Free Republic

A recently released Angus-Reid Public Opinion Poll show that "...most people in the United States agree on the meaning of the Second Amendment, and half endorse the 'shall-issue' prerogative to carry concealed weapons in public." This most recent poll (taken January 17 - January 18, 2012) show that support for legal firearm ownership continues to grow. Fully 85% of Americans believe that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms. This belief matches the United States Supreme Court finding in the D.C. vs. Heller case from 2008. Also, now more than half of the United States are supporting concealed...

[...] And yet, here we are at the end of 2011, with Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and discussion boards still teeming with intemperate quick takes. President Obama has taken considerable heat this year, but isn't it too soon to accuse him of being an ineffectual leader? Isn't that one lesson from the Tucson incident? On a Christmas Day episode of "GPS" on CNN, Fareed Zakaria interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who reminded us that it's too early to cast Obama's legacy in stone. Here's an excerpt from their interview: I admire him very much, and I think that his...

It was because he was going to retire anyway, lost a favorite port town in redistricting and had a tough race last time. Was this really why Congressman Barney Frank announced today he’s retiring from the House of Representatives? Perhaps another reason was he’s no longer chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and like a lot of bullies, Mr. Frank found it’s not easy to be stripped of the power to torment and humiliate others. Brilliant, but acid tongued and generally unpleasant, Mr. Frank ruled with an iron gavel, ran over critics with delight and treated committee members and...

Is MSNBC merely a lost leader for the National Debocrat Party? If the Debtocrats stopped their financial support, could the leading talking heads at MSNBC find another anchor job? At a time when jobs, jobs, jobs, are so important, important, important, one needs to fear, fear, fear! Consider Chrissy "Shout-down-all-of-your-guests-who-disagree-with-you" Matthews. Not a lot of hope for a change in him. Maybe as a reporter on labor activities? Hope, and Change, Hope and Change, Hope and Change has just GOT to work someday - - - ? And then there is the gal infected, (terminally, I'm told), with the horrifying...

Dire consequences. In political arena you have options: 1) be on idiot or 2) be absolutely clueless of what’s going on, and then is 3) purposely pretend to be on side of groups, while dismantling fabric of nation. You choose. We are leaving in world upside down, what is right is portrayed as clueless selfish thinking, while what is wrong is being perceived as well organize community and structure of thoughts as well human beings. It is in that context that so many in media as well in political arena, were able to not only destroy essence of what is...

Yesterday, I pushed back on the bothersome Beltway meme that President Obama is invisible in this epic fight over raising the debt ceiling. Today, I want to dispute Peggy Noonan’s assertion that “nobody loves Obama.” Her opinion piece is all the more noteworthy for calling the president “a loser.” There are many legitimate criticisms you could level against Obama, particularly about his governing style or his personality. But calling him a “loser” was uncalled for. The notion that “nobody loves Obama” is something Noonan says she’s “never seen in national politics.” She goes on to write: This is amazing...

If you read online reviews before purchasing a product or service, you may not always be reading the truth. Review sites are becoming targets for "opinion spam" -- phony positive reviews created by sellers to help sell their products, or negative reviews meant to downgrade competitors. The bad news: Human beings are lousy at identifying deceptive reviews. The good news: Cornell researchers are developing computer software that's pretty good at it. In a test on 800 reviews of Chicago hotels, a computer was able to pick out deceptive reviews with almost 90 percent accuracy. In the process, the researchers discovered...

Tea party Republicans, to their credit, want to pass a BBA that would include the supermajority tax limitation. But it has no chance of passing, and absent that rule, political pressure could turn the amendment into a driver for the entitlement state as successive Democratic governments raised taxes, most likely with a European-style value-added tax to balance spending commitments. The new Members who are intent on fiscal responsibility should visit with Congressional historians to discover a root cause of this modern spending catastrophe—the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, the most laughable title ever placed on a federal law.

EARLY one morning, 50 years ago today, while his wife, Mary, slept upstairs, Ernest Hemingway went into the vestibule of his Ketchum, Idaho, house, selected his favorite shotgun from the rack, inserted shells into its chambers and ended his life. There were many differing explanations at the time: that he had terminal cancer or money problems, that it was an accident, that he’d quarreled with Mary. None were true. As his friends knew, he’d been suffering from depression and paranoia for the last year of his life. Ernest and I were friends for 14 years. I dramatized many of his...

The messiah-nation, gripped by war and fear of the unknown, could finally be coming to its senses. At periodic intervals, the American body politic has shown a marked susceptibility to messianic fevers. Whenever an especially acute attack occurs, a sort of delirium ensues, manifesting itself in delusions of grandeur and demented behavior. By the time the condition passes and a semblance of health is restored, recollection of what occurred during the illness tends to be hazy. What happened? How'd we get here? Most Americans prefer not to know. No sense dwelling on what's behind us. Feeling much better now! Thanks!...

Here is the why Romney will be the republican nominee and why Perry or Cain or Bachmann will not save the republicans. Romney is moving left on global warming and staying the course on Romneycare and you will see him take his natural left positions on other issues as the campaign gets underway. His goal is to attract as many democrat voters into the republican open primaries as possible to vote for him. Meanwhile , Bachmann has been brought into the race by the establishment as well as Cain who has no idea. Perry is coming in too. This is...

Our Lefty Military By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: June 15, 2011 As we search for paths out of America’s economic crisis, many suggest business as a paradigm for cutting costs. According to my back-of-the-envelope math, top C.E.O.’s earn as much as $1 a second around the clock, partly by cutting medical benefits for employees. So they must be paragons of efficiency, right? Actually, I’m not so sure. The business sector is dazzlingly productive, but it also periodically blows up our financial system. Yet if we seek another model, one that emphasizes universal health care and educational opportunity, one that seeks...

Politicians opposed to reform and change have always used fear as a means of persuading the people to forswear choice in the name of stability. Their mantra recalls that of Democritus, nicknamed by Avicenna as "The Happy Philosopher." Democritus' slogan was: "Desire what you have!" However, when change has already happened, its opponents abandon Democritus in favour of Alice, Lewis Carroll's little explorer of the Wonderland. There, the slogan is: "Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday; but never never today!" Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed the use of both stratagems in Tunisia and Egypt. At first, the dominant elite...

India's recent decision not to purchase American warplanes for its $10 billion-plus fighter aircraft programme - the largest single military tender in the country's history - has stirred debate in defence circles worldwide. India's defence ministry deemed the two American contenders, Boeing's F/A-18 Superhornet and Lockheed's F-16 Superviper, not to fulfil the requirements that it sought in a medium-size multi-role combat aircraft. With the Russian MiG-30 and the Swedish Gripen also eliminated, two European planes, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the French Rafale, are the only aircraft still in contention for an expected order of 126 planes. India had never previously...

Since the mid-nineties, I have nurtured a thesis about the dotcom bubble, tech bust, and the role Microsoft played in it. The opportunity to discuss it has never came up. That is, until Microsoft’s purchase of Skype yesterday. I have long argued that while Microsoft might have begun life as a software firm, it long ago morphed into something that was more a very clever IP/marketing firm with a huge tactical legal advantage that gave rise to a monopoly, rather than a true technology company. Microsoft remains hugely profitable today, but increasingly irrelevant. Their purchase of Skype is an attempt...

I thought it might be fun/interesting to see how people would finish this sentence: I never thought I would live to see the day when,,,,,,,,

Presidential résumés have run the gamut -- from commanding general of the United States Army (Ulysses S. Grant) all the way down to collector of the Port of New York (Chester A. Arthur). Unfortunately, since George McGovern ruined the presidential nominating system in 1971, there has been a new potential item for the presidential CV: navigating the byzantine process of primaries and caucuses better than any competitor. Not all eventual nominees have managed to do this (e.g. Gerald Ford was nearly outflanked in 1976, so was Ronald Reagan in 1980), and with only two presidents has this been a prime...

"I rarely heard a speech by a president so shallow, so hyper-partisan and so intellectually dishonest, outside the last couple of weeks of a presidential election where you are allowed to call your opponent anything short of a traitor. But we're a year and a half away from Election Day and it was supposed to be a speech about policy," syndicate columnist Dr. Charles Krauthammer said about President Obama's speech.

(ABP) -- “It is no longer illegal to carry a gun to church.” Scott Lewis, a Texas community college student, made that point recently as a rationale for his support of pending legislation to allow college faculty, staff and students (above 21 years of age) to carry concealed weapons on campus. He apparently believes that if Texans can bring guns to Sunday school, they can surely take them to them to psych class. While Texans debate the presence of guns at college (and well they should), the possibility of concealed weapons in church is a sharp reminder that many religious...

The founder of an organization that has influenced the Obama Administration's media and information policy, is both reporting on and leading the labor union/socialist occupation occupation of Madison Wisconsin. John Nichols John Nichols founded Free Press, "a national, nonpartisan organization" with Marxist Robert McChesney in 2002 to "engage citizens in media policy debates and create a more democratic and diverse media system". Free Press has contributed former affiliates to Obama Administration positions, including pro Hugo Chavez "Diversity Czar" Mark Lloyd and State Department policy adviser Ben Scott. John Nichols from The Nation and the Madison Capital Times has been a...