Free Republic

The resignation of national security advisor Michael Flynn has the anti-Trump media declaring the new administration a "mess," in "turmoil" and thrown into "chaos." Funny, these same Chicken Littles barely shrugged their shoulders during the turmoil-laden first 100 days of Barack Obama's first term. Some perspective is in order. Remember the withdrawal of Obama's pick for National Intelligence Council chairman, Charles Freeman, in March 2009? Obama had tapped the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia for the sensitive post despite abundant conflicts of interests. Freeman had served for four years on the board of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation,...

First Lady Melania Trump announced on Tuesday that the White House would re-open for public tours beginning on March 7. The White House had been closed to tours for the past seven weeks, which is an "unusually long" spell between administrations. In the past, the White House has re-opened to the public within days after the inauguration. .@FLOTUS Melania Trump is pleased to announce the White House Visitors Office will resume public tours on March 7th https://t.co/FhJUf1UP1m— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 14, 2017 “I am excited to reopen the White House to the hundreds of thousands of visitors...

Is there no end to the political hypocrisy elected officials will throw at us? No sense of decency or patriotism in the media? No sense that re-publication of baseless attacks is actually complicity, and damages their own credibility? Is there no understanding that one-sided stories undermine civic dialogue? Two dozen stories over the past three weeks hit the Trump White House and cabinet. So many of these have so little truth, perspective or proportion that observers are left speechless. A “removed bust” of Martin Luther King was not removed. “Bad faith” averred on executive orders was not bad faith. Smears...

RUSH: Now, I mentioned at the beginning of the program a piece that I read at a publication called Foreign Policy. It’s a magazine. It’s owned by the Washington Post, and it’s an effort to compete with another magazine called Foreign Affairs. Foreign Affairs is a very august publication of the Council on Foreign Relations — which, of course, has a symbiotic relationship with the Trilateral Commission. Now, this is the Washington Post attempt to get in on the business of elite establishment types reading about foreign policy. Now, these people have nothing to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy...

On Monday, the hosts of Morning Joe mocked and berated White House adviser Stephen Miller for his recent comments regarding the court ruling against President Trump's immigration order. Tuesday morning was no different, as the show came back from a commercial break by airing a distorted, grainy black-and-white video of Miller. The video contained the statement he gave on the network Sunday shows concerning the President’s executive powers and spliced Miller’s quotes attempting to make him look sinister and menacing. After the video concluded, host Joe Scarborough declared, “Wow,” and journalist Willie Geist agreed, “That’s terrifying.” Co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed...

RUSH: Hey, in the midst of all of this, Trump just signed his first bill today, first piece of legislation. You know what it does? I was watching CNN. They’re just livid. CNN is reporting that Trump’s bill that he signed weakens oil and gas and mining regulations. And you should have seen them when they announced this. They’re just shaking their heads, “Oh, my God.” And what they’re shaking their heads about is he won’t stop. We can’t make him stop! We thought we had him paralyzed with Flynn, he just keeps doing it. And that’s what’s gonna continue...

RUSH: Are you ready for this? Now, it’s CNN, so consider that. Headline: “Republican Senators [Republican senators!] Call for Russia Investigation, Flynn Testimony.” Are you ready for the lede? “The Senate’s second-ranking Republican and other GOP senators are calling for an investigation into connections between President Donald Trump and Russia, and want former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to testify. Sen. John Cornyn, who has called for an investigation into Trump’s tie to Russia before Flynn resigned, told reporters Tuesday that the Senate standing committees with oversight of intelligence need to investigate Flynn. Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of the...

Coal is a gift that we have in abundance. The vast reserves of coal guarantee the United States energy for hundreds of years. Coal is efficient. No fuel, other than uranium, is cheaper. Coal burns clean in modern plants. Strip-mining coal in the modern way improves the landscape. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. demonstrated coal reserve base is 477 billion 2,000-pound tons, enough for more than 500 years at current consumption rates. In the eyes of the diminishing crowd of believers in catastrophic global warming, coal is evil, a demon. Why? Because it is mostly carbon, and...

"You must always leave the wall" -- "The Fantasticks" While the debate continues about when, how quickly and who will pay for a "wall" across America's Southern border, at least one country known for its liberal politics is offering a lesson. The "City of Light," Paris, France, has decided to spend 20 million euros ($22 million USD) to build a wall around the Eiffel Tower. Why? To limit the risk of terrorism. Bloomberg.com reports that a city official, Jean-Francois Martins, said the idea is to have a "permanent and aesthetic barrier" around the city's most famous landmark. "Sadly," he said,...

My wife of 51 years passed away last Saturday after a long battle against multiple health issues. We met in the musical theater. She was in it. I wanted to be on stage. I have a passable singing voice. Her contralto voice was powerful and perfectly pitched. She could hit the back seats without amplification. She traveled with some of Broadway's biggest stars on the summer stock circuit, but ultimately chose another life -- a life with me and our four children. When they were older I urged her to finish her college education while I kept house. I was...

Congratulations to Secretary DeVos. She will now roll up her sleeves and work to ensure that our children receive the education they deserve, and not the education they have been receiving for a long, long time. We know that she wants to begin by devolving a good portion of the responsibility for education from the federal bureaucracy to the states. As noted by E. Jeffrey Ludwig in American Thinker on February 9, 2017, "Federalism in the area of education with its restored respect for state authority is the key to change and progress." But this will just be a start,...

Powerful people, especially in politics, often get into trouble when they pay too much attention to the people who are blindly devoted to them and not enough to their critics. They wind up in a bubble, believing they're as wonderful as their admirers think, and they learn nothing from those who oppose them. Donald Trump may be guilty of that. He often plays to his most loyal fans while tweeting trash about his critics. If you thought the presidency was going to somehow change him, think again. Hardly a day goes by when he doesn't give his progressive opponents ammunition...

Recent media coverage of two Virginia mosque permit proceedings repeats charges of local bigotry and bias directed at the Islamic organizations. At the same time, news reports featured the same accusations, this time originating from a New Jersey federal judge’s ruling against Bernards Township zoning officials and residents. In all of these cases, the proceedings involved a mosque application to build in a residential or quasi-residential area. Yet case studies suggest that other priorities may be compelling the residents and municipal officials in the neighborhoods where complex mosque applications are being filed. For example, in 2011 the city council in...

I hear a lot of calloused arguments in favor of abortion. Most of them come from leftists. Unfortunately, I occasionally hear them coming from self-described libertarians and conservatives. Unlike leftists who are wrong on every issue, the person claiming to be conservative or libertarian is usually right on most issues. So it is worth trying to offer them a respectful and well-reasoned response. Below, I respond to just such a reader. Her words are indented and in italics, mine are not:I ask pro-lifers: who will take care of all the unwanted babies if we were to ban abortion. (There is...

Why should Americans feel obligated to open our borders for Muslims to move here en masse? Foreign nationals in foreign countries do not have U.S. Constitutional rights. As the Supreme Court has held, an unadmitted and nonresident alien "had no constitutional right of entry to this country as a nonimmigrant or otherwise." (Mandel, 408 U.S. at 762; see Plasencia, 459 U.S. at 32.) Beyond this fact, the president has plenary power over foreign affairs and this includes, under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the power to suspend or impose restrictions on the entry of foreign nationals if he...

Here's a news flash for Democrats and other Americans on the left: Four years ago, when Barack Obama was re-elected president, conservatives were just as depressed as you are now that Hillary Clinton lost and Donald Trump won. I describe this as news because this undoubtedly surprises many of you. You probably never gave a moment's thought to how depressed conservatives were in 2012. (Why would you? Unlike you, we shun hysteria.) But believe me -- we were. Many of us believed that President Obama was doing great damage to America. Now we are convinced that he did more damage...

Former President Obama failed at transforming America, but did succeeded at transforming the Democratic Party. That is why we are witnessing an unprecedented all-out war against the new president.  Since President Trump’s inauguration, the headlines are all about leftist groups forcing Democratic Party politicians to adopt their strategy of “Resist!” and claiming President Trump is a threat to the country.Believe your eyes:  women in pink pussy hats led by a jihadi-supporting Muslim in a hijab, and youths in black masks attacking Trump supporters with clubs, are precisely what they look like – ideologues and extremists. So where did all these...

Speed cameras became a cash cow for the small village of New Miami, Ohio. The town, with a population of about 2,200, collected over $3 million in revenue from heavy-footed motorists after it installed stand-alone speed cameras along one of its major throughways, US 127. The speed cameras in New Miami, which is less than one square mile, automatically fined motorists $95 if they drove faster than 50 miles per hour. It proved to be a lucrative venture for the village just 35 miles north of Cincinnati. Flush with cash, it raised its annual budget from roughly $1.5 million to...

RUSH: I want to get to some of this immigration news because I firmly believe that immigration remains ballgame in terms of the future of the United States remaining the nation it was founded to be. Immigration is the primary reason Donald Trump was elected. It remains a focal point for people that support and voted for Trump, and that executive order… Trump supporters are livid about this in every which way. The media’s not changing minds among Trump supporters on that executive order. They’re angry at the judiciary, as they should be.And these ICE raids that are happening? People...

RUSH: Did anybody watch the Grammys last night? Just one little observation about it. It’s something that you’re not gonna see reported in a lot of places, but let’s weigh some things. Every day, multiple times a day, all day long all you are seeing is stories on the opposition to Trump in the form of rioters and protesters, you name it, people upset with Trump’s immigration, his executive order, all of that. It’s just nothing but opposition. And, as I’ve said, the objective is to make you, Trump supporters, believe that Trump’s losing it, that the country hates Trump,...