Free Republic

Tonight’s presidential debate is the last one that will include questions on domestic policy. The previous presidential and vice presidential debates covered a host of issues, but there are key questions still to be answered. Heritage experts submitted five issues below—with questions—that it is important to discuss before the debate moves on to foreign policy exclusively. Join us tonight at 9 p.m. ET—you can watch the debate live on our Debate 2012 page. We’ll have the live stream of the debate and a live blog of our experts’ analysis, and you can follow our tweets and chime in. 1. Welfare...

(CNSNews.com) – In marking the one year anniversary of Let’s Move! in Indian Country, First Lady Michelle Obama praised the work done by Native American and Alaskan American communities in fighting childhood obestiy by, among other things, adding "traditional foods like buffalo meat into school lunches." A year ago, Mrs. Obama joined Native American children in the White House garden to launch Let’s Move in Indian Country by planting the “three sisters”--corn, beans and squash. “This is such an important issue,” Mrs. Obama said in the video marking the one-year anniversary of the program. “We know that children in American...

Orrin Judd links to a quote from Slate contributor Beverly Gage, a Yale history professor, who asks, “American conservatives have a canon. Why don’t American liberals?” Ask Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan how he became a conservative and he’ll probably answer by citing a book. It might be Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Or perhaps he’ll come up with Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, or even Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. All of these books are staples of the modern conservative canon, works with the reputed power to radicalize even the most tepid Republican. Over the last half-century,...

Looks like Vice President Joe Biden has been taking extracurricular Democratic jive-talking lessons. The results of condescending liberals' cynical racial pandering attempts are, as always, seismically cringe-inducing. At a campaign event in Danville, Va., the gaffetastic veep dropped his g's and picked up a bizarre twang in front of an audience of black voters. Middle-Class Joe swapped his Home Depot apron for an A.M.E. preacher's robe and sermonized about the big, bad GOP. Romney's "gonna let the big banks once again write their own rules," Biden shouted. "Unnnn-chain Wall Street," he exclaimed with pulpit bravado. "They're gonna put y'all back...

CNSNews.com) - The average price of ground beef hit a record high in the United States in July, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS has been tracking the average price of a pound of 100% ground beef since 1984. In July, it cost $3.085, up from $3.007 in June. Prior to June, the average cost of 100% ground beef in the United States had never topped $3.00. In January 1984, the first month BLS tracked the price off 100% ground beef, the price was $1.29 per pound. Had that price merely tracked the...

The Eric Holder Justice Department has filed this brief in the United States Supreme Court defending racial preferences at the University of Texas. (Texas, by the way, is also vigorously defending the racial preferences.) Abigail Fisher, who is white, is challenging race preferences that cost her a slot at the University of Texas law school. Because the racial spoils go to Obama’s most loyal political constituency, people of color, naturally Eric Holder’s Justice Department is defending them by spending your tax dollars paying lawyers to write the brief. None of that is a surprise. What is surprising is the argument...