Free Republic

The good news: Congressional negotiators reached a deal late last night to finish the FY2019 budget — and it includes some funding for the border wall. The bad news: Sean Hannity may veto it. The Fox News host called it a “garbage compromise” as he covered Donald Trump’s rally in El Paso last night, and warned that Republicans who support the deal will have to answer to him: “On this new, so-called compromise, I’m getting details,” said Fox News host Sean Hannity, referring to the tentative agreement reached by a bipartisan conference committee that would allocate roughly $1.375 billion...

It’s only when progressives lose control of an issue that they agree to even have it discussed. This is then called a conversationThe president of Wilfrid Laurier University recently published a statement on free speech at Laurier and in the academy generally. It was a sad effort. She built a Giza-sized pyramid of clichés and virtue-speak about something she was pleased to call “better speech” — as opposed to that decayed old concept, hustled by the likes of John Stuart Mill, Voltaire, and the framers of the American Constitution, known as “free speech.” Amid the vast waste of anodynes, platitudes...

House GOP leaders distributed an immigration bill to conference members Thursday, in hopes of finding a permanent legislative fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) while advancing some of President Trump's immigration and border initiatives. Full text at the link.

KEY LARGO, Florida -- At dinner with friends, I was asked what is wrong with Washington. The question presumes a standard by which "wrong" can be defined. I am frequently asked this question by people who do not live in "the swamp." They don't behave like Washington politicians. If a disagreement arises in their personal or professional life, they discuss it and usually compromise and work things out. Only in Washington, they note, does this rarely happen, and when it does it makes headlines. The most obvious answer to the question I am asked -- often before the appetizer arrives...

Evelyn Farkas, a former top Obama administration Defense Department official, has advocated for the intelligence community to consider compromising sources and methods when it comes to “saving American democracy.” “And I know that we have to preserve our sources and methods,” Farkas said, speaking about the U.S. intelligence community. “But at some point you know, sometimes maybe you have to actually compromise some kind of source or method if it comes down to saving American democracy.” Farkas was speaking last Thursday at a panel discussion on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, and was talking specifically about the intelligence community’s...

“In victory, magnanimity!” said Winston Churchill. Donald Trump should be magnanimous and gracious toward those whom he defeated this week, but his first duty is to keep faith with those who put their faith in him. The protests, riots and violence that have attended his triumph in city after city should only serve to steel his resolve. As for promptings that he “reach out” and “reassure” those upset by his victory, and trim or temper his agenda to pacify them, Trump should reject the poisoned chalice. This is the same old con.

Donald Trump is considering jetting to Mexico City on Wednesday for a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, just hours before he delivers a high-stakes speech in Arizona to clarify his views on immigration policy, according to people in the United States and Mexico familiar with the discussions. The possibility, which was hatched in recent days by Trump and his campaign advisers, comes after Trump has wavered for weeks on whether he would continue to hold his hard-line positions on the central and incendiary issue of his campaign, in particular his call to deport an estimated 11 million immigrants...

Donald Trump is considering a last-minute trip to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Wednesday, just hours before he is expected to announce his full immigration policy, the Washington Post reported late Tuesday. Those familiar with the possible meeting said security concerns and logistics of the impromptu visit are still being worked out by both parties. Pena Nieto had recently invited the billionaire businessman to visit him. Trump mulled over the invitation over the weekend and decided to go ahead with it after his new campaign chairman, Steve Bannon, told his boss the move could indicate to undecided...

On Wednesday night the Georgia legislature introduced new language to its religious freedom bill and passed the bill in mere hours. Haste makes waste. This new language significantly waters down a religious freedom bill that had real force even though it was, as we pointed out three weeks ago, already lacking in certain respects.

Sen. Lindsey Graham would work with Hillary Clinton on a range of issues if she became president in exchange for concessions on fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The South Carolina Senator, who is trailing in polls of the Republican presidential field, told TIME after a town hall meeting in Londonderry, N.H., that he would give a hypothetical President Clinton “political cover” on other issues if she fought ISIS. “If she’s willing to be more robust in terms of destroying ISIL, I’d give her political cover,” Graham said. “If she wanted to be more muscular in her foreign...

MADISON, Wis. – Government Accountability Board Judge Gerald Nichol has said he has no regrets about the early-morning raids and other constitutionally challenged tactics used to go after conservatives. “I don’t have a problem with the way we played that role,” he said last month when asked about the GAB’s integral involvement in an unconstitutional John Doe investigation that upended the lives of dozens of citizens who were never charged with any wrongdoing – all in the name of political speech. “It obviously angered one specific party,” he added. Nichol and his fellow retired judges who preside over the state’s...

The Jeb Bush experiment continues to be fascinating to watch. As you may recall, Bush said not long ago that a GOP presidential candidate needs to be prepared to lose the primary in order to win the general election — implicitly suggesting that he will not fall victim to the dynamic that claimed Mitt Romney. Here’s the latest example of Jeb Bush employing that strategy: He audaciously suggested that as a general matter, GOP primary voters are hostile to compromise. The New York Times reports on a Bush appearance in Orlando, Florida: “We need men and women of good will...

The world's largest Baptist university, Baylor, has dropped language in its sexual misconduct policy that punished those who engaged in homosexual acts, a change the socially conservative school said better reflects its values as "a caring community." Baylor, in the central Texas city of Waco, had been one of a handful of religious U.S. colleges and universities that allowed for the dismissal of students, and sometimes staff, for homosexuality. Baylor has removed "homosexual acts" as a punishable offense in its sexual misconduct policy, an official said on Tuesday. The policy also mandated disciplinary action for sexual assault, incest, adultery and...

I loved reading the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie books to my daughter. The somewhat Aesopian theme is that if you give the mouse what it wants – a cookie – it will just want more: a glass of milk, a straw, etc. The story came to mind last week, a week that began with many vowing to inter the Confederate flag and that ended with the Supreme Court mandating that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. As far as culture-war victories go, the flag news was big, but the marriage ruling was tantamount to VE...

Once a Constitutional Republic famed for its pragmatism, the United States has lately become a country notorious for its inconstancy, no longer recognizing that actions have finite and foreseeable consequences. In this space, for example, I recently argued that the release of the “torture report” by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence came perilously close to the constitutional definition of treason by “giving Aid and Comfort” to America’s enemies. Admittedly, that was a tough assessment. But barely a week after the report’s release, the Huffington Post published an article linking those revelations with their most immediate effects on our allies....

One of the recurring topics during Obama's speech to the Business Roundtable taking place today, aside from Obama's clear revulsion against any sort of pessimistic thought - although we admit there is still time for an executive order that makes only Optimistic thought legal, or a brand new Federal Department of Optimism with a $1 trillion annual budget - has been Obama's fear and loathing of another government shutdown. The issue, you see, is that Republicans are simply unwilling to compromise. Because, apparently, Obama is, about everything... except taxes, immigration or healthcare. And while everyone knows Obama's position and...

On the Thursday after Democrats’ drubbing at the polls, White House Press Sec. Josh Earnest appeared on CNN where he doubled down on Barack Obama’s insistence that the areas where there was likely to be grounds for compromise were initiatives of key importance to the American left. In his speech yesterday, Barack Obama inexplicably cited “roads and bridges,” universal pre-kindergarten funding, and increasing the minimum wage as places where ascendant Republicans should compromise their principles. Each of these proposals are also, coincidentally, bullet points on the progressive wish lists he calls State of the Union Addresses. Somehow, Obama was unable...

Vice President Joe Biden says he expects congressional Republicans to work to “get things done” if they win control of the Senate — and he notes the White House is prepared to give a little. In an interview with CNN released on Monday, Biden said that while he still expects the Democrats to retain Senate control, he believes a Republican-controlled Senate will move beyond obstructionism. “[G]oing into 2016, the Republicans have to make a decision whether they’re in control or not in control,” the vice president told Gloria Borger. “Are they going to begin to allow things to happen? Or...

The Big Bang “doesn’t contradict the intervention of a divine Creator, but demands it,” Pope Francis said Monday morning, because the beginning of the world “is not the work of chaos.” The Pope was addressing the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, gathered in the Vatican to discuss “Evolving Concepts of Nature.” God is not some sort of wizard, said Francis, but rather “the Creator who brought all things into being.” The origin of the world derives directly “from a supreme Principle of creative love,” he added. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation,...

Texas' two Republican Senators disagree on what Republicans should prioritize if the party regains control of Congress. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is considering a 2016 presidential run and is seen as the conservative voice in Congress, wants Republicans to try to repeal Obamacare and stop President Barack Obama's executive grants of amnesty. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who may become Majority Whip if the GOP wins a net of six Senate seats this year, believes Republicans will only win the White House in 2016 if conservative stalwarts like Cruz water down their bold conservatism and compromise. Cornyn recently said "that...