Free Republic

Angus Deaton is doing some rethinking. Specifically, the 78-year-old Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist is re-examining his views on major topics like unions, immigration, and global trade. It's a big statement from someone who's spent over 50 years studying inequality, welfare, poverty, and "deaths of despair," and it comes as he sees economics in disarray. His most recent book, "Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality," came out in 2023 — it catalogs, among other topics, the role of economists in the US and tackles some of the problems he's identified. When I asked Deaton what prompted...

2024 Is Shaping Up To Be The ‘We Were Right About Everything’ ElectionCrime, Covid, the economy, immigration, foreign policy, education — Biden’s poor ratings show voters are starting to ask if Democrats have gotten any issue right in the last four years.Last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the National Guard to start patrolling the subways of New York City to deal with the city’s crime problem, which has been metastasizing for years now.There was a lot of guffawing from the online peanut gallery, and understandably so. In the summer of 2020, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., had written a...

Hal Lindsey’s book “The Late Great Planet Earth,” written in 1970, sold over 28 million copies. Gullible Christians got sucked into Lindsey’s soon end-of-the world poppycock. As time has passed without his version of Armageddon taking place, we can now objectively analyze where Lindsey went wrong: • Lindsey (p. 54, 181), like other dispensationalists, placed the beginning of the end with Israel becoming a nation in 1948. He thought all prophecy would be fulfilled within a 40-year generation (Matthew 24:34). But 1988 came and went, proving him to be a false prophet. (This should be adequate proof that 1948 has...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson Vivek predicts Democrat Presidential nominee: "I personally think it's going to be Michelle Obama." 6:23 PM · Feb 21, 2024

Former President Trump urged his followers to give Anheuser-Busch a “second chance” after months of criticism the company has faced from conservatives. “The Bud Light ad was a mistake of epic proportions,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website Tuesday, referencing a brief partnership the company had with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney that has cost it billions in market value. “Anheuser-Busch is not a Woke company,” the former president said, adding “I can give you plenty that are, am building a list, and might just release it for the World to see.” “Anheuser-Busch is a Great American Brand that perhaps...

Governor Kevin Stitt (R-OK) said Friday on CNN’s “The Lead” that he agreed with Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) defying the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that federal agents may remove razor wire at the southern border. Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Twenty-five Republican governors from across the country have signed a joint statement supporting the Texas governor as he thumbs his nose at the highest court in the land.”

The world had just emerged from World War II when 20th century author and armchair theologian C.S. Lewis penned what he called “A Christmas Sermon for Pagans,” a message to British readers about the dangers of a world yielded no longer to objective truth but one lost in a sea of relativism. Lewis’ words in December 1946 — which first appeared in the erstwhile Strand Magazine — warned that “post-Christian” thought, a way of thinking that rejects absolute rights and wrongs, leads to nihilism. He wrote, in part: As for the ideologies, the new invented Wrongs and Rights, does no...

Donald Trump has claimed that he won all 50 states in the 2020 US election at a Florida event where two of his rivals for the Republican presidential primaries were booed for suggesting the party should dump the former president before his legal woes catch up with him. "We won, the last time, 50 states, think of it, 50 states," he told the Freedom Summit, outside Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night. "We won every state. We then did great in the election. We got 12 million more votes or so … 12 million more votes than we got the first...

Former Vice President Mike Pence warned this week that if Russian forces are not repelled in Ukraine, U.S. military service members may have to step up to the fight. "I’m convinced that if the Ukrainian military doesn’t stop and repel that Russian invasion, it’s not going to be too long before that Russian army crosses a border that our men and women in uniform are going to have to go and fight under our NATO Treaty," Mr. Pence said during a town hall-style interview with NewsNation on Wednesday. "I truly believe it. Whether that's Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, ... Poland, I...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) heaped criticism on Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on Tuesday for saying a night earlier that the definition of “white nationalist” comes down to one’s “opinion.” “The Senator from Alabama is wrong, wrong, wrong,” Schumer said Tuesday. “The definition of white nationalism is not a matter of opinion.” “For the Senator from Alabama to obscure the racist nature of white nationalism is indeed very, very dangerous,” Schumer continued. “He is fanning the flames of bigotry and intolerance.”

There are many pixels being spent to make it appear that Florida and Governor DeSantis are being unfair to Disney and, as a result, have lost an investment opportunity. Neither assertion is true. None of the claims by politicians will make them true. It's understandable that Democrats make these claims. It's neither understandable nor forgivable that Republicans like Pence, Haley, and Trump join in. To understand the situation, it's best to start at the beginning. In the 1960s Florida granted Disney local government control over 27,000 acres of land that straddles Orange and Osceola counties. The area was called the...

Tuesday, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) touted an effort he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had partnered on to combat insider trading within Congress. According to the Florida Republican, his New York colleague was “wrong a lot” but not “corrupt.” “AOC is wrong a lot,” he said. “She’d probably say the same thing about me. But she’s not corrupt. And I will work with anyone and every one to ensure that Congress is not so compromised. We should disallow congressional stock trading for the same reason we don’t allow the referee...

The Russian strongman began his invasion refusing to accept the legitimacy of Ukrainian nationhood and identity. The past year has proven how wrong he was. After a year’s wait and just hours before a speech by President Joe Biden in Poland, Vladimir Putin gave his first “State of the Nation” speech since the invasion of Ukraine. In the nearly two-hour address, the Russian autocrat promised to press on in Ukraine, calling the “existential” conflict a “war” for the first time and asserting that the West had started it. He attacked the leaders of the Ukrainian government as “neo-Nazis,” and addressed...

At 99, Henry Kissinger is a living demonstration that you’re never too old to learn new things — or to unlearn wrong old things. The former secretary of state has implicitly acknowledged that he dramatically misjudged Russia, its war against Ukraine, and the qualities of Ukraine’s leaders and population. After Vladimir Putin described the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its repressive empire as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” suggesting it should be reconstituted, Kissinger urged America to “show greater sensitivity to Russian complexities.” After Putin invaded Georgia, Kissinger stated that “isolating Russia is not a sustainable long-range...

Former President Donald Trump revealed Thursday that the “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” that he teased earlier in the week — which some of his supporters thought could be anything ranging from his announcing a bid for House Speaker to announcing who he would want to be his VP pick should he win the GOP primary — was a series of digital trading cards. “I’m doing my first official Donald J. Trump NFT collection right here and right now; they’re called Trump Digital Trading Cards,” Trump said in a promotional video. “Here’s one of the best parts: Each card comes with an automatic...

This would never be allowed to stand. All of the GOP would be requesting a do over election, along with the conservative media. It would be like having a Pennsylvania election with Philadelphia experiencing major voting issues. It is one thing to oppose Trump, but for these RINOs to support fraudulent elections crosses the line. Some of you still praise these people claiming they put out good books or made good points in the past, but they are the enemy if they support fraudulent elections to defeat the MAGA movement.

The Democrats’ surprisingly strong showing in the midterm elections has raised a familiar question: Did the pollsters get it wrong again? Heading into Nov. 8, polls from across the industry gave Republicans the clear edge in battleground races, as well as on the generic ballot. The data bolstered the belief among pundits that a red wave was on the rise.

Every election has its holdouts who predict polling and conventional wisdom leading up to the big vote is way off. This year, the optimism caucus has to work overtime for Democrats. With less than a week to go until Election Day, most Democrats are bracing for potentially huge defeats — including losing one or both chambers of Congress — but some in the party aren’t willing to concede anything just yet. “I don’t believe the GOP is headed for any kind of a wave,” said Angelo Cocchiaro, a Democratic Party activist based in Virginia. “The polls show tight races nationwide....

I'm posting a vanity to try to get this discussion going. Congressional committee "hearings" or "investigations" are required to have a discrete legislative purpose (separation of powers). Congress is not a permanent Grand Jury or a Star Chamber. The practice of making "criminal referrals" to avoid breaching the authority of Article II (Executive) or Article III (Judicial) co-equal branches is not one of the "Legislative powers herein granted" when we created Congress. In fact, Congress is FORBIDDEN from Bills of Attainder against individuals for the exact reason that Congress is NOT an Executive or a Judicial body. It appears that...

He found the beef. A Wendy’s customer who flew into a rage when his drive-thru order was wrong unleashed fury and bullets on the fast-food workers he believed messed up his meal, according to local reports. Christian Ellis, 19, went to a Wendy’s location in Frisco, Texas, on Aug. 17, according to the local FOX station. After picking up his food at the drive-thru window, he went inside the store and began arguing with employees about what was in his Biggie Bag.