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Over the past half-decade or so it’s become fashionable to claim that millions of Americans, including many families with kids, are mired in “extreme poverty” — they’re not just below the poverty line, and they’re not even in “deep poverty,” defined at half the poverty line; they’re making do on less than $2 per person per day, the kind of threshold we use to measure deprivation in the Third World.I wrote last year about some research led by the American Enterprise Institute’s Bruce Meyer that devastates these claims — research that he and three coauthors have now expanded and updated....

Former Republican Rep. Ron Paul blasted the presidential hopeful, Donald Trump for being “authoritarian” on Alan Colmes’ Show recently. Paul’s comments about Trump came about when he was asked if Donald Trump was good or bad for the Republican Party, to which Paul replied, chuckling, “Well I don’t even care whether he’s good or bad for the Republican party. I don’t have much interest in that per se. But, I think he’s a dangerous person and a lot of people find him kind of funny and they love him, even libertarian types love him…” When Colmes presses Paul to explain...

1.) Arrive to the sound of a 1980s montage song, like "I am a real American" from Hulk Hogan's WWE Days. ... 2.) pay your respects to the American flag. ... 3.) Remark on the yuuuuge sixe of the crowd. ... 6.) When discussing trade and foreign policy, mention China as often as possible. 7.) Remind everyone that you have more money than they do,. 8.) Say the Bible is your favorite book and everyone will give you a thumbs up. ...

... The ad goes on to say that Trump bulldozed the home of an elderly widow in Atlantic City to build a limousine parking lot at his casino. "Trump won't change the system. He's what's wrong with it," it says in the end. Cruz tweeted his ad Friday morning saying "It's time we change the system and break the #WashingtonCartel -- together!" ...

Over ONE MILLION copies sold! On the NYTimes Bestseller List for 19 weeks, 12 weeks at #1!Buy it… read it… live it!“Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles.” --Mark Levin in Liberty and TyrannyWelcome to “The Levin Lounge”… Step in and have a virtual FRink.Taking the country by storm, one radio station at a time – and kicking the BUTTS of the competition! Welcome all, to the most FUN LIVE THREAD on FreeRepublic.com! You can call Mark’s show: 1-877-381-3811

<p>Politicians from across the US have called for a reassessment of gun laws in the wake of Friday’s deadly school shooting in Connecticut, with prominent Jewish representatives leading the charge. Two senators, including Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, called Sunday for a national commission to examine mass shootings in the United States, while Senator Dianne Feinstein of California (D) vowed to ban the sale of military-style assault weapons.</p>

Yesterday morning, Soledad O’Brien had on her CNN show economist John Lott, of More Guns, Less Crime fame (also an NRO contributor). As I’ve discussed before on NRO, O’Brien has a habit of bringing on conservative guests and then spitting out Democratic talking points under the glib guise of a non-partisan moderator calling them to account on the facts.But her encounter with Lott, the video of which you can view below, is a new low: Rather than parroting liberal arguments (which typically involve at least a few facts) in order to confront Lott’s arguments, she merely relates her bewildered sentiments...

Dozens of protesters were arrested after confronting police in riot gear in Phoenix today. The protesters waved the Mexican flag as they protested Arizona's recent crackdown on illegal immigration.Do you see what I see?Video at link.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is warning that illegal aliens may have gained access to a U.S. Army installation in Arizona that also serves as the nation's largest military intelligence-training center.

It was September 1986, and Annabel Hill, 66, was facing an auction where she would lose the farm that had been in her family for five generations. Hill’s husband, Lenard, had committed suicide eight months earlier, 20 minutes before a scheduled auction, in a last-ditch attempt to save his property with life insurance money. The life insurance money wasn’t enough, covering only $175,000 of debts than ran in excess of $300,000, from two years of a drought that Hill said had ruined their livelihood. Even when several hundred acres of the 1,300-acre Waynesboro, Georgia, farm were sold, the now-widowed Annabel...

After a mere nine years in existence, the Transportation Security Administration rivals the DMV and the Postal Service as a played-out comedy cliché. And now the TSA is adding union bureaucracy to the mix. Second-rate standup performers are licking their chops; the rest of us should be much less delighted. The agency’s head, John Pistole, recently gave its 40,000-plus employees the right to bargain collectively on “non-security employment issues.” Two unions, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), will compete in an election tentatively set to begin March 9. At first glance, the...

John Kerry's comments stirred up quite a bit of emotion yesterday. The American Legion promptly denounced them, and John McCain and President Bush rushed to hold press conferences. Kerry vowed to apologize "to no one" and insisted that the statement--"education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq"--was a botched joke directed at Yale graduate George W. Bush. Few, however, stopped to consider the factual nature of the assertions. If they did, they'd realize...

Harvard historian Jill Lepore has a piece attacking gun rights in the latest New Yorker, and a follow-up post on the magazine’s website. Most of it is basically what you’d expect: some numbers about gun violence, some horrifying anecdotes about people who’ve misused guns, some reporting from a gun range, some artsy writing (“a gun is a machine made to fire a missile that can bore through flesh”), and an overarching history of the gun-rights movement.More irksome, however, is Lepore’s analysis of the Second Amendment’s meaning. By leaving out or misrepresenting key historical details, she shortchanges the idea that...

As the House health-care debate entered the homestretch on Sunday, GOP lawmakers interacted with the protesters who had gathered outside the Capitol. “There was a very, very large group of people, and many flags from our heritage were on display,” recalls Rep. Geoff Davis (R., Ky.). Davis and fellow Republican representative Mary Fallin (Okla.) borrowed one of those flags — a yellow one bearing an image of a rattlesnake and the words “Don’t Tread on Me” — brought it upstairs, and hung it from the building’s balcony. That flag has become a staple of tea-party rallies nationwide. Its appearance at...

Ten years ago today, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed their high school with bombs and guns. They killed 15 people, including themselves, and injured 23 others, some severely. The nation thought the shooters’ parents were mostly to blame. Adults cast a suspicious eye on high-school-age males who were bullied, played violent video games, listened to Marilyn Manson, took an interest in the macabre, enjoyed shooting guns, or dressed like “Goths.” Americans had to respond somehow, but at the time they could not respond to the facts: There was little information available, and much of what was available was false....

Bernardine Dohrn has a history with the Justice Department. More specifically, in the early 1970s, she was one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives because of her actions with the Weather Underground, a violent radical organization.Times have changed. In 2010 and 2011, the Justice Department saw fit to give $400,000 in grants to an organization that lists Dohrn as a member of its board of directors: a $150,000 grant in September of 2010 and a $250,000 grant a year later. The organization that received the grants is the W. Haywood Burns Institute, and the project that brought in the...

Numerous writers, most recently Emily Bazelon of Slate, have touted the Brice Harper case from Montana as evidence against the castle doctrine, which allows people to use lethal force when it’s necessary to keep intruders off their property. These accounts tend to minimize the threat that Harper faced when he shot and killed Dan Fredenberg, and while it’s a difficult case, it hardly proves that the castle doctrine is bad policy.Harper was in some sort of relationship (he refused to call it an “affair” in interviews with police) with Dan Fredenberg’s wife, Heather (who said it was “pretty much”...

This is called, of course, “eminent domain.” The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment allows the government to take private property for “public use,” so long as “just compensation” is paid. In the infamous 2005 Kelo decision, the Supreme Court held that “public use” could include, well, private use, so long as the new property owner paid more in taxes than the previous one. In other words, it allowed developers and the government to gang up on homeowners. The developer gets more land, the government gets more tax money. The only losers are the original owner and his property rights. A decade and...

You start a blog, get noticed almost immediately, and — within two months — have a six-figure book deal. That’s every white person’s dream. How can anyone make such a broad statement with certainty? Well, just that happened to Christian Lander — whose blog and book share the title Stuff White People Like — and he says so. And it’s not so broad a statement as it might seem. When Lander says “white person,” he doesn’t just mean “checks ‘white/Caucasian’ on the affirmative-action info box.” In fact, the Stuff White People Like Facebook quiz — with such questions as “What...