Free Republic

Say what you want about Senator John Kerry, nobody ever called him lazy. He landed in Congress and immediately rolled up his sleeves and spat on his hands. The Nicaraguan people must end up like the Cuban and Vietnamese! Toward this end the man was tireless. The vision inspired him to such a staggering work load, energized him to such a frantic pace, and propelled him to such legislative feats, that his colleagues -- even the pinkest -- gaped in envy and awe. Back in the mid 80’s Nicaragua was the pinkos' latest City on a Hill, Daniel Ortega their...

With dark shadows of uncertainty descending upon the hearts of so many at the conclusion of 2012, one can only hope 2013 will be a year of promise. But even in these dark days, miracles do still happen, especially when people are willing to roll up their sleeves for the cause of freedom. This present darkness has its roots in our nation's moral decline, and the further we get from our moral center, the worse off we are as a people -- and a nation. It has taken some time to get where we are today. Over the years, conservatives...

An entire country is in shock as we continue to watch the funerals of these innocent children and adults in Connecticut. It's not merely shock, but horror and revulsion, at the second-bloodiest school shooting in our history. It is sickening even to rank them in this way, to admit that there have been so many as to require it, but it is true: yet another child has killed yet more children in cold blood. We don't have to worry about foreign terrorists coming to our country: we are better at hurting ourselves than they are at hurting us, and we...

Was there anything about the Sandy Hook massacre the media got right on the day it happened? In their rush to be first, they ignored their obligation to be right. Nearly every detail they disseminated Friday was wrong, even down to the name of the killer. Their desire to sensationalize had them shoving microphones in the faces of children who couldn’t possibly comprehend the events of the day. This was just the latest example of how out of control and dangerous the media has become, and it’s time government did something to protect us. You’re probably asking yourself, “What...

Just when you thought yesterday’s dismal jobs numbers couldn’t get any worse -- they did. According to CNSNews.com, nearly seventy-five percent of all civilian jobs created since the beginning of last summer are in the public sector: Seventy-three percent of the new civilian jobs created in the United States over the last five months are in government, according to official data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In June, a total of 142,415,000 people were employed in the U.S, according to the BLS, including 19,938,000 who were employed by federal, state and local governments. By November, according to data...

The Military Demarcation Line splitting the "truce village" of Panmunjom doesn't legally demarcate the political boundary between North Korea and South Korea. Instead, it splits a demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating two warring armies who have observed a tenuous ceasefire since 1953. No, the Korean War is not over, at least not officially. The next president, whether President Barack Obama in his second term or Gov. Mitt Romney in his first, will be a Korean War president, and, unless the ceasefire totally craters, one of them will oversee the 60th anniversary of that ceasefire and the 63rd anniversary of the beginning...

When we list the areas that Barack Obama wants to "fundamentally transform," as he promised before his 2008 election, let's not overlook his plans for education. They are as fundamentally transformational, costly and dictatorial as Obamacare. It's well-known that public schools are not graduating students as well-educated as before, that Americans score poorly on international tests, and that billions of federal dollars showered on public schools have not achieved any of the designated goals, which were to raise test scores and to eliminate the gap between higher income and lower income students. The Obama progressives want us to believe that...

While national political campaigns and politicians are regularly featured in the news for their accomplishments on the right, one small state-based think tank is quietly grinding away victory after victory. The Goldwater Institute was already a leading state-based think tank when libertarian lawyer Clint Bolick came on board five years ago to launch a litigation division. Since then, Bolick has greatly expanded the reach of the right-leaning think tank, filing lawsuits against all levels of government to protect taxpayers and businesses from government overreach. Bolick's favorite line, which he says with a grin, is, “I get paid to sue government...

When President Obama came to the U.N. General Assembly on September 25, his arrogance was on full display. He skipped meeting any world leaders, but did find time to sit down and talk about his lover moves on ABC's "The View." Topics included how he's a "romantic husband," how he "tucks in" his wife at night and how his first kiss with Michelle is now memorialized by a monument in Chicago. Meanwhile, Israel is preparing for war against a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. Yawn. Obama also skipped the traditional luncheon, leaving U.N. Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon looking like "a jilted prom date,"...

After watching the national media's performance since the party conventions, one can only hope that college students are out on a summer safari or some Third World Peace Corps mission. Anything to avoid this mess. Sean Hannity is right. The establishment news media is dead. Whatever remains has only one standard. If it helps Obama, it's "news." If it doesn't, reporters should move on. There's nothing to observe here. Our media doesn't just report "news" unfavorable to Romney. They obsess over it; complete with repetitive and thoroughly useless incantations that Romney's campaign is hopeless. On September 17, perhaps not accidentally...

Culture Challenge of the Week: Movies "Selling" Sex to Children Can you name the last five movies your teenage son or daughter has watched with friends? How strong was the sexual content in those movies? And does it really matter? New research suggests that it does. The study, conducted by Dr. Ross O'Hara and soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, found that promiscuity on-screen promotes promiscuity in real life. "Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages, have more sexual partners," and engage in riskier sexual activities says Dr....

There is a reflexive desire among a certain species of moderate Republicans to be perceived as "civil" by liberal opponents who believe that the mere existence of free-market, limited-government conservatism is an indecent affront to humankind. All aboard the U.S.S. Lost Cause. This disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship is a hard habit to break. In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain rode the "Barack Obama is a nice guy, but vote for me" wave to crashing defeat. In 2012, McCain's endorsee, Mitt Romney, has made "Barack Obama is a nice guy but in over his head" a standard stump-speech talking point. Conservatives of...

Last semester, I was giving a lecture on the history of the Supreme Court from 1953 to present. Toward the end of the lecture, I asked my students if they could name the current Chief Justice. None were able to do so. There were thirty students in the class. This was in a college classroom, mind you. I was annoyed by the failure of a single student to know the name of one of the three most powerful men in America. But, whenever annoyed, I have a tendency to make jokes to lighten the atmosphere. So I told my students...

They're coming for your children! They're coming for the womenfolk! Then they're coming after you! Norman Lear, the famous television show producer, offered this hysterically paranoid assessment of the allegedly growing and presumably insidious power of "the right": "I want to suggest that we lefties start laying claim to what we see as 'sacred' and serve it up proudly to the religious right -- to the James Dobson, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove ... hatemongers, sheathed in sanctity, and to the Koch brothers, the types that fund them and use them so effectively for their own political power-grabbing purposes....

I wonder if the Tebow critics would be as mouthy about his faith if Tim’s name was Achmed and the god he praised after a TD was Allah. I doubt it. Why do I hesitate? Well, it’s principally because Christophobic toads are afraid to turn the verbal guns they use to berate Christians on Muslims, that’s why. Plus, they’d probably go to jail or get fired for “hate speech,” but good Lord, you can certainly rag on Christians, now can’t ‘cha? Yes, my children, Christians are fair game because the brethren won’t retaliate with an underwear bomb when you rip...

Last week in Boston, a seven-year-old boy named Mark got into a fight with a bully. The bully put his hands around the boy's throat and began to squeeze. That's when Mark fought back; he kicked his aggressor right in the family jewels. In a normal society, we'd celebrate Mark. Throw him a ticker tape parade or something. Bullies need a sharp kick to the testicles. That's how you convince them that bullying is wrong. But in Boston, Mark was charged with sexual assault. Just to get this straight: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank's gay lover can run a homosexual prostitution...

Wrapping himself in the mantle of Theodore Roosevelt's "National Greatness" agenda, President Obama urged the nation to stand strong and unite behind ... his umpteenth regulatory czar. Nothing symbolizes American strength and vigor more than another unaccountable Washington bureaucrat. If Richard Cordray, the stalled White House nominee to enforce the Dodd-Frank financial bureaucracy, is not approved, the wheedler-in-chief warned in Osawatomie, Kan.: "Every day we go without a consumer watchdog in place is another day when a student or a senior citizen or member of our Armed Forces could be tricked into a loan they can't afford -- something that...

The taxpayers are being beaten to death by liberalism. Meanwhile academic liberals are complaining that they are taking a beating with recent budget cuts, which they claim are unjust. For the first time in a long time, I agree with the liberals. The budget cuts are unjust. In my view, they aren’t deep enough. If you disagree, consider this: One public university in North Carolina has just found money to start (in the midst of a budget crisis) a new scholarship to reward feminists for engaging in feminist political activism on the job. Here in the Tar Heel state, this...

The Hollywood elite's concern for the children stops at the water's edge of physical fitness. They simply do not touch the subject of moral fitness. On The Huffington Post, former entertainment executive Laurie David offered this pre-holiday piece of encouragement: "Thanksgiving Conversation Starter: Is It Time to Ban Soda Ads on Prime Time Television?" At the same time that the broadcast networks are allowing -- even advocating -- the removal of all limitations on nudity or profanity on TV, at any hour of the day, David is most upset about those old polar bear ads for Coca-Cola: "Knowing what I...

In Part 1, I discussed how the mainstream media, billionaire progressives such as George Soros, the White House and even the Occupy movement are in cahoots with one another. In Part 2, I discussed the MSM's maneuvering to coronate their choice for the GOP presidential nomination, Soros' covert investments in the 2012 presidential election, and Agenda 21's relation to progressivism and the Occupy movement. Today I will address not only exactly what the goal and meaning of progressives' "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" are but also what I believe we can do to stop that onslaught from overturning...