Free Republic

It is a reflection of the vulgarity and even the criminality now stalking our society that social media, as it is called, cannot extricate itself from this awful question of censorship. Facebook, Twitter and all the other social media platforms that are passing judgment on what Americans say today are in the pickle that they are in because the First Amendment freedoms are extended to pornographers, common criminals, political psychopaths and run-of-the-mill conservatives. Soon, if the social media tycoons have their way, their censorship will extend to ordinary liberals, butterfly collectors and, who knows, maybe even stamp collectors. You do...

Washington -- The forces of militant ignorance are in motion again. They are marching with Crazy Bernie Sanders and his spendthrift wife. They are marching with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former bartender. They are rousing the drowsy forces of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the drowsy forces of the Occupy D.C. movement, who have been recumbent for the past decade. You remember them. They were the utopian socialists and parasites who provided so much hope to the left-wing Democrats back in 2011 and 2012. They slept in parks. They hassled pedestrians. They, occasionally, relieved themselves on parked automobiles. I...

Washington -- Dare we call it the Trump Revolution? We call the presidency of Ronald Reagan the Reagan Revolution. Well, consider what President Donald Trump has achieved in but three years. He has revived the economy with ample growth, historically low levels of unemployment and efficiencies in the economy thanks to the removal of unnecessary stultifying regulations. He promises more if reelected. He has assured international peace and stability. Becoming a prominent terrorist is no longer a smart career choice. Longevity can be problematic. And the president has assured a judicial system stocked with men and women who really believe...

Washington -- This past Sunday brought the news to the front pages of our leading newspapers of the passing of shock jock Don Imus. Comparatively speaking, it was happy news. At least, it was happy news compared with the news that otherwise adorns the front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times and is then repeated and repeated in the newspapers' interior pages. Most of the stories these dolorous journalists cover are stories of squalor, grief, travail and out-and-out evil. Do you doubt me? See how many cheerful stories you can find either on the front pages...

WASHINGTON -- David Koch, one of the two celebrated Koch brothers known to millions of Americans who follow the news, passed away last Friday. He was 79. Now there is only one Koch brother to appear in the news. Yet the name Koch will be around for years. One sees the name frequently when business is being discussed, in discussions of the arts, in discussions of politics, particularly libertarian politics. Does anyone stop to wonder why the name Koch appears so frequently in the news? Well, I have had some experience with the Kochs, and I have an insight into...

WASHINGTON -- Last week the headlines should have abounded with the year's good news. It was the economy: gross domestic product was up some 3 percent and, for the last quarter, nearly 4 percent; unemployment was down to a 17-year low, with black unemployment at the lowest level since such statistics were compiled. The stock market was soaring, up some 40 percent since Donald Trump was elected, and inflation was low. It was the best Christmas season in years. President Trump has -- true to his word -- presided over a genuine economic recovery, as opposed to President Barack...

We in America today live in a country circumscribed by entitlement policies devised by an America that has steadily been disappearing. Those policies established over a generation ago cannot possibly in mathematical or demographic terms support the America of the present much less the America of the future. That is the stark reality. We need to reform those policies or we shall go bankrupt, and raising taxes on the so-called rich will not fix things. Even raising taxes on the middle class will not fix things. Nor will spending a trillion dollars more than we have on hand fix things....

WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- I cannot rid from my mind the name Alioto, Judge Samuel Alioto. That is the name of Judge Samuel Alito as pronounced by the delightful Sen. Edward Kennedy, or is it Eduardo Kennedino? No, it is simply Teddy, and he is as entertaining as any U.S. Senator since the days of the soused Southerners, who would tipple their way through the dreamy days on Capitol Hill, rousing themselves for histrionic oratory in the mid-afternoon and then slumping back into their seats, awaiting the late afternoon hour when they would all gather in one or another's chambers...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Dr. Howard Dean poses for me an unanticipated moral dilemma. Throughout the 1990s, I debated him on a little-known public affairs show taped in Montreal -- beautiful Montreal, I should add. It is a grand city with much of the elegance of France and the added asset of having almost no native-born French. But to return to Dean and my moral dilemma. Owing to his combative politics and my impatience with political hokum, we found ourselves going tete-a-tete often to the exclusion of anyone else on the show, which by the way is called "The Editors." I...