Free Republic

Stand Your Ground: A big hypocrite in the IRS scandal targeting Tea Party groups sets his sights on a conservative think tank, asking its suspected supporters: "Are you now or have you ever been a conservative?" Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is on a witch hunt that threatens anew the free speech rights of Americans who don't hold his views or those of the Obama administration. This time he has targeted the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group of state legislators who promote free markets, limited government and federalism, ahead of a "stand your ground" hearing Durbin announced after George...

ObamaCare: Some Democrats are signing on to bills repealing the powers of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to effectively ration health care for seniors. So Sarah Palin was right about those death panels after all? Palin was mocked by liberals when at a Tea Party rally in Reno, Nev., in late 2010, shortly before the GOP retook the House of Representatives, she told attendees: "Don't be thinking that we've got victory for America in the bag yet. ... We can't party like it's 1773." Leftist know-it-alls insisted that 1776 was the correct year, when in fact Palin was right: The...

Justice: The wife of a Fort Hood survivor claims the Defense Department is "slapping victims with gag orders" and telling family members not to talk to the press following testimony in the trial of Nidal Hasan. One of the great scandals of the Obama administration has been its shameful designation of the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage at the Army base in Killeen, Texas, by Maj. Nidal Hasan as "workplace violence." It has only compounded the pain and suffering of the victims and their families who have now apparently been ordered to shut up about it. Thirteen people were killed, 14...

Cities: Chicago appears to be following Detroit's lead to financial disaster, perhaps the latest victim of decades of one-party rule by Democrats eager to redistribute wealth while driving real wealth creators out of cities. Moody's Investors Service downgraded the Windy City's credit rating by three notches last week, partly the result of $19 billion in unfunded pension debt, leaving Chicago's lower than 90% of Moody's public finance ratings. Among the nation's five largest cities, Chicago has put aside the smallest portion of its looming pension obligations, according to a study issued this year by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The condition...

Race Relations: A quarter-century after a black teenager falsely accused an innocent white man of rape, she has begun paying reparations for her slander. The man who rocketed to fame on her falsehoods is still at it. If ever there was a case of racial injustice it was the case of Tawana Brawley and Steven Pagones, except the roles of victim and perpetrator were reversed in the parallel universe of the racial grievance industry. The master of that universe is Al Sharpton. Pagones is not as well-known as George Zimmerman, nor is he likely to be now, given the media's...

Health Reform: The American people don't want it, even Democrats think it's a train wreck, and now members of the agency charged with enforcing it have said it's hazardous to our health, financial and otherwise. While testifying Thursday on Capitol Hill, Daniel Werfel, acting chief of the Internal Revenue Service, the agency charged with enforcing ObamaCare's mandates, told a House committee he would rather keep his current health insurance plan than make the switch to one offered by the Affordable Care Act. Perhaps he admitted what most Americans believe because he is only the "acting" director about to be replaced....

The Libyan Lie: Dozens more CIA operatives were on the ground in Benghazi than previously acknowledged. Were they running guns to Syrian rebels? And why are they and their families now being intimidated? The only thing "phony" about the Benghazi scandal has bee