Free Republic

Traveling after tax season is a regular experience. While it may be “regular,” it is nonetheless still a special experience. Today’s travel is so easy compared to even 20 years ago. Except for the security issues, you can be halfway around the world, in a completely different culture, faster than you can blink. There is a lot to observe about life while traveling. How small the world has gotten. There are people all over the world walking around aimlessly staring at their cell phones. They are misnamed “smartphones” because they certainly do make people stupid. Watching people walk across streets...

I used to be a doubter who would cringe, just a little, at any mention of “the deep state.” I admit it, it all seemed a little far-fetched to me that there was this cabal of careerists conspiring from within the government to harm President Donald Trump when I first heard it. I never doubted there were individuals doing it, but a wide net of conspirators seemed like something out of a bad movie more than anything that could actually happen in the United States. I was wrong, very wrong, the deep state is real. But there is much more...

On Friday, President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services announced it would be updating the Title X regulation framework to better enforce the letter of the law, which outlaws federal funding for abortion, and to ensure that federal family planning dollars do not go to facilities that perform abortion. This new framework is based largely on President Reagan’s similar Title X regulation in 1988, which was challenged in court but eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan.However, up to now, the framework has never truly been enforced. President Clinton quickly ditched it as soon as he took...

During his sunset years, the great American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison invested a great deal of time and energy in a project that he felt sure would be not just profitable, but essential for U.S. national security. Along with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, in the 1920s and 30s he sponsored botanical research into finding an alternative source of rubber. His reasoning was simple: at the time, rubber came from Europe's colonies in Africa and Asia, and from countries in Latin America. It was therefore possible that, in a major war, the U.S. could be cut off from foreign...

Maybe it’s a matter of timing. Maybe I’m not giving this a fair shake. But whenever I happen to tune in to CNN, there’s a panel of talking heads discussing President Trump and the porn star. Or President Trump and the Mueller investigation. Or President Trump and whether he’ll be impeached. Or President Trump and Jerusalem. Or President Trump and Saudi Arabia. Or President Trump and Iran. Or President Trump and North Korea. Or President Trump and the American economy. Or President Trump and pro-life legislation. Or President Trump and national security – or whatever the major topic is –...

Robert Mueller’s politicized investigation into allegations that President Trump or the Trump campaign or some Trump associate somehow colluded with Russians continues unproven but unabated. Many think partisan politics ensure it will not be concluded or terminated before the fall 2018 elections.Federal District Court Judge T. S. Ellis may have rebuked Mueller for attempting to wield “unfettered power” and actually being motivated primarily by a desire to hurt the President. But Mr. Mueller seems determined to find collusion somewhere – except where it seems blatantly obvious: in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s dealings with Putin oligarchs and the Clinton...

A brief direct message on Twitter gave me the grave news I feared the most: President Trump endorsed John Cox, a Chicago-born businessman who carpet-bagged to California five years ago, for Governor of California.I am stunned, and it made me sick to my stomach. Full disclosure: I support Assemblyman Travis Allen for governor, the candidate who has been outspoken about his support for Trump and his agenda from the beginning.But the bigger issue comes to the following questions: Why would Trump support Cox instead of Allen?Who is giving advice to the President? Did he make this decision himself?How does...

"We called the White House and they acted swiftly on the Friday event, which has since been postponed," said a staff member for Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who complained that the event would have openly undermined President Donald Trump’s agenda on Cuba."The event in question has been postponed," a State Department official confirmed."This (event) was designed to embarrass the president and Pompeo—somebody needs to be held to account," one source said. "The fact that State Department officials were advancing a program that is so slanted and completely at odds with the president's directive on Cuba, I am concerned what...

President Donald Trump continues to address the American people’s practical needs. Now, he is out to reduce drug costs with his latest initiative “American Patients First.” Barack Obama recognized there was a health care problem. But he took the wrong action by pushing through Congress legislation that dramatically raised the cost of health insurance and reduced the medical choices for many Americans. After making the health care problem worse, the Left fixated on pharmaceutical costs. And prices are too high. Noted Alex Azar II, the Secretary of Health and Human Services: “This burden has become a threat to the...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was the leader of the #Resistance legal strategy, focused seemingly more on litigating against President Donald Trump’s policies than representing the interest of his state. He was using the job to build a national platform. And why not? Two of the last three Democratic governors—Eliot Spitzer and Andrew Cuomo—were high profile attorneys general, using it as a springboard for bigger ambitions. Schneiderman, after resigning last week in disgrace, will never reach those ambitions. Four women accused him of physical abuse. Schneiderman resigned just hours after the allegations he denied were made.The massive scandal that represents much of what...

Is torture always morally wrong? Is it sometimes justified?These are questions swirling around the nomination of Gina Haspel to head the CIA. Critics (mainly Senate Democrats) claim that torture is always wrong, even though some of those senators were aware of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” for years and never once complained about it. In her defense, Karl Rove told Fox News viewers that whatever we do is legitimate if it’s for the defense of the United States.As I explain below, both sides are wrong. But first things first.Zero Dark Thirty. This is Hollywood’s version of Haspel’s backstory. She apparently supervised...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Jenny Beth Martin.***“I say to Congress: I will never sign another bill like this again.”President Trump made this crystal clear following the massive, last-minute funding bill in March, and he is serious. However, Congress has not gotten the message.Several weeks have passed since the president issued this warning, and Washington is still spiraling towards another 11th-hour spending battle. We can see it clear as day, but many career politicians cannot.Action must be taken immediately to overcome the following obstacles.First, obstruction. Senate Democrats are waging an historic campaign to keep Trump from getting...

Don’t be fooled by the terminology. Net neutrality isn’t a tech term that will be hard for you to comprehend. You will get it in an instant, I promise. It’s the same old socialism, just rebranded to make it tech-trendy.There’s nothing neutral about net neutrality. It simply means everyone pays more, for things they need and don’t need, all indiscriminately, like taxes. Net neutrality is just internet socialism. People who originally fought for net neutrality were afraid of “unregulated capitalism.” Red flags all over the place. Why else did you think Democrats wanted it so badly? Senate Democrats just voted to keep their...

The liberal media made fools out of themselves Wednesday as nearly every major news outlet rushed to breathlessly report that President Trump had called all illegal immigrants to the United States “animals.” Of course, the glaring problem with their claims was that they were totally false. And despite the fact the media had to issue reams of retractions and corrections, NBC Nightly News and Spanish-language networks Univision and Telemundo kept up the charade Thursday evening. Here is Trump’s comment, complete with the full context: UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: There could be an MS-13 gang member I know about, if they don't reach...

If ever there were a “fake news” story, it’s this one.At a roundtable meeting on Wednesday about U.S. immigration policies, including California’s so-called “sanctuary law,” President Trump referred to “bad people” being deported from the United States as “animals,” sparking intense backlash from the everything-Trump-says-and-does-is-racist media.“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country,” Trump said. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at...

President Donald Trump rejects the narrative that Russia wanted him to win. USA Today examined each of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency, the company that employed 12 of the 13 Russians indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for interfering with the 2016 election. It turns out only about 100 of its ads explicitly endorsed Trump or opposed Hillary Clinton. Most of the fake ads focused on racial division, with many of the ads attempting to exploit what Russia perceives, or wants America to perceive, as severe racial tension between blacks and whites. Think of...

Remember the movie, “When a Stranger Calls,” originally made in 1979 and remade in 2006? It’s about a babysitter who it harassed and threatened by a prank caller who ends up in the house the whole time. As a nation, we face a similar situation.There is no military on the planet that can defeat the United States, and no external force who could take us down. But we do face the threat of destruction, internally from liberals and their “progressive” policies.Not one policy, it’s more of a “death from a thousand cuts” scenario, and it’s hard to believe destruction isn’t...

According to Hamas, 50 Hamas members were killed during their terror attempt to breach the Israeli border. The other 12 that Hamas claimed to have died appear to be some of the children that Hamas encouraged people to bring to the “Great Return March” to overtake Israel and massacre Israelis.  Through the terrifying attempt to breach the Israeli border, Hamas terrorists achieved significant destruction only half a mile from Israeli homes. They have thrown rocks and explosives, released firebomb kites into Israeli towns with swastikas on them (because they want to burn “the Jews,” they explained to NPR), used wire...

All major liberal policy positions have one thing in common – normal people like you are always supposed to pick up the checks liberals write when running their mouths about caring and kindness. Some of these are annoying, like how the answer to the looming crisis of it maybe being slightly hotter in 100 years (or colder – it doesn’t matter) is that you ditch your SUV and ride on a bus where and when they tell you like a sucker. Some of these are expensive. Have you ever heard a liberal say, “Gosh, maybe instead of taxing hardworking people’s...

Ever since Donald J. Trump won a stunning victory against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, the Left was convinced there was something at play to cause this event. How could the politically tone deaf Hillary lose? How could a woman with no charisma, economic agenda, or political skill lose? How could a woman who wrote off half the country as deplorable racists lose? You know the answer to this, but for liberals it had to be the Russians. The mocking of the GOP over Russia being our biggest geopolitical rival was relegated to the trashcan. Now, it was the...