Free Republic

When Donald Trump stood in the lobby of Trump Tower on June 16, 2015 and announced he was running for president, he told all who listened to "mark" his words. "I would do various things very quickly," Trump said. "I would repeal and replace the big lie, Obamacare," he said. "I will build a great, great wall on our southern border," he said. "And I will have Mexico pay for that wall. "Mark my words," he said. Fifteen months later -- after he won the Republican nomination and less than two months before his general election showdown -- Trump released...

My father, who was born in 1922 and lived his teens and early twenties during the unfortunate reign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whimsically embraced a tax reform plan that he sardonically explained to me once or twice during his hard-working life. The first step in this plan was to abolish the federal system of withholding taxes from a worker's paycheck -- a system enacted in 1943 by Roosevelt and a Democratic Congress. FDR wanted not only to limit the size of an individual's income, but also to seize a large share of it before the individual could lay his own...

The federal government has a duty to enforce this nation's borders and do it in a humane manner that minimizes harm to human life both inside U.S. territory and on the approaches to it. The best way to do that at the border with Mexico is to build effectively impermeable barriers that send a simple, straightforward message: You can only cross this border legally. For years, our government has sent a different message: You may be able to cross illegally. More recently, that inapt message has been compounded by another: If you make it here illegally, we may let you...

In 2002, President George W. Bush signed a law he did not intend to fully obey. Thus, a Republican president set in motion a chain of events that allowed a Democratic president to claim, and an activist liberal Supreme Court to affirm, that the president has a unilateral power in foreign policy that the Framers did not envision and that is not consistent with representative government. When he took office in 2001, Bush placed his hand on a Bible and swore to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Article 2 Section 3 of that Constitution commanded Bush to "take care...

Ultimately, it will not matter if people in government cynically promote the theory that human activity is destroying the global climate as a means of taking control of your life, or if they take control of your life because they sincerely believe human activity is destroying the global climate. Either way, government will control of your life. The National Climate Assessment the Obama administration released this week describes in Sisyphean terms the task government faces in limiting carbon dioxide emissions, which the assessment says make up 84 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions it holds guilty of artificially warming our...

"If Jesus were alive today, he would be more inclined to say, 'you know, I didn't know it all...'" - Rev. Oliver White, Sean Hannity Show, March 27, 2013 In general, most news outlets have provided awful coverage of the Supreme Court proceedings on same-sex marriage. Covering the proceedings like they cover a political campaign or a sporting event, most of the analysis and commentary has been about political "wins" for one side or the other and the ramifications of the pending decision on homosexuals in our society, rather than the wide-ranging ramifications for society itself. Filling the void of...

In yet another stunning attack on freedom of religion, President Barack Obama's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court last week to give the federal government the power to tell a church who its ministers will be. The case involves a former teacher at Lutheran school, who along with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is pushing a claim that a Lutheran congregation should be forced to restore her ministry position. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and American Atheists, Inc. have filed briefs siding with the Obama administration against the church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church...

Terry Jeffrey walked away the winner on Hardball this afternoon. Despite being double-teamed by Chris Matthews and Salon's Joan Walsh, the editor-in-chief of our sister publication CNSNews.com had the others admitting that the Obama admin has gone too far with the cult-of-personality way it's pitched the president's speech to schoolchildren. But that didn't prevent Matthews and Walsh from unsubtly accusing PBO's opponents of racism, archly claiming that the motive for the opposition to the president is his "background." View video here.

Frist a Major Shareholder in Reputed For-Profit Abortion Provider By Terence P. Jeffrey Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.), reportedly the White House choice to succeed Trent Lott (R.-Miss.) as Senate majority leader, is a major shareholder in HCA, a for-profit hospital chain founded by his father and brother. HCA reportedly provides abortions to its customers.So now Republicans face this question: If it is disqualifying for their Senate leader to make offensive remarks interpreted as endorsing an immoral policy that denied African-Americans equal rights, is it also disqualifying for their Senate leader to make money from a hospital chain that denies unborn...