Free Republic

President Obama has wrapped up his tour of Africa. It was notable, insofar as that word can be applied to the trip, for his somewhat condescending and neo-colonial lecture to his hosts on the need to ease up on the old homophobia. Certainly, Africa is not terribly gay-friendly. But nor are other parts of the planet. In his ardent wooing of Iran, for example, he doesn't seem to have been perturbed in the least by his new best friends' executions of homosexuals, anymore than he is by the brutalization of gays elsewhere in the Muslim world. You might deduce in...

We are cursed, as the Chinese say, to live in "interesting times", about which there is much to say - the Iran deal, for example, or the Allaku Akbar guy running amok in Chattanooga. Yet the dead sloth that is the Republican Party has finally roused itself to spend the last 48 hours hammering Donald Trump for impugning the honor of John McCain. As his criminal-immigrant surge demonstrates, Trump's support comes almost entirely from Americans who feel the political class passes its time talking about nothing that matters to them. So feel free to spend the weekend talking about John...

Just last week, in reference to the abandonment of first principles, we were reminded by Mark Steyn: The trick of civilizational self-preservation is to spot this stuff when it's just small things and stop it at the itsy-bitsy stage. It's never one thing that is unlike the other, two opposing corners of civilization and barbarism, an express train rocketing from one to the other. It's always a continuum. Since several of you have posted the now infamous video of Dr. Deborah Nucatola discussing the sale of, uh, “undifferentiated tissue mass” I will not do so again. Butt I will point...

Readers keep asking me about the presidential race, and to be honest my heart sinks. Yes, yes, I know it's important to elect a Republican candidate because, if nothing else, as we're always told, they get to nominate strong candidates to the Supreme Court - like, er, Anthony Kennedy and, um, John Roberts. So that said: Because for many years the only TV station I could get in my corner of New Hampshire was Channel 3 Vermont (with its excellent local news show anchored by the late and much missed Marselis Parsons), I've been watching Bernie Sanders since he was...

I started the day on Bill Bennett's radio show, which is always fun. Jonah Goldberg was on before me, and advanced the proposition, after the Supreme Court's almighty constitutional bender last week, that it wasn't so bad; conservatives who just pottered around in their own world and tended to their families would still be able to lead lives largely unbattered by the forces of "progress". A few minutes later, one of Bill's listeners, Claudine, came on and said that's what Germans reckoned in the 1930s: just keep your head down and the storm will pass. How'd that work out? Claudine...

Guest-hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show last week, I mentioned an outrageous and very direct assault on free speech by the Government of the United States. As I said on the air, federal prosecutors are demanding Reason, the libertarian mag, cough up any identifying information on readers who posted comments in relation to the Silk Road case. That was the trial in which the Silk Road drugs impresario, Ross Ulbricht, wound up being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This would not happen, obviously, in Sweden or New Zealand or anywhere else, but even by the standards...

Martha Washington on the 1891 one-dollar bill. I shared my thoughts on the church murders in Charleston and the Pope's encyclical on climate change on this afternoon's Hugh Hewitt show. We'll print the transcript here tomorrow morning. ~The decision to boot Alexander Hamilton off the ten-dollar bill - or at any rate reduce him to one-half of a double-act (like the short-lived Dan Rather and Connie Chung) - is one of those small acts of historical vandalism I absolutely loathe. The powers that be have decided it's time (once more - see right) for "a woman" on a US banknote....

I've reached that happy stage in life where I'm like the bewigged judge at the Old Bailey: "Who are these 'Beatles' to whom the defendant refers?" "I believe they're a 'popular beat combo', m'lud." So I have no very clear idea who Amy Schumer is. Never knowingly seen or heard her. But I understand she's boffo with the millennials, and one must respect a hit. So I was interested to see turn up in my inbox this headline from Salon: Amy Schumer's one tweet that captures the Rachel Dolezal controversy Naturally, I clicked. And this was it, the Tweet that...

Out for the Count: A quartet of dolly birds can't wait to get it in the neck from Christopher Lee as Dracula. Christopher Lee died last weekend at the grand old age of 93, and remarkably his widow managed to keep it out of the public prints until Thursday, in order that she and their family might be able to grieve in peace. He had a long career going back seven decades and comprising many memorable roles: A Transylvanian count and a Jedi count, a Dark Lord of the Sith who became a Knight Bachelor in the 2009 Queen's Birthday...

In a not terribly long life, I have known well three transsexuals (as we used to say), and another three not so well. Not because I especially sought out their company, but just because I've spent a lot of my time around theatre and music and areas that attract those who feel "different". Two of those three friends I didn't know were transsexual until they were "outed", one very publicly - although with hindsight certain curious aspects of both their physiognomy and behavior suddenly made a lot more sense. But that's the point: Even those far closer to them than...

I am very sorry to learn from his latest column that Mark Steyn has been ill, but very glad that he has managed to find the energy to comment on the media and political response to the terror attack in Garland, Texas. As you would expect, he is witty and to the point. The title alone is gem: "Stay Quiet and You'll Be Okay" Read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt to whet the appetite:

As we mentioned a week ago, I'm none too well at the moment, and it so happens my preferred position in which to write causes me severe pain - which is presumably some kind of not so subtle literary criticism from the Almighty. But I'm back, more or less, with lots to catch up on. There were two big elections in recent days, with dramatic results: in Alberta, the Tories were wiped out; in Scotland, the Labour Party was slaughtered; in England, the Liberals were crushed. Strange times. I'll have more to say about the elections in the days ahead,...

For me, the issue this US election season is the corruption. Sure, I'd like a balanced budget and less debt and repeal of Obamacare, but I'm getting used to being sold out on those issues. So I'm down to the bare minimum requirement for a politician: The corruption nauseates me, and, if it doesn't nauseate the candidates, then that explains a lot about why nothing happens on any of those other matters. It's in the air, it's in my nostrils, and I'm sick of choking on it. We have a "justice" department that prosecutes a senator who made the mistake...

... I'll be talking about today's Hillary Clinton press conference later tonight with Sean Hannity on Fox News, but it was an amazing performance. Amazingly wooden and unconvincing, of course, but in a sense that was part of its brazenness. Its sheer implausibility underlined her central message: Yeah, and what are you gonna do about it? Most political figures would be terrified at having to advance this thin a defense in public: Oh, well. I didn't have a government email address because I didn't want to be forced to carry "two devices". Who'd she get that one from? Bill? "Aw,...

I'm a little under the weather (which is not as chronic as being under the climate), but I wanted to add something to what I said the other day about thug operator Raúl Grijalva, Democrat Representative from Arizona and Ranking Member of the House UnEnvironmental Activities Committee. It is not a small thing when even a jumped-up twerp hack announces that the national legislature of the world's superpower is targeting seven private citizens for disagreeing with him. In this case Commissar Grijalva is clamping the electrodes to various climate scientists - Robert Balling, John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Hayward, David...

The US media have had a fit of the vapors over Rudy Giuliani's suggestion that Barack Obama does not love America. As the Instapundit says, their reaction suggests that Giuliani hit a nerve. For my own part, I am way beyond that. By the way, I'm growing rather weary of the cheap comparisons of Obama with Neville Chamberlain. The British Prime Minister got the biggest issue of the day wrong. But no one ever doubted that he loved his country. That's why, after his eviction from Downing Street, Churchill kept him on in his ministry as Lord President of the...

Today, Valentine's Day, a café in Copenhagen hosted a discussion on "Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression". Islam knows not "freedom of expression", and the inclination of a certain proportion of its adherents is to respond to any "discussion" by opening fire. Why wouldn't they? As President Selfie told the UN General Assembly, "The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam." The fanatics of Islam take him at his word, and act accordingly. So at that café this afternoon they came in shooting and yelling "Allahu Akbar!" - which is Arabic for "Can't we all...

On Tuesday the Islamic State released a 22-minute video showing Flight Lieutenant Muath al-Kasasbeh of the Royal Jordanian Air Force being doused in petrol and burned to death. It is an horrific way to die, and Flt Lt al-Kasasbeh showed uncommon bravery, standing stiff and dignified as the flames consumed him. And then he toppled, and the ISIS cameras rolled on, until what was left was charred and shapeless and unrecognizable as human. King Abdullah's response to this barbaric act was to execute two ISIS prisoners the following morning, including the evil woman who was part of the cell that...

The cover of this week's Charlie Hebdo (right) shows Mohammed shedding a tear and holding up a "Je suis Charlie" sign under the headline "Tout est pardonné" - all is forgiven. The illustration is unclear: Is Mohammed forgiving the secular leftie blasphemers? Or are the secular lefties forgiving Mohammed and his murderous believers? The Commentator devotes an editorial to the subject, and finds it "a strange cover" symbolic of "western confusion". On the other hand, Paul Berman in The Tablet thinks "uncertainty lends majesty". On the other other hand, over at Ace of Spades, they think Charlie's staff are mocking...

In 2008, when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing, we heard a lot of the usual hooey (courtesy of that eugenicist crackpot Oliver Wendell Holmes) that there was no right to shout fire in a crowded theatre. On the very last day of the trial in Vancouver, my old friend Julian Porter, QC summed up thus: Against the argument that you cannot cry fire in a crowded theatre: Oh yes you can — you must, if in your considered view there is a fire. In that case there is a duty to cry fire.The satirists of Charlie...