Free Republic

From the outset, several top-tier Democratic presidential candidates are pushing for new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and attempting to portray themselves as best positioned to fight the country’s yawning inequality gap. It is an indication of how much the Democratic Party is shifting and how far the candidates are willing to go to appeal to the party’s energetic liberal faction. The debate over wealth — particularly with billionaires in the field and Democrats challenging a president whose riches helped get him to the White House — is a dominant theme of the early primary season. Among the first advisers...

Hosts of tonight's New Year's Eve celebration in New York City Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper butted heads with Times Square security after event organizers told them that CNN would not be invited back next year if they didn't relinquish their umbrellas. Rain lashed Manhattan as revellers in Times Square rang in the New Year and adhered to strict security measures that did not allow umbrellas in the area.

Daniel Bonthius was never much interested in politics before Donald Trump came along. Both his parents are involved in the labor movement, but he earned a musical theater degree in Boston and moved to New York City to make it as an actor. Like many of the city’s aspiring actors, Bonthius, 33, was waiting tables and working for an event planner—and had been doing it for most of a decade when Donald Trump obliterated the political system in 2016. After the election, a shocked Bonthius invited friends over to his home in Sunnyside, Queens, a one-time Irish enclave that has...

Late Monday night, the White House showed off the finishing touches of first lady Melania Trump's first state dinner, as she and President Trump will host French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife at the executive mansion tomorrow. Reporters were briefly allowed into the White House and were greeted by gold table settings, gold silverware, gold candlesticks, gold wine glasses, gold chairs – situated elegantly around puffs of green and white flowers – in the candlelit state dining room. At each of the 130 place settings there was a menu, with the White House seal and the fleur-de-lis, which were...

Roseanne made a triumphant return Tuesday night, blowing past projections with a 5.2 adults 18-49 rating and 18.2 million total viewers for the debut of its revival, which drew 10% more viewers than the original series finale 21 years ago. While nostalgia was expected to bring in eyeballs, no one predicted such a huge turnout on premiere night for the blue-collar family sitcom with a Donald Trump-supporting protagonist, especially among the younger demographic. But then, few predicted that Trump would become the Republican nominee and would win the presidential election when he first announced his candidacy.

...secretive group in upstate New York...videotaped ceremonies where they were branded in their pelvic area with a symbol featuring Raniere’s initials. “During the branding ceremonies, slaves were required to be fully naked, and the master would order one slave to film while the other held down the slave being branded,” the complaint says...“slaves” had to stick to very low-calorie diets...“forced to wear fake cow udders over their breasts while people called them derogatory names,” or threatened with being put in cages,...Raniere has been bankrolled by Clare Bronfman, an heiress to the Seagram’s liquor fortune. Bronfman gave millions of dollars covering...

CHINESE women are disfavoured at birth compared to boys (the country has one of the lowest female-to-male sex ratios at birth in the world) and stigmatised as “sexless” spinsters if they choose to earn a PhD. Now, a viral video has surfaced on China’s Internet, of a class that teaches its students that “women should talk less, do more housework and shut their mouths”, according to an AFP report. The teacher in the class in the northeastern province of Liaoning, also told students that “women should not strive to move upwards in society, but should always remain at the bottom...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton and his fellow Princeton University professor and wife, Anne Case, made headlines two years ago when they reported that mortality rates among white, working-class Americans are going up in contrast to other demographic groups in the U.S. Since then, the two have continued to dig into what is behind the increase in “deaths of despair” among white, middle-aged Americans with low levels of education. They sat down with Wall Street Journal News Editor Janet Adamy to discuss their latest findings. Edited excerpts follow.

“He assaulted his stepson severely enough that he fractured his skull, and he also assaulted his wife,” said Don Christensen, a retired colonel who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force. “He pled to intentionally doing it.”...He was sentenced in November of that year to 12 months’ confinement and reduction to the lowest possible rank. After his confinement, he was discharged from the military with a bad conduct discharge. It is unclear whether his conviction would have barred him from purchasing a gun. The case marked a long downward slide that included divorce...After Mr. Kelley was discharged from the...

‘Red October” was the name for a great Cold War movie. It’s also the name for the Communist takeover of the Russian government on Oct. 26, 1917, when Bolshevik forces stormed the Winter Palace in today’s St. Petersburg. That’s according to the old-style calendar; in the new calendar, the 100th anniversary of the Revolution is Tuesday, Nov. 7. We had our own revolution, a year ago. Which makes it a good time to compare Red October with red-state America, the Trump revolution in American politics. I got a heads up about the comparison at a 2015 dinner, when I heard...

Why is it okay to disrespect the American flag, okay to wear a t-shirt praising communist butcher Fidel Castro, okay to depict cops as pigs, but not okay to wear a Christian t-shirt? Everyone is weighing in in the disrespectful NFL flag-sitters, so I might as well. Here are several points that make the case that NFL owners and the commissioner are utter hypocrites for allowing players to disrespect the American flag: 1) The NFL is a private company — it is not the federal government. Every private company has codes of conduct. 2) The NFL forced RGIII (Robert Griffin...

The graph on the left is white people without college degrees. The other one is white people with college degrees. The source is this paper from Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The numbers for black and Hispanic working-class people don’t track these stats for working-class whites. The economists can’t figure out what’s going on: Taking all of the evidence together, we find it hard to sustain the income-based explanation.For white non-Hispanics, the story can be told, especially for those aged 50–54, and for the difference between them and the elderly, but we are left with no explanation for...

The Cold War has been followed by the class war. A transatlantic class war has broken out simultaneously in many countries between elites based in the corporate, financial, and professional sectors and working-class populists. Already this transnational class conflict has produced Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the American presidency. Other shocks are likely in store. None of the dominant political ideologies of the West can explain the new class war, because all of them pretend that persisting social classes no longer exist in the West. Neoliberalism—the hegemonic ideology of the transatlantic elite—pretends that class has disappeared in...

A University of Arizona classroom dialogue guide encourages professors to use the “Oops/ouch method,” where students who are offended in class say “ouch” and the offender responds with “oops.” The guide, published by the Office for Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, provides outlines for how to encourage discussion about diversity in the classroom, explaining that “diversity poses both challenges and opportunities for a college campus.”

South Carolina-A parent is outraged after her 6th grade child was indoctrinated on Islam and was forced to learn about the Islamic conversion prayer (Shahada)! WCSC reports: In worksheets provided to Live 5 News, sixth graders at Alston Middle School were asked to fill in blanks about Islam and match up statements from the Quran with the five pillars of the religion. The mom says she is infuriated and that others agree with her. “Our concern is that if the need permission to teach sexual education, they should be getting permission to teach religious values,” she said.

“God bless him. “What a class, character guy. It's character. That's him. Rather than padding his stats, just take a knee. No sense in running it up on somebody.” This season a remarkable decision took place on the next–to–last play of the Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State football game. This intra–state championship matchup dates back to 1904, but this matchup was particularly important. Oklahoma was ranked #9 and OSU just behind at #10. The game winner would not only have bragging rights, the victor would also be the Big 12 champion. My alma mater OU got off to a ragged start....

Dolly Parton has announced plans to donate $1,000 per month to every family who lost their home in the wildfires sweeping through the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The country music icon is helping the homeless families in need with the monthly donation for six months, until they get back on their feet. Parton will make the donations through her Dollywood Foundation, reports the Knoxville News Sentinel, noting that the foundation plans to make more information available on Friday. According to the newspaper, more than 150 homes and businesses in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, have been destroyed.

On Sept. 6, 2016, Neal B. Freeman of the National Review published an interview with Angelo Codevilla, the author of “The Ruling Class.” The bottom line was that Dr. Codevilla has concluded that what he has estimated to be two-thirds of the country’s citizens are increasingly falling in with the increasing number of those who intend to vote for Donald J. Trump as president, despite having an opinion that he has significant shortcomings and that they are doing so because of their dissatisfaction, as the “country class,” with the ruling class. ****People have been able, with regard to one candidate,...

Hillary Clinton called for raising taxes on the “middle class” while campaigning on Monday in Omaha, NE. Joined by left-wing Democrat billionaire Warren Buffett, she received applause from those in attendance. “Because while Warren is standing up for a fairer tax code, Trump wants to cut taxes for the super-rich,” said Clinton. “Well, we’re not going there, my friends. I’m telling you, right now - we’re going to write fairer rules for the middle class and we are going to raise taxes on the middle class!”

J.D. Vance didn’t encounter anyone else with a personal story like his when he arrived at Yale Law School six years ago. His early family life in a poor town in eastern Ohio was tough, with a mother who became a drug addict and a partially absent father. He and his sister spent a lot of time with his grandparents, evangelical Christians who were originally from Kentucky and inspired Mr. Vance to do more with his life. His experiences are the basis of his new memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The book started out as a quest to answer questions about his...