the counts are familiar to those of us who have followed the...

"....................All this tells a considerable amount about what passes for the unremarkable inside the Washington establishment. For Feehery spends his time continually attacking conservatives. There was this open letter attack on Rush Limbaugh in Politico in which he snarked:Congratulations! You have been selected by the Obama administration, the mainstream media and 20 million of your most passionate followers to be the new head of the Republican Party.As such, you are given all the rights and responsibilities that come with being a true political leader.Your mission is simple: Restore the Republican Party to its former greatness by single-handedly helping Republicans to...

What happened to the American Spectator magazine. the website is still current but it seems there has not been a magazine published in a while.

The political baggage he carries isn't likely to fly.Politically, Bushes are, like the value of the Ivy League degrees most of them have, vastly overrated. Jeb Bush, who recently, to the surprise of no one, all but announced he would run for president, is no exception. Ever since Jeb established an “I’m Thinking About Running for President Committee” (translation to English: I’m running for president) a week or so back, the conventional wisdom, whooped up by the chatterati and the various great mentioners, is that this latest Bush is a lock for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. They...

AUSTIN, April 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Ebola, a form of hemorrhagic fever in which the internal organs of the victim liquefy, has one of the highest rates of fatality of any known contagious disease at approximately 80-90% and is one of the most contagious diseases known to medical science. It is also high on the list of possible bio-terror weapons of concern to international law enforcement and military security agencies. Tom Clancy’s thriller novel, Rainbow Six describes a group of radical environmentalists that wants to rid the world of people using a modified version of Ebola. All of which is...

A grand jury has convened to determine what charges, if any, will be brought against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown earlier this month. Over at The New Republic, Yishai Schwartz argues that a conviction against Wilson is impossible because of Missouri's self defense laws [Snip] If Wilson isn't indicted by the grand jury or is acquitted at trial, the Brown family will most certainly file a wrongful death lawsuit. I also wouldn't be surprised if Eric Holder were to pursue a case against Wilson for federal civil rights violations. But that will...

When the news trickled out a year ago that the head of the IRS union, Colleen ("fat and ugly") Kelley, met with President Obama the day before the agency began targeting the Tea Party, I finally saw the link. The story was picked up by many news sources on the right but did not develop any further. It's my opinion that this is the connection that the "lost" emails are trying to hide. And it's a big connection -- the White House, the POTUS, the union boss, and the government agency all collaborating, and conspiring, to thwart the actions of...

The replacement of Kathleen Sebelius by Sylvia Mathews Burwell as the Secretary of Health and Human Services has been portrayed by the legacy “news” media as a new lease on life for Obamacare. The party line is that Sebelius was mortally wounded by GOP exploitation of a single uncharacteristic mistake—the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov—while Burwell is a brilliant Beltway veteran unsullied by controversy and possessing the very administrative skills needed to save Obama’s “signature domestic achievement.” … This tale fails to conform to the facts, however … The vessel is taking on water at an alarming rate, and Sylvia Burwell’s...

Russian takeover of the Crimea, as well as many of our problems in the Middle East, was funded by high oil prices. Since there is no military solution to the Crimea conflict, President Obama should look closely at the successful pages of the Reagan playbook. Before the Reagan and Gorbachev Summits could begin, Reagan needed to rebuild our defenses to bring the Soviets back to the bargaining table. The Kremlin was pressured to end the Cold War on America’s terms because of President Reagan’s policies of supporting the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, deploying Pershing cruise missiles in Western Europe (to counter...

WASHINGTON -- It is called the Taranto Principle, having been named after he who coined the principle, the inimitable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. According to the Taranto Principle, the left-wing media, in their fawning treatment of left-wing politicians, only encourage the pols' worst instincts: encouraging Jean-Francois Kerry's sophomoric wind-surfing during his presidential race or Howard Dean's blood-curdling scream upon losing the Iowa caucuses. And then there is President Barack Obama. At his press conference the other day, he finally commented on the traitor Edward Snowden. Obama said, "You know, if I had a son, he'd look like...

A congressional select committee could offer immunity to the CIA’s dispersed, intimidated survivors. You can always tell the depth of an event’s illegality by the measures people take to cover it up. By that measure, the conduct of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and David Petraeus leading up to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans on 9/11 2012 must be must be so sufficiently wrongful that, if revealed, they could lead to the president’s impeachment.How else can we gauge what is apparently the most energetic coverup in modern history? We know, from several sources, that the survivors of the attack —...

It’s not so much that he thinks he’s above the law as that he thinks he is the law. The duties of the President of the United States are spelled out in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which states, inter alia, that the President “shall take Care that the laws be faithfully executed.” As Stanford Law Professor and former federal judge Michael McConnell explained in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do...

Anthony Weiner had it all. Had. And will never have again. As a powerful progressive congressman who never had a serious election challenge before 2010, he was considered the heir to Senator Chuck Schumer’s throne. He also had an early lead for the 2013 mayoral election–a position he had been vying for since his 2005 defeat in the Democrat primary. And with one tweet it was all gone. Despite Weiner’s ambition to rise again to become New York’s mayor, the electoral and demographic math simply isn’t there... --snip-- What Weiner and all the other non-Quinn candidates are hoping for is...

In January, Rush Limbaugh warned that there was “an effort under way to normalize pedophilia,” and was ridiculed by liberals (including CNN’s Soledad O’Brien) for saying so. But now liberals have joined a crusade that, if successful, would effectively legalize sex with 14-year-olds in Florida. The case involves Kaitlyn Ashley Hunt, an 18-year-old in Sebastian, Florida, who was arrested in February after admitting that she had a lesbian affair with a 14-year high-school freshman. (Click here to read the affidavit in Hunt’s arrest.) It is a felony in Florida to have sex with 14-year-olds. Hunt was expelled from Sebastian High...

I just don’t wanna. I don’t wanna write about whether to treat homosexual relationships as “marriage,” and I don’t wanna see lawmakers do anything about it. Just a quarter century ago, just about nobody had even dreamed of such a thing as “gay marriage.” Why don’t we leave the law alone as it is, leave people free to do what they want to do behind closed doors as long as no innocents get hurt (and as long as they don’t “scare the horses”) — and have everybody, including heterosexuals, stop talking in public about what they do in the realm...