Free Republic

Donald Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign was consciously modeled after Richard Nixon's 1968 run, seems to think he can win reelection by emulating his predecessor's appeal to a "silent majority" disgusted by raucous anti-war protests. Trump is offering voters a choice between his firm hand and the pusillanimity of "liberal Democrats" who let "violent anarchists" run wild in the streets. Notwithstanding Trump's pose as "your president of law and order," his heavy-handed reaction to the protests triggered by George Floyd's death represents neither. In response to largely peaceful demonstrations against police brutality that have been punctuated by criminal behavior, he...

It's the oddest thing. The more America's Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter have contributed to keeping America's economy afloat during the coronavirus lockdown, the louder the voices get to break them up or to tie them up into regulatory knots. At the same time that the White House and many conservatives are pushing to "bring our businesses and manufacturing back home" from nations such as China, plenty of so-called nationalists see our globally dominant, high-tech firms as the enemy. Do they realize that there is nothing that the communists in Beijing would wish...

In an interview with the WSJ, libertarian Clint Eastwood endorsed Mike Bloomberg:

Donald Trump famously won the combined 56 electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan by a total of 77,744 in the popular vote. Had those quarter-percentage-point squeakers gone the other way in the three states, Hillary Clinton would have won the Electoral College in addition to the popular vote, by a score of 283 to 248. It's no wonder that the president's re-election campaign is focused foremost on, well, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Davis police investigators said they recovered evidence from the rental property of the man who shot and killed one of their officers Thursday, including a note they believe was written by the man and two guns that were not registered to him. On Saturday, police released a one-paragraph letter they believe was written by Kevin Douglas Limbaugh. Spokesman Lt. Paul Doroshov told reporters that the paper was found face up on the bed of the gunman. The letter reads: “The Davis Police department has been hitting me with ultra sonic waves meant to keep dogs from barking. I notified the...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Former Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson said in seeking to make history and capture a U.S. Senate seat in New Mexico he'll have to give up a few of his favorite activities: marathon biking rides, hanging out in his northern New Mexico "dream" home and tuning out news about President Donald Trump. But he can't promise he won't smoke an occasional joint. Johnson, who served two terms as New Mexico governor in the 1990s and gained national attention as one of the first mainstream politicians to call for the legalization of marijuana, announced Thursday that he's...

Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his Middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine. The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasn’t hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesn’t belong in prison. The jury’s decision earlier this month in Dublin, Ga., may have been due to a muddled prosecution of a muddy case. Or it may have been...

Cite car accidents, opioid epidemic, rule of law as reasons for support Law enforcement and prosecutor organizations gave their support to Attorney General Jeff Sessions's Thursday decision to rescind Obama-era guidance which discouraged prosecutors from enforcing the federal laws against marijuana in states which had legalized the drug. Sessions's guidance most prominently overturned a 2013 memo from then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole. Issued in the wake of marijuana legalization in Colorado and Washington state, the memo instructed U.S. Attorneys to not enforce marijuana's schedule I status in states where its recreational consumption had been legalized and regulated. In its...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will roll back an Obama-era policy that gave states leeway to allow marijuana for recreational purposes. Two sources with knowledge of the decision confirmed to The Hill that Sessions will rescind the so-called Cole memo, which ordered U.S. attorneys in states where marijuana has been legalized to deprioritize prosecution of marijuana-related cases. The Associated Press first reported the decision. Sessions, a vocal critic of marijuana legalization, has hinted for months that he would move to crack down on the growing cannabis market. Sessions, since taking over as head of the Justice Department, has appeared to show...

We are supposedly a nation of laws, not men, but our lawmakers have ensured over the years that we are increasingly at the whim of men, elected or appointed, instead of the law. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declared that he will reverse an Obama Administration position allowing states to decide on marijuana legalization. Now, local United States Attorneys will be empowered to decide. But neither the Obama Administration nor Jeff Sessions should do anything other than enforce the law, and federal law criminalizes marijuana. The solution here is not to ignore the federal law, but to repeal it. To...

Scott Adams has an interesting take on Sessions' recent announcement regarding federal pot laws enforcement. It's interesting on a couple of levels. It implies that Sessions is doing that 4D chess thing that the pro-Sessions people like to think, and if that's so, it makes me wonder (and desperately hope) that the Freep Sessions-cheerleading-section are right about his ability to work at a higher level than we Never-Sessions people can appreciate. ...but I dream.

Former Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson reacted angrily to President Trump's apparent abandonment of a campaign pledge to leave pot policy to the states, saying he hopes the pivot ends Trump's shot at re-election. Johnson, who served two terms as a Republican governor of New Mexico, said the Trump administration is "grossly underestimating the anger this will create." "I hope it dooms his re-election. Trump promised to leave marijuana to the states," Johnson told the Washington Examiner.

Tyranny's misleading phrases In an 1822 tract titled “Tyranny Unmasked,” Virginian John Taylor (1753-1824) observed that “Tyranny is wonderfully ingenious in the art of inventing specious phrases to spread over its nefarious designs.” Indeed. Here are two especially misleading phrases that today's opponents of free markets regularly use to mask the ugly reality of their policies. • “Minimum wage.” By legislating... ...the real minimum wage is $0 — the amount earned by workers who, because of the minimum wage, can't find jobs. • “Elect me and I'll stop foreigners from stealing our jobs.” This boast — issued by politicians from...

Gary Johnson, the likely Libertarian candidate for president, is blasting Donald Trump's policy on immigration as "insanity," and positioned himself as a helping hand to those who came here illegally. Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, is expected to emerge this weekend as the Libertarian standard-bearer. "Is my door going to be knocked down because I'm going to get checked for papers?" Johnson said while praising undocumented immigrants who are leaders in their communities. "We're going to now come in and knock down doors and they're going to be deported? It'd be like putting them on the...

First, here are the biggest "losers." Nate Silver. Back in November, this liberal media darling and alleged prediction guru told the world that Trump had no real chance at the GOP nomination and that his poll numbers were nothing to be concerned about because they were likely to fade before any votes were cast. ... Frank Luntz. Luntz unequivocally declared that Trump was dead, gone and finished. Trump's poll numbers only got better from there. ... Rich Lowry & National Review. Lowry deserves to be singled out for his hilariously inaccurate and inappropriate analysis that Carly Fiorina had surgically removed...

[...] Last week a group of 12 House members led by Ted Lieu of California wrote to House leadership to push for a provision in the upcoming spending bill that would strip half of the funds away from the DEA's Cannabis Eradication Program, and put that money toward programs that "play a far more useful role in promoting the safety and economic prosperity of the American people:" domestic violence prevention and overall spending reduction efforts.Each year the DEA spends about $18 million in efforts with state and local authorities to pull up marijuana plants being grown indoors and outdoors. The program has...

The Thanksgiving season is upon us, and as most Americans look forward to spending this special time of year with family and friends, many other Americans, including 2.7 million children, are forced to spend the holidays without their mother and/or father, through no fault of their own. In all too many homes, there will be an empty seat at the Thanksgiving table. The U.S. criminal justice system incarcerates more citizens than any other country in the world including, incredibly, those with authoritarian (or worse) governments. That makes it impossible to ignore the high cost we pay as a society for...

Rand Paul sells libertarian crack. The Kentucky Senator deals in a designer drug of anarchism so powerful that it flows equally well in the ruby red arteries of liberty-leaning Republicans, as well as the deep blue veins of liberal Democrats. This drug isn’t your run-of-the-mill small government chatter that all the Republican candidates parrot (save Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee, who are perfectly fine with trying to leash Leviathan).  It’s beyond the flat-tax, abolish the IRS, away with the wacko environmentalists polluting the EPA points that Sen. Ted Cruz espouses. It’s so addicting that lunatics and tin-foil-hat wearing conspiracists from both ends...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) fired at Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among others, calling their ideas “fiscally irresponsible and dangerous to the country” and “just as bad as the Democrats” after they voted to raise defense spending on Thursday without offsetting that with spending cuts to discretionary federal programs. Paul had introduced an amendment that would have raised defense spending, but offset that increase with cuts elsewhere, such as the Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce. That amendment competed with an amendment from Rubio that would have increased defense spending with no offsetting spending cuts—just a blanket...

Robert Patterson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gave "aid and comfort to the rioters and the protestors" with his op-ed in Time against the militarization of local police forces. Appearing on Breitbart News Saturday, Patterson said that Paul was "outdoing" President Barack Obama's "attempt to show moral equivalence between the rioters and the police" with a Time op-ed that even Al Sharpton praised. Patterson said that it is "another illustration of out-of-touch Republicans who are looking for love in all the wrong places" by "pandering to liberal and corporate elites instead of...