Free Republic

While the country has become more liberal in some ways, the Republican Party has moved to the extreme right, and the Democratic Party has filled in the vacuum in the middle by also moving to the right on many issues. As a consequence, many people who previously considered themselves in the middle are finding that the current views of the left are closer to their views. Thomas Ricks, who wrote Fiasco, and excellent look at the Iraq War, described why he moved to the left at Politico: Disappointment in the American government over the last 10 years. Our wars in...

Well, this is awkward.Unlike the D.C. Circuit, which split 2-1, the majority here was 3-0. Even so, the most noteworthy thing about the opinion is how tormented the court seems in trying to determine what Congress intended when it said that subsidies should be available only on “an exchange established by the State.” From page 20:Page 24:Page 28:If they can’t decide what the key phrase was designed to do, why don’t they follow the D.C. Circuit’s lead and stick with the plain text? In the first excerpt above, the court frankly admits that the language of the law seems...

The account for U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Rick Stengel published a tweet with a pro-Gaza hashtag, which was captured by the following screenshot.

This father walked in on a man molesting his son and did what any good dad would do. No, he didn’t just let the police handle it, he beat the living daylights out of him.

CAROL COUNTY – Maryland State Police have classified anti-immigration graffiti spray painted on the former Army Reserve Center in Westminster as a hate crime. The graffiti was sprayed sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning, according to Lt. Patrick McCrory, commander of the state police Westminster barracks. The graffiti said “NO ILLEAGLES [sic] HERE NO UNDOCUMENTED DEMOCRATS.

Today between 1500 and 2000 joyous and impassioned people came out to StandWithUs’ “Solidarity Rally for Israel” here in Los Angeles. In this interview with Scott Jacobs of Democracy Broadcasting News, Evan Sayet describes the event, and building on his “Unified Field Theory of Liberalism,” explains the media’s refusal to report the truth about Israel generally, and their lack of coverage of this event specifically.

Guatemala Gilberto Ramos wanted to leave his chilly mountain village for the United States to earn money to treat his mother's epilepsy. His mother begged him not to go. "The better treatment would have been if he stayed," Cipriana Juarez Diaz said in a tearful interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. When he wouldn't relent, she draped him with a white rosary for safe passage. A month later, his decaying body was found in the Texas desert. Now, the boy has become a symbol for the perils faced by a record flood of unaccompanied children from Central America who...

President Obama made headlines in Minneapolis on Thursday, rolling out his “phony scandal” rhetoric to address the cascade of questionable acts now receiving public outrage, and not just from Republicans. In a stunning rebuke, the dominant newspaper in the state of Minnesota, the very left-wing and politically correct Star-Tribune of Minneapolis has editorialized a demand for a special prosecutor: The old caution against ascribing to malice what can be explained by incompetence is worth keeping in mind when evaluating a high-profile blunder in either the private or public sector, such as the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for...

Obama and Russia: the World Laughs Dear Leader (PBUH) has provided his contrarian investment dog whistles that have boosted the Russian economy. Specific stocks he targeted for "sanctions" have performed magnificently. White House sock puppet press secretary Jay Carney warned that it was not a good time to invest in the Russian stock market because Obama was planning to impose devastating economic sanctions that would send the market into a tailspin. What actually happened, the FT says, is that the Russian market rose from 1,250 on the RTS Exchange to 1,450 -- a gain of over 15%. In fact, if...

With the momentum of the appropriations process stalled in the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid is trying to bring back the grease that helps the legislative wheels roll: earmarks. It is no secret that the Senate Majority leader is a huge proponent of the specially-tailored spending provisions that have faced a moratorium in congress since 2011. “I have been a fan of earmarks since I got here the first day,” Reid proselytized in May, right as eager appropriators got off to the fastest start in recent history. But congressional appropriators’ optimism has faltered as lawmakers have failed to reconcile policy and...

Chelsea Clinton doesn’t care about money as sincerely as her parents struggle to make ends meet. In the latest Clinton money quote, the career first daughter pronounced in a Fast Company interview that she has “tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success that I wanted in my life.” How indifferent is she to the lure of filthy lucre? Clinton is currently pulling down $600,000 per year for the kind of no-show...

by Jason DeWitt | Top Right NewsOne thing we love about Mike Rowe, the former “Dirty Jobs” TV host and current head of Mike Rowe Works, is that he always speaks his mind. Monday, he did so once again — and took on a lawyer in doing so.Mike hit his local liquor store last week and noticed a picture near the front of the shop: a man in a white shirt that the store was identifying as a shoplifter. “Good for you,” Rowe says he told the owner, as he retold the story on a Facebook post: “I wish every store in the country did...

<p>When the President was first elected, I pledged to wait from the day of his election--to his then swearing in--to begin critique of his public policy. I promised to do so because in the day of the first "post racial" President I felt it was a necessary discipline to criticize him on policy, actions, behaviors, and decisions rather than abstract arguments like birth certificates and "the President is a secret Muslim" conspiracies.</p>

Yesterday’s “Burgers with Bill,” held in the normally sleepy days following the end of primaries, the end of school, and pre-Independence day, has gotten folks to thinking. Why? Because the GOP is in complete transition. And it’s time to just openly accept it.(SNIP) So, when many of the former leaders gathered last night for “Burgers with Bill,” which used to be a much sought after fundraising ticket, but is now an event that is paid for by Bolling’s PAC, it seemed a bit like a nod to the past and a reflection on the current state of the party. McDonnell...

WaPo had this story a few days ago but Byron York has a smart post today about its deeper significance, as an expose of the White House’s latest lie about illegal immigration. Why are illegals from Central America, many of them kids, now streaming across the southwest border at a rate of 35,000 per month? Ask an Obama spin doctor like Josh Earnest that question and he’ll tell you there’s a simple explanation: Violence. They’re fleeing into Mexico to get away from gang wars, then continuing north to the United States. Ask the illegals themselves, though, and you get a...

The focus of most political observers has been on the primary elections in Virginia last week, and for good reason. But a timezone away, there was another important primary taking place in Arkansas. There, one of the Republican architects of the state’s “private option” Medicaid expansion proposal, state Rep. John Burris, was vying for a state Senate seat that was also being contested by newcomer Scott Flippo. Like Virginia, candidate spending was lopsided with the presumed favorite Burris heavily outspending the challenger. But in the end, the race appears to have hinged on one thing above all else: Burris’...

Best of week's news/views/humor from today's 'new-media' Right....

Several days ago, we looked at the big picture of US immigration, presenting the place of origin of America's 40 million foreign-born residents. However, as is always the case with the US, focusing on the big picture at the national level ignores the nuances at the state level. The following two charts using Pew Research data, compiled by the WaPo, show the dramatic changes in the land of origin of US immigrants, beginning with 1910 when Germany was the primary driver of US-born residents, accounting for 18% of US immigrants, and proceeding through 2010, when Mexico has become the...

One week to the June 3rd GOP primary for senator in New Jersey! This week is CRUCIAL for Rich Pezzullo, as he is running in perhaps the most underwatched yet IMPORTANT primary in the country. He is polling either #1 or #2, depending on the poll or the flavor of the day. Nonetheless, he is the most consistently conservative candidate in the race who will caucus with the Ted Cruz / Mike Lee wing of the Republican Party if he wins the primary, then beats Cory Booker. I'll be blunt: This race is not just important for the senate seat,...

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar” and one of the smartest and most devious thinkers on the left, has a highly revealing Bloomberg column out this week reporting on the results of a study of the way China has attempted indoctrination in its school system. This column and the underlying study (it’s an NBER paper, behind a paywall unless you have academic access) are useful as background reading for everyone who is rightly concerned about how Common Core standards will likely become the means of nationalizing a liberal school curriculum. (What? You mean you aren’t reassured by the promises from...