Free Republic

RUSH: Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, announced that he's running for president today. I think that gets us up to 16 announced Republicans. He gave a, eh, fairly average 20-, 25-minute long stem-winder. We have just a couple of sound bites I want to play for you. He was in Livingston, New Jersey, at Livingston High School. He said he traveled around the country and he keeps hearing all these people telling him that Americans are angry. But he said he's traveled around the country and he hasn't found anybody angry. He hasn't found anybody mad. He's found...

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, the unemployment rate, what is the latest reported unemployment, 5.5%, is that what it is, 5.3, 5.6? It's in that neighborhood, right? I don't know what the exact number is. Not that this matters to anything anymore. I mean, the truth is increasingly irrelevant. The truth is increasingly meaningless. In fact, there isn't any truth in way too much of the country. There is certainly no objective truth. Anyway, I have had, as you know if you listen regularly, I've had a lot of doubt about the accuracy of an unemployment rate of 5.5% when, at...

Tomorrow President Obama will travel to my home state of Tennessee to tout the supposed successes of his signature healthcare law. The trip marks the president’s third visit to the Volunteer State in less than a year so it seems that we can agree on at least one thing: Tennessee is a great place to visit, and an even better place to call home. The president and I have profound disagreements, however, on the subject of his visit. I’ve been a nurse for more than 40 years, but you don’t need a background in healthcare to understand that if Obamacare...

Last week, the Supreme Court sided 6-3 with the Obama administration’s interpretation of the Affordable Care Act, ruling the law was written with the intent to provide subsidies through federal exchanges. To put it lightly, conservatives are less than thrilled. But in our disappointment, let’s not forget that the subsidies are just one problematic element of many found in the 20,000-page law. While Congress may not be able to undo the Court’s recent ruling, that doesn’t mean they can’t address another serious issue with the Affordable Care Act: the employer mandate that defines a full-time workweek as 30 hours. The...

Pope Francis says that it’s hypocritical to be a Christian and manufacture or invest in the manufacture of weapons.The Church of Rome, whose magnificent center, the renowned St. Peter’s Basilica, located within the city built on seven hills, has never shied from controversy. The Church’s teachings find their moorings in tradition, intellect, and parenthetically at best in some Biblical doctrine. Pope Francis himself has engaged in the deeply controversial in a recent encyclical, playing patsy for the socialist climate change apparatus. If, as Pope Francis says, it is hypocritical for a Christian to manufacture or invest in the weapons industry,...

Americans love the 4th of July—and for good reason. Writing to his wife in July 1776, John Adams hailed the Fourth as “the day of deliverance” and predicted that it would be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.” He correctly foresaw these annual celebrations “with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.” On the first anniversary in 1777, the celebrations started, and they have continued ever since. The year 2015 will be no exception. But as Americans...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Heidi Huber, founder of Operation Opt Out Ohio.Parents across the nation are in open revolt against the testing mania that has seized public schools under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Common Core national standards. In some states, thousands of students — 200,000 in New York alone — are refusing the “mandatory” assessments. One would think the Washington politicos who are writing the NCLB reauthorization bill would take note of this widespread rebellion and would ease — or better still, eliminate — the federal testing requirements. But unlike the repentant thief who...

California has become the place where politicians go to rich people's homes to talk about the lives of less-fortunate people they rarely meet. What's notable is the fact that California, despite its huge number of electoral votes, is no longer in play politically in general elections. The state is widely considered to be a shoo-in for Democratic presidential candidates. But contenders from both parties continue to visit to raise money, which they spend on advertising and other campaign costs in battleground states. That’s why visits by presidential contenders to the Golden State tend to be private affairs rather than public...

I have an important public service announcement for everyone who changed their Facebook and other profile photos to a rainbow recently. Absent some massive desire for more color in your life, you probably did this to celebrate the United States Supreme Court magically creating a constitutional "right" to a marriage license for gay people. Didn't you? I suppose you think this makes you quite tolerant, and forward thinking, but it doesn't. I imagine you think you're advancing freedom, but you're not. You probably feel really good about yourself for helping gay people gain acceptance in society, but that's not even...

A complete commentary on the same sex marriage case would take far more than a single short article. Accordingly, I offer only some discrete thoughts:* A big expansion of federal power. Many libertarians believe the courts should use the Fourteenth Amendment to protect rights unenumerated in the Constitution, and some urged the Court to declare that civil marriage was among those rights. They need to be careful what they ask for. What they have just “won” is a major expansion of federal power.The case removes limitations on Substantive Due Process, the principal way judges create “rights” unmentioned by the Constitution....

San Francisco changed America. When then-Mayor Gavin Newsom opened City Hall to same-sex marriages during the 2004 Winter of Love, he had determined to "put a human face on discrimination." The long line of couples eager to tie the knot appealed to the public's romantic side. When two people are in love and want to commit to each other for the rest of their lives, activists asked, how can the government say no? That sentiment permeates Friday's Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. "In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were," wrote...

Scott Walker’s call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling has saved his reputation with the conservative right. Scott Walker has his groove back with social conservatives and he has the Supreme Court to thank. After the court ruled that the Constitution guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry, Walker released a statement calling for a Constitutional ban on gay marriage. And social conservatives loved it, and it came at a moment when he needed all the love he could get. Back in May, the Wisconsin governor traveled to Washington to...

"Natural law -- God's law -- will always trump common law," said Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and a Christian leader in her own right, "God will have the final word in this matter." But, for now, Justice Anthony Kennedy has the final word. Same-sex marriage is the law of the land, as the right of gays and lesbians to marry is right there in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868. We just didn't see it. Tony Kennedy spotted what no previous court had detected. The absurdity of the decision aside,...

For most people, words mean what they say. But not necessarily for a majority of Supreme Court justices in two important decisions handed down Thursday. In the most prominent, King v. Burwell, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority, ruled that the words "established by the state" mean "established by the state or the federal government." In a second decision, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, ruled that the omission in the 1968 Fair Housing Act of words banning acts that have a disparate...

It’s not possible for me to write about First Amendment issues and refrain from weighing in on the current Confederate flag controversy that is brewing down in South Carolina. Many of my students and readers have asked for my take, so here it is. I will start with an empirical prediction of what I think will happen. I’ll follow that with my opinion about why I think it will be bad for the country. First, there will be the successful effort to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol. The move will spread to other states like Mississippi...

Since the interim deal was announced in April, the government in Tehran has proven to the world what its people were trying to convey in 2009: they cannot be trusted. Six years ago today, round-the-clock coverage of Iran’s Green Revolution suffered a fate all too common in today’s media world – it came to a complete halt, in this case upon breaking news that Michael Jackson had died. Up until those moments, the people of Iran, taking it upon themselves to become brave citizen journalists in a censored and suffocated political environment, posted updates and vivid videos on social media...

“I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools. By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas.” – Justice Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court decision that forced gay marriage on the country The dilemma Christians and conservatives face after the Supreme Court's made-up-from-whole-cloth-instead-of-the-Constitution ruling on gay marriage is...

Will the old-line establishment media tackle a bigger identity mystery? ​​In June, a reporter from KXLY in Spokane, Washington, asked Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, if she was an African American, as she claimed. Dolezal said she didn’t understand and walked away, but national media jumped on the story. Then Dolezal’s parents came forward with the truth. Their daughter Rachel was in fact a person of no color, a white woman. In short order, Rachel Dolezal stepped down from her presidential NAACP post but her case raises questions...

Federal involvement seems to be the exploited niche of the motivated Left. For it is the tax code and the special tax treatments carved into the most complicated compilation in the Western World that affords the activists their openings. The gay marriage issue was essentially an equal treatment issue regarding Social Security benefits of surviving spouses, estate taxes, and joint tax returns. All the emotional scenery was fluff. It was about money and how the federal government, based on marital status, taxes some people one way and others another. Next apparently on the docket are the churches. The same thread...

nvironment: The rogue agency known as EPA has been slapped back by the Supreme Court for failing to consider the cost of a massive new regulation. What else is new?