Free Republic

“The American Constitution is an outdated, malfunctioning piece of junk,” wrote Ryan Cooper in a 2018 column for The Week. After the obligatory cheap shot at our Framers for their imaginary yet unforgiveable original sin of slavery, he launched into a tirade about a divided Washington in which elections generally do not produce functioning governments, meaning government responsive to passing popular whims. His remedy? Adopt the governing structure of “normal” countries, a parliamentary system.To counter what he calls the “right-wing fringe” in the House of Representatives, he proposes three reps from enlarged congressional districts. In this scheme, what I call...

For the world’s richest man, charity begins — and stays — at home. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has given only a tiny fraction of his $160 billion fortune to philanthropic causes, falling far behind fellow billionaires such as Bill and Melinda Gates and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, public records show. Although Bezos, 55, and his estranged wife MacKenzie recently pledged $2 billion to a new charitable initiative, their previous giving amounts to a total of just over $145 million or .0906 percent — far less than one percent — of their net worth. Out of $100,000,...

While trekking the internet I came across this article from March 2018 by David Faris in the Washington Post about packing the Supreme Court: Democrats must consider court-packing when they regain power. It’s the only way to save democracy. I did a search and came up with the book he wrote, "It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics: It’s Time to Fight Dirty How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics The American electoral system is clearly falling apart—as evidenced by the 2016 presidential election. In It’s Time to Fight...

Ultimately, finding an optimal tax rate for the super-rich is a moral and political issue as much as an economic one. Last week, when 60 Minutes aired an interview with newly sworn-in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the freshman New York congressperson caused an uproar with what, by Washington standards, seemed a rather immodest proposal. Asked whether an expansion of public investment in green technologies would require raising taxes, she cited history.

The 2018 midterms were a disaster for House Republicans. Democrats gained 40 seats, retook the majority, and, to our horror, Nancy Pelosi is speaker again. They were elected to stop Trump, to block him at every turn, and lead the effort for his impeachment and removal from office. Any Democrat who says otherwise is lying. The base demands Trump go at all costs. The younger, feistier Democrats say that openly. The older crew tries to downplay it, but ultimately that’s their goal. They’re banking heavily that the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the DOJ’s Russia probe,...

A 25-year-old woman in Chicago defended herself against an armed attacker with her own legally concealed weapon. But according to Think Progress’ LGBTQ Editor Zack Ford, “That’s not how justice works.”

Jews around the world tomorrow hear Parsha Bo (Exodus 10:1 to 13:16) declaimed in the synagogue, recounting the last of the biblical plagues, the killing of Egypt’s first-born, and our midnight departure from Egypt. It is a solemn moment in our religious calendar. Our rabbis emphasize that God did not simply rescue us from Egyptian bondage, but brought a terrible judgment against their gods. Lord, hear our cry, and bring judgment against the pagan gods who are worshipped today!

[PHOTO] The modern Socialist doesn’t have an actual brain. [PHOTO] Their substitute-brain, Karl Marx, wrote THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, in 1848. And, ever since then, Communism/Socialism has had an unbroken record: over 170 years of utter failure, everywhere it was tried. Yet, the communist-inspired philospher—the Socialist—still beatifically calls for world-wide socialism. In these days of an American Trump, and a wild jackass, anti-America, “Resistance,” the Socialist, smiley-face, “look” has changed. It alternates between bug-eyed madness and fanged violence. “Socialists may not be able to claim experience, learning, smarts, or success. But they make up for all that by a boundless certitude.......

A controversial new law in California, the first of its kind in the U.S., requires publicly traded companies headquartered in the state to include at least one woman on their board of directors by the end of 2019. But are quotas are the best way to bring women’s voices to the table? Legislators in New Jersey have already indicated they think so. Garden State lawmaker Nancy Pinkin (D-NJ) proposed a bill that would require women on state-based corporate boards. The measure has been sent to its first committee for hearing. Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania have also moved the needle...

This mess at our southern border is stirring up the Sunday-school wannabes again, and as a Christian and a conservative I am getting tired of being schooled by liberal Christians and nonbelievers about what my opinions should be, about what Jesus would do. This needs to stop; we Christians need to stand up for our Savior and put an end to the appropriation of our Scripture and misunderstandings of Christ’s commandments. In order to do this, we must first establish a couple of principles that are often ignored in this era of super-sloppy thinking. In the first place, God quite...

In the November elections, Democrats won in the 20 richest congressional districts. An ebullient Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif), currently vacationing during the "cruel" government shutdown at the Fairmont Orchid resort in Hawaii (where room rates range from $900 per night for a regular room to $5,000 for a suite) bragged that "the ultimate demise of the Republican Party is imminent. Democrats own the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, the immigrant vote, the welfare vote. We have more campaign money from wealthy donors than Republicans can ever hope to see." "The coalition of small business owners, farmers, middle-income wage-earners, craftsmen, and...

The American left has perfected the art of changing the meaning of words or phrases. For example, gun confiscation is reshaped to now mean “sensible gun safety measures.” White male now means privileged. Republican and racist are now interchangeable words. Voter ID laws for fair and clean elections means voter suppression to liberals. Moreover, political violence—torching buildings and bludgeoning innocent Americans on the street is now synonymous in their lexicon, as a peaceful protest. The American left has struggled for a long time dealing with another term: liberal. Conservatives were successful at demonizing the term when George H.W. Bush labeled...

Over the last decade, California has led the nation in reducing its prison population. The state has shortened sentences and diverted some offenders to the counties for incarceration and supervision, transforming California’s criminal justice system into what supporters hope will become a humane model around the country. But amid the changes, crime has increased in recent years, sparking debate about the causes and giving ammunition to those leading a new effort to roll back some of the reforms. An analysis by the Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times found that California’s crime rates remain near historic lows, but overall...

And this year ends with our loser ruling class shedding any pretense of legitimacy in its quest to reclaim the power we took back from it in 2016. The reaction to Donald Trump by our alleged betters - SPOILER: They are much, much worse than us - is instructive. They have abandoned all the principles they once claimed to support - democracy, civil rights, due process, and equality. None of those principles help them to keep or regain power anymore, so they are expendable. As are you. Liberalism was always a lie and a scam, right from its sordid...

Careful scrutiny of how the left operates reveals a tiered hierarchy. There is a small cadre of elite leftist leaders who know the true nature of the evil that they perpetrate. This leadership is utterly self-serving and utterly cynical. This is where you find the true psychopaths, racial eugenicists, etc. Examples include Vladimir Lenin, Lavrentiy Beria, Heinrich Himmler, and George Soros. They have a praetorian guard of similarly elite true believers in the causes trundled out for consumption by the leadership. These are intelligent, motivated, and charismatic champions of causes like environmentalism, multiculturalism, Malthusianism, etc. These are the people who...

Imagine during the Cold War that one political party, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Soviet Union was engaged in espionage against the United States, had a nuclear arsenal pointed at the United States, kept Eastern Europe under its thumb and imprisoned dissenters, refused to consider the Soviet Union a danger - of any sort - to the United States or other Western democracies. And they would offer no credible evidence to the contrary, but rather assert that it was all a hoax. Besides, they’d insist (with no evidence) that it was too expensive to address the challenge...

Most voters say Democrats have yet to prove a convincing case tying President Trump to Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, according to a new poll being released Tuesday. And a majority in the McLaughlin & Associates survey also say Democrats’ efforts to impeach Mr. Trump are a “partisan political ploy,” sending a cautionary signal as liberal activists agitate for the ultimate political punishment against the president. The GOP firm surveyed 1,000 voters likely to cast ballots in 2020 last week. Just 32 percent said given what they’d seen, Democrats had produced evidence Mr. Trump “fixed” the election by cooperating...

When I talk to young people, I try to offer them what I was offered when I was their age but is rarely offered today: wisdom. I was given wisdom largely because I went to a religious school -- a yeshiva, a traditional Jewish school in which the long day (9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) was divided between studying religious subjects (in Hebrew) and secular subjects (in English). With the increasing secularization of society, less and less wisdom has been conveyed to young people. One particularly obvious example is most secular people, especially on the left, believe human beings are...

Chief Justice of California Tani Cankil-Sakauye has reportedly renounced her Republican Party registration and re-registered as a no-party-preference voter, citing Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Cankil-Sakauye made the comments in a phone interview on Thursday to CALmatters, a nonprofit news organization, saying that she had been thinking about Kavanaugh's September confirmation hearing. "I’ve been thinking about it for some time," Cankil-Sakauye said of her decision. She said that she spoke with her husband and friends about the hearing and their conclusion was that "you didn’t leave the party - the party left you." “I felt compelled to make a choice...

“Why would a person choose a life where they will be hated, judged, and rejected by society?” This was one of the first arguments I learned to defend myself against in arguments about my sexuality. In the late 1990s, it was perceived as a powerful call to the humanity of those who opposed gay rights under the notion that it was merely a lifestyle choice. The idea was that if we could appeal to others’ sense of compassion for our social plight, perhaps they could understand the effects of their intolerance. I often fantasized about breaking through the walls of...