Free Republic

Maybe we shouldn’t expect anything much from a president who gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod filled with his own speeches, and who gave former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of American movies on DVDs that didn’t work in the U.K. But the way this White House is choosing to “welcome” Pope Francis is appalling. When Francis arrives at the White House on Wednesday for a welcome reception, his greeters will include “Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop who’s now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a think-tank with ties to the...

Most people don't know what a socialist is. Socialist sounds too much like "social." A socialist, I suspect, for most Americans means to be "social." Who could be opposed to that? Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. In reality, he's a theft using the respectability of the United States Senate as cover for his criminal views. Like all socialists, Sanders believes it's OK to steal from people if he can get enough votes and enough support from the people he will be stealing for -- the beneficiaries of his thieving ways. Of course, Sanders isn't the only socialist in Congress. Most...

The Progressive Crime Wave Grows Murder, murder, everywhere, but Obama's not to blame. September 7, 2015 Matthew Vadum    Murder rates are skyrocketing in large U.S. cities, but President Obama's progressive pro-crime policies and endless racial provocations have nothing to do with it, the New York Times predictably declared in a recent article. Nowadays Americans are being killed and maimed explicitly because of their race. Execution-style cop killings are becoming distressingly common. Killings and vicious assaults based on the skin color of the civilian victim are also becoming common. That any of this is happening shouldn't surprise anyone who...

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the fictional Oceania government imposed a truncated English upon its people. The purpose of the new language, termed Newspeak, was to help the regime in its effort to eliminate thoughtcrime. “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc [the state ideology of Oceania], but to make all other modes of thought impossible,” Orwell said. But now Newspeak is transforming from fantasy to reality at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. The taxpayer-funded university recently issued a new guideline for...

How come: 1. A white racist kills 9 blacks in a church and everyone screams to ban the Confederate flag, but a gay black man kills two white reporters and nobody wants to ban the rainbow flag or the African liberation flag? 2. Hillary Clinton compares Republicans to ISIS and nobody bats an eye, but Curt Schilling compares ISIS to the Nazis and everyone has a conniption (and Schilling gets suspended)? 3. A few hundred Black Lives Matter people march in Minnesota and they get plenty of media coverage, but over 20,000 march in Birmingham in Restoring Unity, retracing the...

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally, you live in a country run by idiots. If you have to get your parent’s permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion, you live in a country run by idiots. If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor or check out a library book, but not to vote who runs the government, you live in a country run by idiots.idiots...

Apparently all of that “anti-imperialist” rhetoric from Caracas was just a farce for public consumption. As Venezuela’s economy implodes amid skyrocketing inflation and crippling shortages of practically everything, Socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro (shown) has a new plan to prop up his imploding regime: annex two thirds of neighboring Guyana’s territory and almost one third of its population. The area eyed by Maduro’s autocracy is especially noteworthy now that potentially lucrative oil deposits have been discovered offshore. Unsurprisingly, a powerful alliance of the region’s socialist strongmen and their allies has sided with the regime in Venezuela. Talk of war is escalating....

It’s the law of the jungle in Venezuela, as shopping for groceries becomes an increasingly dangerous activity. As the shortage crisis worsens, more and more angry mobs are raiding the nation’s supermarkets, looting whatever basic goods they can find.+ During the first half of 2015, the Venezuelan Observatory for Social Conflict (OVCS) registered no fewer than 132 incidents of looting or attempted looting at various stores throughout the country. In addition, Venezuelan consumers staged over 500 protests that condemned the lack of available products at state-run grocery stores, markets, and pharmacies.+ The OVCS has documented at least 132 incidents of...

Kelly Osbourne stuck her foot firmly in her mouth on Tuesday’s episode of “The View” when she made an unfortunate remark during a discussion on Donald Trump’s favorability among Latino voters. “If you kick every Latino out of this country, who is going to be cleaning your toilet Donald Trump?” Osbourne said. Her statement was met with an awkward groan from Raven-Symone before co-host Rosie Perez said, “Latinos are not the only people doing that.” Osbourne quickly back-pedaled, saying “I would never mean it like that. I’m not part of this argument.”

In 1958, writer Alvin Schwartz introduced a character named “Bizarro” to jazz up the Superman comic franchise. “I was striving, you might say,” Schwartz noted, “for that mirror-image, that opposite. And out of a machine which would reveal the negative Superman, came the mirror image.” By his very nature, Bizarro did everything the exact opposite of the way a rational person would. On at least one occasion he explained why, “Me unhappy! Me don't belong in world of living people! Me don't know difference between right and wrong -- good and evil!” If there is a difference between Bizarro and...

The messenger needed shooting. Forget the message On July 22 Juan Williams, a progressive pundit on Fox (yes there are democrats on Fox) was appalled by the release of a video taken by The Centre For Medical Progress that revealed Dr. Mary Gatter, the medical director for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, talking about the selling of fetal baby parts. I was watching the conversation unfold. This occurred one week after another video had been released with Dr. Debora Nucatola Senior Director of all medical services for Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is selling fetal baby parts-which is against the law. When...

Back in March, the pundits expressed horror at the alleged extremism of the Conservative Political Action Conference. On ABC, NPR correspondent Cokie Roberts insisted "I think the person that won at CPAC was John Kasich. He didn't show up, and I think that's the wisest thing for anybody to do." ABC pundit Matthew Dowd bizarrely suggested Ronald Reagan would be booed at today's CPAC. On NBC, they found peril for Scott Walker after his speech: "Governor's gaffe? ... Presidential hopeful Scott Walker under fire for saying his experience with union protesters has prepared him to take on ISIS. Is it...

For years, the right has been frustrated by the left’s ability to unite various interest groups successfully as a force. The right hasn’t had as much success, with factions calling each other RINOs and lecturing about Reagan’s 11th Commandment. Now, it looks like the left’s ability to work together is finally unraveling. It is happening because the left has become increasingly obsessed with identity politics, labeling everyone in groups and stereotypes instead of as individuals. As we all learned from history, grouping people by race resulted in terrible things like slavery. It is unsustainable, as it breeds resentment toward other...

Supporting America’s enemies abroad and criminals at home The modern-day progressive’s abiding hatred of the United States of America and the eternal principles for which it stands is what animates the Left’s efforts to cripple and destroy this one-of-a-kind nation. It is fair to say that support for America’s enemies abroad and criminals at home are the twin pillars of progressivism today. Since in the real world left-wing social engineering schemes inflict great damage on the human beings selected for experimentation, progressives’ most effective tactic is the smear, which they deploy day in, day out, when they run out of...

The Conservative base is upset – to put it mildly – with the Progressive RINO Establishment Since November of 2010 – when Marco Rubio, along with John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, et al, began to walk back poker-faced campaign promises – I’ve been documenting evidence indicting Marco Rubio as a happy little ladder-climber within the Progressive RINO Establishment. After winning in 2010, they spoke of “compromise” and “bi-partisanship;” not unlike a marketing theme incongruously composed and presented in a conference call. Many other conservatives grasping history are with me in the Reagan school of compromise: We win, they lose. As with...

On Friday, large crowds in Tehran and other Iranian cities burned American flags and chanted “Death to America!” On Saturday, Iranian media outlets reported that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had instructed university students to “continue the struggle against arrogant powers” – with the United States at the top of that list. On Tuesday, President Obama announced an historic agreement between Iran and the United States. It would be comforting to believe that the last of these developments mitigates the first two – that with an agreement in place, Iran’s “struggle” to bring about America’s demise will begin at least to...

Obamacare! The War on Drugs! A War on Poverty! Prohibition! The idea that government will bring social progress isn't new. Europe's monarchs believed in big government long before there was a Soviet Union or a welfare state. Eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire praised "enlightened" monarchs like Prussia's Frederick the Great. Since the nineteenth century, so-called "progressives" have wanted government to get ever larger. They got their wish. The results were not so good for people. Today pundits and protesters moan about fiscal "austerity" in nations like Greece. But if austerity means cuts in government, there hasn't been much of it. Sure, Greece...

Donors have given just $30,000 to Lincoln Chafee’s Democratic run for president, leading him to acknowledge that Democratic competitor Bernie Sanders is filling the role he hoped to play in the 2016 contest. Chafee lent his campaign $364,000, according to federal campaign finance filings. The former Rhode Island governor trails by a wide margin in fundraising. The campaign for Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said it raised $45 million since mid-April, while Sanders, a Vermont senator, has raised $15 million since he joined the race in late April. “I always thought that there was fundraising potential for an honest progressive...

Take a bow, MOTI, you are all innate insurgents.At least according to Daniel Greenfield, the Sultan of Knish. I think one of you must have posted a link to this post as it was in my satchel of “must reads.” Butt if, like me, you never find time to get around to reading all those gems stuffed into your perpetual stack of stuff, here’s one you don’t want to miss: Five Ways to Fight the Left and Make Your Life Better. He lists 5 things that the MOTI (Famiglia MOTUS) have been doing for years now. Organic Opposition doesn't require...

Are we still a serious country? I couldn’t help but notice something last week about the stories that were emphasized in the news – and about the way they were treated. Let’s start with Donald Trump. He may not be your top choice for president. He may not be mine. But the reaction to what he said about illegal immigrants bringing crime into the United States has been one of the most absurd spectacles we’ve seen in some time. His fellow Republican candidates have either rushed to denounce his statement, or have been put on the defensive in explaining why...