Free Republic

The hashtag #EmptySeatMAGATour dominated Twitter on Friday as Trump haters took to the social media network to poke fun at several empty seats that appeared on camera during the president’s Thursday night “Keep America Great” campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was quite a virtual party - albeit not nearly as fun as a real-life Trump rally - and some of the biggest NeverTrump names were there, obnoxiously chortling at the president’s supposed inability to draw a crowd these days.“Trump keeps saying his rallies are full, but doesn’t look like it,” tweeted Trump-hating blogger Tony Posnanski. “Wow, I would hate for #EmptySeatMAGATour...

It’s always good to occasionally leave deep blue west Los Angeles and visit the United States. When your congressjerk is Ted Lieu, you get a skewed perspective on the country as well as suffer continuous embarrassment. My recent travels through parts of the country that aren’t populated and controlled almost exclusively by liberal nimrods gave me some hope for the future. America as a whole does not appear eager to become Scat Francisco. The problem is the people who want to transform our entire country into a socialist open sewer know nothing of this country outside their reeking pinko enclaves....

It’s not often you find a land development story (outside of Kelo) that’s worth a debate, but there’s one playing out this month that might have some broader implications worth considering. In the state of Oregon, work is underway to construct a new ocean-studies building, which sounds normal enough. But it’s being constructed right in the projected path of a tsunami which geologists are convinced is coming one of these days. It’s just a question of when.But the state legislature went ahead and repealed a previous ban on new construction of critical facilities, including schools and police departments. This has...

**SNIP** These Democrats worry that her uncompromising liberalism would alienate moderates in battleground states who are otherwise willing to oppose the president. Many fear Ms. Warren’s past claims of Native American ancestry would allow Mr. Trump to drown out her policy message with his attacks and slurs against her. They cite her professorial style and Harvard background to argue that she might struggle to connect with voters from more modest circumstances than hers, even though she grew up in a financially strained home in Oklahoma. And there are Democrats who, chastened by Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, believe that a...

The “Never Trump” movement has a new ally: hedge fund boss Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in 2017 after serving 11 days as communications director in President Donald Trump’s White House. Anti-Trump pundit and veteran Republican operative Bill Kristol confirmed to CNBC in a few brief text messages that he has spoken to Scaramucci since the SkyBridge Capital founder had a public falling out with Trump this summer. Asked whether he has spoken to Scaramucci about trying to find another presidential candidate to replace Trump on the top of the GOP ticket next year, Kristol said: “Yup.”

politicized atmosphere of today’s factory-style government-monopoly schools. ... many students did not understand English grammar ... Poor preparation, however, was only the tip of the iceberg. Students did not bring books to class, relentlessly complained about homework, and expected high grades regardless of proficiency. ... A department head had been demoted for teaching at a pre-college level and refusing to lower his standards. Senior teachers were dropping out in disgust. ... the school embraced grade inflation ... administrators tacitly urge teachers to lower standards, despite proclaiming the opposite in public. Like the Dodo in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:...

The Reverend Not So Sharpton is not considered a hater. He was much sought after by 12 of the Democrat presidential candidates, who made the pilgrimage to his humble abode to kiss his ring. When it was time to renew his television show, his credentials were examined (but the ratings were ignored), and yes, he was qualified because he is still black. That seems to be the reason Al is a television star. Al is paid $500,000 annually by MSNBC for his television work, and he pays himself over $200,000 from his civil rights non-profit organization. You might think a...

We all now know that Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib will not be going to Israel. Did Israel exercise good judgment in denying them entry? Absolutely. Omar's and Tlaib's support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement reveal that they in fact do not view Israel as an ally of the United States, do not want to promote true peace, and were seeking to use their trip as a Trojan horse to promote an anti-Israel agenda. Their failed trip stood in direct opposition to America's best interest. Omar and Tlaib Support BDS, Which Supports the Destruction of IsraelOmar...

The death of Jeffrey Epstein in the MCC federal jail has touched off no end of speculation. While the medical examiner’s conclusion indicating it was suicide has been made public, the report itself has not been released. Many don’t believe it. In many ways Epstein’s death reminds me of Sherlock Holmes’s mystery “Adventure in a Sealed Room” where a trained monkey was the culprit after lots of clues were sifted through. An online friend “Rocco,” a prison guard, agrees with me. He’s seen too much of this himself and knows how quickly and easily prisoners have killed themselves in locked...

When accused pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein died over the weekend, the president of the United States retweeted a far-right conspiracy theory that claimed the Clintons murdered him.On the fifth anniversary of Michael Brown’s death at the hands of a police officer, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris repeated false rumors about Brown’s death — specifically the now-proven lie he was killed mercilessly while attempting to surrender with his hands up. When the Miss America pageant decided to drop its swimsuit competition, Gretchen Carlson described it as a “cultural revolution.” The New York Times described it as an effort to “redefine its...

In 2016, President Donald Trump carried Louisiana with 58 percent of the vote. Every Louisiana statewide elected official, except one, is a Republican. The Louisiana Legislature has a strong Republican majority and the state’s six-member congressional delegation has only one Democrat.Clearly, Louisiana is a conservative, Republican state but it is led by Governor John Bel Edwards, who is a Democrat. Edwards was elected in 2015 because of his opponent’s personal and political baggage, which is why his victory has been called a fluke by many political observers.As Governor Edwards runs for re-election this fall, he has amassed over $10 million...

A rumor spread when legendary football coach Lou Holtz announced that he was leaving the University of Minnesota to accept the head coaching job at Notre Dame. The rumor? That he had been offered a lifetime contract. When he was asked about it by the press, his response was classic Lou Holtz. He said yes, he had been offered a lifetime contract. But, he added that we needed to understand what a lifetime contract means in big time college football. He said, “It means that I cannot be fired, during the third quarter, of a game in which we are...

You’ve got to admire Israel. When people who want to destroy their country try to enter their borders, they turn them back. Rather than do the same, the political left in this country celebrate those people. No matter where they are in the world, progressives have one objective: destroy. People don’t volunteer to have something they love to be “fundamentally transformed,” and fundamental transformation of the country and the world is exactly what progressives ultimately want. And they’re willing to do anything to get there. When it was announced that Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were going to travel to...

My late father was a lifelong steelworker at J&L Steel’s famed Aliquippa works. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, I was witness to politicians of every stripe too easily accepting the death of the American steel industry, and manufacturing in general. We were told that it was simply the way of the world in the 21st century for American industry to ship jobs off to China and other countries with fewer labor rights, weaker environmental regulations and practically no concept of “human rights.” The most enthusiastic supporters of this “new normal” told us not to worry, assuring us that we wouldn’t...

Over the past two months, the world has seen the people of Hong Kong bravely stand up to the growing threat of totalitarianism. What began as a protest against a bill that would allow prisoners to be extradited to mainland China has evolved into a movement to demand that the Hong Kong government (largely now controlled by China’s Communist Party) adhere to the promises of freedom and autonomy it made when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Protesters have flooded the streets since June – despite the threat of being arrested, smothered with tear gas, pelted with rubber...

You already read the headline, but that’s not even the worst part. Yes, Austin City Council is spending a record-high $62.7 million this year to try and solve homelessness, equivalent to giving roughly $28,000 to each homeless person in the city. But the more startling fact is that Austin officials are leading the city down the same dangerous path San Francisco has already journeyed—a path Austinites should be wary not to travel. Before peering down the road toward Austin’s future, let’s look around for a moment at the crisis happening right now in Texas’ capital city. The homeless population is...

Much has been written about the need for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, even beyond the July cut, the first one in eleven years. Indeed, the latest escalation of trade tensions with China and its concomitant currency depreciation might make further cuts more compelling. Or not. The principal purpose of a rate cut is to provide liquidity to foster greater consumption and business investment that stimulate economic growth in the face of sustained opposition forces. But rate cuts without sufficient justification, such as those based on transitory developments, reaction to presidential jawboning, miming other central banks, or inadequate...

As Americans, we speak our minds. It’s the quintessential American quality. Freedom of expression is so foundational to our liberty that it is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. We must never take our freedom of speech for granted. Today, 243 years after our nation’s founding, educational institutions, originally created to foster and promote freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, are now actively suppressing first freedoms in the name of political correctness. In a sudden Orwellian twist, students across the country are now discovering that it’s not only acceptable, but morally praiseworthy to use intimidation,...

As a Millennial with student loans, the idea of a magic eraser wiping my Sallie Mae account clean sounds really good – actually too good. And when things sound too good to be true, they usually are.When politicians say, they want to “erase,” “cancel,” or “forgive” student loan debt, what they are really talking about is redistributing personal debt. They want to transfer the balance from individual student loan accounts to an account that all Americans are on the hook for, including the over 120 million without a degree.Blue-collar workers who entered the workforce straight after high school and didn’t...

Move over “race card,” there is no need for you to do all the heavy lifting anymore. No, because now just being against the current president is more than enough license for unhinged liberal “thought leaders” to spew hateful, incendiary and increasingly dangerous rhetoric against all things MAGA.Isn’t racism, which has been the central theme focused against all things Trump and his ardent base of supporters, so 2018? I mean, shouting racist at Trump didn’t prevent historic ascension to the presidency in 2016, did it? It hasn’t prevented a plurality of Americans from supporting common sense border security and immigration...