Free Republic

There’s a damning number regarding our economy that Obama doesn’t want to talk about. It’s a number, but for him, would be lower. And, lower, in this case would be a good thing for the economy. “Although estimates vary,” says Joel Kurtzman, a senior fellow at the Milliken Institute, “American companies have between $4 and $5 trillion in liquid assets, a sum greater than the size of the German economy.” How is it that companies can now have more cash than anytime in history, while unemployment remains so high, inflation in many goods so low, and national income grows so...

concerned with a local Nevada rancher? By Wayne Allyn Root Published April 16, 2014 FoxNews.com Facebook787 Twitter123 Gplus26 I live in Las Vegas. I live and breath Nevada politics. Something is very wrong. Something smells rotten in the Nevada desert. And Senator Harry Reid’s fingerprints are all over it. I am of course referring to the Bundy Ranch siege. This was a dispute between a Nevada ranching family with rights to the land in question for 140 years and the BLM (Bureayu of Land Management). The government claims they haven’t paid grazing fees for 20 years. The result was a...

<p>If the Rev. Al Sharpton, the bigoted, anti-Semitic, non-tax paying race-hustling poverty pimp, had any credibility left, it just vanished.</p> <p>The beneficiary of a lifetime of passes from our race-conscious mainscream media, Sharpton ran into an outlet not afraid of him -- The Smoking Gun. They obtained material that exposed Sharpton as an FBI "informant." Sharpton, of course, denies that this constitutes "snitching." No, he says he "volunteered" to "cooperate" with the FBI -- and for the most honorable of motives.</p>

People have been saying the country is “going to hell in a handbasket” for decades. It’s sort of a rite of passage for every current generation to look at the next one and think it will screw up things so badly everything will be ruined. But the handbasket this current generation is creating may well be the one that sinks us. Every generation is the product of the previous one – its culture, morals, priorities, everything. In the 20th century, that meant passing on a work ethic, the importance of family and the American Dream that each generation will do...

Solving the illegal immigration problem should not be hard. No one knows how many foreign nationals are residing illegally in the United States -- estimates range from 11 million to 20 million. But everyone understands that it is an untenable situation that must be addressed. The two extreme positions of the Left and Right probably have little public support -- on the one hand, blanket amnesties and open borders, and on the other, deportation of all foreign nationals who reside here without legal authorization. Polls show that most Americans want something in between. Close the border. Allow entry only to...

Growing up in rural Georgia, Easter meant not only the resurrection of Jesus, but also a new Sunday dress, a hat, gloves and more chocolate than I could eat, at least at one time. My sister Kathy and I would wake up before dawn, rush to our Easter baskets, eat a few bites of chocolate, get dressed in our brand new Easter dresses and head out for the sunrise service, with candy stashed in our purses. It seemed as though the services were more bearable since we were able to unwrap the candy during the service and pop it...

At the end of the day, we all want Americans to have access to affordable, quality healthcare, but Obamacare is the wrong path to get to that goal. As we begin to review the qualifications and record of President Obama’s new nominee to become HHS Secretary, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, current director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), will have to answer a number of very important questions during her upcoming confirmation hearings before both the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. And while Ms. Burwell was unanimously confirmed to become OMB director,...

April 16, 2014 The IRS Scandal's Smoking Gun? A suspicious email could confirm Lois Lerner's culpability in recent IRS abuses. Peter Roff The so-called “smoking gun” proving the Internal Revenue Service played politics with conservative groups seeking official non-profit, social welfare status over the last several years may finally have been found. In a rash of documents provided under the Freedom of Information Act to Judicial Watch, a non-partisan public interest law group, is an April 2013 email written by David Fish, acting manager of IRS Exempt Organizations Technical Guidance and Quality Assurance and sent to, among others, former IRS...

Deserts always feel like my natural habitat, and I am very fond of them. That being said, I have, for my sins, spent a fair amount of time in Clark County, Nev., and it is not the loveliest stretch of desert in these United States, or even in the top twelve. Protecting the pristine beauty of the sun-baked and dust-caked outskirts of Las Vegas and its charismatic fauna from grazing cattle — which the Bureau of Land Management seems to regard as an Old Testament plague — seems to me to be something less than a critical national priority. At...

The cult centered on “global warming” alarmism is getting hot under the collar. People seem to have stopped paying attention, and polls show “climate change” barely registers on a list of voters' concerns. This can only mean, as losing politicians like to say, that their message isn’t getting through. What to do? Why, shout louder, of course. A recent story in the New York Times sought to help alarmists raise the decibel level: “The countries of the world have dragged their feet so long on global warming that the situation is now critical, experts appointed by the United Nations reported...

THE WORLD now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Expect a certain part of our political class to insist that man-made climate change is not consensus science, and that until it is, nothing should be done. The problem there is obvious: By the time all the skeptics are persuaded, it will be too late for an effective response. In that regard, climate change poses a...

Federal Land Retention and the Constitution’s Property Clause: The Original Understanding (Conclusion) Robert G. Natelson* Conclusion Considered from the vantage point of original meaning, both the conservative and liberal interpretations of the “other Property” portion of the Property Clause are partly correct. The liberals are correct in that the Constitution – not just arguably, but clearly – authorizes permanent property ownership outside the Enclave Clause. The clarity of this result flows both from the text of the document and from comments made during ratification. Moreover, the liberals are correct in suggesting that those lands are subject to a public trust...

Liberal pundit Sally Kohn is on Yahoo! this morning with an article titled "What I learned as a liberal talking head on Fox News." She learned conservatives were personable and human. What? Yes, she says that would amaze "fellow liberals who had not watched much Fox News but had seen the most outlandish clips of Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity that had made it to 'The Daily Show' or YouTube. They perhaps imagined that walking down the hallway outside makeup, Mr. O'Reilly might yell then, too, instead of just saying hello. That's a funny notion, but it couldn't be further...

(Snip) At long last, it appears that Rush Limbaugh has run out of steam. I have to acknowledge that I have sensed Rush getting by on fumes for some time now (yes, I tune into his show from time to time to enjoy his broadcasting skills if not his message). However, it was only recently that the world of Limbaugh crossed that thin red line from partially serious to total self-parody and audience deception—a line crossed from which there is often no return. It happened on the occasion of Stephen Colbert’s appointment to fill David Letterman’s soon to be vacated...

Imagine this. You send your 13-year-old daughter to her first day of high school. She goes into the school bathroom, and standing there is a 6' 2", 19-year-old male student. She screams. But instead of school officials expelling the boy from school and turning him over to the police, your daughter is arrested for committing a hate crime. Something like that will happen soon in California. On January 1, the state imposed on children Assembly Bill 1266, mandating that all bathrooms, gym showers, and sports teams in public schools be open to everyone, regardless of sex. The bill’s official title...

Newark, April 10–New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D) may be headed for a more difficult reelection campaign this fall than many political professionals seem to think. The reason: the mainstream press, which has been his biggest booster, is now beginning to question not only his veracity but his competence as Newark mayor, which recently took a hit from a report issued by the state comptroller. When he announced his intention to seek a Senate seat, Booker was considered a shoo-in. But the Senate campaign turned out to be no coronation. Although polls in early August had Booker with a 35-point...

Without mentioning reports that the man accused of shooting up a Jewish Community Center over the weekend was apparently a fan of the left's Max Blumenthal, CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen exploited the murders to claim the American Right is more deadly than jihadists.

Intimidation tactics.I’m sure you’ve heard about this dispute in Nevada, where a rancher named Cliven Bundy was confronted by a virtual army of armed agents from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The whole thing is a dispute over very complicated laws concerning grazing rights, and the laws are too confusing for me to sit here and tell you who is right and who is wrong. But the complicated nature of the law is a huge problem here, as it is when we deal with things like tax law. That’s why I have sympathy for Mr. Bundy. His issue with...

I realize this may be a thought crime by DC standards, but it sure would be nice to eliminate the high tax rates that undermine economic growth and reduce American competitiveness. At the risk of sharing too much information, I fantasize about a world without the internal revenue code. In addition to getting rid of high tax rates, I also want to abolish the pervasive double taxation of income that is saved and invested. Just as important, I want to wipe out the distorting loopholes that tilt the playing field in favor of politically connected interest groups. And I daydream...

Grant, that by this unsparing hurricane Green leaves with yellow mixed are torn away, And goodly fruitage with the mother spray;'Twere madness--wished we, therefore, to detain, With hands stretched forth in mollified disdain, The "trumpery" that ascends in bare display-- Bulls, pardons, relics, cowls black, white, and grey--Upwhirled, and flying o'er the ethereal plain Fast bound for Limbo Lake. And yet not choice But habit rules the unreflecting herd, And airy bonds are hardest to disown;Hence, with the spiritual sovereignty transferred Unto itself, the Crown assumes a voice Of reckless mastery, hitherto unknown.-Reflections by William Wordsworth The market was humming...