Free Republic

My brother Kirk Randolph Elder died suddenly and unexpectedly 16 days before his 70th birthday. He and Tresta, his wife of 41 years, had planned a trip to Hawaii, where they were going to celebrate Kirk’s birthday. Kirk was a retired supervisor at an oil refinery, and we were extremely close. He started coming on my radio show about four years ago, reluctantly at first. We’d discuss politics, culture and sports. A registered Democrat, he and I often disagreed. Yet, week after week, I received letters from listeners who called him their “favorite Democrat.” Kirk always showed respect for Republicans...

Getting fact-checked cuts two ways. It means the fact-checkers pay attention to what I say. It also means I should expect liberal bias from the checkers. In a recent appearance on Fox News, I made the following assertions: -- Republicans did not own slaves. Democrats owned slaves; -- Democrats founded the KKK; -- Democrats opposed the 13th Amendment that freed the slaves, Democrats opposed the 14th Amendment that made the newly freed slaves citizens, and Democrats opposed the 15th Amendment that granted them the right to vote; and -- As a percentage of their party, more Republicans voted for the...

What's the difference between the $2 trillion "infrastructure" plan that Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and President Donald Trump have reportedly agreed to and then-President Barack Obama's so-called economic "stimulus"? Apart from the fact that the Schumer-Trump proposal is double the Obama price tag, the answer is: very little. Economist Milton Friedman famously said there are four ways to spend money, from the most efficient to the least. The most efficient way is to spend your own money on yourself. That way, the money is spent exactly the way you choose and on exactly what you want. The second, less...

Many "experts" expected, predicted and warned of instant economic disaster under a Donald Trump presidency. But a funny thing happened on our way to economic oblivion. The economy took off. Former President Barack Obama presided over the worst economic recovery since 1949. He became the first president to preside over a recovery without at least one year of gross domestic product growth at 3% or better. Last year, under President Trump, the economy hit 3% GDP growth. And despite the predictions of an economic slowdown at the beginning of this year, the economy, according to the advance estimate by the...

During a 2008 interview with then-Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, ABC's Charlie Gibson asked whether Alaska's proximity to Russia offered Palin unique "insight." Palin responded, "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." In a Saturday Night Live skit, comic Tiny Fey mocked in this exchange with comic Amy Poehler, who portrayed Hillary Clinton. Fey as Palin: "You know, Hillary and I don't agree on everything ..." Poehler as Clinton: "Anything. I believe that diplomacy should be the cornerstone of any foreign policy." Fey as Palin: "And...

Nearly 70 percent of black kids are born to unwed mothers - but let's talk about 35-year-old blackface pictures. The "blackface scandal" proved beneficial for two things. It displaced the frenzy over Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's support for a law lifting many restrictions on late-term abortion. It also took away headlines and news print space from the commonwealth's Democratic lieutenant governor, who faces two sexual assault allegations. But the blackface controversy has legs. Northam's 1984 medical school yearbook page depicted a photograph of someone in blackface and someone in a KKK outfit, both apparently holding cans of beer. At...

Outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown recently said, "The weakness of the Republican Party has let the Democratic Party, I think, go get further out than I think the majority of people want." When a tax-spend-and-regulate Democrat who signed legislation making California the first "sanctuary state" says the Democrats have gotten too "further out" for the majority, that party would be wise to take notice. In the November elections, California Democrats won veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of state government. No Republican currently holds an elected state-wide office. Brown seems to recognize that there are only so many "rich" people and...

The Detroit school board recently voted 6-to-1 to consider removing Dr. Ben Carson's name from one of its high schools. Carson, a former Detroit student and former head of pediatric neurology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, pioneered several groundbreaking neurosurgical procedures. He now serves as President Donald Trump's secretary of housing and urban development. But one school board member said Carson's name on the school is comparable to "having Trump's name on our school in blackface." About Detroit public schools, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty's C.J. Szafir and Cori Petersen recently wrote, "In 2017 Detroit ranked last in proficiency out...

Abraham Lincoln, when informed that General Ulysses S. Grant was a drunk, famously asked Grant's accusers what whiskey he was drinking so Lincoln could send a barrel to every general in the army. Keep this in mind when President Donald Trump's critics accuse him of "racism" against blacks. Under this "racist" President, black unemployment, since the government began keeping numbers, hit an all-time low in May. Polls show that inner-city parents want choice in education: specifically, they want the means to opt out of sending their children to an under-performing government school the child has been mandated to attend....

As expected, Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives. But the much-anticipated "blue wave" failed to appear. History shows that the first midterm election for the party in the White House usually results in a loss, often a big loss, in that party's House members. President Barack Obama, for example, lost 63 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate in the 2010 midterms. In the 21 midterm elections held from 1934 through 2014, the President's party has gained seats in both the Senate and the House only twice: during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's and George W....

President Donald Trump took a pounding at the services for Aretha Franklin. The Rev. Al Sharpton took Trump to task for supposedly demonstrating a lack of respect by saying, "She worked for me on numerous occasions." Other speakers took shots at the President either by name or by implication for his supposed racism and bigotry. Onstage, in the front row, sat Sharpton, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and former President Bill Clinton, all of whom know a thing or two about racism and bigotry. Their careers depend on exaggerating the extent and the impact of...

When President Donald Trump revoked the security clearance of former CIA head John Brennan, more than a dozen former high-level intelligence officials fired off a letter that said the president's decision was "ill-considered," "inappropriate" and "deeply regrettable." The next day, 60 former lower-level CIA officials signed an open letter condemning the act. Their letter read, in part: "All of us believe it is critical to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure. But we believe equally strongly that former government officials have the right to express their unclassified views on what they see as critical national security issues without fear of...

The New York Times, for its editorial board, hired a 30-year-old tech writer named Sarah Jeong, an American immigrant from South Korea. But Jeong, only a few years ago, posted a series of offensive, anti-white tweets. Her anti-white tweets included the following: "Dumbass f-ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants." "Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men." "I dare you to get on Wikipedia and play 'Things white people can definitely take credit for, it's really hard." "Are white...

A man I have known since grade school changed his name, years ago, to an Arabic one. He told me he rejected Christianity as "the white man's religion that justified slavery." He argued Africans taken out of that continent were owed reparations. "From whom?" I asked. Arab slavers took more Africans out of Africa and transported them to the Middle East and to South America than European slavers took out of Africa and brought to North America. Arab slavers began taking slaves out of Africa beginning in the ninth century -- centuries before the European slave trade -- and continued...

Roseanne Barr lost her new television show. Barr, in a tweet about Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, said of Jarrett: "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj." The comedian deleted the offensive tweet, but the damage was irreversible. The reaction was swift. The Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted: "The comparison ... of ... Valerie Jarrett to an APE is racist and inexcusable. ABC must take action NOW!" The Disney-owned ABC issued the following statement: "Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show." Barr left Disney little choice....

Former Vice President Joe Biden recently told MSNBC's Rev. Al Sharpton that the GOP wants voter identification laws for one reason. Racist Republicans so despise blacks and are so determined to oppress them, that they seek to prevent all blacks from voting. Biden said: "It's what these guys are all about, man. These Republicans don't want working-class people voting. They don't want black folks voting." What Republicans "are all about," according to Biden, is the push in some states for voter ID laws, which Democrats call "voter suppression." Then-Attorney General Eric Holder characterized the call for voter ID laws as...

Dr. John Lott was on Larry Elder’s national radio show to talk about the Left’s Fact Checking Machine.

A photojournalist withheld publication of a 2005 photograph of a smiling then-Sen. Barack Obama with a beaming Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic, anti-white leader of the Nation of Islam. The occasion was a meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus. The photographer, Askia Muhammad, said that almost immediately after he took the picture a CBC staffer called and said, "We have to have the picture back." Muhammad later surrendered the disk with the photo to Farrakhan's chief of staff. "I gave the picture up at the time and basically swore secrecy," Muhammad said in an interview with the Trice Edney News Wire....

About a year into President Donald Trump's first term, the jury for much of the country and for most of the major media has returned its verdict: Trump is a failure. Trump is incompetent. Trump cannot lead. Trump has no legislative victories. Even former President Jimmy Carter said he had never seen a president so maligned in the media. Meanwhile former President Barack Obama all but compared Trump to Hitler. Trump endures a nightly beating from the cast of late-night comedians who take turns calling Trump racist, sexist, dumb, inarticulate, overweight, overwrought and, of course, clueless. His reported consumption of...

It is a political, tactical and moral mistake for Republicans to continue backing Judge Roy Moore for Alabama's Senate seat. In brief, he has been accused by multiple women of, decades ago, making unwanted and inappropriate sexual advances toward them when they were teenage girls -- one as young as 14 -- and he was in his 30s. At least four women say he initiated sexual contact with them. When asked if he thought the Moore allegations were true, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said, "I believe the women, yes. ... I think he should step aside" -- a...