Free Republic

In October of 2013, Hardhatters received an email from a trusted source within the Navy claiming the Navy SEALs were ordering personnel to remove the traditional “Don’t Tread On Me” patch, also known as the First U.S. Navy Jack, which is often used by conservative/Tea Party groups. The source had received the order by email which states the following: ALL:WARCOM and GROUP TWO/ONE have pushed out the uniform policy for NWU III and any patches worn on the sleeve.All personnel are only authorized to wear the matching “AOR” American Flag patch on the right shoulder. You are no longer authorized...

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Trey Parker & Matt Stone's marionette masterpiece Team America. While the 2004 action-musical took in a respectable $32M at the box office and received a fair amount of critical acclaim, at the time of its release it was most often characterized by its vulgarity than the sublime brilliance of its message. No doubt this had much to do with who was the butt of many of the jokes. SPOILER ALERT:The musical tells the tale of an elite US CIA-fronted paramilitary group, Team America, whose sole call of duty is to track and hunt...

The House Oversight Committee will vote to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress next Thursday. Lerner, a key figure in the tea party targeting controversy that scarred the agency last year, has been under the threat of contempt for more than a month after she again invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify at a hearing. Americans expect accountability and want Congress to do all it can to gather relevant evidence about what occurred and who was responsible so that this never happens again,” said Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). “Ms. Lerner’s involvement in wrongdoing...

Progressives are awful people willing to exploit anything and anyone to advance their agenda. From the human props trotted out at every White House event to former Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings mocking Andrew Breitbart’s death to push Obamacare, there’s no line they won’t cross, no lie they won’t tell, to force their government religion on people who simply want to be left alone. Force is the cornerstone of the progressive philosophy. Hundreds of millions of people were slaughtered in the name of “progress” in the last century. Lynchings, forced sterilizations and “work” camps may have morphed into “anti-poverty programs,” speech...

House Republicans said Thursday that they’ll vote in committee next week to hold Lois G. Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify about her role in the IRS’s tea party targeting scandal. Rep. Darrell Issa, the House’s top investigator, said that as a senior official at the center of the agency’s targeting, Ms. Lerner must either talk or face penalties. “Ms. Lerner’s involvement in wrongdoing and refusal to meet her legal obligations has left the Committee with no alternative but to consider a contempt finding,” he said. Mr. Issa has scheduled a Thursday vote in the House Oversight...

CNSNews.com) - B. Todd Jones, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, couldn't tell Congress why his agents made two visits to a tea party conservative in a 13-month period -- but only after she requested tax-exempt status for her conservative group, True the Vote. Catherine Engelbrecht had a Federal Firearms License (FFL) for 12 years. "And suddenly she applies for tax exempt status, and you're knocking on her door twice in 13 months," Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Jones at a hearing on Wednesday. "Congressman, I wish I had better answers," Jones said. Jordan noted that...

On Tuesday, Mike Dickinson, the Virginia Democrat seeking the House seat currently held by Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., compared the Tea Party to the terror group al-Qaeda on Twitter and claimed that Sarah Palin, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., are the U.S. equivalent of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terror attacks. Ultimately, Dickinson called the Tea Party and Sarah Palin "pure unamerican (sic) trash." "The tea party is Americas version of Al-Qaeda. Ted Cruz/Sarah Palin/Rand Paul all on same level as Bin laden (sic)," he claimed. "Tea party and Al-Qaeda: both resort to...

Nick Clegg accused Nigel Farage of peddling "dangerous fantasies" in an ill-tempered BBC TV debate on Britain's future in Europe. Mr. Farage accused the Lib Dem leader of "willfully lying to the British people about Brussels' grip on UK laws. He also claimed EU immigration had hit the "white working class" the hardest. Instant polls said Mr. Farage had won by a bigger margin than he did in their debate last week.... The UKIP leader accused the Lib Den leader of being "hell bent on getting Britain involved in a war.... He said he did not want Britain to be...

Are you kidding? You’d think one who is representing the mighty Badgers, who made it to the Final Four based on sacrificial work ethic and discipline that obviously pays off in the end, he who represents the great state of Wisconsin that hosts this underdog celebrated college basketball team, would understand that future success depends on hard work and sacrifices. The latest Ryan (R, Wisconsin) Budget is not an April Fool’s joke. Palin said that the budget that was presented, though,"really IS a joke because it is STILL not seeing the problem." "It STILL is not proposing reining in wasteful...

First published on American Thinker. By Enza Ferreri If you had had the dubious privilege of watching the BBC’s political debate programme Question Time on March 6, you would have been afforded a glimpse of what immigration and multiculturalism have become in Britain, their consequences for its native residents and the Establishment’s response to both the crisis and the protests about it. It followed the usual Question Time format, in which members of the public from an always-changing part of the country ask a panel of politicians and other “experts”, such as media people and assorted celebrities, questions of...

With Chris Christie in deep trouble, Republican poobahs are reportedly looking to Jeb Bush to save their party in 2016. The former two-term governor of Florida speaks fluent Spanish, is a convert to Catholicism, and has high name recognition. Jeb could raise millions of dollars over night by just saying “yes” to running. Despite all this, there are strong reasons Republicans should say no to him. 1. His last name is poison. Let’s face it, if Jeb Bush had the last name of Something Else he would have already run for president in 2008 or 2012. According to a recent...

It could take years for Congressional committees to get all the documents demanded about the IRS scandal under mandatory subpoenas, IRS’ new Commissioner John Koskinen testified. The new IRS Commissioner displayed the slippery style of a snake-oil salesman while testifying March 26 before Congressman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government. Koskinen’s excuses were especially surprising because similar demands for documents are imposed upon private companies all the time by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Your author has worked as a lawyer on teams responding to such massive governmental document requests. Any time there is...

Conservative critics of government are “freaks,” are “in for a pretty rough ride,” and “will need their Kevlar,” i.e., bullet-proof vests. These statements didn’t come from the Obama administration or some radical leftwing organization. They are Facebook posts of a Republican elected official in Virginia’s Fauquier County. Fauquier drew national attention in 2012 for charging farmer Martha Boneta with violating the law by having a birthday party for eight little girls without a permit and zoning site plan. The highly charged posts of county supervisor Holder Trumbo came shortly after two recent events, and are emblematic of the civil war...

Any limited government constitutional conservative who thinks that establishment Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA-7) isn’t such a bad guy and might serve as a viable and more conservative alternative to Speaker John “Let’s Make A Deal” Boehner should take a look at who he is hanging out with this weekend. Cantor is heading to the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Florida to speak to the "Main Street Advocacy" organization. Attending the event costs $5,000 a person. It is hosted by the Main Street Partnership, the progressive “Republican” group headed by former Representative Steve LaTourette of Ohio. We put the...

In the past, those at the political fringe were limited in their ability to communicate beyond their cliques. Now, with social media, the shouters on the left and the right have taken center stage with the largest megaphone in history, the Internet.USA Today proclaimed in a front-page headline last week that Americans are not all that upset the federal government is functioning at a dead slow pace. “More Americans say polarization in Congress is good,” the newspaper proclaimed. There can be no question that there is today, and always has been, a substantial group of folks, mostly conservative, who think...

Once the Cold War ended it didn't make much sense for neoconservatives and small-government conservatives to remain in a coalition. But breakups take time, and post-9/11 politics briefly created the illusion that Bill Kristol and George Will belong in the same political party. I am here to tell you that they do not, even if many people who identify as small-government conservatives still don't realize it. There are kind, intellectually honest neoconservatives who genuinely believe that their hawkish, imperial approach to foreign policy would bring about a better world. Their notion of the good is still incompatible with small-government conservatism...

Perhaps no other person has spent more time within the conservative movement and guided its development than Richard Viguerie. As a pioneer of direct mail fundraising, one of the original founders of Young Americans for Freedom and as prolific political fundraiser, Viguerie has been involved in the conservative movement for over 50 years.But his experience and involvement within politics has led him to a stunning conclusion.“Conservatives haven’t had a lot of victories in the last 100 years,” Viguerie told The Daily Caller Friday.The political fundraiser has a new book coming out, “Takeover: The 100-Year War for the Soul of the...

Joe Biden To Me Today at 10:45 AM Xxxx, I've been in this business a long time, and I've seen a lot of deadlines come and go. But let me tell you why the deadline tomorrow is among the most important: If we wake up on Tuesday and find out we came up short, we're in bad shape for November -- that is not hyperbole. That's why we're asking 33 Democrats like you from Des Moines to chip in to keep your region's support strong Losing will mean more senators like Ted Cruz, and more Tea Party Republicans in the...

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Republicans in Washington wanted North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis to quickly win the party’s Senate nomination and focus entirely on vulnerable Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan. Instead, Tillis faces a May 6 primary that’s so crowded it may be hard for any candidate to muster the 40 percent needed to avoid a mid-July runoff. The race also pits two leaders -- Kentucky U.S. Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul -- against each other in a proxy battle over the party’s future. Tillis must balance support from national Republicans against the Tea Party’s anti-Washington...

As the media ignores the delays and waivers President Obama and his magic pen have imposed upon the country for this settled law called Obamacare, there are more troubles brewing in the fight to restore liberty. For all the enthusiasm Tea Party members bring to the political world, their biggest opponent may not be progressives on the ballot but the very groups who claim to be their champions. You’d think with this current crop of gun smuggling, kiddie-porn loving, bribe taking, family enriching corrupt Democratic Party clowns, the electoral pickings this November would be easy. When your opponent produced, supported,...