Free Republic

A great man once explained why New Jersey needed to tighten up its requirements for issuing driver’s licenses. "In an era after 9/11 it is so critical to have working safeguards to show we are who we say we are,” this man said back in 2004 as he implemented an ID system with a six-point verification system to prevent fraud. That great man – or perhaps I should say “great politician” - was none other than Jim McGreevey. Though his run as governor ended later that year for unrelated reasons, McGreevey had the soundest of political instincts. As for the...

After the 9/11 attacks, we began to hear that cliche about how “the terrorists will have won” if we let ourselves become so consumed with fear that we no longer act rationally. Well, the future is now. That’s my reaction to that decision to cancel the annual Labor Day parade in South Plainfield because a guy left some fireworks in a bar in Sea Bright. When I got an email from the Governor’s Office Monday morning saying this year’s parade had been canceled, I figured it might be because of the weather. -snip- Nope. It soon turned out that the...

One of the toughest questions for any politician – or anyone for that matter – is the question of whether he should trust his instincts. The case of John Bolton offers a textbook example. Reports say that President Trump’s first impression regarding John Bolton was to steer clear of him because of his mustache. Perhaps it might have made more sense to steer clear of him for the obvious reason that his foreign-policy views are demonstrably insane. But as reasons go, that mustache would have done just fine. Various wags said it made Bolton look like a walrus. Others said...

Can somebody tell Gov. Phil Murphy that the voters elected him to run the state, not to start another civil war? Apparently not. Last week, our governor opened up hostilities between New Jersey and Mississippi over the issue of state flags. One from each of the 50 states flies in Liberty State Park – or did so until Murphy declared Friday that Mississippi’s flag must be removed. It seems that Mississippi’s flag incorporates elements of the Confederate Battle Flag. That’s the flag known mainly for drawing people into long, boring arguments about exactly what it signifies. Fortunately, we here in...

I woke up the other day and checked my messages. The first was from the most right-wing member of the state Senate. “Trump needs to rein in Captain Kangaroo and Mike Plumpeo,” read the message from Mike Doherty of Warrren County. “They are out of control.” The first reference is to John Bolton, the comic character with the white mustache. He got the job as President Trump’s national security adviser despite opposing the president on virtually every aspect of his “America First” foreign policy. The second reference is to Mike Pompeo, the somewhat portly secretary of state who is, like...

When I read last week about the scandal surrounding Joe Biden’s antics with women, I had a nagging thought that it reminded me of something. I couldn’t think of quite what, so I decided to embark on my preferred method of meditation: a run in the woods. I was jogging along a beautiful lake when suddenly it came to me: The Vulcan mind meld. That was a trick employed by the Spock character on the science-fiction TV series “Star Trek.” Mr. Spock, a member of the Vulcan race who supposedly felt no emotions, would corner some unfortunate soul in much...

President Trump recently said that he expects to ride to re-election on the back of the Green New Deal offered by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The New York Democrat’s plan calls for the U.S. to engage in a “10-year national mobilization” that would require “meeting 100 percent of the energy demand in America through clean, renewable, and zero-emissions power sources.” If that’s the goal the Democrats embrace, then they’re going to need a heck of a lot of nuclear plants. The Green New Deal doesn’t mention nuclear. But Troy Singleton does. Singleton is a Democratic state senator from Burlington County...

In the classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead,” a space probe returning from Venus blows up and causes corpses to rise from their graves to attack the living. I got thinking about that movie when I read that Jeb Bush was back in the news last week, begging for someone to run against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential primaries. The dictionary defines a zombie as “a person or reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature capable of movement but not of rational thought.” Bush fills the bill. If you doubt that, consider what he said...

There’s an old saying that goes. “When you set out to kill the king, make sure you don’t miss.” I got thinking of that after the news broke that special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe failed to find proof that the Donald Trump campaign colluded with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign. That was no surprise to me. From the evidence available to the public, it never looked like a case for collusion could be made. The anti-Trumpers made much of the campaign’s contacts with various Russians in search of possible dirt on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. But at the...

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - If you want a short course in understanding why border relations between the U.S. and Mexico tend to be a bit shaky, I heartily recommend a visit to the place where the border wall begins. That’s in this city at the eastern end of the Rio Grande near where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. To get to the wall, which was built during the Bush 43 administration, you drive to the campus of Texas Southmost College and then follow a dirt road as it runs along an eight-foot fence. The fence soon turns into a...

LOS INDIOS, Texas – Photographer Andre Malok and I were three days into traveling the banks of the Rio Grande before we saw any sort of wall along the Mexican border. We finally saw one in McAllen. So did half the TV crews in Texas. It was Thursday, the day President Trump came to this border town to give a speech on his current tiff with Congress over $5 billion in funding for a border “wall” – or “fence” – or whatever. The day before, Andre and I had driven along 150 miles of border without seeing any barriers at...

RIO BRAVO, Texas - In theory, the Border Patrol could prevent the flow of undocumented aliens into the U.S through a combination of high-tech approaches such as electronic sensors and a heavy presence of agents on the ground.I discovered the limits of that theory as I was poking around the town of Rio Bravo on Tuesday with Andre the photographer.  As we pulled up to the banks of the Rio Grande in this small town near Laredo, we saw three Border Patrol vehicles stationed so the agents could keep an eye on the banks of the river.  But that’s not...

Here’s a question for the Congressional Democrats:If physical barriers don’t work, then why did the emperor Hadrian bother to build one across the island of Britain back in the 2nd Century? (Not to mention the Great Wall of China, which is twice as long as our southern border.)Actually, they do work. We have that on the authority of none other than Chuck Schumer.In 2009, the senior senator from New York attended a conference on immigration at Georgetown University. During that conference he boasted about the progress that Congress had made on immigration."Between 2005 and 2009, a vast amount of progress...

The last two times I saw Bruce Springsteen, I paid $15 and $40 for scalped tickets. So I certainly wasn’t going to shell out $600 to a scalper just to see him on Broadway.It wasn’t until Springsteen’s Broadway show finally appeared on Netflix that I got to see it.The beginning is very funny, especially when Springsteen jokes about the fact that at the time he was singing about factories, he had never set foot in one – and that he didn’t even know how to drive a stick shift at the time he was about to write “Racing in the...

Here’s a quick quiz: Name one issue on which Mitt Romney has ever taken a principled stand and continued to defend it in the face of criticism. Can’t think of one? Me neither. So I got a good laugh the other day when the incoming senator from Utah penned a piece for the Washington Post in which he attacked President Trump’s character. Say what you will about Trump, but this is a guy who takes a position and sticks to it in the face of whatever opposition is thrown at him. Just in the past couple weeks, he has outraged...

Don Cresitello is not the kind of guy to say "I hate to say I told you so."  In fact he takes great pleasure in doing so. And the Democratic former mayor of Morristown told you long ago that we need better coordination between local and federal authorities when it comes to dealing with potentially violent undocumented immigrants.That was proven against last week when an undocumented Mexican immigrant murdered three people in Missouri after being released from the Middlesex County jail in December to await trial on charges of domestic violence.That incident brought memories of a 2007 incident in which...

In a recent editorial, The Philadelphia Inquirer declined to endorse the Republican Congressional candidate for New Jersey's 2nd District because, among other things, he said that Kwanzaa is a "phony" holiday.Where did Seth Grossman get that idea?  From me. In one of my columns, I noted that the organizer of Kwanzaa, Maulana Karenga, once said of Kwanzaa, "People think it's African, but it's not."It certainly makes me feel good to have a candidate citing my writings. But I'm afraid history shows that agreeing with me is usually the kiss of death for a politician. I'm not up for election, so I...

A reader asked me the other day why I was writing about marijuana legalization in Canada instead of President Trump's tangled relationship with Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman.Simple.  Because it's more fun to go to Canada to write about pot than to write about the Mideast. But now that I'm back in the U.S.A., let me address the Saudi issue. I told you so.For as long as I've been writing about Saudi Arabia, I have had nothing but bad things to say about the place. A month after the 9/11 attacks, I wrote, "If Saudi Arabia had only sand, we...

Don't look now, but Donald Trump is on the verge of accomplishing one of the biggest goals he endorsed during the 2016 presidential campaign.  He promised he would debunk the notion that the Beltway crowd was capable of micromanaging the Mideast.Thanks to Saudi Arabia's recent conduct, we now have irrefutable proof of that thesis.  The way Trump did so was brilliant. He named as his envoy to the Mideast a Jersey guy whose prior experience in diplomacy consisted of  getting the Eatontown Township Committee to cooperate on his plan for remaking an aging mall his family owns there.Jared Kushner then went...

As we prepare to enter the final two weeks of this presidential campaign, here's how things shape up: On the one hand, we have a candidate who's accused of hiring crazed fanatics to aid in her campaign. On the other hand, we have a candidate who gets crazed fanatics to help in his campaign for free. Who's going to win? At the moment the most reliable poll in recent history is giving a slight edge to the guy who fires up fanatics for free. That's Donald Trump, and as of Saturday the Investors Business Daily/TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence Poll had him...