Free Republic

An innocent girl, a volleyball player innocently sitting in a park with friends, was gunned down in gang crossfire in Chicago. Killed by mistake at age 15 – just for being in a public place in a dangerous city – the girl’s mourning family would have been alone in their grief, no more than a statistic to the rest of America, if it weren’t for the fact that she had performed as a majorette in the president’s inaugural celebration a week before. So the story went national. Chicago’s 500-plus killings in 2012 alone, plus the countless thousands of attempted murders...

Reflections on the birthday of Ronald Reagan... Illinois calls itself the Land of Lincoln, proud of the self-educated man who made a national name for himself in Springfield, and rose from country lawyer to president when Illinois was still young. But Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and raised in Indiana; he only moved to Illinois when he came of age at 21. The great Union General Ulysses S. Grant too is credited as an Illinois president, having lived in Galena when the Civil War broke out and through his candidacy for the presidency. But Grant had lived all over...

Getting our heads around apparent irrational exuberance on Wall Street... On Friday, February 1, the market rally continued as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 14,010. Many investors rejoiced, and conservatives wondered if they were living on the same planet as the investment community. Unemployment is, after all, still at a publicly-declared 8%, a number that can only be reached if you stop counting a jobless person if his unemployment checks have run out, and if you consider an unemployed lawyer, accountant, salesman or buyer as “employed” if he bags groceries or delivers newspapers. The real number can be...

Chicago, home of one of the nation's most stringent gun bans for fifty years, has also been the source of many frightening statistics. The city of Chicago - not the greater metropolitan area, just Chicago proper - surpassed 500 homicides in 2012 all by itself. If gun bans are the solution, the problem must be something other than a murder epidemic, because this gun ban sure isn't solving that one. It's not people from outside Chicago committing the crimes, either. An easy out for the gun banners, if it were true, would be to simply prove that the villains are...

This may be difficult to believe, for a nation with a multi-trillion dollar economy and a massive government that is itself larger than most countries. Surely with as many accountants as many countries have people, the USA must have a budget! But no. We don’t have a budget, even though, dutifully, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a thoughtful and responsible budget every year. The U.S. Senate under Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, State of Insolvency) has been unable or unwilling to pass a budget for the past four years. They still spend money, however. Even without a budget,...

When over two dozen children and adults were murdered in a school in Connecticut in December, 2012, millions were horrified, millions mourned, millions prayed. The horror of the mass murder at Sandy Hook rightly focused attention on some of this society’s risks… but it was also quick to be used as propaganda by the Left, and in particular, by a president who has been itching for the right opportunity for four years. There have been mass murders before, even, sadly, during his presidency’s first term – an islamofascist terrorist at Fort Hood, a madman in a cinema at Aurora, Colorado...

Reflections on Gun Control and the Actions of a Tyrant... On December 1, 1958, a garbage can ignited in a basement stairwell at Our Lady of the Angels School, on Chicago’s west side. The fire spread quickly, and 95 lives were lost that awful day, 92 of them children. There was a chance it was arson, or just a boy playing with matches at the foot of the stairs – though it could have been something as innocent as a surprised smoker ditching the cigarette before being caught in the act. We’ll never know for sure; we only know it...

Thoughts on the growing drive to issue drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens… There is nothing inherently wrong with allowing non-citizens to legally drive in the United States. The United Nations Convention on International Road Traffic, for example, has been providing a framework for issuing International Driving Permits to world travelers ever since 1949. Without one, we Americans could not rent cars in most foreign countries, and we would be restricted to passenger trains and taxicabs overseas. The key to that permit, of course, is that it’s issued by the driver’s home country, his country of citizenship. We Americans get one...

The nation’s problems are almost all economic ones. That’s not to say that we don’t have social problems too, or that we don’t have defense problems too. But even those can be somewhat alleviated by fixing our economic problems. Too many of us don’t go to church or synagogue every week… too many of us don’t have intact families. And our nation is beset with threats from criminals from across our border and from terrorists from across the ocean. But if we were to fix our economic problems, one byproduct of that fix would be that those other problems would...

Time once again for a list of New Year’s Resolutions for the Republican Party. The party leaders haven’t taken my advice these past few years, so there’s no reason to believe they shall this year, but who knows? Perhaps if things get too dire, they’ll start looking to bloggers for solutions to the problems that their top consultants haven’t been able to solve. One can but hope. 1. Learn the Meaning of Compromise This isn’t entirely fair, but it’s still a good place to begin. Republicans are notorious for conceding defeat before negotiations begin. Let’s say for example that the...

The minor mob boss from the south of Europe learns about how hard it is for a small business to survive, with big government, high taxes, and EU austerity programs crushing your every effort... coming soon to a western nation near you?... ------------------ It was a good day for a walk. The sun was shining, the air was clear… the view from Athens, out across the lovely Aegian Sea, had never been so sparkling. So Greco put on his pea coat and fisherman’s cap, clipped his blackjack on his belt and checked his pocket for his switchblade, pulled on his...

(Today, our friendly mob boss learns the ultimate conclusion of punitive taxation:) Greco was making his rounds, one cool December morning, when he turned the corner and saw an unexpected sight. One of his clients, a shopkeeper who was never late with his protection payments, was sitting on the park bench in front of his shop, covered in bandages, gently rubbing his cheek and temples. “Giannis!” shouted Greco as he strode up. “What happened? Were you in an accident?” Giannis looked up. “Yeah, it was an accident, all right.” “You look like you were hit by a bus!” said Greco....

The nation is in recession. Home foreclosures continue to wreck lives, unemployment (when counted honestly) remains in the mid-teens, business startups are in virtual retreat. But not to worry, the president and the leaders of Congress are working on an agreement to raise real taxes and maybe, just maybe, to cut the projected increase in future spending a bit. Ooh. What a relief. Have none of this nation’s leaders, and none of the mainstream media, ever taken an econ class? Haven’t they even played back their own speeches from as recently as a year ago? What on earth are they...

Democrats like to shout that “the Richest Americans” must share in the sacrifice. It’s recently become the principal mantra of Barack Obama: that all this is going to hurt, a lot, and “the richest Americans” can best afford it, so they must share in the suffering. Some rich Americans, every so often, even admit that it’s true. From Rob Lowe in 1988 famously shouting back to George H.W. Bush “I don’t NEED your help!” to Warren Buffet today, rich people occasionally say that, yes, they can afford to suffer a larger tax bite more easily than can the rest of...

PUTTING 2012 UNDER A MICROSCOPE Reflections on the late disaster, a month after November 6… When disaster strikes, it is easy to see only the negatives, and easier still to cry out “All is lost.” Negativity rules the day, all the more so in politics after a national election. But there are lessons to be learned in every defeat, and if we objectively view these election results, we will see a foundation upon which a wise movement can build, to save this country from its current path of destruction. This won’t pretend to be an exhaustive list, but perhaps there...

“When in the Course of Human Events…” thus begins the most famous divorce decree in history, conceived by the Committee of Five in the Continental Congress, crafted principally by future governor and president Thomas Jefferson, with the helpful editing of their fellow delegates in Philadelphia, in June and July, 1776. It was indeed a divorce decree, not a letter of annulment. It did not declare that we had never been partnered with England; it acknowledged clearly that there had once been legitimate bonds between England and these colonies. But the Declaration of Independence analyzed the then-recent practices of King George...

In the 1760s, the British fought a world war, partially to defend her American colonies from French encroachment. When they tried to unfairly raise taxes to pay for that war, American colonists objected, so the British solved the problem in a way that suited the times: They merely mandated that virtually all American commerce must move through London. Everything had to be exported to London and imported from London… so that the king would be sure to get his cut. The colonists objected, and started a war of independence over it, because the king had them chained; this coastal nation...

It is said that people get the government they deserve. As the election of 2012 proves, this is woefully inaccurate in politics, because even if those who consciously voted for the destructive Democratic Party do deserve it, those who wisely voted against it certainly do not. The same saying is often said of the economy, particularly when something disastrous happens – a large-scale layoff, a manufacturer fleeing burdensome taxes or regulations for the welcoming shores of China or India, a company collapsing under the weight of an unreasonable union. But there too, the saying is inaccurate. Even if some deserve...

On the walls of my office, I have several prints of my heroes. General Washington on horseback, pointing his sword down at my computer as if to say “Get to work!”… Colonel Hamilton in profile, posing for a sawbuck… a photo of President Reagan in the Oval Office… a sketch above a quote, of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, reminding us that “The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the optimist, the opportunity in every difficulty.” Most imposing and inspiring is “Signing the Constitution” (yes, it’s a terrific poster-sized version of the famous Howard Chandler Christy mural of all 55...

Among the Obama campaign’s many accusations this year, one of the more interesting ones has been the claim that Mitt Romney was an “outsourcer” during his days at Bain Capital. When exploring this claim, we must remember the job of a company like Bain Capital: it’s to create value for the investors by building a successful company. The vast majority of companies that Bain shepherded to success during Romney’s tenure were and are, in fact, major employers, major retail, wholesale, or manufacturing firms that employ thousands and thousands of Americans. The net result of Mitt Romney being involved in the...