Free Republic

U.S. Sen. John McCain says the Arizona Republican Party’s censure of him over the weekend may just motivate him to run for a sixth term. […] … McCain tells The Associated Press he has a strong conservative voting record and led the fight in the Senate against Obama’s health care plan. He blames the censure on uninformed “extremist” party elements. …

This posting is not about Wendy Davis. It is not about her views. This is about a man who has pattern of being disrespectful to women: We are a big nation with different viewpoints. We won’t always agree…but a strong debate is helpful when we disagree. Sometimes if you are smart in your debate, you persuade someone who otherwise had disagreed with you. And then there are the creeps who take cheap shots because they are too ignorant and small to engage in an important discussion. The best they can do is make themselves look really bad. No one should...

Pete Seeger, the singer, folk-song collector and songwriter who spearheaded an American folk revival and spent a long career championing folk music as both a vital heritage and a catalyst for social change, died Monday. He was 94 and lived in Beacon, N.Y. Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama. In his hearty...

Chris Matthews really doesn’t listen when he speaks.  On every program since Chris Christie’s bridge scandal broke on January 8, the MSNBC anchor has smeared the Republican governor as just like Richard Nixon in Watergate. Matthews has done this for nine straight shows, including the January 20 edition. However, on the same program, with no sense of self awareness, a thought occurred to the anchor.  He announced that if “it is discovered that Governor Christie did not encourage political revenge, did not signal that this is the way he wanted political business conducted, then he will be exonerated before the...

David Remnick of The New Yorker showed up on PBS’s Charlie Rose Monday night to discuss his long, mostly sympathetic profile of Barack Obama from the January 27 issue of the magazine. Near the end of the interview, Rose focused in on the president’s reported desire to be “big.” The host wondered, “[W]hat's his definition of 'big,' and does he believe in his deep recesses of his own mind that the chance of that has slipped away?” Remnick replied that no, Obama does not think his chance of being “big” has slipped away. The editor then rattled off a laundry...

Foreign Policy: The latest U.S. ally to openly sneer at us is a senior British defense adviser who says President Obama has "devalued the deterrent effect of American military capability" in the world. In his first campaign for president, in April 2007, Barack Obama complained George W. Bush's war in Iraq cost the U.S. "in influence and respect." Because of Iraq, he said, "many around the world are disappointed with our actions, and many in our own country have come to doubt either our wisdom or our capacity to shape events beyond our borders. Some have even suggested that America's...

Just dig a little deeper into who has been driving the anti-Gitmo disinformation campaign these past 12 years, and we discover an international, fervently anti-American, far-left coalition attacking the nation through a savvy propaganda effort. This includes those linked to Al Qaeda financiers, communist groups, anarchist movements - backed by sympathetic press and politicians. Regrettably, it’s a coalition President Barack Obama has sided with in his priority to release as many Al Qaeda, Taliban and “affiliates” as humanly possible.the State Dept. will finally designate ex-Gitmo detainee, Libya’s Sufian Bin Qumu, and his group, Ansar Al-Sharia as “foreign terrorist entities” for...

On Monday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose predictably placed the blame for the unusually cold weather in North America on climate change. Rose wondered, "Is it definitely connected to global warming?"

We already knew he was racist and homophobic. Now it emerges that he thinks girls should marry at 15 or 16. Know what? If you had told me, a month ago, that the Christian Right would have a strong reaction to a bearded religious zealot in a headscarf urging men to take child brides, I'd have believed that. And I would have believed that the man's family would go on Fox News to defend him, but I would have assumed they were doing it from a bunker somewhere, with voice filters and behind a screen … not in the studio...

Actor Andy Serkis is set to direct an upcoming movie adaptation of George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm. But there will be a slight deviation from the story’s original focus: rather than serve as a cautionary tale about Communist totalitarianism, this updated version will address Hollywood’s predictable, go-to embodiment of evil, the Darth Vader of our time: corporate greed. Orwell’s brilliant allegory Animal Farm was written during World War II as a satire on Soviet Communism (and very nearly wasn’t published, critical as it was of our Russian ally). It has since been adapted to film twice, a British animated...

Among the roughly 300 killed during intense fighting in Aleppo was Molhem Barakat, a Reuters photographer. Barakat's death last Friday, in the indiscriminate barrage on Aleppo that the White House criticized Monday, has raised serious questions about Reuters' hiring practice. Hannah Lucinda Smith, a British freelance photojournalist and acquaintance of Barakat, writes that Barakat tried to join Al Qaeda. According to Smith, Barakat wanted to join the terrorist organization for the 11,000 Syrian lira monthly salary. "It is a pitiful wage for a potential suicide bomber, but enough to tempt an eighteen-year-old stuck in a war zone with no job."...

In addition to my career as a PhD chemist, I am one of a select few who enjoy the privilege of moderating content on reddit.com’s science forum. The science forum is a small part of reddit, but it nonetheless enjoys over 4 million subscribers. By comparison, that’s roughly twice the circulation of The New York Times. The forum, known as /r/science, provides a digital space for discussions about recent, peer-reviewed scientific publications. This puts us (along with /r/AskScience) on the front line of the science-public interface. On our little page, scientists and nonscientists can connect through discussions on everything from...

He was bullied for his outspoken opinions and didn't care much for Republicans. Karl Pierson, 18, who stormed his Colorado high school brandishing a shotgun and bearing hatred for his debate coach, critically injured a 15-year-old fellow student before shooting himself to death Friday afternoon as he was cornered by heavily armed police. "He had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff," said junior Abbey Skoda, who shared a class with Pierson during her freshmen year, The Denver Post reported. "I also heard he was bullied a lot." After undergoing surgery Friday, the injured girl was listed in critical,...

Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that President Barack Obama had shaken hands with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. However, the UK Telegraph's Josie Ensor reported that Obama "was asked to take his seat just before reaching Mugabe." Complicating matters, another article in the UK Telegraph also claimed that Obama had shaken hands with Mugabe--in very similar terms to those used in the NBC article. Breitbart News caught the discrepancy--and suddenly the NBC News article was corrected, with no notice. Before: On his way to the rostrum, Obama also shook the hand of Robert Mugabe, the strongman ruler of Zimbabwe, and hugged...

Nelson Mandela: Israel Is Terrorist and Islamic Arabs Are Innocent By Julio Severo If you believe the leftist Christian press, Nelson Mandela was… a Christian! Sheer indoctrination by the mainstream secular media? No doubt. The secular press has portrayed Mandela as a hero. A major Protestant news site in Brazil published a list of nice quotes by Mandela. By reading exclusively these nice quotes, you could say that he was a hero and even a Christian. Yassir Arafat and Nelson Mandela Yet, what about the other quotes? Since the mainstream media and even the Christian press will not show...

Mandela's final act of peace: Obama shakes hands with Fidel Castro's brother (before selfies with David Cameron and Danish PM) President Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro today, an unprecedented gesture of friendship which occurred, fittingly, at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela. The handshake between leaders of the two Cold War enemies took place during a ceremony which honored the former South African President's powerful legacy of reconciliation... He was later spotted in the VIP stands posing for a 'selfie' camera phone picture with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish PM Helle Thorning Schmidt...

Obama is urging the world to act on Mandela's legacy by fighting inequality, poverty and racism. He says progress in the U.S. and South Africa mustn't cloud the fact there's still work to be done. He says South Africa shows us that we can change.

Elian Gonzalez, the focus of a bitter international custody dispute after he was rescued at sea as a child, left Cuba on Friday for the first time since 2000, when the U.S. government returned him to the island. Gonzalez, who also turned 20 on Friday, traveled to Quito, Ecuador, as part of a 200-member Cuban delegation to a weeklong youth conference there. "Fidel Castro for me is like a father," Gonzalez said in the recent interview. "I don't profess to have any religion but if I did my God would be Fidel Castro. He is like a ship that knew...

I just saw a video shot of the White House and the flag is being flown at half staff. I can only assume this is due to Mandela's death. I am curious if it customary to fly the flag at half staff for death of foreign leaders.

Republican men in Congress “aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be” when it comes to running against female candidates and appealing to female voters, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday. “We’re trying to get them to be a little more sensitive,” Boehner said at his weekly Capitol press conference. “You look around the Congress, there are a lot more females in the Democratic caucus than there are in the Republican caucus. And some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be.” The Speaker was responding to a question about an article in Politico reporting that...