Free Republic

There's an MRCTV video circulating on the Internet that features a man with a microphone asking college students in Washington, D.C., to name just one member of the United States Senate. At least half a dozen are stumped. When he asks how many senators each state has, the same crew is equally flummoxed. One hundred percent of the students could name the hit song from the movie "Frozen," though. These surveys about how ignorant Americans are have become hardy perennials. Survey data confirm that large numbers of Americans lack even rudimentary knowledge of what used to be called "eighth-grade civics."...

As horrible as Kathleen Sebelius has been as this nation's health and human services secretary, she has been exactly who President Barack Obama has wanted her to be. This was no rogue incompetent tinkering with America's health care. This was one of Obama's chief lieutenants, one who was doing his bidding every step of that treacherous road they traveled together. Don't get me wrong; Sebelius was inexcusably bad -- arrogant, defiant, uncompassionate, dogmatic and unrepentant. Obama cashiered her only because it was time to deflect blame from himself and change the channel. There is nothing incompatible between assigning major blame...

An economist serving on a second-term president's Council of Economic Advisers might expect to weigh in on fundamental issues, restructuring the tax system or making entitlement programs sustainable over the long term. Barack Obama once talked of addressing such issues, and Republican leaders such as House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp are doing so. But that's not what University of Michigan economist and CEA member Betsey Stevenson finds herself doing. Instead, she is defending the use of misleading statistics in support of legislation addressing a minor problem. The legislation is Obama's latest pay equity measure, which failed to pass...

Americans despise and fear the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS has been discriminating against, and has even persecuted, conservative groups. The IRS will soon be policing ObamaCare compliance with thousands of new agents.The IRS is no longer just a collection agency. The IRS even has its own SWAT teams. Something needs to be done about the IRS. The way to get control over the IRS is through tax reform. Several tax reform plans, such as the one from the Bowles-Simpson commission, have proposed the same thing: ridding the Tax Code of its exceptions. Exceptions are the exemptions, deductions, credits, write-offs,...

Last Tuesday, on April 8, Brandeis University rescinded its invitation to human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree from the institution. Brandeis caved in the face of intimidation from CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups, as well as a student petition on Change.org and a faculty petition – the contents of which have now become known.The faculty petition is a textbook case of leftist pathology and of how “progressives” demonize true heroic freedom fighters and push millions of victims of totalitarian regimes and ideologies into invisibility for the sake of their own egotistical and destructive agendas.A...

How do you ensure that you won’t be ostracized, denounced, or fired if you are a media celebrity, captain of industry, or high public official? For some, sexist banter is certainly no problem. Stand-up comedian Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a c–t and a tw-t, but suffered no ill consequences. David Letterman joked on air that Sarah Palin’s 14-year-old daughter had had sex with Alex Rodriguez during a New York Yankees game. There was no downside to that either. President Obama tosses around “sweetie” as he wishes. No problem with that. No one believes Barack could be condescending to women....

The oil-services company Halliburton is an old obsession of the anti-Bush Left, and evidently of Kentucky senator Rand Paul. The libertarian standard-bearer and almost-certain Republican presidential candidate suggested to audiences a few years ago that Vice President Dick Cheney’s views on the Iraq War were influenced by his time as CEO at Halliburton. Cheney had opposed going into Iraq during the Persian Gulf War under the first President George Bush; then, after a stint at Halliburton, he supported going into Iraq under the second President Bush. Q.E.D. Asked about the Halliburton charge on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Paul...

In his column last week, Charles Krauthammer crossed a line. He declared the American left totalitarian. He is correct. Totalitarianism is written into the left's DNA. Krauthammer wrote about a left-wing petition "bearing more than 110,000 signatures delivered to the [Washington] Post demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming." He concluded: "I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation -- no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper...

**SNIP** So instead of serving foods they do like, including french fries, some school authorities participating in the taxpayer-funded National School Lunch Program have decided to make smart choices on their own — and that No. 1 choice is to opt out of the program. One Illinois superintendent, of the Monticello School District, recently lamented to The News-Gazette that “The guidelines require us to serve items like three orange vegetables a week. Can you name three orange vegetables?” said Vic Zimmerman. “Squash, sweet potatoes, they wouldn’t eat them. Kids like carrots but not three times a week. You’ve got to...

Since liberals can't find enough real examples of racism to whine over, they've taken drastic steps to invent imaginary bigotry. One of the ways they've done this, especially on college campuses, is by embracing the concept of "privilege." The general idea is that as a straight, white heterosexual male, you have all sorts of special "privileges" you should feel guilty about because of your "dominant" position in society. Buzzfeed even put together a special quiz on the subject called, "How Privileged Are You?" Some of the indications of "privilege" on the quiz include: * I have never been told I...

This week holds some critical dates. April 15 haunts most Americans as a tax deadline. April 18 and 20 this year commemorate the pinnacle in Holy Week -- Good Friday and Easter. But April 13 still stands as an important day that eludes most Americans. It's the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. We patriots love to quote the Founding Fathers, especially when they support our theses. And Jefferson remains at the top of the heap. But there are three beliefs or practices often attributed to Jefferson that are either myths or cherry-picked partial views. The first myth is that Jefferson was...

Are conservatives linguistically challenged? Or are they just naïve enough to think they can win the battle of ideas with — ideas? Okay, and money. Conservatives, like liberals, will spend huge amounts of money this year to get their ideas across to voters. But what they fail to do is bundle their thoughts into a bright, shiny linguistic package that explodes in the face of their enemies when opened. The left has assembled a rich lexicon of phrases that serve either as stilettos that can be turned again and again in the guts of their opponents, or shields that obscure...

Republicans must stop putting moneyed interests ahead of the American family.Now taking his third shot at the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey, Jeffrey Bell has spent his career warning of the risks of kicking the cultural leg out from under Ronald Reagan’s coalition of defense, economic, and social conservatives. Indeed, his 2012 magnum opus, The Case for Polarized Politics, argues that social conservatism, rooted in the moderate Enlightenment that informed the Founders, is indispensable to American exceptionalism and to any Republican resurgence in our time. But the political theorist overstates the ability of even the most...

Senate Democrats have been desperately trying to move the national conversation away from Obamacare to just about anything else before the midterm elections — “paycheck fairness,” the minimum wage, even the Koch brothers. But President Obama’s choice of Sylvia Burwell to replace Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services thrusts Obamacare right back into the national spotlight — and with it Obama’s false promise that “if you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan.” Burwell should not be confirmed until she explains how OMB allowed the president of the United States to lie — repeatedly...

Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives have expressed bewilderment over CBS’s abandonment of the “American Heartland” by choosing Colbert to replace Letterman. Ed Driscoll has contrasted the pick with the Letterman and Leno succession battle. But the real lesson of that battle is that while Leno won on performance, beating Letterman in the ratings, Letterman won on image, retiring as an honored figure, despite his abusive behavior, while Leno was booed out the door Leno is no conservative, but he left with the baffled bewilderment familiar to many on the right of being the better man who is despised for his...

In “Einstein, God, and the Big Bang,” a colorful chapter of his new book, Amir D. Aczel maintains that Albert Einstein truly believed in God. He points out that Einstein attended synagogue during his year in Prague (1913). He repeats several famous Einstein utterances mentioning the Deity: “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not” and “I want to know God’s thoughts — the rest are details.” And he quotes from a letter the great physicist wrote to a little girl in January 1936: “Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: You know, moving on to something serious here. In recent days, in the recent past, we've talked here about the Millennials, people that are basically 21-34. One of the things I am hearing or fear has happened is that as Obama continues to break promises and Obama continues to wreak havoc on the economy and basically destroy the foundations of the American dream, which is what he's doing, that young people who, by virtue of their age, have no living experience with conservative victory. You and I do. Those of you who were alive in the eighties,...

The "war on women" political slogan is in fact a war against common sense. It is a statistical fraud when Barack Obama and other politicians say that women earn only 77 percent of what men earn — and that this is because of discrimination. It would certainly be discrimination if women were doing the same work as men, for the same number of hours, with the same amount of training and experience, as well as other things being the same. But study after study, over the past several decades, has shown repeatedly that those things are not the same. Constantly...

April 14--Contrary to the Obama administration's empty assurances, ObamaCare-related premiums are not on pace for merely a slight increase next year. Health insurance officials tell The Hill newspaper that patients could see their fees double in some parts of the country. Their response follows comments by former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who told Congress that rates in 2015 will rise slowly. "The increases are far less significant than what they were prior to the Affordable Care Act," she said. Fat chance, according to industry insiders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity -- no doubt in response...