Free Republic

Dateline- New Hampshire. The last few years my kids and my wife and I have had a really amazing experience living in Manhattan. The restaurants, the shows, the culture were more than just wallpaper for us. We actively tried to engage in them and had the time of our lives. We were truly blessed to be able to share with our kids experiences that most people outside of NYC don’t get. The growing up experiences that the “insiders” get. Like 8th grade graduation at Columbia University or music day at the Lincoln Center or art appreciation at there Met. It’s...

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My 10-year old son is in his second year of wrestling here in NY. He just won the Sectional Championship, and he's headed to the State Tournament next week. He's excited and I'm awfully proud of him, and pleased that he's learned a bunch of important life lessons this year. Maybe the biggest one is that hard work and commitment lead to good things. Anyway, I put together this highlight video and thought I'd share it with you all.

In a world where boys are feminized by their schools and popular culture, I think wrestling is a great way to teach kids the old-fashioned values of personal accountability, winning and losing with honor, and the value of work ethic. My son started wrestling at 5, but he just got serious about it this past year. Since April he's been practicing with clubs and his personal coach 5-6 days a week, and sometimes for 4 hours a day. It's been paying off, as this formerly meek and unathletic kid started winning travel tournaments, and placing in major events (2nd at...

My sons are getting about the age where they've started asking me about the differences between liberals and conservatives, so I guess I should start a list of easy ways to tell the difference... - If you're committed to women's rights, but unconcerned about the females that are aborted every day, you're probably a liberal.  - If you think the world needs better solutions to problems like hunger and disease, but you think capitalist companies should be raped and pillaged, you're probably a liberal.  - If you despise bullies who use intimidation and threats to get their way, but...

I guess there was a time when unions did some good. I know my great grandfather was a big supporter of them, but frankly I can't see where they do anything good at all anymore. From the time I was a kid, all I've ever understood about them was that they're associated with organized crime, and they're physically violent and proud of it. But over the last couple of years I've learned a little bit more, and I have to say I'm not at all enthusiastic about what I've seen. First it was SEIU union thugs tossing beatdowns at...

Pennsylvania and Ohio were two states the GOP thought they could win last week. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan crisscrossed both states over and over until it seemed endless. They drew some pretty big crowds, too. No matter, both states were confirmed Obama territory within hours of the polls closing, and many economically disadvantaged districts voted near-unanimously for a second Obama term. I guess you could call today's jobless numbers poetic justice for all the voters who feel like they can vote a standard of living for themselves that they're unwilling to earn. Well, there's 14,000 newly jobless this week...

Oh no. Global warming's on the move again. You heard me right. Our President told us so today. When he was asked about NYC Mayor Michael "Nanny" Bloomberg's belief that Obama would do more to fight global warming, Obama made it clear he'd hold up his end of that bargain. In fact, he went so far as to say that temperatures are rising even faster than predicted just ten years ago. Here's what he said, verbatim, "I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions.” “You know, as you...

While Mitt Romney encourages the more bellicose wing of his party to temper their partisan positions, and while Speaker John Boehner tells GOP legislators to get in line and get ready to compromise, and while the GOP-elite spin machine prepares to unleash an unprecedented campaign of Hispandering in a last-ditch effort to save the party from the demographic cliff, the conservative blogosphere is buzzing with stories about voter fraud. Claims are being made that Obama's GOTV apparatus was really a sophisticated fraud designed to steal the election. There's no doubt Democrats engaged in fraudulent actions; there've been 52 arrests so...

Dear Governor Palin: Can I call you Sarah? I've been a supporter of yours ever since I saw you introduced as John McCain's VP nominee. You rocked the house that day, and really every opportunity you've gotten after that. I'd say you were the best thing about the '08 campaign, but that almost seems like a backhanded compliment, since John McCain sucked so bad as a presidential candidate. Maybe I'll say it this way - choosing you as his VP was about the only thing I think John McCain did right as a candidate. Over the past few years I've...

Romney probably used a lot more than these, but here are a few of his biggest losing strategies I came up with: 1. Nominate a candidate who doesn't represent the core values of your party. Mitt Romney is not now, nor has he ever been, a conservative. Of course, next to Barack Obama, Mitt Romney looks like a conservative, but then next to Obama, Francois Hollande would look like a conservative. 2. Suppress your own vote. The Romney team invested millions of dollars, and gambled election day success, on a program called ORCA, which was designed to centralize (centralize?) the...

I honestly never thought the day would come when I would be nostalgic for the Presidency of Bill Clinton. As noxious as the man and his politics are to conservatives, his administration was a good time for the conservative movement. Yeah, he won two elections, but the efforts he made to expand government were largely successfully parried, and he was ultimately forced to accept the idea of limited government control and intervention in order to govern. I think that no greater compliment has ever been paid to the legacy of Ronald Reagan than Bill Clinton's statement that, "the era of...

First off, let me say this. I am completely, unabashedly and unapologetically pro-life. That being said, I was somewhat dismayed by the reports of the 2012 election featuring the largest gender gap in history. Given multiple national polls showing that people do not support abortion, it remains an issue, and it remains an issue that the GOP does not handle well. I remember watching the VP debate between Biden and Ryan, and being hugely disappointed in how Ryan handled the abortion question. You can watch a video of it below, but, if I may paraphrase Ryan's answer in general terms,...

I'm a Jets fan, and I have been one for almost 25 years now. I'm also a Tim Tebow fan, since his days playing for the Gators in my native Florida. He seems like a really quality guy, in pretty much every respect. The only knock on Tebow is that he can't throw accurately. Maybe that will continue to be valid, or maybe not. In the meantime the Jets have Mark Sanchez, the worst QB in the league stinking up the place every week, and Rex Ryan continues to stand by his man. I'm confused. They say Tebow can't throw...

Superstorm Sandy's really turned a lot of people's lives upside down here on Long Island. The watchword for myself and my family is "thankful." We're thankful that we're safe. We're thankful that our home is largely undamaged. We're thankful that God protected our family and that we've had the resources to more or less rough out the conditions for the past week and a half without any ridiculous hardship. It's been 11 days since my car got swamped by a storm surge. I haven't been able to get gas with any degree of regularity, and when I have there have...

As recent survivors of Superstorm Sandy, my family has been focused this week on being thankful for the things we have. As I tell my kids, gratitude is largely a matter of attitude, but it's especially poignant when you see the struggles of our neighbors and friends in Long Beach, south Queens, and Staten Island. Maybe the most frustrating single aspect of this entire Sandy experience has been watching politicians pat each other on the back while they posture over ridiculous consumer protection laws designed to prosecute price gougers. In the aftermath of the storm last week, when I realized...

It only took a couple of days after the rejection of their most recent manufactured candidate for GOP-elites to start wildly groping for their next manufactured candidate to keep the conservative wing of the party at bay. And whose name pops up? Another George Bush. Imagine that. Not that George P. Bush seems like such a bad guy. I'm sure he's quite nice, really. He's photogenic, well-spoken, and, wouldn't you know it, Hispanic, too. What a great fit for the future of the GOP-elite. When you consider his family's history of using the conservative wing of the GOP like a...

While things are tight all around for most of us, one really has to feel for the people right now who're heading into the holidays looking for work. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Obama's re-election is spurring any hiring frenzies - in Realville, USA it may be the opposite. Of course there are theatric (but still quite real) stunts like the guy in Las Vegas who's laying off 22 of his 114 employees in order to prepare for what he perceives is a coming storm of regulation and the Virginia store that shut down for a day to mourn America's...

If you haven't heard yet about the GOP's huge "demographics problem," then get ready, because you'll be hearing about it a lot over the coming days and weeks. The media will hammer on the idea that the GOP is doomed by the rapid "diversification" of America, because they want to demoralize the American people. Many of the GOP-elite who pushed Romney on their base will concur, mainly because it's a convenient way to deal with their loss without pointing the finger at themselves. But neither of these groups are living in Realville, where there is no demographic problem that can't...

I have to admit I didn't think I'd be writing this today. I had expected to be writing about how America had woken up and returned to the course of liberty, accountability, and prosperity that made us the greatest nation on earth. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. Instead, the buzz in Realville is "where do we go from here?" I think the first thing that has to be addressed is the turnout, reported to be 14 million voters lower than in '08. That's a little hard to process, when you consider the enormous crowds that Romney and Ryan were drawing...