Free Republic

‘He was much more liberal than his presidential campaign let on,” Charles Kesler writes of Barack Obama in 2008. You can say that again. “Liberals like crises, and one shouldn’t spoil them by handing them another on a silver salver. The kind of crisis that is approaching . . . is probably not their favorite kind, an emergency that presents an opportunity to enlarge government, but one that will find liberalism at a crossroads, a turning point,” he argues in I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism. “Liberalism can’t go on as it is, not for...

A West Point think tank has issued a paper warning America about “far right” groups such as the “anti-federalist” movement, which supports “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.” The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.” Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/17/west-point-center-cites-dangers-far-right-us/#ixzz2ILS1AwgH Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

After back-to-back presidential losses, Republicans in key states want to change the rules to make it easier for them to win. From Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, GOP officials who control legislatures in states that supported President Barack Obama are considering changing state laws that give the winner of a state’s popular vote all of its Electoral College votes, too. Instead, these officials want Electoral College votes to be divided proportionally, a move that could transform the way the country elects its president. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus endorsed the idea this week, and other Republican leaders support it, too, suggesting...

Not one of the 23 executive orders that President Obama signed -- flanked by schoolchildren whom none of us want to see murdered and before an audience that included relatives of murdered schoolchildren -- would have prevented the massacre at Sandy Hook. Did the main idea of the sentence above come through -- that the president's latest orders would not have stopped the heavily armed monster who entered a Connecticut school last month and killed 20 children and six adults? Or was your brain overwhelmed by anxiety signals arising from the imagery of vulnerable youngsters? The overwhelming imagery is no...

New York Times movie critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis team up for next Sunday's edition (posted early online) to once again pour their peculiar brand of pretentiousness over the latest crop of innocent films: "Movies in the Age of Obama." In the summer of 2011, Dargis lamented "the symbolic phallus" present in the form of a rifle in a Western. Last July she managed to make a villain out of President Reagan, while Scott chimed in by complaining that movie superheroes were "avatars of reaction" and that the last X-Men movie was insufficiently attentive to the civil rights movement....

Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Muslim protesters outside a church in southern Egypt Friday. The demonstrators were demanding an investigation into allegations that a Christian man sexually assaulted a 6-year-old girl. … Flare-ups of violence between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims have become more frequent in the past two years in the wake of the country’s uprising that ousted longtime President Hosni Mubarak but also weakened security across the nation. Egyptian Christians fear that the power vacuum that has followed Mubarak’s overthrow is giving ultraconservatives and extremist Muslims a freer hand to attack churches and Coptic property, especially...

My dear rifle I love it so It ain't for shooting deer Don't you know? Let's be blunt It's for shooting tyrants For protecting liberty You can kill me But 'til then I'm free Yeah, you can come and take it If you dare But let me warn you I'm a well-armed bear Signed, An American

A self-professed illegal alien who spoke at today’s “Campaign for Citizenship” event tells MRCTV that after 20 years of hiding, she’s now “safe” to admit her status publicly. Alejandra Gomez, a “DREAMer” who addressed the media at the PICO Network-sponsored event, told MRCTV that she’s been in the U.S. illegally for “about 20 years now.” …

A bill that was authored by an Ironworkers’ union organizer to expand union-only Project Labor Agreements–to include Hurricane Sandy cleanup and reconstruction–passed the New Jersey Senate on Monday along party lines 23-13. The Ironworkers’ union organizer who drafted the pro-union bill, Steven Sweeney, also happens to be the president of the New Jersey Senate and recently accused New Jersey Governor Chris Christie of “praying” for Hurricane Sandy to hit New Jersey. As it turns out, though, unions must be counting their blessing with the New Jersey’s Senate passage of S. 2425 which adds to an already-existing discriminatory PLA laws in...

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Palestinian officials largely view Benjamin Netanyahu’s expected re-election with despair, fearing the Israeli hard-liners’ ambitious plans for settlement construction over the next four years could prove lethal to their dreams of a state. Some in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ circle hold out hope that President Barack Obama will re-engage in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and, freed from domestic electoral considerations in his second term, get tougher with Netanyahu on settlements. One aide suggested Europe is ready to jump in with its own peace plan if Washington is not. But short of trying to rally international opinion, it seems Abbas can do...

The US Transport and Security Administration (TSA) will remove all 174 of OSI Systems Inc. (OSIS)’s Rapiscan body scanners from airports, following serious concerns over their inability to protect the privacy of passengers.

“One American president after another — and most recently, that Obama — talks about American guarantees for the safety of the Zionists in Palestine. [Obama] was very clear when he uttered his empty words on the land of Egypt. He uttered many lies, of which he couldn’t have fulfilled a single word, even if he were sincere — which he is not,” Morsi says in the latest clips, referring to Obama’s 2009 speech, delivered at Cairo University. These and other remarks were revived when an Egyptian TV show aired them last week to highlight and mock Morsi’s current policies. In...

President Obama's second inaugural address will be full of lofty sentiments and promises to move us forward. But I'd like to suggest that instead of eloquent and uplifting rhetoric, the president do something unexpected and brave. What if he actually spoke frankly to the American people about the sacrifices that are needed from all of us if we are to secure our future and salvage our character? During the presidential campaign, the president said a lot about the need for the wealthy among us to pay their "fair share" in taxes. Bolstered by his electoral victory, he was able to...

Martial-arts movie legend Jackie Chan deserves a rhetorical roundhouse kick to the mouth. So does his pal PSY, the Korean rapper whose “Gangnam Style” music video has racked up more than a billion views worldwide. Both men have raked in big bucks from Western fans while trashing the very freedoms and cultures that made them superstars. Last week, the Washington Post spotlighted a recent interview Chan did with Chinese TV in which he accused America of being “the most corrupt country in the world.” The Hong Kong–born Chan also admitted proudly that he is a propagandist for the Communist Chinese...

Most Americans think jarring economic problems will erupt if lawmakers fail to increase the government’s borrowing limit. Yet they’re torn over how or even whether to raise it, leaning toward Republican demands that any boost be accompanied by spending cuts. According to an Associated Press-GfK poll, 53 percent say that if the debt limit is not extended and the U.S. defaults, the country will face a major economic crisis. An additional 27 percent say such a crisis would be somewhat likely, while just 17 percent largely dismiss the prospects of such damage. … “The worst thing for the economy is...

Most of his crazy proposals are so extreme, only few of his initiatives pose serious threat Surrounded by child-props, Barack Obama yesterday proposed a semi-automatic ban so extreme that it could potentially outlaw up to 50% of all long guns in circulation and up to 80% of all handguns. Originally, Obama's allies had announced they would reintroduce the 1994 ban on commonly-owned, defensive firearms. That was until they found out that they would look like fools, since that semi-auto ban was largely the law of Connecticut on the day the Newtown shooting occurred -- and didn't cover Adam Lanza's AR-15....

Late fatherhood and quintuple-bypass surgery have in recent years conspired to awaken a long-dormant political bug in David Letterman, and so he’s increasingly trying to do a sort of triangulation between Dick Cavett and Charlie Rose, having Serious Conversations with Important People. Take an interview with NBC newsman Brian Williams early this month, in which the pair spent a good deal of the segment talking gun control. The chitchat ranged from the surprisingly even-handed (Letterman speaks of the gun culture of the West as both “thriving” and “legitimate”) to the head-scratching (Williams casually compares the right to bear arms spelled...

"Those who beat their swords into plough shares shall plough for those who don't."~Anonymous By Mr. Curmudgeon:The New Deal's Political Machines"I am indeed grateful to you for all that you have done," wrote New York Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a 1932 letter addressed to Tennessee's Edward Hull "Boss" Crump, "I should much like to have a good talk with you before you go to Chicago. Can you not run up to see me either in Albany or in Hyde Park? There are many things I should like to talk over with you."FDR was hoping to gain Crump's political support ahead...

“OBAMA told the 2 most pig like lobbies, AIPAC & NRA, to drop dead in same month," message retweeted by columnist read.New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof retweeted a message that called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the National Rifle Association “the 2 most pig like lobbies” in America.