Free Republic

Shortened title. Full title: GOP Rep Calls on Congress to Divert Billions of ‘El Chapo’s’ Drug Funds to Help Construct Border Wall When it comes to constructing a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, one GOP member of Congress is offering a suggestion on how to get the funds for it. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) wrote a Fox News op-ed published on Tuesday in which he suggested that Congress divert the funds made by Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera to help secure the U.S. southern border. El Chapo is a convicted drug lord who will be sentenced on...

As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in The Washington Post: "Kudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs." The story began: "National Economic Council Director Lawrence Kudlow acknowledged Sunday that American consumers end up paying for the administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, contradicting President Trump's repeated inaccurate claim that the Chinese foot the bill." A free trade evangelical, Kudlow had conceded on Fox News that consumers pay the tariffs on products made abroad that they purchase here in the U.S. Yet that is by no means the...

"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow... "By their right arms the conquest must be wrought." So wrote Lord Byron of Greece's war of independence against the Turks, though the famed British poet would ignore his own counsel and die just days after arriving in Greece to join the struggle. Yet Byron's advice is the wise course for the United States, and for the people of Venezuela who seek to free their country of the grip of the incompetent and dictatorial regime of Nicolas Maduro. Let the Venezuelans decide their own destiny, as did we. As of today,...

Last Friday, in Christchurch, New Zealand, one of the more civilized places on earth, 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, an Australian, turned on his cellphone camera and set out to livestream his massacre of as many innocent Muslim worshippers as he could kill. Using a semi-automatic rifle, he murdered more than 40 men, women and children at one mosque, drove three miles to another, and there killed seven more. Dozens are still wounded, suffering and dying.

Recently, Congressman Vern Buchanan (R-FL) stood with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to support his “EL CHAPO” Act, which would use funds confiscated from the infamous drug lord and use it to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall. Now the congressman plans to pass a bill of his own to go after notorious gang members like MS-13. “We can’t allow vicious gangs like MS-13 to enter or live in the United States,” Buchanan said in a statement. “My bill would help ensure these criminals don’t slip through the cracks and threaten the lives of law enforcement and ordinary citizens.” The “Criminal...

"Record Numbers Crossing to U.S., Deluging Agents" was the page-one headline. The Times quoted Kevin K. McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection: "The system is well beyond capacity, and remains at the breaking point. ... This is ... a border security and a humanitarian crisis." Reporter Caitlin Dickerson explained what is behind CPB's alarm: "The number of migrant families crossing the Southwest border has once again broken records, with unauthorized entries nearly double what they were a year ago." She continued, "More than 76,000 migrants crossed the border without authorization in February, an 11-year high ... newcomers continue to...

Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., Monday called on the Department of Justice to immediately halt federal funding to the Nation of Islam, after the Washington Examiner first reported that the group has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government to teach religious studies programs to prison inmates. In a letter to the Justice Department obtained by the Washington Examiner, Buchanan called the report “disturbing” and said the government’s funding of the openly anti-Semitic black separatist group was “downright immoral.” “As you may know, the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have designated the Nation of Islam as...

Saturday, in Pittsburgh, a Sabbath celebration at the Tree of Life synagogue became the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in U.S. history. Eleven worshippers were killed by a racist gunman. Friday, we learned the identity of the crazed criminal who mailed pipe bombs to a dozen leaders of the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. From restaurants to Capitol corridors, this campaign season we have seen ugly face-offs between leftist radicals and Republican senators. Are we more divided than we have ever been? Are our politics more poisoned? Are we living in what...

AFTER A 50-YEAR siege, the great strategic fortress of liberalism has fallen. With the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court seems secure for constitutionalism — perhaps for decades. The shrieks from the gallery of the Senate chamber as the vote came in last Saturday, and the sight of that bawling mob clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court as the new justice took his oath, confirm it. The Democratic Party has sustained a historic defeat. And the triumph is President Trump’s. To unite the party whose nomination he had won, Donald Trump pledged to select his high...

A dress rehearsal for impeachment Pat Buchanan: The assault on Kavanaugh is the playbook for what is planned for Trump In his 30 hours of public testimony before the judiciary committee prior to Thursday, no senator had raised an issue of a sexual misconduct. But if Brett Kavanaugh is elevated to the Supreme Court, it will be because, in his final appearance, he tore up the script assigned to him. He set aside his judicial demeanor to fight for his good name with the passion and righteous rage of the innocent and good man he believes himself to be. More...

Our diversity is our greatest strength. After playing clips of Democratic politicians reciting that truth of modern liberalism, Tucker Carlson asked, "How, precisely, is diversity our strength? Since you've made this our new national motto, please be specific." Reaction to Carlson's question, with some declaring him a racist for having raised it, suggests that what we are dealing with here is not a demonstrable truth but a creed not subject to debate. Yet the question remains valid: Where is the scientific, historic or empirical evidence that the greater the racial, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity of a nation, the stronger...

The campaign to overturn the 2016 election and bring down President Trump shifted into high gear this week. Inspiration came Saturday morning from the altar of the National Cathedral where our establishment came to pay homage to John McCain. Gathered there were all the presidents from 1993 to 2017, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Henry Kissinger, the leaders of both houses of Congress, and too many generals and admirals to list. Striding into the pulpit, Obama delivered a searing indictment of the...

The campaign to overturn the 2016 election and bring down President Trump shifted into high gear this week. Inspiration came Saturday morning from the altar of the National Cathedral where our establishment came to pay homage to John McCain. Gathered there were all the presidents from 1993 to 2017, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Henry Kissinger, the leaders of both houses of Congress, and too many generals and admirals to list. Striding into the pulpit, Obama delivered a searing indictment of the...

This summer, the sex scandal that has bedeviled the Catholic Church went critical.First came the stunning revelation that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington and friend to presidents, had for decades been a predator-priest who preyed on seminarians and abused altar boys, and whose depravity was widely known and covered up.Then came the report of a Pennsylvania grand jury that investigated six dioceses and found that some 300 priests had abused 1,000 children over the last 70 years.The bishop of Pittsburgh, Donald Wuerl, now Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, defrocked some of these corrupt priests, but reassigned others to new...

In backing John Brennan's right to keep his top-secret security clearance, despite his having charged the president with treason, the U.S. intel community has chosen to fight on indefensible terrain. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seemed to recognize that Sunday when he conceded that ex-CIA Director Brennan had the subtlety of "a freight train" and his rhetoric had become "an issue in and of itself." After Donald Trump's Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin, Brennan had called the president's actions "nothing short of treasonous." The battle is now engaged. Trump cannot back down. He must defy and defeat the...

Friday, deep into the 17th year of America's longest war, Taliban forces overran Ghazni, a provincial capital that sits on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar. The ferocity of the Taliban offensive brought U.S. advisers along with U.S. air power, including a B-1 bomber, into the battle. "As the casualty toll in Ghazni appeared to soar on Sunday," The Wall Street Journal reported, "hospitals were spilling over with dead bodies, corpses lay in Ghazni's streets, and gunfire and shelling were preventing relatives from reaching cemeteries to bury their dead." In Yemen Monday, a funeral was held in the town square...

1) He is right in that these nations pose no threat to us. 2) Iran has been poking us in the eye for 38 years. We owe them a big punch in the nose. If they're in Syria I say take them out and let Israel get in a good hit while we're at it. Russia meeting with us/Israel + Iran protests make it an opportune time. Hezbollah is in Lebanon. No need for invasion/US troops. Just stir the pot. Buchannan is naive on this one. We can engage without being involved.

"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Under the Constitution, these are the offenses for which presidents can be impeached. And to hear our elites, Donald Trump is guilty of them all. Trump's refusal to challenge Vladimir Putin's claim at Helsinki -- that his GRU boys did not hack Hillary Clinton's campaign -- has been called treason, a refusal to do his sworn duty to protect and defend the United States, by a former director of the CIA. Famed journalists and former high officials of the U.S. government have called Russia's hacking of the DNC "an act of war"...

My wife saw Pat Bucahanan's recent book on Nixon for sale at Dollar Tree in hardback for $1. If you like Buchanan as an author, or respect him as an authority on Nixon, that's a hard bargain to pass up.

As tens of thousands marched in the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in support of the regime, the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps assured Iranians the "sedition" had been defeated. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari is whistling past the graveyard. The protests that broke out a week ago and spread and became riots are a fire bell in the night for the Islamic Republic. The protesters denounced President Hassan Rouhani, re-elected last year with 57 percent of the vote, for failing to curb inflation or deliver the benefits he promised when Iran signed the nuclear deal. Supreme Leader Ayatollah...