Free Republic

Before my fellow conservatives jump immediately to defend Candidate Carson, I would ask that they read the following short column. Some years ago, I became aware of the extraordinary and remarkable career of Dr. Benjamin Carson via the 2009 movie "Gifted Hands" ,a film in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. portrayed the doctor. I even talked about him to my friend and colleague Laurie Roth who, subsequently, interviewed him on her Radio show. Dr. Carson seemed to be an honorable man, conservative and true to his word. However, since he officially began his campaign for the position of POTUS, something appears...

[VIDEO AND AUDIO OF MARK LEVIN'S SHOW] On his radio show yesterday evening, Mark “The Great One” Levin blasted Donald Trump and Marco Rubio for smearing their rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. As PJ Media reported earlier, Trump recently went off on Carson during a campaign event in Iowa. The billionaire businessman smeared Carson, comparing him to child molesters and declaring he’s unfit to be president because he had violent impulses as a teenager. He even went so far as to blast Carson’s religiosity, basically saying it’s all a lie to swoon Iowa voters:...

Leading Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson believes that federal and state official overreacted in the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who died in 2005 as her husband and family battled over whether to keep her alive despite her vegetative state.The case roiled the state of Florida and sparked an emotional national debate about the ethics, politics and spiritual significance of her life and death.(snip)After speaking at a Republican Party conference here on Friday, a reporter asked Carson what he thought of the infamous case -- one that Bush speaks about occasionally as he mounts his own presidential campaign."We...

TTAG reader MK contacted U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein to ask her support for national concealed carry reciprocity. (I know, right?) The email he received from the California Democrat – who never met a gun control law she didn’t like – was less than enthusiastic . . .

The spread of anti-terrorism-style laws through Australia’s criminal justice system is conditioning the public to accept “severe and disproportionate” losses of civil liberties, a legal academic has warned. South Australia has drafted laws that would permanently tag members of motorcycle gangs as “criminal organisation participants”, leaving them facing the lifetime risk of jail for associating with others even if they had quit a gang. The measures were introduced despite the South Australian government’s blueprint being under review in Queensland, where its Labor counterpart has a taskforce to recommend ways to repeal or replace gang laws once touted as the world’s...

Sen. John McCain suggested Sunday that President Obama should nominate an Ebola czar to lead the nation’s response to the deadly virus. “From spending time here in Arizona, my constituents are not comforted. There has to be more reassurance given to them,” the Arizona Republican said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

At a press conference Thursday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said people with religious beliefs who disagree with the Obamacare contraception mandate should be given a choice between living by their faith or being allowed to form a corporation to do business. “You’re born with a religion or you adopt a religion. You have to obey the precepts of that religion and the government gives you a wide penumbra – you don’t have to form a corporation,” Schumer said. In the Hobby Lobby case, decided last month, the Supreme Court ruled that a closely-held family-owned corporation could not be forced by...

July 05--Anyone who wants a job next year at Anne Arundel Medical Center -- whether as a surgeon or security guard -- will have to prove they don't smoke or use tobacco. The Annapolis hospital's new hiring policy might be controversial, but it is legal in Maryland and more than half of the United States. And it's a type of job screening that is gaining favor with employers -- from hospitals to companies such as Alaska Airlines -- trying to control rising health costs and cultivate a healthier, more productive workforce. Anne Arundel Medical Center, like a growing number of...

One of the current liberal cliches tells us “whites” are privileged. The color of their skin evidently bestows benefits others do not receive. They are therefore supposed to be grateful and defer to those who are less fortunate. But in what does this “privilege” consist? Yes, whites have not been discriminated against the way African-Americans have. They have not been denied jobs or forced to drink from separate fountains because of the pigmentation of their epidermis. This is surely an advantage — but how big an advantage? Charges of white privilege make it sound as if every Caucasian is automatically...

President Obama repeatedly assures us that this will be his “year of action.” (snip).... Yet not a word has been heard of late about a truly transformative Obama executive action, his rule on “affirmatively furthering fair housing” (AFFH). That rule will push Americans into living how and where the federal government wants. It promises to gut the ability of suburbs to set their own zoning codes. It will press future population growth into tiny, densely-packed high-rise zones around public transportation, urbanizing suburbs and Manhattanizing cities. You won’t see a more ambitious Obama administration initiative than this. Yet Obama never discusses...

MILFORD, Ohio - An 89-year-old southwest Ohio woman is preparing to move out of her home of the last 10 years because it has gone smoke-free. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Beulah "Billie" Toombs faces eviction after being deemed non-compliant by her apartment building's management. A smoker for seven decades or so, she thinks she should be allowed to do what she wants in her own home. But more than a year ago, the management of the apartments for low-income seniors announced a smoke-free policy. Residents already there were allowed one year of smoking with some conditions. When the smoke-free...

The sun was just beginning to rise over the Rocky Mountains, but Sheriff Justin Smith was already awake. He was standing outside Fort Collins High School – shivering in the frigid cold. It was 12 degrees. Snow was falling. But Mr. Smith, wearing his dress blues, stood resolute, waving an American flag. The sheriff of Larimer County, Colorado had come to school Tuesday to send a message to those responsible for educating the county’s children. The sheriff was not in a good mood. He was standing in the winter snow to protest the school’s decision to ban a celebration of...

Survival Doc (the videographer) and Mark M. are arrested for not obeying an officer and Mark was also charged with resisting arrest. Did he resist arrest? You be the judge. Oh, and they never read us our Miranda Rights. We spent 24 hours in the St. Charles Count Jail with Missouri Hwy Trooper Jenkins acting as judge, jury and executioner.

Exclusive: Patrice Lewis says New Media saved America from progressive demise It may come as a surprise to many people, but America is in the midst of a revolution. It’s not the revolution you might think. Patriots are not fighting enemies in the street. The Minutemen are not assembling in the green, ready to defend against redcoats. No, it isn’t the patriots who are fighting a revolution. It’s the progressives who have been fomenting the revolt. And, until recently, they were winning. Quite simply, they are fighting a revolution against the Constitution. Think about it. The progressives object to just...

Monday, May 06, 2013 The Burglar-Terrorist Alliance Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 0 Comments (The following is an adaptation of a talk that I recently gave.) Every act of violence has two sides. The side of those who carry it and the side of those who let it happen. When a burglar breaks into a home and kills two people, we don't just discuss what made him do it, but why it was allowed to happen. That's a conversation we rarely have about terrorism. The left wants us to talk about terrorism as a reaction to...

If taken at great cost, it often lasts for quite a while. If inherited, not that long. If given, it is even more readily perishable. The United States gained their freedom, by force and at great cost, from those who used military might to prevent them from having it. Even many in the United States who inherited their freedom seem to have forgot how and why those from whom they inherited took it and the costs they bore. Those "given" freedom should know by now that it does not long endure unless cherished and defended, by force if that is the only...

In The Republic, Plato argued that philosophers must be made kings for the ideal city-state to be born. In the pages of The New Republic, Cass Sunstein argues for the benevolent paternalism of the nanny state and its philosopher-kings. It’s an old Sunstein theme and the one that brought him to the attention of politicians who dearly love to imagine themselves in the roles of those philosopher-kings. One of those politicians, Barack Obama, even made Sunstein his Regulatory Czar. Sunstein debuted as the philosopher-king of the technocrats with his book Nudge. Now having left his D.C. Czardom, Sunstein is back...

Since people started living in communities, there’s been tension between the rulers and the ruled. That became particularly acute when America reintroduced the concept of self-government 237 years ago. Bob Buckley reports on Eustace Conway, a Boone man who says he just wants to be free from the government and its rules.

Until three months ago, when he dropped out of the race to become the Republican nominee for governor, Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling had to keep mum about his unhappiness with the GOP’s shift to the right. He couldn’t say, as he did in an interview here Tuesday, that he thought the Republicans had become so extreme that they were alienating voters and blocking the commonwealth’s progress. (snip) To say all that previously would have meant giving up any chance of beating Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a tea party favorite, for the nomination. As it happened, Cuccinelli and his allies...