Free Republic

My neighborhood is changing. In just the six years that we have lived in our suburb after fleeing St. Louis, Missouri for a more conservative area that supports our conservative values, towering apartment buildings are being built everywhere. There have been dozens of new car washes, chain restaurants, and big businesses put in or approved. During 2020, panhandlers started appearing in the area. This has grown so common that the local government had to recently pass a bill outlawing it for the safety of pedestrians and drivers because the panhandlers were obstructing traffic. While conservative Americans have continuously expressed outrage...

Multiple major charities throughout the country are using blacklists compiled by far-left groups to prevent conservative, Christian, and other right-wing organizations from receiving donations, according to a new report. As reported by the Daily Caller, various public records and other documents show that some charities rely on donor-advised funds (DAFs), and thus turn to left-wing groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for lists of groups that should not receive donations. The SPLC has a reputation for simply labeling every remotely conservative, right-wing, or Christian group as a “hate group” and recommending them for blacklisting. “‘Hate group’ is...

On January 26, President Joe Biden announced a “pause” on federal approval for new liquefied natural gas (LNG)–export terminals. While the Department of Energy’s indefinite suspension and order for new environmental analyses may keep the president’s reelection hopes above water, it will harm America’s long-term economic and geopolitical interests. Further, the policy may not even serve its ostensible purpose of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Ten months from Election Day, the president’s campaign likely thinks that renewed attention on his climate agenda will rouse support among progressive Democrats, who have drifted from Biden in recent months. By rallying his political coalition, however,...

Maybe the problem with all of the government can be summarized by what the Federal Reserve is doing. The Federal Reserve lost $114.3 billion in 2023 and doesn’t seem to care. Maybe that is why the federal government has run up $34 trillion in debt, while they pretend government programs are paid for. They don’t care. They can always print more money. So what does the Federal Reserve do on its books when it has this massive loss? It just books a fictitious asset and fictitious equity. It cooks the books. It has no justification to claim it has money...

The Mann v. Steyn trial has ended, for now. Post-trial motions and appeals will likely play out over months and years, with little to report on a daily basis. It’s time to return to some of my other obsessions. Like the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Over the years, I’ve had more than twenty posts on this utterly failed agency, which is probably the best large-scale example of a pure socialist-model economic enterprise in the United States. A few of my prior posts on NYCHA can be found here, here and here. After starting out with great optimism and...

Many have discussed a second Trump presidency revolving around “retribution.” Trump’s Republican primary opponents have claimed that Trump, if re-elected, would be consumed with “personal grievances” at the expense of “real issues.” Across the aisle, leftists have attempted to program the masses into believing that any form of “retribution” — more on what they mean by that later — would render President Trump a dictator. However, both narratives contain easily exposed flaws. The media have been champing at the bit to twist Trump’s words to advance their dictator narrative. In response, Trump has given smart political answers in saying winning...

These people will stop at nothing to retain their power. That could make this year’s election dicey. I am not a conspiratorialist by nature, and I know that what I have written here places me in the minority. However, I do believe that Trump may well have won the 2020 election had it not been for the improper allowance of the “after-election vote count.” Granted, time was against Trump. He was not organized, and he made far too many inane, unsupportable accusations. And the mass media continued supporting their Democrat friends. But we know that before the election, the Pennsylvania...

Global warming doomsayer Michael Mann of Penn State University has won his defamation lawsuit against critics Mark Steyn and Rand Simburg, proving that conservatives cannot get fair verdicts from District of Columbia juries. This is a huge, structural problem for the federal judiciary, because D.C. courts have jurisdiction over many actions regarding the federal government. Bias to the point of hatred of Republicans and conservatives by D.C. juries has made those courts a part of the Democrats’ armory. If Republicans ever again get the Oval Office and majorities in both Houses of Congress, they must redefine the jurisdiction of lower...

As competitive colleges and universities continue to admit underqualified applicants in order to adhere to their schools’ “equity” agenda, those students are predictably struggling and receiving poor grades. But now elite universities are offering a solution to that problem too: make course grading more subjective, or even eliminate objective grading completely. After the Supreme Court ruled in the 2023 Fair Admissions case that accepting students based on race was both illegal and unconstitutional, administrators at numerous competitive schools intimated that they would find ways to circumvent the decision. In the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” their goal was still...

Last year, I had to go to an IRS office. I was subjected to a humiliating pat down for weapons. It was uncomfortable, invasive, and intimidating. The guard wouldn’t just pat me down, either. He had to announce the nature of each pat before he did it...which further irritated me. After all that, the office couldn’t even handle my trust and estate tax questions. Never again. If I ever have to visit that IRS office again, I’m putting on a dress (not shaving anything), slapping lipstick on my teeth, putting on a blue wig...and arriving like Jim Carrey in Vera...

Tolerating progressive ideals of equity within Republican ranks for the sake of “getting along” is a duplicitous strategy designed to deliver this county to the Left. Republican leader Mitch McConnell and his senatorial stooge James Lankford promoted a federal bill that would send billions oversees to protect the borders of other countries, while allowing an invasion into the U.S. of nearly two million illegal aliens every year. A City Journal piece details how the Biden administration has every intention of allowing illegal aliens to flood the country regardless of negotiated “bipartisan” border bills. “Why is Biden releasing millions of illegal...

Among anti-cop legislators, “defund the police” may have lost some currency, but “demoralize the police” is doing just fine. On January 30, the New York City Council passed the How Many Stops Act, over the veto of Mayor Eric Adams. The law requires New York police officers to fill out a form nearly every time they interact with a civilian. If, for example, an officer asks a potential bystander to a shooting if he had witnessed that shooting, the officer will have to complete a form listing the bystander’s race, sex, and age. Are there other potential witnesses in the...

“We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate. But we will absolutely do what is required to protect ourselves to continue that mission and to respond appropriately to these attacks…We will respond. We’ll do that on our schedule,” White House National Security Spokesman John Kirby stated. Iran isn’t afraid of escalating. Its leaders and spokesmen don’t constantly express their fear of escalation. Instead, they escalate. Their Jihadists seize control of shipping in the Red Sea. They invade Israel and kill over a thousand people. They hit a U.S. base inside Jordan. The obsessions with “escalation” or...

I came to the Air Force Academy (AFA) in 1968 from Wyoming, where my hard scrabble ancestors homesteaded in the 1800s. Wyoming’s residents were predominately rural, white, patriotic and claimed the highest per capita participation rate of members of the armed forces during World War II. The Air Force Academy became my window to the world, where I had the opportunity to meet and interact with fellow cadets from every state in the union. They represented a melting pot of races and ethnicities, all with unique experiences and perspectives, who were united by the desire to serve our country. In...

Elites are individuals who occupy the upper strata in society through either wealth, politics, sports, religion, and/or social status (such as entertainment), and they have been a part of society for millennia. Because of human nature, elites have usually — though not always — considered themselves to be better than those below them or have simply been indifferent to them. By the same token, those below the elites have either envied them, worshipped them, been hostile towards them, or have just simply been indifferent to them, occupying different worlds of which they were not privy to, though they might have...

We recently discovered that Google’s ad-serving network is blocking its ads from appearing on a story we published almost exactly three years ago. Google declared that the article violated its terms of service because it contained “Dangerous or derogatory content,” which it defines as anything that: - incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization. - harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of...

"The U.S. government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders". Iran controls and finances multiple Islamic terror groups, but being a Shiite state, there are Sunni Islamist terror groups that target it. Some of these are aligned with ISIS. Others have nationalistic reasons linked to the Baloch movement. And some have both. Recently, an ISIS bombing attack at a commemoration ceremony for IRGC terror leader Soleimani, who was responsible for the deaths of many Americans, made headlines. The Biden administration is now announcing that it tried to help Iran head off the...

The old joke about Communists was that anyone to the right of Stalin was a fascist. It’s one of those jokes with a lot of truth to it. And in his interview, ousted Soros DA Chesa Boudin (a domestic terrorist spawn) forced out of office by two black women after voters tired of his position that criminals were the real victims and arresting them didn’t work, lives up to that joke. Boudin complains that San Francisco made a “hard turn to the right” by electing “centrists” and prosecuting crime. “San Francisco is not nearly as progressive as its reputation, and...

After Hamas supporters were caught screaming “shame on you” at children receiving cancer treatment at a Manhattan hospital (“make sure they hear you, they’re in the windows”) some people wondered what they were trying to accomplish. Questions like that only reveal the vast gap between the pro-Hamas mob and everyone else. The pro-Hamas protests, allegedly in pursuit of a ceasefire, but in reality celebrating Hamas and now Houthi terrorism, have picked random fights with Starbucks, Christmas Tree lightings and Alec Baldwin to name a few. They are not so much for anything as they are against things. Reasonable people, usually...

In what can only be described as an urgent alert to parents, families, and those who care about the importance of parental rights, Maine is in the process of trying to pass an extremist bill making the state a “sanctuary state” for so-called “transgender” minors whose parents are not handling their child’s mental health issues in a way the left approves. No one wants this catastrophe but that doesn’t stop those obsessed with control over our children. Maine’s LD 1735 bill, euphemistically-titled, “Act to Safeguard Gender Affirming Health Care,” is in reality a bill that is using children as an...