Free Republic

After a crushing week of attacks, protests and anger, President Obama touched on the values that unite Americans before diving headlong into the debate over guns, one of the most divisive issues of his presidency. The president, speaking on Saturday at the NATO summit here, suggested that the licensed gun in the car of Philando Castile, who was shot by police in Minnesota during a routine traffic stop, had contributed to the tragedy there. Castile died as his girlfriend live-streamed video of him bleeding to death while an armed police officer stood a few feet away. “We don’t know what...

President Barack Obama sent a message to Donald Trump on Wednesday in a statement marking the end of Ramadan, calling on Americans to renew their commitment to protecting Muslim Americans against bigotry and xenophobia. “Muslim Americans have been part of our American family since its founding,” Obama said in a statement released by the White House on the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. “This Eid, we recommit to protecting Muslim Americans against bigotry and xenophobia, while celebrating the contributions of Muslim Americans around the country, including one of our finest, the People’s Champion Muhammad Ali, to whom we bade farewell this...

Gov. Chris Christie may be on the short list for Donald Trump's pick for vice president, but to readers of the Drudge Report would soon have the billionaire mogul pick someone else. In a flash poll posted on the news website on Tuesday, the governor received just under 6 percent of more than 200,000 votes, while former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich received almost 40 percent. Also a popular choice among readers of the conservative news aggregator is freshman U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa (31 percent), who traveled to New Jersey to meet with the tycoon at...

(CNN)Huddled around a corner table during happy hour at the swanky St. Regis Hotel bar in downtown Washington, five young Republicans busily brainstormed how they could help Hillary Clinton become the next president of the United States. The group included an unlikely gang of pro-Clinton foot soldiers, including a Mississippi-born Southern Baptist who got her start in GOP politics as an intern in the second Bush White House, a conservative health care policy analyst who has volunteered for anti-abortion causes and a former president of the Cornell University College Republicans. Over glasses of wine and champagne Monday night, they kicked...

If U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has his way the United Nations will be able to say if Americans are allowed to have their Second Amendment rights. He signed an anti-gun treaty with the United Nations that the U.S. Senate has already said it is against. The treaty Kerry signed without authorization from the Senate would create an un-Constitutional registry of all US gun buyers and would lead to the UN controlling American's gun rights. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday signed a controversial U.N. treaty on arms regulation, riling U.S. lawmakers who vow the Senate will not...

Abandoning reality At one point, you were probably worried about ISIS. It seemed like the horrific terrorist organization was on a real roll as its barbarian forces slaughtered their way across the middle east. They raped, tortured, burned, beheaded, crushed, and acidically-disolved their enemies while our leaders promised that they were being dealt with in the harshest possible way. We’d “contained” them, we’d “diminished” them, and - most importantly - we’d decimated their command and control capabilities. According to President Obama, the J.V. team is on the run.

Mitt Romney still can’t see himself voting for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. However, he can’t bring himself to vote for the Democratic counterpart, Hillary Clinton, either. But the 2012 GOP nominee has a solution: putting his own wife’s name on the ballot. “It’s a matter of personal conscience,” Romney told CBS News’ John Dickerson Wednesday at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “I can’t vote for either of those two people.” Romney explained that he simply cannot get behind Trump’s divisive character. “Our nominee is saying, ‘Hey look it’s these people here. It’s these Mexicans coming across the border... it’s...

According to 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner in a post published to Slate, U.S. judges should stop studying the Constitution. “I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation,” Posner argued. “Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century,” he continued. “Which means that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments (including the 14th), do not speak to today.”

When US Secretary of State John Kerry wanted to push his country to take the lead on climate change, it was no accident that he chose to give a speech in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk Naval Station is the biggest naval installation in the world. But, Kerry said last November, “the land it is built on is literally sinking.”

John Kerry, Angelina Jolie attend iftar dinner in US Published 4 hours ago Actress Angelina Jolie, UNHCR special envoy, speaks during an interfaith Iftar reception to mark World Refugee Day at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling, Virginia on June 20, 2016 (AFP Photo) Actress Angelina Jolie, UNHCR special envoy, speaks during an interfaith Iftar reception to mark World Refugee Day at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society in Sterling, Virginia on June 20, 2016 (AFP Photo) U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and actress Angelina Jolie attended an iftar dinner on Monday an iftaar dinner in Sterling,...

Sources now indicate Paul Ryan wants Hillary Clinton to be America’s next president, and is doing everything in his power to secure that very outcome. If that allows Hillary to nominate up to three more Supreme Court Justices and thus tilt the balance of power of the Court so it represents far-left, progressive views, so be it. The forty-six-year-old Paul Ryan doesn’t care because he has already been promised, and wishes to make certain, that he is the GOP’s 2020 nominee for president. And it’s not just the 2020 election cycle that is currently on the table. Powerful Republican insiders...

Opposition leader and Zionist Union chief Isaac Herzog agreed to far reaching concessions on the eve of the 2015 election, a report by Channel 10 on Sunday revealed. Herzog, who prior to the election was seen as a viable candidate for Prime Minister, signed a secret letter of understanding with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, agreeing to a number of long-standing Arab demands. Among the subjects covered in the letter are the division of Jerusalem, the future disposition of Judea and Samaria, and the so-called “right of return” for Arabs who left the country in 1948. According to the agreement,...

Amid melting Arctic ice, Kerry sees looming climate catastrophe By Lesley Wroughton ABOARD THE HDMS THETIS, Greenland Standing near Greenland's Jakobshavn glacier, the reputed source of the iceberg that sank the Titanic over a century ago, U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saw evidence of another looming catastrophe. Giant icebergs broken off from the glacier seemed to groan as they drifted behind him, signaling eventual rising oceans that scientists warn will submerge islands and populated coastal region. Briefed by researchers aboard a Royal Danish Navy patrol ship, Kerry appeared stunned by how fast the ice sheets are melting. He was...

Washington (CNN)Speaker Paul Ryan said House Republicans should not betray their conscience when it comes to backing their party's presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump. "The last thing I would do is tell anybody to do something that's contrary to their conscience. Of course I wouldn't do that," he told NBC News' Chuck Todd in an upcoming episode of "Meet the Press" airing Sunday. "Look, believe me, Chuck. I get that this is a very strange situation. He's a very unique nominee," Ryan added. "But I feel as a responsibility institutionally as the Speaker of the House that I should not...

Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid Green Card Totals, FY09-FY14: Pakistan (102K), Iraq (102K), Bangladesh (90K), Iran (85K), Egypt (56K), Somalia (37K), Uzbekistan (30K), Turkey (26K), Morocco (25K), Jordan (25K), Albania (24K), Afghanistan (21K), Lebanon (20K), Yemen...

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) has made clear he doesn't agree with a proposal put forward by Donald Trump -- whom Ryan has endorsed -- to ban Muslim immigration into the United States, but in an interview with the Huffington Post Thursday, Ryan floated taking a President Trump to court if he tried to implement such a ban or some of his other controversial proposals unilaterally. “I would sue any president that exceeds his or her powers,” Ryan said in a back-and-forth about Trump's claims that he could implement a Muslim ban or build a Mexican border wall without congressional...

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin told an MSNBC panel on Thursday that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is "killing us" in terms of preventing gun violence. Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, referred to due process as an inconvenient "firewall" when it comes to denying Americans firearms. Money quote: "So can't we say that if a person is under suspicion, there should be a five-year period of time that we have to see if good behavior, if this person continues the same traits?"

John Kerry unloading yacht that made waves Authors Gayle Fee for Boston Herald The 76-foot luxury yacht Isabel — the tony tub that sailed Secretary of State John Kerry into stormy political seas a few years ago when the Track revealed that he and his wife had dodged a $437,500 state tax bill on their swanky $7 million sailboat — is up for sale. Kerry and the missus, ketchup heiress 
Teresa Heinz, listed the New Zealand-built Friendship sloop for a mere 
$4 million with luxury yacht brokers Northrop & Johnson in Newport, R.I. — some $3 million less than they...

Kerry visits Arctic Circle to see climate change impact The secretery of state has made the health of oceans and combating climate change a priority. By MATTHEW LEEThe Assoicated Press NY-ALESUND, Norway — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday visited Norway’s extreme north, viewing areas where climate change has melted ice and opened new sea lanes. Trailed by staff and journalists in small Zodiac-type inflatable boats, Kerry and Norway’s foreign minister motored in an Arctic scientific vessel from a research station in Ny-Alesund, the world’s northernmost civilian settlement. The short cruise took Kerry and his delegation across the...