Free Republic

<p>On Monday, George Yancy, a black professor of philosophy at Emory University, wrote a lengthy piece in The New York Times detailing the awful death threats he has received from white racists. I can sympathize -- throughout 2016, I received my fair share of death threats. But Yancy sees those death threats as representative of a deeper malignancy plaguing all of white America, not a sickness within a subset of the population. Thus, he asks, "Should I Give up on White People?"</p>

The accusation that the Obama administration used information gleaned from classified foreign surveillance to smear and blackmail its political opponents at home has gained new traction in recent days, after reports that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice may have been rifling through classified transcripts for over a year that could have included information about Donald Trump and his associates. While using resources that are supposed to keep Americans safe from terrorism for other purposes may be a dereliction of duty, it is no more of a crime than spending all day on Twitter instead of doing your job. The...

RUSH: Let me tell you the truth about something. Every one of these Drive-By Media hypocrites that are going on and on and on about conflict of interest regarding Sean Hannity would be the first people to accept an up-close and personal relationship with Barack Obama any day of the week, Hillary Clinton any day of the week, and they wouldn’t have any problem covering it up. They would all brag about it. They all strive, they all wanted to impress Obama, they wanted to be in Obama’s inner circle. What the hell does it mean when you write that,...

Golden Rice was declared safe for consumption by Canada recently. This has huge implications for the rest of the world, where Golden Rice can be vital resource in tackling vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition.Genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to display traits that are otherwise absent or subdued in natural crops. For example, gene modification results in crops that are highly resistant to diseases and more accustomed to extreme weather conditions. Sometimes, these crops also contain increased nutritional value.Golden Rice, also known as Provitamin A Biofortified Rice Event GR2E, has strikingly higher levels of Provitamin A than other commercially available...

Federal judges sit on the bench for life and can either uphold the law or rule like tyrants. This puts judicial appointments right near the top of the most important things a president can do. The newest Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, has already shown what a difference a constitutionalist can make. But we need many more to counter the hundreds of Clinton, Obama and Jimmy Carter-appointed judges who issue zany rulings that override common sense and thwart democratically enacted popular will. A case in point is U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, a 2010 Obama appointee. In March, he issued...

Presidential pardons have fallen under renewed scrutiny. Critics contend that President Trump is helping friends and fellow conservatives. He pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio following his conviction at the hand of a liberal federal judge. Trump also pardoned Kristian Saucier, convicted of federal crimes for taking photos in a submarine. Ultimately, the public is hearing heavy condemnation about these pardons only because of the media’s deranged anti-Trump hatred. Perhaps Trump should issue a blanket pardon for press agents like Jim Acosta, Rachel Maddow, and their illiberal ilk. They have engaged in massive corporate fraud and deception for decades. Trump’s latest pardon to...

"Ten days ago, President Trump was saying 'the United States should withdraw from Syria.' We convinced him it was necessary to stay." Thus boasted French President Emmanuel Macron Saturday, adding, "We convinced him it was necessary to stay for the long term." Is the U.S. indeed in the Syrian civil war "for the long term"? If so, who made that fateful decision for this republic? U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley confirmed Sunday there would be no drawdown of the 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria, until three objectives were reached. We must fully defeat ISIS, ensure chemical weapons would not again...

When President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform act in 1996, which he negotiated with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, the left claimed people would starve. They didn't. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between 1996 and 2000, the employment rate for single mothers increased from 63 percent to 76 percent. In addition, the overall poverty rate has declined over the last half-century. Many able-bodied people who once relied on a government check found jobs and started earning a paycheck. Good news, but the sideshow that has attached itself to so much of the Trump administration has distracted...

Willie Parker knows that a lot of people hate him. Such knowledge is unavoidable, given the fact that people often shout at him as he is entering a clinic to perform abortions. How does he get through it with the knowledge that he is so hated? In response to this question, Parker simply says, “I channel the courage of the civil rights legacy.” In other words, he’s more than just a modern day St. Paul as we learned in the last installment of this series. He’s Martin Luther King, Jr., too.Parker may be able to provide a source of “courage” to...

There is an old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and we've learned that again with the Congressional Budget Office and its latest highly misleading fiscal forecast. For years, we've been trying to get the CBO to use real-world scoring that reflects how businesses, workers and financial markets react to changes in tax rates. But no go. This is why the left is having a field day with the CBO's forecast that deficits under President Trump will average a trillion dollars a year for the next decade. This is supposed to be a result of Trump's...

About half the American people do not believe the mainstream media tell the truth. They believe the media are more interested in promoting their left-wing views than reporting the truth. I am, I note with sadness, a member of that half. Here is but one more example: The New York Times best-seller list. As a writer (who, for the record, had a previous book on that list), I have long known it isn't a best-seller list, and I don't pay attention to it. But I paid attention last week to see if my recently published book, which opened up on...

Is Jordan the next destination for the "Arab Spring?" Demonstrations against the king have reached new levels. Towards the end of 2010, when the "Arab Spring" erupted destabilizing goverrnments and social order in most of the Middle Eastern countries, questions began to be raised about the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and whether the tidal waves sweeping across the Arab world would reach its borders. So far, King Abdullah II has succeeded in stopping the destructive advance at the country's borders, although over the past seven years, several manifestations of support for ISIS were observed, mainly in Maan, in Sourthern Jordan,...

"Israel has still not learned the lessons from the Holocaust. Had it taken the meaning to heart, it would stop the ongoing atrocities in Syria." We've been inundated with such messages every since the Syrian bloodbath commenced in 2011. While these vacuous statements are heard constantly, they reach a fever constantly pitch when Yom Hashoah season rolls around. According to this view, Israel is betraying its Jewish heritage by letting Assad butcher his people unopposed. I've always hated hearing people say this because it's the worst kind of virtue signaling. Imagine you were handed the keys: What would you do?...

Asia needs more transport infrastructure. More than the state, which finances the lion's share, can fund. So what more can be done to bring in increased private capital, when investors have so far been mostly disappointed by the returns? Is there a way of breathing new life into the public private partnership (PPP), the most common vehicle for private infrastructure investment? We think so. Governments need to offer private sector investors more than they can hope to earn from ticket sales on railways or motorway tolls. They should consider sharing the extra tax revenues generated from the increased economic activity...

A public university president in Oregon gives new meaning to the idea of a pensioner. Joseph Robertson, an eye surgeon who retired as head of the Oregon Health & Science University last fall, receives the state’s largest government pension. It is $76,111. Per month. That is considerably more than the average Oregon family earns in a year.

RUSH: Do you know why this is happening, by the way? I like to try to synthesize things down and find: Why is all of this going on? If I ask you that question, I’m sure I’m gonna get as many answers and attempted explanations as there are people out there such as you trying to answer. Why are we going through all this? Why is all of this happening? Why is the Trump dossier a big deal? Why is the Drive-By Media, the special counsel — why is everybody — devoted to getting rid of Trump? Why is this...

Will House Speaker Paul Ryan’s retirement increase the odds of President Trump’s impeachment? Maybe, but Democratic leaders don’t want to talk about it. President Obama’s former Attorney General Eric Holder and former top Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, among others, want their liberal allies to shut up about impeaching President Trump. They fear that threats to drive the president from office will boost voter turnout – not among Democrats, as some on the left hope, but rather among Republicans. Axelrod tweeted recently: “Dems should NOT commit to impeachment unless & until there’s a demonstrable case for one…. If we “normalize”...

The prosecutor is overreaching. The American people elected our president based on his politics, not his personal life.” Sound familiar? I’ve heard all of this before. Every charge above came directly from the liberal playbook defending President Bill Clinton two decades ago from the Ken Starr investigation. I was there. I’m a witness. Every liberal friend and colleague I knew back in 1998 used these words and phrases. But it wasn’t just average everyday liberals. It was liberal celebrities and high-profile Democrat politicians, too. I know. I was a regular guest on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” back in the late...

Windmills use an enormous amount of copper. For example, a single wind turbine can contain 335 tons of steel, 4.7 tons of copper, 3 tons of aluminum and 700-plus pounds of rare earth minerals. ... In fact, wind and solar energy use more copper than conventional forms of energy, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear power plants. Conventional power plants require about one ton of copper to produced one megawatt of electricity, whereas wind and solar can require between three to five tons per megawatt. ... Make no mistake, switching from reliable sources of electricity like coal, natural gas,...

The Obama Administration tried to put the coal industry out of business, and in the 2016 presidential campaign Hillary Clinton proposed subsidies to ease the financial pain government had created. The question is why President Trump would adopt this economic method with an idea to increase subsidies to farmers hurt by the Trump tariffs. Mr. Trump has been getting an earful about the damage that his tariffs-first trade policy might do to U.S. farmers if countries like China retaliate. But instead of dropping the tariffs, Mr. Trump and some of his advisers are floating the idea of increasing farm subsidies...