Free Republic

How precious is it that resident Joe Biden still seems to genuinely believe that the United States is the ultimate guardian and arbiter of democracy worldwide? It's not like the U.S. itself isn't struggling with the concept - and Biden really isn't making things better. American voters have long realized that those who are ultimately elected have the kind of financial hurdles to overcome that make it incredibly difficult for the Average Joe to participate, let alone win. Then, once they get to Washington, these elected representatives often succumb to the seductive siren song of special interests with deep pockets...

Speaking to the House of Commons in 1948, Winston Churchill, paraphrasing philosopher George Santayana, made a critical point: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." In his book, "While England Slept," Churchill makes the case World War II could have been avoided had England's weak and feckless prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, not tried to appease Germany's power-hungry despot, Adolf Hitler. We now have President Joe Biden taking Chamberlain's approach with three contemporary tyrants: Russia's Vladimir Putin, Communist China's Xi Jinping and Iran's "supreme leader," Ali Khamenei. As Chamberlain learned, appeasing tyrants never works. It's like...

When did the political systems of 193 nations become the business of the government of the United States? And who elected us Americans to write the moral code for the regimes that rule other lands? Consider: On taking office, resident Joe Biden pledged to center his foreign policy "on the defense of democracy and the protection of human rights." At his Summit for Democracy, he said it was America's intent to undertake the bolstering of democracy and human rights worldwide. Yet no nation bristles more than we Americans do when we discover foreign regimes meddling in our politics or presidential...

One of the most popular provisions of the 1994 Contract with America was a rule requiring Congress to live by the same laws that families and businesses are subject to. So, why doesn't Congress live by the financial and accounting standards required of the rest of us? I'm speaking of the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better law, a giant financial masquerade. No one knows what it costs. None of the Democrats in Congress who are hellbent on passing it seems to care. That may be because, as the House Budget Committee chairman has pronounced, "We can pay for whatever we want...

One day after warning Russian President Vladimir Putin he would face "severe" economic sanctions, "like ones he's never seen," should Russia invade Ukraine, resident Joe Biden assured Americans that sending U.S. combat troops to Ukraine is "not on the table." America is not going to fight Russia over Ukraine. "The idea that the United States is going to unilaterally use force to confront Russia invading Ukraine is not in the cards," said Biden. "We have a moral obligation and a legal obligation to our NATO allies," but "that obligation does not extend to ... Ukraine." Anti-interventionists who have opposed bringing...

With the passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, federal construction projects just received a massive infusion of taxpayer money. And, because of the high cost of building infrastructure in America, even small additions or repair jobs on roads and bridges can cost taxpayers dearly. These costs have skyrocketed over the past few decades. A team of Brown University and New York Federal Reserve Bank researchers found that the cost of constructing a, “lane mile of infrastructure increased five-fold” between 1990 and 2008, and costs have increased even more in the 13 years since the end of that period. And...

Over the past two decades, so-called designer drugs have infiltrated the U.S. from South America and China, harming, poisoning and killing our country's youth in droves. MDMA, ecstasy, fentanyl and other opioids provide a rapid escape for young people from the reality of the world around them. Tragically, for far too many, that escape becomes permanent. Something particularly distressing that I discovered is the impact that unnecessary procedures have on children. Around 80% of knee operations performed each year are entirely unnecessary. Apart from the long-term medical consequences of knee surgery, which often result in subsequent operations and restricted mobility...

The November jobs numbers are in, and the results confirm what most Americans already know: Joe Biden’s economic agenda is a disaster. On Friday the Labor Department reported the economy added a paltry 210,000 jobs in November. That’s not just missing the mark – it’s less than half the number economists predicted, making November the worst jobs report of this year. Sadly, underwhelming jobs reports are the new normal when it comes to this administration. In three of the past four months the economy has added far fewer jobs than economists expected. November’s dismal jobs report fits into a larger...

The majority of Republicans in Washington are thoroughly confused about their own party and their own voters. Some have lost faith in Republican voters completely and written them off as racists or crazies. Others don't know what to think. They are essentially biding time and hoping things go back to the way they were. They won't, of course. America is changing quickly. Voting patterns and the two-party norm that lasted for decades are under strain. Amazingly, Democrats are on the verge of handing back power to a Republican Party that's in a state of total chaos. All Republicans need to...

resident Joe Biden scored the first legislative victory of his presidency with his signing of the much-anticipated and hotly contested infrastructure bill. The bill, which was stalled in the Senate for months, was a subject matter that was bipartisan in nature, but with significant differences in the details between political parties. Through the tumultuous negotiation process, much was revealed about the president, the Senate and the government at large. A figure that came up repeatedly throughout the negotiations was West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Manchin, a Democrat, represents a very Republican populous. As a result, he is an extremely moderate...

Remember those "shovel-ready jobs" promised by the Obama-Biden administration in 2011? When many failed to appear after passage of this spending boondoggle, President Obama joked, "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected." That law, noted Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), cost $787 billion, of which $48 billion was supposed to go for infrastructure. It was disingenuously called the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Harvard economist Martin Feldstein calculated that each job created would cost taxpayers $200,000. When asked about this statistic in a September 26, 2011 interview with ABC News, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did not dispute the figure,...

It is not often that I read news that leaves even me so dumbfounded that I need to fact-check it. Even after my thorough fact check, I had to send the article to my production team to make sure I was not going crazy. Yes, the story in question was, in fact, true. What was the story? A Wall Street Journal report titled, "U.S. in Talks to Pay Hundreds of Millions to Families Separated at Border." The article details a plan put forth by the Biden administration to pay immigrants who were separated from their families up to $450,000 per...

In the 1980 presidential campaign, the Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, said, "A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his." The Gipper turned out to be correct. The gale-force winds of rising inflation had knocked working-class people to the ground, with paychecks shrinking month after month. Reagan wound up winning a landslide victory, and Carter was bounced out of office. The middle class hates inflation. The New York Times recently surmised that the effects of inflation are mostly "psychological," and that people should appreciate that...

One way to think of the national news is like a political weather forecast. Facts don't come first -- the emotional tone does. The Donald Trump project always sounded doomed, perpetually on the verge of dying in darkness. During the 2016 presidential campaign, one Time magazine cover had Trump's face melting, and another melted into an orange puddle. And then he won. During the Trump administration, Time offered a series of painted covers of Trump in a windstorm, Trump in a flood, and then "In Deep," with Trump nearly drowning in water (with his head above the cover line). It...

Not so long ago, resident Joe Biden was being talked of as a transformative president, a second Franklin D. Roosevelt in terms of the domestic agenda he would enact. And there was substance to the claim. Early in his presidency, Biden had passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. While his majorities in both houses of Congress were razor-thin, they proved sufficient to push through a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Clusters of Republicans backed the Biden infrastructure bill. A follow-on $3.5 trillion Build Back Better social spending bill to rival New Deal and Great Society measures has broad support -- though...

The October Consumer Price Index number was a stunning .9%. That means prices have increased 6.2% in the last twelve months. The behavior of the Federal Reserve (Fed), Congress and the Biden Administration is shockingly irresponsible. Action must be taken immediately. Failure to do so could lead to runaway inflation. Four decades ago, the Fed realized that the growth in the money supply has a direct effect on the inflation rate. Since then, Fed policy of controlling the money supply growth has generally kept inflation under 3%. Now the Fed has stopped that policy. Instead they say that based on...

As in the 1880s, we live in an era of polarized partisan parity, in which changes of opinion among independent voters can sweep election results. One year ago, Joe Biden was elected president with 51% of the popular vote. Now, with his job approval down to 42%, his party is in trouble. That's obvious from Republican Glenn Youngkin's 51-49 victory for governor in Virginia, which Biden won by 10% in 2020, and Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy's reelection by only 51-49 in New Jersey, which had been +16% for Biden. It's obvious also that, barring an upward shift in public opinion,...

Is the Biden administration governing in a way that takes into consideration the will of the American people? Based on his plummeting poll numbers and crude anti-Biden chants filling sports stadiums, the answer would seem to be no. Last week’s defeat of the left at the polls in Virginia and elsewhere was a reminder of the pushback of “we the people.” Some leftist pundits said Terry McAuliffe lost his Virginia gubernatorial campaign in 2021 because he didn’t campaign to the left enough. Others remarked it was the alleged “white supremacist” factor that gave conservatives the victory. Of course, they say...

With the Biden administration facing a growing wave of lawsuits to stop the president’s vaccine mandate on companies, an Indiana businessman-turned-senator believes he has the quickest way to kill it. Sen. Mike Braun, backed by most GOP senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is hopeful of nixing the mandate through the arcane but effective Congressional Review Act. It would force a vote in both Houses just before Christmas and when 93,000 firms could be firing unvaccinated workers. The act allows Congress to review federal rules, normally ignored by the House and Senate. In this case, he would target the Occupational...

"I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." With this remark -- arrogant, dismissive, contemptuous -- in his debate with Glenn Youngkin, Terry McAuliffe committed a historic gaffe. From that debate forward, his poll numbers steadily sank until McAuliffe lost his lead, and with it, the election. And going down to defeat, McAuliffe dragged with him his fellow Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and attorney general and watched Virginia's House of Delegates revert to Republican rule. What was McAuliffe saying, and what were Virginians hearing, in his remark? McAuliffe was saying that, in deciding what should...