Free Republic

Last month, I celebrated the beginning of my 81st year of life. For nearly half that time, I have been writing a nationally syndicated column on many topics generating reader responses that go from supportive to quite ugly. So I thought a column making my vision, values and views explicit might settle some of the controversy. My initial premise, when looking at all human issues, is that each of us owns himself. I am my private property, and you are your private property. If you agree with that premise, then certain human actions are moral and others immoral. The reason...

Ted Cruz is a coward. He's other things — a GOP presidential candidate, a senator from Texas, possibly the Zodiac Killer (Google it) — but most of all, and most unquestionably, he's a coward. A coward mocks what he doesn't understand. A coward seeks political gain by maligning others. A coward talks about North Carolina's controversial bathroom law, which requires transgender people to use the restroom that matches the gender on their birth certificate, by saying this at a Sunday campaign event: "If Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he still can't go to the girl's bathroom." Hah! The...

In what is likely an unconstitutional state action seemingly calculated to ensure that the purple state of Virginia goes blue in the November election, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D.) signed an order on Friday restoring the voting rights of 206,000 ex-felons in Virginia, including those convicted of murder, armed robbery, rape, sexual assault, and other violent crimes. The order also restores their right to sit on a jury, become a notary, and even serve in elected office. McAuliffe believes that ex-felons can be trusted to make decisions in the ballot booth and the jury box but apparently not to own a...

Since Erdogan was elected president in August 2014 he has sued at least 1,845 Turks for insulting him. Now his judicial challenges have been exported to Europe. Angela Merkel's decision to allow Böhmermann's prosecution hardly complies with the European culture of civil liberties. Now the Turkish journalists and artists will even suffer more." — Rebecca Harms, co-chair of the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance at the European Parliament. The trouble is, the more Erdogan realizes that his blackmailing works, the more willing he will be to export his poor democratic culture into Europe. Merkel has set the wrong precedent...

Erdogan Germany has a well-known period in its history where it gave in to a dictator. Things didn’t work out so well for a lot of people. Now there’s another dictator exerting his influence, apparently. This time, the dictator is from Turkey. New York Times bestselling author and Christian evangelist Joel Richardson blasted German Chancellor Angela Merkel for approving a criminal probe against German comedian Jan Böhmermann. The satirist’s supposed crime is reading a satirical poem about Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Richardson, who highlights the plight of Middle Eastern Christians in his new documentary “Global Jesus Revolution,” said...

It has been a week of weeks concerning the assaults on the American people coming from this administration and their communist allies within and without. They are becoming more emboldened, ruthless and obvious as to who is responsible for the crimes committed against the American people, especially those involving the sodomite community. Yet, you are told to believe that the homosexual manifesto is just satire. Let me make my point. Barack Hussein Obama the “First Gay President” and his controllers appoint 225 radical lesbians, homosexuals, and transgender to governmental positions only to be used as a political battering ram to...

Jim Donnelly is a registered Republican who is disgusted. His lifelong party, he believes, has done little for anyone but the wealthy, the well-connected, and its own leaders. "I'm a strong Republican and this is the worst I've ever seen it," said Donnelly, 73, a retired factory production manager who lives in Lansdale. "In Washington, D.C., and in Harrisburg, the Republicans are only looking out for themselves. I don't see any Republican I like except for Donald Trump - because he says it the way it is." Donnelly has a lot of company in Pennsylvania. For decades, the state has...

My dear friends, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. I am sorry to tell you that the terror attacks we from which we suffer today and yesterday, a week ago, a month, a year and a decade and century ago, are all part of the same war, the same struggle, the same Jihad waged against us by our neighbors for over a century.... ..... I am sorry to disappoint you but the worst thing that ever happened to Israel's hopes for peace was the rise of the peace movements.... The peace movements turned Israel's image into that of a weak...

Welcome to life in totalitarian America, where even going to the bathroom and identifying the sex of an adult have now become intensely political acts. Totalitarianism is about the politicization of everything, and once people’s careers can be destroyed by the New Bathroom Order if they publicly object to the once-bizarre idea of men in the ladies’ room–we’re there. Ask the now-unemployed Curt Schilling. Totalitarianism is about using force to gain political goals. You can’t get more coercive than forcing the vast majority of people to endorse the utterly bizarre just to accommodate the allegedly hurt feelings of an almost...

On his Real Time show on Friday, HBO comedian Bill Maher referred to the U.S. military as a "mass murder machine" as he recalled that the reason he likes Bernie Sanders so much is because the Vermont socialist is the only presidential candidate who would argue against building a bigger military. A bit earlier, as he discussed with the New Yorker's Lawrence Wright the possibility of Saudi government officials being linked to the 9/11 attacks, Maher also made a crass reference to Tea Party conservatives -- whom he has mocked in the past as "teabaggers" -- by referring to Muslim...

The Burr-Feinstein antiencryption bill isn't just bad, it's evidence of a dangerous incompetence in congressional leadership that is undermining America’s security. In fact, the draft bill, leaked two weeks ago and now officially released, is compelling evidence that Senate leadership should strip – or at least not reappoint – Senators Burr and Feinstein of their positions on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Amongst its many provisions, the draft bill mandates that tech companies make all of our online data "intelligible" when presented with a court order. The bill defines intelligible as "decrypted, deciphered, decoded, demodulated, or deobfuscated" to "the...

In many of our history books today, Christopher Columbus did not discover America, instead he was a ruthless white European marauder who brutalized peaceful indigenous people and helped spread disease among their midst. This type of historical revisionism was on full display this week when one of our greatest Presidents and military heroes, Andrew Jackson, was removed from the front of the $20 bill. Eventually, he will be featured on the back of the bill, while the image of Harriet Tubman, an African American slave who escaped and led hundreds of other slaves to freedom, will adorn the front. These...

The great white environmentalist sharks smell blood in the water. It’s gushing from mortally wounded US coal companies that the Obama EPA has gutted as sacrifices on the altar of “dangerous manmade climate change” prevention and other spurious health, ecological and planetary scares.Peabody Energy, Arch Coal and other once vibrant coal producers have filed for Chapter 11 protection, shedding some $30 billion in shareholder value and tens of thousands of jobs in their companies and dependent industries. The bloodletting has left communities and states reeling, union pension funds and 401k plans empty, and the health, welfare, hopes and dreams of...

As he gets closer to the GOP nomination Donald Trump is beginning to look like a political chameleon, adapting his campaign to more aptly fit the mold of a party nominee. It's a big step for Trump and appears to be a departure from his usual campaign practices as it is in fact a move that candidates often make. Describing how it is typical of candidates, especially those who secure the nomination, to "pivot towards," the general electorate, Daniel P. Franklin, Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State explained the candidates go from appealing to the center of the...

“Today is Earth Day -- the last one I'll celebrate as President. Looking back over the past seven years, I'm hopeful that the work we've done will allow my daughters and all of our children to inherit a cleaner, healthier, and safer planet. But I know there is still work to do. (resident Barack Obama, April 22, 2016.) In fact, the work of genuine American environmentalists has been ongoing for much longer than seven years—more like SEVENTY plus. Alas, many of these (genuine) environmentalists belong to those insufferable rustics who “cling to guns and bibles.” To wit:The Pittman-Robertson Act (1937)...

Last month, UNESCO’s director general Irina Bokova issued a statement congratulating Russian- backed Syrian forces for liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIS). Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.” Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique...

Here is something I bet you haven’t thought about. We naturally assume that that public policy advocates actually want to achieve the things they advocate. But there are a lot of people both on the right and the left – but especially on the left – for whom that probably isn’t true.Suppose you could wave a magic wand and eliminate global warming forever. You might think that all the environmental organizations and all the environmental scientists and would get out the champagne and cerebrate. More likely their offices would look like a wake. Causes are vehicles to money and power....

"Bullying isn't cool. Bullying is lame.Bullying is ugly and has a stupid name.For a healthy world, bullying's unfit.And I think I know what we should do to i-it.Do do do do do to i-it.Let's all get together and make bullying kill itself.Bullying's an ugly thingLet's shove its face in the dirt and make bullying kill itself.Woah-oh. Woah-oh. Woah-oh." -- From the song Make Bullying Kill Itself on South ParkWhat’s the difference between a bully and a victim? It seems like a simple question, but in America’s victim-obsessed culture, the bully is often the supposed victim. As Voltaire said, “To learn...

According to press reports, a man arrested as part of an Islamic State (ISIS) group in Minnesota claimed he wanted to setup a pipeline to funnel terrorists into the U.S. through Mexico. The story rekindles concerns over the security of our southern border.It should come as no surprise that there are reports of terrorists trying to cross from Mexico to the U.S.—it’s been tried before. In 2011, Iranian agents tried to recruit a Mexican cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States with a car bomb while he dined at a restaurant in Washington, D.C.The assault on our border...

Trust can be a double-edged sword when it is not founded on insight. In politics as in personal relations, one can trust the wrong person or distrust the right one -- with unfortunate consequences. Political candidates almost universally craft their public image to play to the voter’s perception of their character -- the “kissing babies” syndrome. They know that their audience is susceptible to emotional manipulation and so present themselves as deeply concerned with the public welfare, as scrupulously honest and, most importantly, as likeable and trustworthy. But let the candidate refuse to play by the rules of the electoral...