Free Republic

Dear Supporter, We have a unique opportunity in Virginia. Governor Bob McDonnell is currently considering which felonies should be categorized as “non-violent” for the purpose of the new, more streamlined restoration of civil rights process that will go into effect as early as next week. Right now, there are several felonies arbitrarily classified as “violent,” like breaking and entering or drug possession with intent to distribute. Those particular felonies disproportionately affect people of color and communities in poverty. We need your help. Will you take the time to email Governor Bob McDonnell and ask that he take the broadest approach...

The Mindset of the Left At least as far back as the 18th century, the left has struggled to avoid facing the plain fact of evil -- that some people simply choose to do things that they know to be wrong when they do them. Thomas Sowell | The New American 02 July 2013 When teenage thugs are called "troubled youth" by people on the political left, that tells us more about the mindset of the left than about these young hoodlums. Seldom is there a speck of evidence that the thugs are troubled, and often there is ample...

For those who may have forgotten what kind of a President Bill Clinton was: 1) Clinton’s own words show his often expressed innate hostility to, and utter contempt for, the core principles of the American founding: ``If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.’’ -- President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993 ``The purpose of government is to reign in the rights of the people’’ –- Bill Clinton during an interview on MTV in 1993 ``We can’t be so fixated on our desire to preserve the...

Breitbart News has learned that less than a month before Barbara Walters defended Bill Maher's vicious attacks on Sarah Palin's special-needs son, Walters personally called Palin's camp to ask if the former Alaska governor could be a guest co-host on The View sometime during the months before the legendary anchor retires from TV journalism. Maher mocked Palin's special needs son by referring to him as "retarded" during a June 8 Las Vegas show. When Palin's schedule did not allow for her to guest host, Palin's advisers left the invitation as an open question. This backstory makes Walters's refusal to defend...

Dear Supporter, Next week, the Medicaid Innovation and Reform Commission (MIRC) is planning to meet. As you know, this commission is tasked with ensuring that certain reforms to Medicaid are met before moving forward with expansion. We need your help to remind the committee members how Virginia feels about Medicaid expansion! We need to remind them that Medicaid expansion will create jobs, provide insurance for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, lower health insurance rates, and not cost Virginia a dime for the first several years. Will you take a moment and call members of the committee and let them know...

Earlier this year, I had some fun when it was revealed that the President’s new Treasury Secretary had a lot of money in the Cayman Islands. After all, leftists want us to believe tax havens are rogue regimes that should be eliminated. Some of them even want military intervention against these low-tax jurisdictions! Much to my amusement, Mr. Lew even pretended he was financially illiterate to justify making sensible decisions to invest via the Cayman Islands. And unlike the President’s first Treasury Secretary, Mr. Lew didn’t break the law and cheat on his tax return. You probably won’t be surprised to...

It must be nice to be a leftist. The solution to every problem is more of someone else's money. That's the favored solution over on the Democratic Party side of the aisle when it comes to the IRS' targeting of conservative non-profits. In a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing, Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano of New York suggested, "There is no clearer way to promote more scandals than by cutting funding that could be used for oversight, training and reform. At the level of this subcommittee is funded right now, we're just asking for more trouble at the IRS and elsewhere." This...

Friend -- Last week, Senator Warner emailed you in order to solicit your help in the fight for marriage equality, and I wanted to follow up real quick. The Supreme Court is currently deliberating on the constitutionality of DOMA, a discriminatory federal law that that denies same-sex couples legal rights like access to their spouse’s Social Security and insurance survivor benefits. As Senator Warner said, “That’s just wrong. All married couples should be entitled to the same legal rights – regardless of sexual orientation.” It’s critical we make our voices heard before the Court issues its ruling in June. Will...

When Cardinal Bergoglio was first chosen as Pope, my immediate reaction was that, although he would probably not tamper with the Church’s views on sexual issues, he would likely move it to the left in terms of economic rhetoric. I based that to some small degree on his choice of name: Saint Francis is something of a favorite of progressives in the Church due to his vow of poverty and his love of animals. But even more important to me was the intellectual milieu out of which he came: Argentine populism, and his own public statements as a cardinal in...

In the wake of the Boston Bombings, media commentators, academic experts and Obama administration officials exhibited classic signs of the five stages of liberal grief when faced with a mass casualty terrorist attack:Stage 1 — Anger: Whoever did this was obviously a right wing, Tea Party-affiliated, patriot, militant, white, religious, Republican, tax-protesting, NRA-loving gun nut.Stage 2 — Self Righteousness: Anyone who assumes that this tragedy was perpetrated by Muslim extremists is engaging in the worst form of racial profiling, jumping to conclusions based on no evidence whatever, and is undoubtedly a racist Islamophobe.Stage 3 — Bargaining: The fact that the...

This blog post searches for the philosophical foundations of left-wing politics, asking this question: The conservative movement rests on a series of great thinkers: Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Burke, Mill, Hayek, von Mises, etc. Where are the intellectual foundations of the Left?...There is an intellectual tradition behind the contemporary Left, stretching back to Plato’s Republic and including Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Marcuse, Alinsky, etc. But it’s a deeply totalitarian tradition. It’s the political philosophy that dares not speak its name in an election season, for it would garner few votes, and for good reason. The real intellectual vacuum underlies not the...

Just last year, Bob Casey ran for re-election as a pro-marriage senator. Now, the Catholic senator from Pennsylvania, has "evolved" on the issue and is now in line with his party by declaring he's pro-gay marriage . Wonder if this has anything to do with recent polls shifting towards gay marriage. This is hardly stunning coming from Casey who swore all over the state that he was a devout Catholic and pro-life like his father, the late Governor Bob Casey. The "pro-life" Casey has repeatedly betrayed the unborn both with his vote for Obamacare and repeated votes to fund Planned...

Have you ever wondered why Fascism (essentially socialism) and Nazism (again, essentially socialism) are considered to be right-wing political philosophies? It's because the left-wing and its obedient lap-dog, the MSM, have gone to great lenghts to recast them as right-wing philosophies. In an effort to create as much distance as possible between Hitler and his socialist principles, Hitler has deliberately been mislabeled as extreme right wing by the socialist movement. Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists (the Nazi party) represented extreme left wing politics. Leftists are quick to cite the fact that one of Hitler's first actions was to get...

<p>This section of DiscoverTheNetworks examines the immensely wealthy charitable foundations that provide financial backing for leftist groups and causes. These foundations -- sometimes called endowments or charitable trusts -- are nongovernmental, nonprofit entities whose assets are provided by donors and managed by their (the foundations') own officials, who earmark portions of their assets each year for what they consider to be socially useful purposes. Most of these foundations can be classified under the following categories: Community Foundations, which build their endowments through contributions from many donors within a given geographic region, and typically focus on local needs Corporate Foundations, which are private foundations established by for-profit corporations but legally separate from the parent corporations 

Family Foundations, in which the original donor or the donor's family plays a significant role in governing the foundation 

Independent Foundations, which are private foundations, usually endowed by one source such as an individual's bequest

 Operating Foundations, which are private foundations that use most of their income to provide charitable services or programs of their own, rather than making grants to outside organizations 

Public Foundations, which are public charities that operate significant grantmaking programs The DiscoverTheNetworks database currently identifies and profiles more than 125 major foundations whose political and philanthropic orientations are generally leftist, and whose combined assets exceed $100 billion. Some of the foundations described in this section are so large that they have single-handedly shaped entire cultural and political movements. (See, for example, the Ford Foundation's role in underwriting The Open Borders Lobby.</p>

Nothing really stuns me anymore about the Left and their lunacy. That was until this week when soulless Columbia professor Mark Lamont Hill appeared on CNN and got giddy about cop killer Chris Dorner. Hill said Dorner’s murderous revenge spree was “exciting,” and was like Jamie Foxx’s character in Tarantino’s latest flick, D’jango Unchained. Hill doubled down on his stupidity during the same interview by stating Chris’ homicidal orgy was akin to the exploits of a “super hero.” I was speechless when I heard such vomit roll off that quack’s tongue. In contrast to numb nuts, Dorner's mother, Nancy Dorner,...

Floyd Corkins Jr. pleaded guilty on Wednesday to wounding a security guard at the Washington headquarters of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobbying group fighting against gay marriage, on August 15 last year. Corkins was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches at the time – the restaurant chain noteworthy for its public, Christian-based opposition to gay marriage – and intended to rub the sandwiches in his victims´ faces. The New York Times made do with a brief from Reuters that did not mention a vital angle

A truly scary and terribly frustrating aspect of the in-your-face communist takeover of Americais the fact that perhaps half (or more) of the American population can’t see it. There are plenty of wide-awake American patriots who are watching in stunned amazement at the blatantly criminal actions of Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) and his lawless administration. But, there are so many other Americans who are oblivious to it. When regarding the dullness of the masses of disengaged or otherwise ignorant and deceived Americans, I am often reminded of the opening verses of one of the songs on Pink...

I admire England’s Lord Christopher Monckton. He has an impressive history that includes careers as a scientist, editor and journalist, political leader, policy advisor and businessman. He is a strong, fearless voice of reason in the face of the tyrannical, freedom-robbing global warmist hoax. So, it was with great interest that I read his latest column at WorldNetDaily. His piece titled, “Obama’s ‘Inauguration’ Marks End of the Left,” makes the case that Barack Obama (or whatever his name is) and his atrocious, lawless behavior in the United States presidency will ultimately discredit the Left and end its political force. He...

The Left Is Convinced Americans Won’t Fight For 2nd Amendment Rights Once cowed at the thought of provoking Second Amendment supporters, leftists will soon attempt to ban “assault weapons” (and much more) as legislation offered by Dianne Feinstein makes its way to the Senate floor. It seems that D.C. liberals have finally become convinced that American gun owners are too cowardly, too lazy or too dependent upon the generosity of Big Brother to fight for their Second Amendment rights. During the past four years, the gun banning-Left have watched as American buyers broke sales records in the purchase of semi-automatic...

Son of Wisconsin state senator assaulted  while confronting 2am yard-sign thieves Already it starts... ________________________________________________________________________________ Early Friday morning, thugs presumably supporting President Obama beat up the son of Wisconsin State Senator Neal Kedzie outside of his apartment in Whitewater. Kedzie caught the two men removing a Romney sign outside of his apartment around two o'clock in the morning.  After telling them to put the signs back, one of the thugs attacked Kedzie and then put him in a choke hold and continued to beat his head... More @ Breitbart ________________________________________________________________________________ Yeah, getting ugly out there as the walls close-in...  Sure...