Free Republic

Why doesn’t this surprise me? People lament the violence in cities that have been under one-party political rule for decades. But voters keep electing people who not only fail to make things better but also make things worse. Take Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot for example. Voters elected another cookie-cutter, anti-law and order politician, and the violence that was bad before she took office may be getting worse. But, of course it’s not her fault or the fault of bad policies. No. The fault belongs to—you guessed it—the police. Who didn’t see that one coming? No cop, that’s for sure. But...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Yes We (Still) Can and cohost of Pod Save America, a sharp political playbook for how Democrats can take on Trump, McConnell, Fox News, and the rest of the right-wing circus dominating American politics. There is nothing more important than beating Donald Trump in 2020, but defeating Trump is just the start of this timely book. Un-Trumping America offers readers three critical insights: first, Trump is not an aberration, but rather the logical extension of the modern Republican Party; second, how Democrats can defeat Trump in 2020; and third, preventing...

Latinos are a coveted voting bloc in the battleground state of Florida — but they're not one group when it comes to their countries of origin and the issues on which they focus. To that end, a progressive political action committee has been releasing a series of ads targeting specific Latino groups as the voting registration deadline approaches. Forward Florida Action has begun airing Spanish-language radio ads this month across the state encouraging voters to register as Democrats before the Feb. 18 deadline to participate in the presidential primary. One radio ad targeting Puerto Ricans tells prospective voters that as...

With a win in New Hampshire, a maybe-win in Iowa last week, and a month-long surge into second place nationally, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is now in strong position to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. It’s been a long road for the curmudgeonly man from Vermont, who spent years toiling on the fringes of official Washington. Of all things, the event that ultimately launched him into the Democratic Party’s mainstream turned out to be a binary 2016 primary contest with Hillary Clinton, a match-up in which the contrast ultimately benefited him more than her.So, here we are, in...

A Richmond school may soon be named after former first lady Michelle Obama, officials with the West Contra Costa Unified School District said. Board members will consider renaming Wilson Elementary School following a request by the school's PTA president Maisha Cole and a Jan. 23 meeting of an ad hoc committee, which recommended the change. District officials said if the board approves the change, it will be the first time in Northern California a school has been named after Michelle Obama and the second school in the state to get such a name. Wilson Elementary School was named after Woodrow...

The progressive socialist left, along with their media accomplices, have gone into another apoplectic unhinged rage. I know, what else is new? This time it is all about the dismissal of one US Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. LTC Vindman has now risen to the dubious acclaim of being referred to as a hero. In the fall of 2018, here in Texas, there had to be an emergency session of the Texas State Board of Education because some leftists wanted to remove the term “heroic” from Texas state history curriculum in reference to the defenders of the Alamo. The left...

The more we talk about freedom (of speech, of assembly, to carry guns, religion) in the world today occupied and controlled by everything progressive, the more we hear the chains rattling I wrote before about the 2006 Oscar winner for the best Foreign Language Film, “Das Leben des Anderen” (The Lives of Others), a German drama that describes in painful detail life in the communist East Berlin of 1984, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, how ordinary and not so ordinary citizens were spied upon by their government, using agents of the infamous Stasi, the German Democratic Republic’s secret...

Weeks after J.K. Rowling expressed disdain for a British employer firing an employee for stating sex is binary, another employer—this time in the U.S.—allegedly fired a freelance columnist for saying there are only two sexes. Jon Caldara, a regular columnist for The Denver Post, announced Jan. 17 in a Facebook post that the publication had fired him for his traditional, but apparently offensive and “insensitive,” beliefs about sex and gender. An editor’s note posted Jan.21 at The Denver Post confirmed Megan Schrader, editor of The Denver Post’s editorial pages, decided the publication no longer would run Caldara’s weekly freelance column,...

In terms of seriousness, I realize that this question ranks right up there with “Why is There Air?” (which was a pretty funny comedy album from back in the 60s). There have been hundreds of books and articles which have examined the “roots of progressive rage.” At times I believe that we have seen so much progressive fury that we have almost become inured to it. Like most people, I usually adhere to the philosophy of “fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and progressives gotta rant.” However, during the holiday season, I ran across two instances that caused me to...

I'm almost as upset that Democratic presidential candidates are squabbling as I am that Prince Harry and the former Meghan Markle apparently don't want to live in Los Angeles until President Donald Trump leaves office. Double bummer. Speaking of doubles, did you know that Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have accused each other of lying? How can this be? Progressives don't lie. With that in mind, one of them must be lying. After Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate, Warren and Sanders were noticed in an apparently heated exchange, and CNN later released the audio of the intra-socialist spat. Word...

Just when it seemed as though the transgender movement was reaching a fever-pitch and it was becoming impossible to stand up to the zealous mob of trans-enthusiasts, it appears some celebrities may have found the secret to shutting them down and evading the dreaded “cancel culture” imposed on anyone who dares speak truth or reason. Perhaps this culture battle is not all but lost after all. Back in December, famed author J.K. Rowling tweeted her support for Maya Forstater, a former tax expert who lost her job at think tank Center for Global Development for declaring that men and women...

Disillusionment with Woodrow Wilson changed the American Left forever. In 1916, German saboteurs destroyed Black Tom Island in New York Harbor.Click for Bettmann/Corbis pic. Today’s state-oriented liberalism, we are often told, was the inevitable extension of the pre–World War I tradition of progressivism. The progressives, led by President Woodrow Wilson, placed their faith in reason and the better nature of the American people. Expanded government would serve as an engine of popular goodwill to soften the harsh rigors of industrial capitalism. Describing the condition of his fellow intellectuals prior to World War I, Lewis Mumford exclaimed that “there was scarcely...

The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...

Before I begin let me say that the objectives of Common Core Math sound good, especially to people like me who need to understand concepts before proceeding to mechanics: Greater focus on fewer topicsThe Common Core calls for greater focus in mathematics. Rather than racing to cover many topics in a mile-wide, inch-deep curriculum, the standards ask math teachers to significantly narrow and deepen the way time and energy are spent in the classroom. This means focusing deeply on the major work of each grade In grades K–2: Concepts, skills, and problem solving related to addition and subtraction In grades...

A self-described progressive activist, who helped found an advocacy group in Pittsburgh that supports autistic people, is mounting a challenge against longtime incumbent state Rep. Harry Readshaw. Jessica Benham, 28, of the South Side Slopes, is bidding for the Democratic nomination in the 36th legislative district, shaping her candidacy after the campaigns of a number of progressive women who have toppled longtime Democratic incumbents in the past two years. Her campaign is framing the race that way, too, and in a recent email, used the secondary headline to proclaim “Progressive Benham to challenge conservative incumbent Harry Readshaw.” “In some ways,...

Watching the hysterical reaction of the radical left—such as Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post—to Attorney General William Barr’s thoughtful, well-reasoned, important speech at the Federalist Society convention on the constitutional doctrine of the unitary executive is like history repeating itself. Liberals had the same overreaction to then-Attorney General Edwin Meese’s 1985 speech to the American Bar Association on the Constitution and originalism. Only someone as openly partisan and ill-informed as Marcus could possibly claim that a speech explaining the historical basis of the Founders’ views on the importance of a strong executive is “angrily partisan” and “scary.” So what...

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Joy Behar revealed a key piece of the Progressive Project to her listeners on 4 November, 2019. She advised politicians who want to confiscate guns from U.S. citizens to deceive the voters so the politicians could get elected; then confiscate the guns.To the Left, this is nothing controversial. The whole point of Progressivism is the electorate is too stupid and ignorant to govern themselves. They believe the purpose of an elite is to deceive the governed (through manipulation of the information they receive, and controlling the narrative), so as to allow the elite to keep power and govern...

I mourned the untimely passing of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman for the very personal reason that I hoped he would one day get to play Whittaker Chambers in a film version of Chambers’ 1952 masterwork, Witness. Short, heavy set, permanently rumpled, Hoffman would have made a near perfect Chambers to George Clooney’s Alger Hiss, the smooth, handsome, establishment golden boy. Chambers’ 800-page story of his life and their encounter remains the great political book of the twentieth century. Chambers was a deep thinker, a dazzling writer, and a reluctant participant in the most riveting political drama of the era. No...

When one becomes a liberal, he or she pretends to advocate tolerance, equality and peace, but hilariously, they’re doing so for purely selfish reasons. It’s the human equivalent of a puppy dog’s face: an evolutionary tool designed to enhance survival, reproductive value and status. In short, liberalism is based on one central desire: to look cool in front of others in order to get love. Preaching tolerance makes you look cooler, than saying something like, “please lower my taxes” — Greg Gutfeld 1) Most liberals are hateful people. 2) Liberals do more than any other group to encourage race-based hatred....

Oct. 21, 2019 - 4:41 - A New York congressional candidate is arguing that taking guns away from law enforcement will make communities safer. A law enforcement panel reacts on 'Fox & Friends.'