Free Republic

Liberals don’t want honest Americans like you to have guns. Liberals just want to arm foreign rebels in crapshoot attempts to “end global violence.” But liberals feign ignorance when the rebels they arm end up being criminals who kill innocent Americans like the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. Why did Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans die in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012? We now know that President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus were likely behind a mishandled gun-trafficking program that ended up arming the radical jihadist rebels who...

"What difference, at this point, does it make?" That was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's angry response to a question about the State Department's account of the attack on the Benghazi consulate where Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered on Sept. 11, 2012. Her response was cheered by leftist commentators on MSNBC. Righteous indignation is so attractive. But of course it makes a difference. Hillary Clinton is leading in polls for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and general election. It's always legitimate to examine the performance of a front-runner for the presidency. And of the...

Since the Boston terrorist attack on 4/15/13 we’ve been learning a whole lot about the two Muslim morons who blew up little children and severely injured hundreds of innocent onlookers and merry marathon runners. Speaking of the Boston terrorist attack, how long do you think it’ll be before the Leftists and their co-belligerent compadres, the Muslims, start whining about building a mosque close to the finish line of the Boston Marathon? I’ll give it … eh … six months. One-year tops. Back to getting to know the demonic Frick and Frack brothers. Of the all the revelations spilling out about...

To call the Tsarnaev family a “piece of work” is an insult to work. But they are a piece of something, something the editors won’t let me write here (just think of what last night’s dinner is now). Not only were Tamerlan, the Boston terrorist currently burning in Hell, and Dzhokhar, the Boston terrorist soon to be burning in Hell, on welfare, but their whole family was on the government dole. This isn’t as much a case against welfare as it is a case against immigration reform. In their time in this country this family did nothing but take and...

"Regular Order" ought to be the way in which the House and Senate conduct their business, but not when highly irregular national security disasters and/or scandals occur, and especially not after an ambassador is murdered by terrorists and a mass casualty terrorist attack occurs on Patriots Day in Boston. Speaker of the House John Boehner has to act even if the president doesn't want to. The country needs to know whether the terrorists in Benghazi represent the future of that country and Syria with its chemical weapons and why our national security services could not protect our ambassador. Even...

Shortly after the terror bombings in Boston last week, two different media people made statements that were alarming to say the least. Two days after the attack, McClatchy reporter Amina Ismail asked White House spokesman Jay Carney: "President Obama said that what happened in Boston was an act of terrorism. Do you consider the U.S. bombing on civilians in Afghanistan ... a form of terrorism?" As usual, Carney didn't have an answer and referred the reporter to the Department of Defense. What Carney should have said is this: "Are you kidding me? U.S. policy in Afghanistan is designed to protect...

One of the consequences of abandoning a standard by which right and wrong can be judged is our increasing inability to mete out punishment that fits the crime. In fact, too often we weigh extenuating circumstances rather than guilty actions. In the case of the Boston bombers, observers search for reasons why the attacks occurred. But the failure to view the attackers as anything other than simply guilty and judge them accordingly, is similar to the U.S. government's attitude toward the Middle East, which often sees Israel as the major impediment to peace. There is little expectation that Israel's enemies...

The American public now knows the identity of the Boston marathon bombing suspects. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was a former boxer and Chechnyan immigrant, radicalized in the United States by an Islamist mentor. He turned against the West in liberal Cambridge, Mass. His younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, was a pot-loving college student at the University of Massachusetts. Last Friday, Tamerlan was killed during a shootout with police after his brother reportedly ran him over with a car. Dzhokhar was captured hours later hiding in a boat. Few who knew Tamerlan seemed surprised at the news that he had masterminded the bombings...

Suddenly, every cable news anchor, every pundit, every Sunday show guest, and every waiter in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia has become an expert on whether or not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be informed of his Miranda rights. Let's assume, for the moment, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has never watched a single episode of "Law & Order" in any of its manifestations and, thus, does not know he can ask for a lawyer - or refuse to answer any questions with a lawyer or without. Just so I can catch up (I know you already know this), the whole Miranda thing stems...

In brief remarks to the nation yesterday on the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama said that "we all have a part to play in alerting authorities. If you see something suspicious, speak up." In Washington, D.C., electronic signs urged commuters to be on guard. Law enforcement, big-city mayors and security experts all echoed that famous post-terrorism refrain: "If you see something, say something." But who really means it? In post-9/11 America, the truth is that our politically correct guardians only want you to see, say or do something if it can't be construed by grievance-mongers as racist, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic,...

The seemingly omnipresent storm clouds hanging over the Constitution often make it hard to find a silver lining. Every day, the front page of The Drudge Report is littered with stories of government assaults on our civil liberties -- from local government officials all the way up to the Oval Office. Even heroic actions, such as Rand Paul’s recent filibuster in opposition to the unchecked use of drones on U.S. soil, are met by scornful catcalls from Grumpy Old Guard politicians who long ago seemed to have lost even the most basic understanding of our Bill of Rights. But,...

In the 1940’s and 50’s, famed Author George Orwell surmised that both the English language and civilized society were in decline. After a press conference held last week by Emeryville, California Police Chief Ken James, it’s easy to see a decline in both language and critical thinking skills in our country. And as Orwell thought, indeed civilized society may very well be in jeopardy. It happened on February 14th. Taking to the microphones and cameras in his suburban San Francisco community, Chief James stood at a podium with the requisite group of serious-looking, professionally dressed, pouty-faced people standing behind...

North Korea has just pulled off an impressive dual feat -- the successful test both of an intercontinental ballistic missile and an atom bomb in the 6-kiloton range. Pyongyang's ruler, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, said the tests are aimed at the United States. So it would seem. One does not build an ICBM to hit Seoul, 30 miles away. Experts believe North Korea is still far from having the capability to marry a nuclear warhead to a missile that could hit the West Coast. But this seems to be Kim's goal. Why is he obsessed with a nation half...

Who would have guessed that one of the most warmongering presidents would be a liberal Democrat who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? Obama has gotten away with a secret escalating drone war because the left and their fifth column in the media have mostly turned a blind eye, just like they have with Obama's expanded ground war in Afghanistan, not wanting to criticize a fellow leftist in power. Obama is not the pacifist he pretends to be. The executive branch's escalating drone strike program has been taking place in secret now for over 10 years, all ostensibly justified...

Astoundingly we have seen the media turn into hypocrites in recent days. Shock of shocks... how can it be? But when the President that an overwhelming majority of media members voted for, was running for President, they parroted his message of compassion, and American humility, and the need for us to talk to our enemies instead of torturing them. Being in the solid minority of media members who held that we either kill the guys who are trying to kill us, or at the very least, extract information about when they are next going to try to kill us, I...

The first line of attack in political battles is language. Getting people to phrase things your way is the first step to getting them to think your way. In the foggy mess of the debate over women in combat, you will see media references to a “ban” being “lifted.” Bans are bad. Lifting bans is good. Therein lies the bias strangling this issue in the dominant media culture. Am I “banned” from the women’s restrooms at work? No, I’m just not supposed to be in there, so that word doesn’t come up. The left has commandeered combat as a rhetorical...

"The single most important thing we can do to prevent gun violence and mass shootings," President Obama said last week, "is to make sure those who would commit acts of violence cannot get access to guns." Toward that end, he wants to require background checks not just for sales by federally licensed firearms dealers (as under current law), but for all gun transfers except those between relatives. This idea seems to be the most popular of Obama's gun control proposals, supported by nine out of 10 respondents in a recent CBS News poll. Yet it is unlikely to stop mass...

Four years ago, as his first term began, President Barack Obama ditched the name Global War on Terror (GWOT). Instead of fighting Al-Qaida-inspired terrorism around the world, the U.S. would conduct "overseas contingency operations" (OCO). Obama's act of oratorical magic -- poof, the global war has ended -- became an awkward problem, however. Real world events subsequently demonstrated that the word "overseas" was at best misleading, if not outright wrong. Detroit, New York and Portland, Ore., certainly aren't overseas, yet militant Islamist-inspired terrorists tried (and fortunately failed) to bomb all three -- Detroit on Christmas 2009, New York's Times...

When people reminisce about what America used to be like, some act scornfully toward us. They say living in a Donna Reed world was great for a few, but that there were many suffering souls. The way our country is today makes some of us long for those days which seemed so innocent compared to the harsh, cruel, coarse, and sometimes murderous days we exist in today. Yet most would argue that there were still injustices when we were growing up fifty years ago. Black people who had been freed a century before were still not treated equally in most...

They were not to be called Commandos. The Brits had dibs on that name. And they had earned it. Our special forces would train in Northern Ireland at the start of the Second World War, and while they might have British trainers and instructors, they'd have to be called something else. The brass would choose a name. They chose Rangers. This outfit would also need a commander. More than a commander -- a leader, one who understood that this special force would have to be, well, special. Its members would always take the offensive, springing on the enemy as if...