Free Republic

Last year I thought I had encountered an all-time high of people looking to buy their first gun or to get a concealed carry permit. World events and political developments have combined to make what I thought was the high water mark look like low tide. It has hit the point where gun sales breaking records is becoming a common phenomenon. In fact, in my email inbox right now there are a couple of emails from people looking to take me to lunch so they can get my input on their first firearm purchase.

Oh yeah? Well, your mama wears army boots! I’m so glad that our politics reflects our national maturity and perspicacity … Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) says that Donald Trump is “a jerk” for his past remarks toward the disabled in a new online ad released Thursday. “I’ve got to get this off my chest — Donald Trump is a jerk,” the GOP presidential candidate said in the spot titled “Enough.”

UPDATE : 10:25 pm EST: Following the release of the Times report, people uncovered the following document on which Cruz did, in fact, disclose the loan:

Country music is the music for much of working-class America, and for many of those who make up that great mass of humanity, 83-year-old Loretta Lynn is the reigning Queen of Country Music now that the great Kitty Wells is no longer with us.  Last week, Lynn publicly announced that she was supporting Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016.  In fact, she says she has been passing on that message of support to her audiences at the closing of her concerts for some time now, and it is being very well-received.  What's more, the Coal Miner's Daughter, so...

Chris Wallace confronted Donald Trump on Fox News Sunday this morning over whether he’s “trolling” Ted Cruz by making his citizenship an issue.

ABC’s Terry Moran has not lost his love for Barack Obama. The Nightline correspondent, who once compared the President to George Washington, on Tuesday got nostalgic for the early days of Obama, reminiscing, “I first met the then-Senator Obama in Cleveland all of the way back in 2006. Back then, they were naming babies after him in Iowa.” The journalist lamented, “For the last time, Barack Obama heard that famous shouted announcement as he strode into the House chamber to give his State of the Union address.” Even though the President has a year left in office, Moran mourned the...

What the Book of Proverbs Has to Say About the Current Age Msgr. Charles Pope • January 13, 2016 • In the Divine Office, we are currently reading from the Wisdom Tradition. Thus our daily fare consists of passages from Sirach, Wisdom, Proverbs, etc. Praise the Lord. They have a lot to say about the times in which we live.I’d like to review a few of the sayings in the Book of Proverbs. But before doing so, I’d like to explain the use of the word fool in the Wisdom Tradition (as contrasted with the wise one). Without a...

Mark Levin has been trying to stay out of the conflict between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.  He says he likes both men and has both on his show.  But as Trump has escalated his birther attacks on Cruz, Levin has spent hours of airtime defending Cruz against these arguments...while studiously not mentioning who is making these arguments. Well, it looks as though Levin has finally had enough, because ConservativeReview.com, of which he is editor in chief, has published a piece (that Levin has tweeted a link to) that exposes Donald Trump's political inconsistencies, point by point. Entitled Trump's...

For all those who revel in the fact that there are 374 days until President Obama finally gets the hell out of the White House, a cautionary note: Obama and his colleagues are RIGGING THE BUREAUCRACY so that their unique brand of "hope and change" extends far beyond their tenure. The latest evidence: Attorney General Loretta Lynch SAID, "MY GOAL IS TO POSITION the [Department of Justice] WHERE IT WILL CARRY ON IN ALL OF THESE ISSUES LONG AFTER MYSELF AND MY TEAM HAVE MOVED ON." specifically to how she planned to prosecute gun sellers under Obama's new executive actions....

Wednesday on the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer weighed in on the Democratic side of the president primary race. Despite Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) showing strength against Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire, Krauthammer was skeptical of Sanders chances beyond that and predicted it would be FBI director James Comey who has the final say in Clinton’s chances beyond the early primaries.

New abundance of food and fodder in the world is not only a result of genetic modifications. Greening of the world is also the consequence of the atmospheric carbon dioxide level that’s beneficial to plants worldwide The world is going green – literally, in all kinds of places that were desert-like before. Have you ever been in an airplane crossing the semi-arid foot hills of the Rocky Mountains and looking down at the ground? You’ll have seen large green, circular patches between the miles of dry brown land. Those patches are irrigated fields sprouting vegetables and fruits of various kinds....

Obama got it wrong from the start and nothing was going to save him from failure in the end President Obama enters his final year as President having given up on trying to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict - following in the footsteps of so many other American Presidents whose similarly-shared lofty and noble aspirations ended in abject failure. In Obama’s case his inability to fully comprehend Jewish history and the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel was the catalyst for his inevitable failure - as tellingly illustrated in his landmark speech in Cairo on 4 June...

At what point in history did these people come to the conclusion that failing to give aid and comfort to the enemy should be a criminal offense? The United States Supreme Court has ruled a number of times that law enforcement cannot protect you. They are there to take a report after a crime is committed. Reality suggests that the police are unable to protect you without compromising your freedom as an individual. To “anticipate” crime and arrest based on a condition of anticipation, before any crime is actually committed, would be to dwell in the realm of Orwellian government...

"It was a mistake, it's our fault, and we apologize for our mistake." You’ve heard of the Geneva Convention, right? Both the U.S. and Iran are signatories to it (unlike, say, Al Qaeda or ISIS), and signatories agree among other things that when they detain people from other nations for border incursions, they will not release photos or other images of them for the purpose of humiliating them. So surely Iran, considering the favorable treatment it’s received of late from the United States, wouldn’t treat U.S. sailors that way - especially in a situation that resulted from a mere no-harm-no-foul...

If there is such thing as a “hockey stick” graph, it charts the disappearance of freedom, opportunity, prosperity and hope of the American middle class during the last 50 years. In 2008 Americans sleepwalked to the polls and elected a man who by his history, family, friends and even his own words left little doubt that his mission was to destroy everything that America has traditionally stood for. We entered the steep part of the graph.

In politics 19 days can be an eternity. In 19 days before my fellow Iowans caucus in local churches, schools, fire houses, and even homes the Republican field will have two more debates, we’ll be exposed countless radio and TV ads, and who knows how many trees have been sacrificed to send us mailers that most of us don’t want.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Islamic State said it was behind an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta on Thursday that brought the radical group’s violence to the world’s most populous Muslim country for the first time. Just seven people were killed despite multiple blasts and a gunfight, and five of them were the attackers themselves, but the brazenness of their siege suggested a new brand of militancy in a country where low-level strikes on police are common. It took security forces about three hours to end the attack near a Starbucks cafe and Sarinah’s, Jakarta’s oldest...

It is hard not to feel protective over Donald Trump while the political classes are seething and scornful. They are unacquainted with such powerlessness. Control was never supposed to stray this far from their grasp. And their rage, manifested in every hapless attack on Trump and his supporters, actually seems to be improving the likelihood of that outcome they fear most of all. How tempting, under these circumstances, to rush to his defense, as so many in the conservative movement have already done. The Donald has boldly made himself a standard bearer of unpopular (within the political bubble), yet critical...

It’s unfathomable. The account of two U. S. Navy vessels being seized by the Iranian navy earlier this week seems completely implausible. No part of it makes any sense. The story is that two river patrol boats – bristling modern-day incarnations of the Vietnam swift boats – were navigating south from Kuwait to Bahrain. At some point, via some means, the two boats, with their contingent of five sailors each, surrendered to the Iranians. Two accounts have been offered as to how that happened. The first was that one of the vessels lost its engine and that they both then...

First, watch this:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Vice President Biden actually claims that Iran behaved the way "ordinary nations" would: One of the boats had engine failure and drifted into Iranian waters. The Iranians picked up both boats, as we have picked up Iranian boats that needed to be rescued and took them to -- I'm not sure exactly where. I don't want to misspeak here. And realized they were there and distressed, and said they would release them, and they released them like ordinary nations would do. That is the way nations should do it, and that...