Free Republic

Like many Americans, I am horrified by the brutality many illegal immigrants encounter when they flee atrocious living conditions in their home countries. But, unlike the Obama Administration and certain federal court judges, I am not confused about where this brutality takes place: not in Arizona or other American states, but in a diverse group of countries, including those with the gall to berate America for its fair and just immigration laws. Consider Mexico, where, until 2008, illegal immigrants were handed prison sentences of one-and-a-half to ten years. Though that law was reformed, Mexican police are still required to check...

Statistically, it’s been a rough few years for the abortion-rights crowd. The numbers of abortions, abortion providers and abortion facilities have declined, and numerous polls have discovered a majority pro-life America for the first time in decades. Perhaps worst of all, the number of medical students training to perform abortions has plummeted. As Susan Hill of the National Women’s Health Foundation told the Washington Post last year, “Our doctors are graying and are not being replaced. …The situation is grave.” Not that pro-lifers believe this is any time to relax. Abortion remains the most common surgical procedure for American women....

According to conventional wisdom, anti-abor- tion advocates are vulnerable to charges of being anti-woman and anti-science. Pro-lifers subordinate dispassionate scientific inquiry to irrational religious belief, many people believe, and their "fetus fetish" blinds them to the plight of women in crisis pregnancies. But two novel laws passed recently in Nebraska explode those myths by highlighting how pro-lifers have embraced women and seized the mantle of science by revealing exactly what it is those who abort are choosing. On July 15, the Women's Health Protection Act will take effect. The law will require women seeking abortions to be screened for mental...

Rashad Hussain, President Obama’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), last month named his boss America’s “educator-in-chief on Islam.” That wasn’t surprising given the President’s Muslim roots and his affinity for some Islamic traditions (he once wrote that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth”). Obama clearly takes this title seriously, as recent events have shown. But Hussain’s designation was ironic because the more Obama talks about Islam, the clearer it becomes that he doesn’t seem to understand its most devout adherents. Obama refuses to acknowledge that radical Islamists are...

President Barack Obama won in 2008 with the vigorous support of young voters. Four years after the Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) won voters 29 and younger by just nine percentage points, Obama won them by 34 points — 66 percent to 32 percent. Given how enthusiastically young voters embraced Obama, many assume that his policies have had largely positive effects on America’s youth. But a closer look reveals that Obama’s agenda harms many young Americans in important ways. In fact, many may be beginning to feel that they literally cannot afford to be as exuberant about the...

In introducing his last Supreme Court nominee 13 months ago, President Obama gushed forth like an out-of-control oil spill about what he saw as Sonia Sotomayor’s main qualification—her “wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey.” Obama lavishly praised her “distinguished career,” which included having worked “at almost every level of our judicial system.” All this courtroom time, he assured us, provided Sotomayor “with a depth of experience and a breadth of perspective that will be invaluable as a Supreme Court justice.” “Walking in the door,” he continued, “she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on...

Anti-abortion advocates have long contended that abortion produces two victims: the unborn child, and his or her mother, who, a mounting body of research affirms, risks physical and emotional injury. But there is evidence that abortion often involves a third victim, one who is typically dismissed when he is acknowledged at all: the child’s father. Postabortion syndrome, a variant of post-traumatic stress disorder, is a subject of considerable controversy. Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy groups maintain that the emotional effects of abortion are “largely positive.” But it is now beyond dispute that after having an abortion, many women experience...

It is often said in politics that if both sides are angry with you, then you must be doing something right. If you’re being assailed from the Right and the Left, then you can probably take pride in having avoided the demands of the extremes and arriving at the pragmatic center. That’s the narrative many Democratic spinmeisters no doubt would like us to believe about President Obama and his congressional allies. But it doesn’t apply. Yes liberal activists are noisy, and the Tea Partiers are upset. But so are many other Americans across the political spectrum. Liberal outrage only underscores...

British journalist Melanie Phillips discusses the West’s civilizational crisis. Could you explain the “Princess Obama” syndrome? Phillips: Yes, it comes from the fact that I look at two phenomena, the cult that surrounded Princess Diana in Britain and the cult that surrounded Barack Obama when he was running for president. Of course the shine has come off Barack Obama, but I was looking at this extraordinary hype that surrounded him when he was running for president. In both cases it seemed to me that the reason for the hysteria and the hype was that the public was projecting onto both...

At the nexus of the Democrats’ two most urgent policy priorities — reducing CO2 emissions and immigration reform that includes amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants — lies an uneasy reality: Enactment of the latter may prove to be the key obstacle to achieving the former. The economic and national security implications of open borders have been examined in depth. Less study, however, has been devoted to the possible environmental impact of immigration. People migrate to the United States to improve their standard of living. But the liberal wish of immigration amnesty may have deleterious effects on the environment, as...

Think of the three or four words that most aptly describe the Left, and the word “secular” would certainly be among them. A defining trend of the last two generations is that as culture war issues related to human life, family and religious freedom have emerged, the Left’s willingness to talk about faith has faded. In fact, for them, faith was an invalid viewpoint to include in any debate. It is therefore interesting that whenever liberal politicians do find their religious voices they try to wrap their big government, socialist agenda in the adornment of Christianity. Other than Barack Obama,...

One of the narratives that’s emerged in the media’s shallow examination of Elena Kagan’s record and temperament suggests that the Supreme Court nominee is a centrist who has built a career on working with both sides and finding common ground. A Monday Washington Post headline was typical: “For Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, a history of pragmatism over partisanship.” But Kagan’s centrism is a lot like that of the man who nominated her—all rhetoric and no substance. Many voters fell for Candidate Barack Obama’s talk of post-partisanship. Millions of Americans have since been roused to the reality of a president...

You know internal White House polling must be dismal if the President and his allies are dropping all pretense of “Obama the Uniter” to embrace the sordid politics of racial division. And that’s exactly what they are doing. That liberals cast every issue through a racial prism is not exactly news to conservatives. What’s interesting is that the Left’s racialism is not fundamentally about race but rather about using one of society’s most divisive issue to distract voters when it has lost an argument. By framing every issue in racial terms, liberals avoid having to engage their opponents on the...

hyped and a profound threat to our nation’s security are not surprising. The truth, of course, is that the current robust opposition to the liberal agenda, of which the Tea Party movement is a large part, is neither. And there is no evidence that enthusiastic criticism of Obama administration policies will lead to violence. In fact, the Tea Party movement is a result–not a cause—of the frustration and anger many Americans feel today. The only threat it poses is to the status quo of big government activism. It’s been comical to watch the Left try to discredit the Tea Party...

There are murmurs that some Senate Republicans may be reluctant to offer more than token opposition to whomever President Obama nominates to succeed John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are demanding a “thoughtful and civil” confirmation process, a standard that seems to surface only when Democratic presidents are doing the nominating. But if Obama does what everyone knows he will do and nominates a liberal activist judge, Judiciary Republicans should approach their constitutional duty to advise and consent to the appointment of judges as if the future of the country depends on it – because it...

It's been nearly a month since Obamacare became law, and Americans of all political stripes are scrambling to understand its life-changing ramifications. For anti-abortion advocates, the new law, by subsidizing abortion with taxpayer dollars, represents the largest expansion of abortion since the Supreme Court handed down its infamous Roe v. Wade decision nearly 40 years ago. But while Obamacare marks a unique development in abortion funding, it is hardly the first time Americans have been forced to underwrite the procedure. In fact, if you pay taxes or have a certain type of health insurance, you are already paying for other...

Jeane Kirkpatrick, when she arrived at the United Nations as U.S. ambassador in 1981, was asked how the new administration’s foreign policy would differ from its predecessor’s. “Well,” she said in a story President Reagan loved to recount, “we’ve taken off our ‘kick me’ sign.” She was then asked, “Does that mean, if you’re kicked, you’ll kick back?” “Oh, not necessarily,” she answered. “But it does mean that if we’re kicked, at least we won’t apologize.” Ronald Reagan, whom I was proud to serve for eight years, tore up the metaphorical “kick me” sign that symbolized Jimmy Carter’s timid foreign...

President Barack Obama talks a lot about empathy. He regularly refers to it when describing qualities he looks for in federal court nominees. He appeals to the public’s sense of it when defending trillion-dollar spending plans and justifying his health care reform bill. It is sure to be part of his argument for immigration reform. It informs his approach to fighting terrorism and addressing human rights abroad. Empathy — the act of understanding and being sensitive to the feelings and experiences of others — animates much of Obama’s talk about his agenda. So it’s taken for granted that his policies...

After a year of lying to taxpayers about the true costs of Obamacare, Democrats have moved on to bullying private sector companies into lying to their investors about the heavy burden of the new law. CEOs carrying out their legal duty to report to shareholders the reduced value of their companies due to Obamacare’s punishing taxes are being scolded by the White House for playing partisan political games and trying to “embarrass the president.” The CEOs will even be hauled before Congress later this month to defend their grim assessments. Which makes me wonder: How many more of Obamacare’s inconvenient...

The conventional wisdom among pro-lifers is that by abandoning his demand that taxpayer funding of abortion be excluded from the health care bill, Bart Stupak reinforces the “myth” of the pro-life Democrat. But that’s not quite right. Pro-life Democrats still exist. What the health care debate did was to put pro-life Democrats on notice that their political lives will be aborted if they seek to ascend the party hierarchy. Prominent pro-life Democrats are nonexistent because, sooner or later, the pro-life principle collides with a policy agenda that abides no dissent. Stupak would like us to believe that he has remained...