Free Republic

There is an exceptional amount of lying in Washington these days, and our media and politicians are entranced by it. Lies must achieve extraordinary bulk and quality to impress the sport’s most ardent practitioners: Only a particularly nasty outbreak of mendacity could draw Washington’s attention to a subject it knows with such intimacy and depth. Most Americans are unsurprised. Long ago, they learned lies are the oxygen of the political world. They know the phrase “political deception” is a redundancy, like “false pretense,” “free gift,” or “foreign imports.” Most electoral lies, they’ve found, are dandruff on the body politic, pedestrian...

Why is Communism relevant today? Ignorance! Just ask around. You may be shocked to find that nearly no one under twenty-five has ever heard of Stalin, whose genocide exceeded Hitler's by a factor of five. Communism is being repackaged in this atmosphere of ignorance. Films like “Motorcycle Diaries” and “Young Marx” portray Che and Marx as wise, prophetic figures fighting for mankind's betterment. Idealistic youth is responding enthusiastically in their need for heroes. If you travel abroad, say to India or South America, you can see full-scale marches complete with red banners and portraits of Stalin. How do you get...

When a dozen of conservatism’s best minds take on Socialism and expose it for the utopian fraud it is, attention must be paid. In a brief foreword to a special issue of National Review, Editor-in-Chief Richard Lowry admitted that many conservatives thought socialism in America had been “vanquished” after the collapse of Soviet Communism 30 years ago. But as T. S. Eliot insisted, “There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The experts examine socialism in its many guises, beginning with Charles Cooke’s blunt assessment that socialism is not...

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" is the best way to describe the lack of original thinking that is prevalent in politics. Take the recent resurgence of calls from politicians on both sides of the aisle to implement industrial policy. These calls are motivated to address the (mythical) decline in American manufacturing — and because other countries are doing it. These policies are tired, utterly uninspiring schemes that governments around the world have tried and, invariably, failed at. The latest example is a proposal by Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., to create a new federal agency called...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) tells @burgessev and me outside GOP lunch that $12 billion in trade assistance to farmers from Trump administration "this is becoming more and more like a Soviet-type of economy here" with "commissars" sprinkling around benefits.

Is it possible for Freepers or any law firm to sue the United Nations, and by extension each of the member nations for their minutes, committee agenda's and notes or associated "get to gathers" associated with Global, International, or Nation - to - Nation immigration proposals, plans or "records of immigration" in the past 15-years that: Result in Islam or Muslims moving into non-traditional or Western Nations For the American (or other nations by other groups suing for information) List of policitians, Commercial endeavors associated with government, and other Actors such as International or American individuals who are pushing the...

The sooner the president realizes that Ryan is an establishment swamp dwelling snake...that's going to suck him down into the swampy quicksand and destroy his chances of enacting HIS agenda the better off he and we will be. Ryan represents the enemy within! Trump won the election already! Now it's his duty is to change gears, uphold the constitution, drain the swamp and MAGA. Quit screwing around with unwanted, unpopular, unsustainable, unconstitutional health care schemes. Push for and accept nothing less than a full repeal on Obamacare and then get to work enacting the rest of HIS MAGA agenda!! And...

Thursday, I laid out the case for why Obamacare should be repealed, instead of propped up and tinkered on by additional top-down, boardroom thinking. It’s clear that whatever replaces Obamacare must focus on quality and incremental local solutions, not one-size-fits-all government mandates.In this respect, the federal government’s biggest task for replacing Obamacare is to get out of the way and let state policymakers and health care providers innovate.First off, let’s get clear what Americans want: They’d like many choices of affordable health insurance plans that allow them to choose their doctors. They want to buy a plan when they are...

Obamacare, the left’s grand attempt to create a national government-run health care system, has failed. They promised lower health insurance premiums, but delivered higher ones. They promised more choice and competition, but delivered less. They promised continuity and better access to care, but delivered disruption and dislocation. Despite promises that people could keep their plans and doctors, thousands of Americans were forced into more expensive insurance with higher deductibles and plans that didn’t include their doctors. After spending billions in tax dollars, Obamacare managed to increase the number of people with health insurance by much less than predicted—with over 80...

The New York Times blasted out the headline yesterday, Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty. In short, Obama will use one or more Executive Orders to entangle the U.S. in a global treaty on climate change, without consulting the U.S. Senate. However, the Constitution requires the Senate to vote on all treaties and the bar is high: It takes a two-third vote to approve. The Constitution is out. The Rule of law has collapsed. Reflexive law has surpassed it all. The balance of this article will show you how and why.If you are saying “Huh?”, you had better...

According to new deal historians, capitalism failed in the 1930s. What, then, is it doing flourishing in the United States, Britain, and Europe and taking root in Latin America and China, where it was never previously present? For the past 20 years there has been a large and growing incompatibility between the verdicts of historians and the performance of capitalism.In 1981 the United States reduced tax rates and reined in money growth. For two decades the economy has experienced an economic boom characterized by large income gains, high employment, and negligible inflation. In the U.K. similar reforms introduced by Margaret...

Did you know that some of your local elected representatives are enabling a shadow government to evolve? These people promote the reinvention of government through their support of, and appointments to, “regional” boards that act like soviet councils. These councils are funded to implement Agenda 21. Federal tax dollars fuel their appeal, but your city and county representatives do not have to go along. Gone are the days when government was limited, where individuals were politically acknowledged to possess unalienable rights, and where money was honest. The American political structure has been transformed. This has occurred quietly for more than...

Two-hundred years after signing a declaration protecting Americans’ right to pursue life, liberty and property, the stewards of the very government our Founders formed, began stealing all three.The story of why and how our government, through federal agencies like HUD and the EPA implement global law is the story of America’s return to slavery.To understand the importance of the story we must first recognize the importance of property rights.For example, if you own a farm, but another person tells you what to plant, where you can mow, and whom you must have for neighbors, your ownership becomes worthless.  That other...

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." - Obama, July 2, 2008 What objectives? Who set them? This may begin to answer those questions, raise other questions, and perhaps point toward things needing further research. Organization of Islamic Cooperation - Criminalization of "Islamophobia" In 1990 the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) issued their “Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam” (http://www.oic-oci.org/english/article/human.htm). It’s Article 22 states: “Everyone shall...

AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing), President Obama’s most radical regulation, continues to go virtually unmentioned in the campaign. You might think a policy that allows big cities to swallow up and control surrounding suburbs would be widely debated and discussed, especially in an election where the suburbs hold the balance of power. Instead, both presidential candidates make a point of avoiding the issue. Meanwhile, it’s become increasingly clear that AFFH is about a great deal more than housing. In truth, this sweepingly transformative regulation creates levers by which the feds can reach into almost every aspect of local government. In...

Dear Colleagues: As the Secretaries of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Transportation... Today, our agencies are calling on local education, transportation, and housing leaders to work together on issues at the intersection of our respective missions in helping to guarantee full access of opportunity across the country.

On June 16, 2009, EPA joined with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U. S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to help improve access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment in communities nationwide. Through a set of guiding livability principles and a partnership agreement that will guide the agencies' efforts, this partnership will coordinate federal housing, transportation, and other infrastructure investments to protect the environment, promote equitable development, and help to address the challenges of climate change.

Obama is not a fan of America’s suburbs. Indeed, he intends to abolish them. Obama is a longtime supporter of “regionalism,” the idea that the suburbs should be folded into the cities, merging schools, housing, transportation, and above all taxation. One of Obama’s original trainers, Mike Kruglik, has hived off a new organization called Building One America In July of 2011, Kruglik’s Building One America held a conference at the White House. The ultimate goal [] is quite literally to abolish the suburbs. One approach is to force suburban residents into densely packed cities by blocking development on the outskirts...

Farmers in the U.S. are pouring out tens of millions of gallons of excess milk, amid a massive glut that has slashed prices and has filled warehouses with cheese. More than 43 million gallons’ worth of milk were dumped in fields, manure lagoons or animal feed, or have been lost on truck routes or discarded at plants in the first eight months of 2016, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is enough milk to fill 66 Olympic swimming pools, and the most wasted in at least 16 years of data requested by The Wall Street Journal....

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has promised to nationalize food distribution in the South American nation beset with record shortages of basic goods, runaway inflation and an escalating economic crisis. [Snip] Various estimates suggest the government already controls about half of the country's food distribution, but that hasn't stopped record shortages in shops and markets. Venezuela is struggling with a recession, 68.5-percent annual inflation and severe shortages of the basic goods that it relies on oil money to import. On any given day, people in Venezuela can wait hours to get some subsidized milk, cooking oil, milk or flour -- if...