Free Republic

The Koch brothers are at it again. Their right-wing political Panzer Division descended on a New York City hospital over the weekend to protest (!) the addition of a new ambulatory care center. What the hell, Koch bros? Why not pro-America?Sorry. That’s not quite right. In fact, it was the New York State Nurses’ Association, the NAACP New York State Conference, and SEIU Local 1199, among others, who marched on the soon-to-be-built David H. Koch Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which was funded in part by a $100 million donation from the man one prominent liberal recently predicted would...

<p>Harvey Weinstein revealed on Saturday that he wasn't sure how he felt about Barack and Michelle Obama when Hillary Clinton -- a longtime friend -- was defeated by Obama in the Democratic primary.</p> <p>"I strongly support Hillary. When she lost, Michelle invited me back in ... but I thought I was going to sit that one out," Weinstein said during his keynote speech at the 38th annual UCLA Entertainment Symposium, hosted by the UCLA School of Law.</p>

Harry Reid is under a lot of job-retention stress these days, so Americans might forgive him the occasional word fumble. When he recently took to the Senate floor to berate the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch for spending "unlimited money" to "rig the system" and "buy elections," the majority leader clearly meant to be condemning unions. It's an extraordinary thing, in a political age obsessed with campaign money, that nobody scrutinizes the biggest, baddest, "darkest" spenders of all: organized labor. The IRS is muzzling nonprofits; Democrats are "outing" corporate donors; Jane Mayer is probably working on part 89 of...

...Over the past 50 years or so, these post-Protestants have gradually formed the core of a new and fascinating social class in America....And we can recognize their origins in mainline Protestantism when we discern some of the ways in which they see the world and themselves. They are, for the most part, politically liberal, preferring that government rather than private associations address social concerns. They remained puritanical and highly judgmental, at least about health. And like all puritans, they are willing to use law to compel behavior they think right. Nonetheless, they do not think of themselves as akin to...

WASHINGTON -- Members of the huge millennial generation are less religious, less likely to call themselves “patriotic” and significantly more‎ liberal than older generations, new research shows. Although adults aged 18-33 are much more likely to call themselves political independents than their elders are, they are also far more likely to vote Democratic. Their views favoring activist government, as well as their stands on social issues such as gay rights, reinforce that voting behavior, an extensive study by the Pew Research Center shows.

This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. The radical Marxist-progressives (communists) took control of the democrat party some time ago. They’ve only become more emboldened with the election of Barack Obama, who was raised as a communist from birth. With their new found leader, Barack Obama, the Socialist Party of America felt secure enough to announce the names of 70 democrats in Congress that belong to their caucus. Other than Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who openly ran as a socialist, the rest of this lot ran as “moderate democrats.” I think it’s time we put the myth...

Like a simple parlor trick, the networks are able to make skeptical scientists vanish, at least from the eyes of their viewers. In some cases, the broadcast networks have failed to include such scientists for years, while including alarmist scientists within the past six months. ABC, CBS and NBC's lengthy omission of scientists critical of global warming alarmism propped up the myth of a scientific consensus, despite the fact that many scientists and thousands of peer-reviewed studies disagree. Neither CBS nor ABC have included a skeptical scientists in their news shows within the past 1,300 days, but both networks included...

Was it ultimately a race about race? The best picture Oscar is meant to honor the year's greatest achievement in film, and "12 Years a Slave" had no shortage of supporters before winning the top honor Sunday. But for all the film's artistry, the undercurrent of many "12 Years a Slave" conversations hinged on race and how Hollywood has for decades given short shrift to one of the most inglorious chapters in the nation's history. All the same, two Oscar voters privately admitted that they didn't see "12 Years a Slave," thinking it would be upsetting. But they said they...

February was not kind to supporters of the liberal agenda. In the span of four weeks, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released four separate reports, each concluding that misguided big government policies are hurting American businesses and families. CBO first reported in early February that President Obama’s healthcare law will drive millions out of full time work and push our ballooning national debt to $27 trillion dollars. A second report released by the CBO concluded that a mandated hike in the minimum wage to $10.10 would kill 500,000 jobs, mostly for low-wage workers. And a third report suggested that...

The journalists at Good Morning America on Thursday were sufficiently provoked by a pro-American Cadillac commercial that they devoted a whole segment to wondering if the spot was "arrogant" and "xenophobic." GMA's reporters, who couldn't find any time to cover former IRS head Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth on Capitol Hill, devoted almost three minutes to the "backlash" against the car commercial. The ad features a man strolling around his large house, praising the free enterprise system and the work ethic of Americans: "Other countries, they work. They stroll home. They stop by the café. They take August off. Off!"...

Europe’s far-left are set to outnumber the Liberals in the next European Parliament, according to a pan-EU opinion poll published on Wednesday (5 March). In the second of a series of fortnightly forecasts in the three months before Europe’s 400 million voters go to the ballot booths from 22-25 May, Pollwatch Europe forecasts that the Parliament’s leftist GUE group would see its number of MEPs swell to 67 seats and become the third largest group in the assembly. For their part, the Liberals would be reduced to 61 seats, well down on the 85 seats they secured five years ago....

If you want to know why everything is going wrong for Obama and the Democrats, from Obamacare to Ukraine, the answer is simple. Liberals got everything they asked for, from stimulus to “reset.” I know: Crimea River. But we conservatives only ever get a smidgen of what we want. Even back in the golden age of Reagan, we Reaganites weren't at all sure what we'd got in Ronaldus Magnus. Could he get through a presidential debate without putting a foot in it? Would supply-side economics really end the 1970s stagflation? Was SDI going to end up a Star Wars fantasy?...

According to the New York Post, New York City’s mad cap Sandinista Mayor Bill de Blasio is about to find out a truth that conservatives have known all along, that bashing the rich can only go so far. It seems when he is not throwing little children out of charter schools or banning carriage rides in Central Park, de Blasio is on full class warfare mode and is going after New York’s one percent with a vengeance. It seems that the wealthy elite are starting to have had enough and are getting ready to decamp en masse, to Florida it...

Liberalism is an ideology that believes in control, not freedom. That's why liberals love the federal government so much while they detest statesí rights. It allows them to bend hundreds of millions of people to their will with one imperial edict. It's also why liberal judges don't believe in the Constitution like conservative justices do. Sticking to one set of rules means people have freedom to do what they want as long as they adhere to the basic rules our society was formed around. A "living constitution" means you can put the force of law behind the whims of liberal...

The Obama administration has a new solution to force compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA): simply ban businesses from reducing staff in response to the law’s burdensome employer mandate. The administration previously postponed the law’s requirement that all businesses with 50 or more employees provide health insurance until 2015, a year later than required by the ACA. In what is being referred to as “transition relief,” the administration’s latest delay of the employer mandate through 2015 exempts mid-size businesses with 50-99 employees from the requirement, and lowers the requirement for businesses of 100 or more employees from 95 percent...

The election of Bill de Blasio as New York’s mayor was a dream comes true for America’s progressives. Not only has one of their own grabbed the top job in the country’s biggest city, but his Working Families Party has total (48/3) control of the City Council to support him. There is now no progressive program de Blasio cannot put into place. He is limited only by his own imagination. Sure those “meanies” in Albany can throw a few road blocks in front of him and briefly stall his plans, but in the end he’ll get his way. The far...

Apparently they're trying!

In the face of a stagnating economy and national debt topping $17 trillion, many policymakers in Washington, D.C. are seeking ways to reduce spending. Given that many states increasingly rely on federal spending to craft their state budgets, the necessary federal spending reductions could pose a serious fiscal threat to states that fail to prepare. What’s more, those federal funds come with serious strings attached, which often hamper state autonomy and effectiveness in policymaking. A recent report from State Budget Solutions based on Census data reveals that on the whole, states received 31.6 percent of their total revenue from the...

Earlier today U.S. Representative Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, released a bill designed to fundamentally reform both the federal corporate and individual income tax (press conference video here and executive summary here). America is far overdue for such reform. As Camp points out in the Wall Street Journal: “According to Nina Olsen, the National Taxpayer Advocate at the IRS, Americans overall spend over six billion hours and $168 billion every year to file their returns. This is stark testimony to the complexity of the tax code. Meanwhile, owners of small businesses face tax rates as...