Free Republic

Editor's note: Below are the video and transcript to Charlie Kirk’s speech at the Freedom Center's Texas Weekend, held June 17 - 18, 2015 at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas.. CK: I come from Chicago. And the fun thing about Chicago is we have term limits -- one term in office, one term in jail. Little bit different than most. We have perfected the vote early-vote often model. My grandmother was a Republican precinct committee woman on the north side of town her whole life. She passed away in 1992, and she's been voting Democrat ever since. But unfortunately, it's true....

When Hawaii Health Director Loretta Fuddy, a central player in the production of Barack Obama’s controversial birthcertificate died in a mysterious plane crash, those of us who are convinced that the birth certificate was forged, suspected foul play. Of course we were belittled. A month later, the cause of her death was released, cardiac arrhythmia. Now, a recently discovered report from a Maui Police Detective reveals that Loretta Fuddy’s heart wasn’t the problem after all. She drowned…. with her life jacket on.

nternal email reveals that three months before fatal terrorist attack, an explosion at compound wall “created a fear factor when it came to working the night shift” (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained 130 pages of new State Department documents revealing that local security guards working for Blue Mountain Group (BMG), the firm hired to protect the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, repeatedly abandoned their posts “out of fear of their safety” in the months leading up to the deadly terrorist attack on the special mission compound. The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch pursuant...

A new special committee created to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, will hold its first public hearing next week, the panel announced Monday. The hearing will focus on the implementation of security recommendations made by the State Department's Accountability Review Board that was set up to investigate the surroundings that led to the attacks. The review board issued almost 30 recommendations in late 2012 after concluding that "systemic” State Department failures led to inadequate security at the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. Details of the hearing, including a witness list and on what day it will take place,...

I have long had a love/hate relationship with pop music. Growing up as an aspiring jazz pianist, I wasn’t interested in listening to anything that might appeal to those that I deemed to possess a less than refined palette of musical taste. This willful ignorance continued for some time; it was not until I began making YouTube videos (and subsequently receiving requests for modern pop songs) that I decided to drop my preconceived notions and examine contemporary pop with an open mind. What I found is that, despite my initial aversion to the stuff I was hearing, I was unable...

When the economy shrinks substantially over the course of an economic quarter, tepid recoveries tend to look, well, tepid. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has slashed its predictions for US economic growth in 2014: The Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday forecast that the U.S. economy will grow by just 1.5 percent in 2014, undermined by a poor performance during the first three months of the year. The new assessment was considerably more pessimistic than the Obama administration's, which predicted last month that the economy would expand by 2.6 percent this year even though it contracted by an annual rate of...

A local radio station in St. Louis reported on their Facebook page last night that Michael Brown’s partner in crime, Dorian Johnson, has now admitted to police that Michael Brown attacked Officer Wilson and tried to take his gun:

You could almost hear the groans from Democrat Jason Carter’s camp last week when his grandfather, former President Jimmy Carter, co-authored an op-ed arguing that Hamas should be recognized as a legitimate political actor. Gov. Nathan Deal has since tried to tie his November opponent to his grandpa’s views of Hamas, the militant faction which the U.S. considers a terrorist group. Others, including some Democratic supporters, have questioned why Carter didn’t come out strongly against his grandfather’s position. Carter’s strategists don’t want the campaign to answer for his grandfather every time he says something controversial. They also recognize Deal and...

This week, we experience the deep, jarring irony of the President from Chicago whose entire career was built on a politically prescient position against the Iraq War, whose biggest foreign policy “success” was pulling American troops out of a relatively stable Iraq to satisfy a political promise, leaving behind the political implosion and brutality of today, reinitiating war in Iraq. President Barack Obama restarting a war in Iraq. It is truly remarkable. But to what end? I think it’s the right move to offer humanitarian assistance to innocents cornered and strategic military assistance against ISIS in Iraq. Much like the...

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) is calling his recent fight with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “a walk in the park” on Monday, after he says she called him a “liar” on the House floor. “She came running over crossing the floor, which is a breach of protocol … and she came up to me wagging her finger and saying that I was a liar, a liar, and I simply said, ‘No, I do my research and I have my facts straight, perhaps you should try that,’” Marino told Fox News on Monday recalling the event. “I’m a former prosecutor...

Former Democratic congressman Barney Frank has some tough words for President Barack Obama about his handling of Obamacare. "The rollout was so bad, and I was appalled -- I don't understand how the president could have sat there and not been checking on that on a weekly basis," Frank tells the Huffington Post in a recent interview. "But frankly, he should never have said as much as he did, that if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it. That wasn't true. And you shouldn't lie to people. And they just lied to people."

A man charged with the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry has been extradited to the United States. Tucson News Now reports: Ivan Soto-Barraza will be arraigned on Friday, Aug. 1 in federal court in Tucson, according to the Department of Justice. Terry died in a shootout in 2010 after confronting some border bandits south of Tucson. Soto-Barraza was caught in Mexico in September 2013. He is charged with first degree murder, second degree murder, conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery, attempted interference with commerce by robbery, use and carrying a firearm during a crime of violence...

A new national survey conducted by the Associated Press suggests that illegal immigration and the border crisis could be morphing into major political liabilities for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. Key take-aways:

Documents Detail Road Map of over 200 Conflict-of-Interest Rulings that led to $48 Million in Income for Clinton Entities Judicial Watch announced today the release of more than 200 conflict-of-interest reviews by State Department ethics advisers of proposed Bill Clinton speaking and consulting engagements during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. The documents were obtained as result of a federal court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on May 28, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)). The lawsuit is ongoing. June 2011 documents show that the State...

No one knows just how many tens of thousands of Central American nationals -- most of them desperate, unescorted children and teens -- are streaming across America's southern border. Yet this phenomenon offers us a proverbial teachable moment about the paradoxes and hypocrisies of Latin American immigration to the United States. For all the pop romance in Latin America associated with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, few Latinos prefer to immigrate to such communist utopias or to socialist spins-offs like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador or Peru. Instead, hundreds of thousands of poor people continue to risk danger to enter democratic, free-market America,...

Late in the afternoon of Saturday, May 31, Barack Obama strode confidently to a lectern in the White House Rose Garden flanked by the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who had gone missing from his platoon in the mountains of Afghanistan in June 2009. “This morning I called Bob and Jani Bergdahl and told them that after nearly five years in captivity, their son, Bowe, is coming home,” Obama said. The president thanked service members who “recovered Sergeant Bergdahl and brought him safely out of harm’s way.” Obama also expressed gratitude to the diplomats who had handled the...

Monday on CNN's "The Lead," host Jake Tapper reported on the growing backlash from U.S. military members to the Obama administration for the deal that resulted in the swap of five terrorism suspects for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner of war who the Taliban had held hostage since 2009. U.S. Army Sgt. Josh Korder joined Tapper under the threat of possible repercussions from the military to discuss Bergdahl's behavior while they served together in Blackfoot company, second platoon in Afghanistan. "He is at best a deserter, and at worst a traitor," Korder said of Bergdahl.

President Barack Obama and the woman who likely wants to be his successor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, held a secret meeting at the White House on Thursday. In a strange sequence of events, the White House was forced to confirm the previously undisclosed Obama-Clinton lunch summit after People magazine tweeted — then mysteriously deleted — the news about the meeting. “The President enjoyed an informal, private lunch with Secretary Clinton at the White House this afternoon,” a White House official said. Because the lunch had not been on the president’s public schedule, Roll Call reporter Steve T. Dennis,...

Translation: If you disliked our plan, you still have to keep our plan. The Obama administration took a victory lap based on dubious-at-best enrollment figures after the deadline passed to sign up for ObamaCare, but Americans aren’t running alongside. Public opinion remains largely fixed, Gallup reports, more than a month later (via Taegan Goddard): Although the Obama administration is boasting higher-than-expected enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, Americans’ attitudes toward the healthcare law have changed only marginally since the open enrollment period ended for 2014. A steady 43% of Americans approve of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as...

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability. Almost nothing that former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during or after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for...