Free Republic

Tantrum City, a rage room that opened in April 2021 in North Syracuse, has closed its doors. “We will be closing our doors effective immediately due to unforeseen circumstances. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you,” Tantrum City posted on its Facebook page on Wednesday. The business was located on the corner of Taft Road and Route 11, and was previously home to ShamROCK’s Rock and Roll Irish Pub. Tantrum City provided weapons (bats, crowbars, golf clubs and sledgehammers) and items to smash, like electronics, glassware, knick-knacks and car parts to release steam and throw adult temper tantrums....

'I think there's got to be something different for people to see that heart of yours.' In Iowa Saturday, Ron DeSantis heard from a supporter who suggested his campaign wasn’t successfully showing his “heart,” laying the blame on “consultants” as he questioned whether the Florida Governor could win the Presidency. During an event in Muscadine, which was hosted by the Never Back Down super PAC, the 2024 presidential candidate was confronted with criticism of how the DeSantis message is delivered. “I don’t know what your consultants are telling you, and it’s good for me to be here today to see...

The 2024 hopeful told podcaster Patrick Bet-David that his cowboy boots were 'just standard, off the rack Lucchese' and that he stood at 5'11'' But a trio of expert shoemakers have come forward to say he is using lifts to make himself look taller. Politico Magazine on Tuesday gave what had been merely online speculation some legitimacy, with all three boot and shoemakers pointing out how the odd fit of the candidate's boots likely means he's getting a boost. (comments by 3 boot makers/experts) DeSantis' spokesman Bryan Griffin did not appreciate Politico Magazine's investigation. Griffin said. 'The governor doesn't pad...

The Collapsing American Family: From Bonding to Bondage, by Linda Goudsmit, is superb writing and analysis. In clear, simple words and concepts, she explains the complex sociological and political phenomena destroying the American family. More to the point, she has an uncanny knack for distilling motivation down to its barest essence with an economy of wording I have rarely seen. Her goal in writing the book is "to expose the multidimensional, coordinated attacks on the American family as strategic, operational, tactical, asymmetric warfare." In just a few pages, Goudsmit is able to explain the globalist intentions of resetting America into...

The Mouse that Roared is a 1959 comedy film about a mouse-sized country (the Duchy of Grand Fenwick) that decides to solve its money problems by declaring war on America, then surrendering, then reaping the financial aid that America always bestows on its defeated enemies.“The Mouse that Whored” is a contemporary true story about a giant entertainment company (built around the character of an animated mouse) that has declared war on American parents. The monster-sized mouse corporation has no intention of surrendering. On the contrary it expects you to surrender your children to it. It has a good chance of...

Donald Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a Kulturkampf. As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump. For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends, and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected, and constantly attacked.In 2016 and early 2017, Barack Obama appointees in the FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice tried to subvert the Trump campaign, interfere with his transition, and, ultimately, abort his presidency. Now, congressional Democrats promise impeachment before the 2020 election.The usual...

Former US Attorney Joe diGenova says that the Huber investigation into the Clinton Foundation is a farce. Huber hasn’t even interviewed the top witness in the case whom diGenova represents! John Huber is the special prosecutor tapped by former AG Jeff Sessions to investigate FISA abuses by Obama’s DOJ/FBI. Sessions nominated Huber to perform this investigation after numerous calls for a special investigation into the Clinton Foundation and the Deep State. But months ago we reported that nothing was getting done. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee say John Huber still has not interviewed key witnesses and they want answers....

For the second consecutive season, Ohio State went on the road against an unranked Big Ten opponent and laid a dinosaur egg. Last year, it was a befuddling 55-24 loss at Iowa, which ultimately cost the Buckeyes a spot in the College Football Playoff. This year, Ohio State went to Purdue and imploded in a spree of red-zone ineptitude, critical penalties and a defense that offered little more than token resistance. It wasn’t just that Purdue upset the No. 2 Buckeyes, 49-20, it was the tenor in which they did it. They pushed around Ohio State up front, out-schemed them...

"Even as the leftist American mainstream media continues to focus its energies on petty and ineffective attacks of Donald Trump, too many journalists on the right unfortunately appear to be diving right in to join them with their own petty counter-attacks. The result is a press that spends the bulk of its time on irrelevant stories of partisan bickering that have little substance or importance. In the last week of 2017 we had one particularly acute example of this."

Immaturity. Self-indulgence. Irresponsibility. These are what liberalism is all about Anyone who regularly uses common sense knows that liberals are almost always wrong. Wrong in their opinions, wrong in their justifications, wrong in their worldview. There is not an area in our social or political discourse in which liberals don’t regularly say or do things that simply make no sense to people who expect rational behavior on the part of others. More often than not, normal people find themselves looking at liberals and wondering, “What were they thinking???” Now, it’s alright to be wrong. Everybody gets something wrong every once...

If one child complains that he didn't get as much food as his brother because his frankfurter was cut into four pieces, while his brother's hot dog was cut into five pieces, we laugh. What we often don't realize is that the definitions of "fairness" that adults use are often every bit as arbitrary as those of children. This is why politicians are so in love with the word "fairness." Using that word justifies their attempt to swoop in, ignore merit, overrule the market, and take something from one group of people to give it to another group of people...

As tempting as it is to view the machinations of the left in masterfully calculated Dr. Evil terms, today's progressive is better-understood as a ranting teenager, burdened with both a disordered view of freedom and typical adolescent entitlement issues. It's not that today's lefty is unintelligent; in fact, many are very bright. It's that he is emotionally underdeveloped. By disordered freedom, I mean the 1960s-influenced, "don't tell me what to do/I'll do whatever the hell I want to do" kind of freedom. Pope John Paul II summarized the flaw in such a stunted and animalistic view of our potential when...

History tells us that organizations, movements, even entire nations can go mad in much the same way an individual does, with the same expression of irrationality, frenzy, and violence. Recent evidence suggests that the American left is going through precisely such a breakdown. In his memoir Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung, the psychiatric pioneer who was smarter than Freud, discussed a particular case history in which a patient told of a troubling dream: he was repeatedly confronted with the image of a howling feces-covered baby. Jung had no immediate explanation, and thought about little else for several days. At last...

The worst effect of modern liberalism is not a host of laws and regulations designed to control every aspect of life. Laws can be repealed. The worst effect is not an increasingly intrusive government. Governments can be voted out of office. The worst effect of modern liberalism is the regression of citizens from self-sufficient adults into dependent children who rely on a parentified government to take care of them, make important decisions for them, and take responsibilities off their shoulders. Real children grow up. Childish adults rarely do. And that’s a shame.

Predictions of cost savings through ObamaCare, like most liberal politics, were based on magical thinking. If they want something to be true with sufficiently intensity, liberals know it must be true. Small children are natural magical thinkers. Ask any psychologist, pediatrician, or parent. Magical thinkers believe that because they want it or can conceive of it, "it" is so, or will be so. The magically thinking child ties a cape on his back and knows that with it on, he can fly. When he jumps off the roof, he will, of course, fall, not soar like Superman. The usual cure...

Now that Obama managed to interrupt his golf game long enough to deliver an emotional high profile speech in the Oval Office with a stealth push for Carbon Credits, a crisis is once again on the way to being co-opted as an opportunity. Not that it's much of an opportunity for Obama who is polling worse than ever. The left is growing to resent him almost as much as the right, for not being the liberal messiah they expected him to be. The irony is that no matter how immature Obama may be, and out of touch with political realities...

Everything I need to know about Barack Obama I learned as a Cub Scout den leader. Last week I watched an American president and a Russian leader sign a START treaty. I almost checked the calendar, wondering if I'd been transported back to 1980. In news stories of the summit I found a link to an article Barack Obama had written in 1983 while at Columbia University titled "Breaking the War Mentality." Back then, Obama was firmly in the nuclear freeze camp. It's true that many of us held views as college students that seem quaint and naïve after two...

Scott Brown: President's Rhetoric 'Inappropriate' Republicans are not backing down in the face of Democrats' landmark health care victory this week. Instead, the moment has energized some members of the party, giving them a cause to rally around.

Cultural observer Joseph Epstein pinpoints the transition from adulthood to adolescence as American culture's default "moral condition" in the decade following the 1951 publication of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. In his 2004 essay, The Perpetual Adolescent, Epstein notes: "Salinger's novel exalts the purity of youth and locates the enemy... in those who committed the sin of growing older, [Holden Caulfield's] parents, his brother ... and just about everyone who has passed beyond adolescence and had the rather poor taste to remain alive." Adolescence as the new adulthood is a widespread but thankfully not a universal phenomenon....

.... Would you please sit down and shut up you old fool! Yup. Think about this one for a moment. You're a young black man or woman, you're finishing up your education and hope to have a career in politics. Along comes Barack Obama and you're just elated! The barrier has been broken and a black man is now President of the United States! Your path is clear! But wait! In the early months of Obama's presidency his inexperience starts to show. He fails on several big fronts: Health care, cap-and-trade and the union card-check bill. He tries to convince...