Free Republic

We are experiencing an ever widening cultural divide, according to Charles Murray. Upper-middle class professional types may pretend that they are cultural relativists, accepting of whatever lifestyle their fellow human beings happen to choose. In reality, they live by old fashioned puritan values, however. They get married and stay married. They work hard and work long hours. Not so for the blue collar, never-got-beyond-high-school class, however. A shocking number aren't even working at all. Many are not getting married in the first place. Of those that get married, the divorce and separation rates are soaring. What about happiness and well-being?...

Dear friend, We are just two days away from the 2012 Democratic Party of Virginia's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner and I could not be more excited. We throw a pretty good party in Montana so I can't wait to see how Democrats get together in the Commonwealth. I am honored to have the opportunity to give the keynote speech and I'm looking forward to exchanging ideas with people from across the state about how Democrats can win in 2012 and continue moving this country forward together. This year's JJ Dinner is going to be one for the ages and I don't want...

Reporting from Washington — With just days before the Nevada GOP presidential caucuses, front runner Mitt Romney appears poised to win the state by a considerable margin. A new poll by the Cannon Survey Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found that Romney has the support of 45% of likely Republican caucus-goers, followed by Newt Gingrich with 25%, Rick Santorum with 11% and Ron Paul with 9%.

What was it everybody used to say about the United States? Look at whatÂ’s happening over there and you will see our future. Whatever Americans are doing now, we will be catching up with them in another 10 years or so. In popular culture or political rhetoric, America led the fashion and we tagged along behind. Well, so much for that. Barack Obama is now putting the United States squarely a decade behind Britain. Listening to the PresidentÂ’s State of the Union message last week was like a surreal visit to our own recent past: there were, almost word for...

Since 1 January, smaller diesel vans have had to be compliant with the LEZ (Low Emission Zone). The scheme aims to make the "polluter pay". So if you have a van over 10 years old you can pay £100 to enter London or you will receive a hefty fine. Vans join lorries and other diesel vehicles that have had to be compliant for a number of years. I wrote about the LEZ here. Since January, there has been an "amnesty" and if the owners of the vans which are not compliant drove them into London they received a warning letter...

(Editorial) Journalism: As the president launches his re-election bid by striking a more centrist tone, the partisan press is helping him whitewash his radical past. • Obama first learned Alinsky's rules in the 1980s, when Alinskyite radicals with the Chicago-based Alinsky group Gamaliel Foundation recruited, hired, trained and paid him as a community organizer in South Side Chicago. • In 1988, Obama even wrote a chapter for the book "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois," in which he lamented organizers' "lack of power" in implementing change. • Gamaliel board member John McKnight, a hard-core student of Alinsky, penned a letter...

Bernie Madoff is in jail for life for using other people’s money under false pretenses in a Ponzi scheme that fooled some of America’s most sophisticated investors. This is an example of fraud, not capitalism. Raj Rajaratnam is in jail for 11 years for insider trading of securities of Galleon Group, the hedge fund he founded. This is an example of violating a law passed by Congress restricting capitalism. If Raj had been a member of Congress, which exempted itself from that insider trading law, he would not be in jail today. Steve Jobs will be remembered forever as the...

WASHINGTON—Mitt Romney says he'll release his tax 2010 tax returns and 2011 tax estimates Tuesday and says it was a mistake for his presidential campaign to hold off as long as it did in getting them out.

With Obama ruling against the Keystone XL pipeline, he continues a direction which he has maintained from the very beginning, and will only accelerate should he win again in November. Think about some of the major actions of this administration: 1. A huge “stimulus” bill, most of which went to his supporters. If you look at where most of the money from the bill went, it went to businesses which supported his campaign, it went to businesses with union employees, it went to businesses which were ideologically aligned to his vision – during the auto bailouts, there were underreported reports...

Sally Kohn, a former senior strategist at the Soros-funded Center for Community Change, has been hired as a Fox News Contributor. Soros is the controversial hedge fund billionaire, convicted of insider trading in France, who finances the “progressive” movement in the U.S. An open lesbian who shuns feminine attire and frequently wears a suit jacket, Kohn is joining Fox News after being a regular on such programs as “The Ed Show” on liberal rival MSNBC. The former chair of the board of the Center for Community Change, Cecilia Munoz, was recently named the Director of the Domestic Policy Council in...

Let's face it, Mitt Romney seems more than a little opaque. On the one hand he's über-rich, incredibly smart and nakedly ambitious; on the other he seems somehow robotic, shut-down and so happy to embrace the pragmatic option that the core of his character remains elusive. There's a sense of a man who will eagerly deny even his own best achievements if doing so will help him seize the brass ring.

Cain is planning a new effort to promote his 9-9-9 plan now that his candidacy is over. It could not come at a better time for the Republican Party. (Those wishing to join should go to cainconnection.com.) He is doing a bus tour and making the rounds on television shows to push his substantive agenda and, in the process, breathe enthusiasm back into Republican ranks. The 9-9-9 plan will satisfy the libertarian impulse that underscores Paul’s appeal, particularly to the young. It will simplify the tax code so that it is a means of raising government revenue, not of promoting...

Now is the time for midcourse corrections to ensure the success of the conservative movement, as well as the American experiment. With that mission in mind, I would like to make a few suggestions of my own. Intellectual conservatism was once defined by two clear goals - the defeat of communism and the reduction in the size, scope and sweep of government. There are three observations I’d like to make about this conservatism. First, it was conservatism with a purpose. The goal of consigning communism to the ash heap of history was to eliminate oppression, increase liberty, and spread democracy....

I'm 34 years old. Young people today are smart and capable. That being said this clip suggests maybe we oughta raise the minimum age for certain major offices. The country is being run by children! GOD help us.

The Santorum and Romney campaigns are following Democrats down the class-warfare rabbit hole.Joe the Plumber might seem oh-so-2008, but as it happens he's alive and voting in New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond. He's that unhappy voter that Republican contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are pitching so hard to win. A little too hard, as it happens. If Republicans have an opening this year, it is with the white working class, a crowd the Democratic Party has been hemorrhaging for decades. Barack Obama did better than John Kerry or Al Gore with these voters, though even he earned just...

The normally Republican-phobic continent is taking a surprising shine to the lead GOP candidate, which it sees as a champion against the fringe   Mitt Romney, the GOP forerunner, met with fanfare on his recent travel to Europe.  The presidential primaries look a little different from across the Atlantic, and not necessarily in the way that you'd expect. The coverage isn't an Obama love-fest as it was early in his presidency, nor is it entirely GOP-bashing. That said, mainstream Europe -- whose open antagonism toward the Republican party appears to have faded somewhat since the Bush years ended, despite an...

... “We have a president who is a socialist,” Perry said in response to a question at the early-morning eye-opener GOP debate in Concord, N.H. “I reject the premise that Obama reflects our founding fathers,” Perry said. “He doesn’t.”..

The Dutch interior ministry has said new cameras for screening people who enter the country by car will not violate EU laws on free movement or privacy. In what looks like a fresh attack on the Schengen passport-free travel agreement, the pilot scheme—entitled "@migo-Boras"—is to see €19 million worth of cameras installed on 15 major highways from Belgium and Germany and in some police cars between February and April. … Dutch interior minister Gerd Leers said in a written statement in December the system "falls within the existing rules for border control and privacy." He added: "The cameras will not...

One of the more insane claims in Ron Paul’s newsletters was that the Israelis were behind the WTC bombings in 1993: Whether [the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little. This claim is of course so ridiculous and absurd that even Paul has to protect himself by claiming that “a Jewish friend” told him about it. What a handy rhetorical device! If only Paul had had the foresight to couch all his racist remarks in the newsletters...

Time to close ranks behind Romney. He will beat Obama.

Pardon the vanity, but I hate living in Illinois, and I just have to vent about it a bit … So I go to the annual extended family Christmas gathering, and this year, because I am a card-carrying Tea-Partier, my two socialist aunts team up to give me a book called Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. This is a book that basically says the people in flyover country who are not urban liberals are naturally prone to become Nazis, given the right political environment. Roth makes this point by hypothesizing an America where FDR loses the 1940 election to...

National Review editors have rolled out their big gun, Mark Steyn, to take whacks at the much-whacked Newt Gingrich. Steyn's article was featured at Monday's National Review Online under the banner: "Big-Government Newt." Steyn spends four pages slicing and dicing the eminently sliceable and diceable former U.S. House speaker. But aside from Steyn's always enjoyable trenchant humor, there's really not a lot of there there in the article. By that is meant nothing groundbreaking on Gingrich. The article is a laundry-list recapitulation of the "Many Foibles of Newt." Newt is contradictory, we learn yet again -- here are the examples,...

<p>O’Reilly: Is he a socialist?</p> <p>Romney: You know, I prefer to use the term that he’s just over his head.</p> <p>O’Reilly: Yeah, but you got to look at his economic plan. An economic plan that’s top down, federal leadership, getting us out of the recession--- he spent trillions of dollars on that. And people say, Listen, the guy’s a socialist — it’s class warfare that’s what he’s gonna wage against you if you get the nomination: You’re a rich guy, you’re out of touch. Is he a socialist?</p>

Cuban-born, Venezuelan-raised actress Maria Conchita Alonso and actor Sean Penn had a contentious exchange at Los Angeles International airport recently, in which Alonso called Penn a “communist a**hole“ and Penn called Alonso a ”pig.” Over a year and a half after Alonso penned an open letter to Penn asking him why he supports socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the two met up serendipitously (or not so) at LAX while both were waiting to claim lost luggage. Alonso, who starred alongside Penn in the 1988 film “Colors,” described the exchange to Steve Malzberg on WMAL. “I go ‘Hello,’ and he smiles...

slip of the tongue reveals the true intentions of Maxine Waters (D) during a house hearing while arrogantly grilling oil executives including John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company. This liberal, Maxine Waters starts to be honest by revealing herself as a Socialist, but stops, stumbles and then comes up with a more accepted answer. Oops! The guy next to her sighs with relief when she finally gets the words out America would want to hear her actually say, the lady next to him seems to be holding back her laughter. A pathetic real time revelation of the true identity...

His mother was an unabashed hippie from 1960s central casting. His father was an openly avowed Communist from Kenya. While his father wasn't around much, his devoutly progressive grandparents arranged for him to be mentored during his adolescent years by a dues paying member of the U.S. Communist Party, Frank Marshall Davis. When he went to college, he was attracted to the Marxist professors and student activists, according to his own published memoirs. When he graduated, he moved to Chicago and became an instructor for the left-wing extremist organization ACORN in the social manipulation methods of radical Marxist agitator Saul...

Who goes Nazi? By Dorothy Thompson It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times–in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis. It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any racial characteristics....

Some video from the attempted blockade by occupy, of the Wal-Mart distribution center in Loveland. I didn't stay long, so didn't get any of the arrests on video. They happened about 10 min after I left it seems.

A Detroit Free Press editorial opposing legislation that would remove arbitrary caps on the number of charter public schools contains a series of misleading, inaccurate and intemperate statements. The newspaper’s opening argument exemplifies the latter: “[T]he experiment [the Legislature] is trying to inflict on children and their parents is ill-conceived and dangerous.” No charter public school has ever “inflicted” anything on parents or children, for a very basic reason: The only children who attend charters are those whose parents have voluntarily and conscientiously chosen to send them there. In fact, the Legislature cannot itself increase the number of charters —...

Youtube video of Scott Walker do official Xmas tree lighting at the capitol. Two in the audience prominently give a 'Nazi' salute as he is introduced.

Gov. Rick Perry: The Entire, Uncut ‘On the Record’ Interview by Greta Van Susteren As promised, here is our entire interview with GOP presidential hopeful Gov. Rick Perry (it has footage that we were not able to show you on last night’s ON THE RECORD because of time constraints). Watch and share your thoughts! ...

In one of the best Marx Brothers scenes is from A Night at the Opera, where Groucho and Chico are ripping up a contract and they finally come to the SANITY CLAUSE, in which Chico proclaims there is no SANITY CLAUSE. In tomorrow’s Financial Times, there is a story about France pushing for a Christmas gift from the ECB. The gift that the French are hoping for is a backstop for the European banks that are under severe stress because of the huge amount of EURO sovereign bonds on the banks’ balance sheets. In order for the ECB to act,...

As hard as it is to believe, WND.com founder Joseph Farah once was a strong supporter of Socialism. How can this be? Isn't WND the leading independent online newspaper in the free world? Watch this amazing video based on his own words. He explains how he used to be an 'occupier' before occupying was cool. Bottom line? Occupiers are recycled Socialists. Short video: http://www.youtu.be/4Iv7lx_hraw

Looman‘s says he put the signs on his company’s trucks and posted pictures of them to his personal Facebook page six months ago. When he originally did that, he said that he received mostly positive reaction from people, “about 20-to-one positive.”

GOP presidential candidate slams president's 'lazy' comment, economic policies

Spanish voters on Sunday are expected to dismiss the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and usher in the conservative People's Party (PP) and its leader, Mariano Rajoy. Mr. Zapatero’s Socialist party (PSOE), which has been in power for eight years, has borne the brunt of public blame for Spain’s increasingly perilous economic situation, which has tainted the party’s leadership candidate, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba. Meanwhile, Mr. Rajoy has been coasting toward an expected landslide victory without saying much about how he plans to reverse Spain’s economic course... The situation is bleak for the eurozone’s fourth-largest...

Rick Perry's presidential campaign is out with a new ad, "Lazy," attacking President Obama for his comment that Americans have "been a little bit lazy I think over the last couple of decades." After video of the president making that comment is shown in the ad, Perry, standing outside in a casual shirt, addresses the camera. "Can you believe that?" he says. "That's what our President thinks wrong with America? [sic] That Americans are lazy? That's pathetic." (Perry appears to have omitted an "is" from his comments.) Perry goes on to say "it's time to clean house in Washington," an...

Three years after Wall Street and the big banks wrecked our economy, 25 million people are still unable to find full-time work and the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent continues to grow. But Representative Eric Cantor and his allies in Congress are not just ignoring the concerns of the 99% -- they are making them worse. Join us this Thursday, November 17 at noon in Richmond, at the foot of the Hamilton Street Bridge, as we will declare an Economic Emergency for the 99%. Click here to RSVP. November 17 at noon, the other 99 percent...

Hi, folks. Here's a collection of some of the better Occutard political cartoons I've come across. Hope you enjoy! 17 Occutard 'Toons

I always like to report progress on a subject close to my classical liberal heart -- namely, the reform of our grotesquely dysfunctional K-12 public school system. School reform (from a classical liberal perspective) involves at least two things: school choice (i.e., putting the resources for education in the hands of parents, not the educational bureaucrats -- preferably by vouchers) and school employee accountability (i.e., tying teachers' compensation to their actual performance). Of the two, school choice is fundamental, because allowing parents and students to choose where they want the students to attend forces school administrators to worry about student...

Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, who goes on trial in France Monday, boasted in an interview with the daily El Nacional of committing more than 100 attacks that claimed up to 2,000 lives. Asked about civilian bystanders who lost their lives in his attacks, the Marxist-Leninist radical said: "There were very few. I calculated that they were fewer than 10 percent. "So out of 1,500 - 2,000 killed, there were not more than 200 civilian victims," . ... Asked if he believed that he had made mistakes, Carlos said his crimes were minor. He charged that former Cuban president Fidel...

"I think there is room for revenues, but I think there clearly is a limit to the amount of revenues that are available," Boehner told reporters. "What I was attempting to do," he said, grinning, "was to suggest that Mr. Norquist, like millions of Americans, believes that raising taxes is not good for our economy." Boehner insisted that Republicans would only compromise on tax revenue if Democrats were willing to take significant and painful steps to shore up Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. "Without real reform on the entitlement side, I don't know how you put any revenue on the...

Actually, they’re not lost geographically. We see them every day on the cable news channels and the evening news of the broadcast networks. This decade they call themselves the “Occupy Wall Street” Group. I believe they are lost, unrecoverable, as productive, patriotic, Americans. I’m no shrink, but I believe they will carry a degree of bitterness, for the reminder of their lives, as a result of America’s rejection of their attempt to force a socialist form of government on a nation of people who love freedom. The risk was theirs to take. History will record their failure — a failure...

Obama; wealth gap shows need for fairer approachAlister Bull Reuters 6:06 a.m. EDT, October 29, 2011 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, seizing on a report that showed America's rich getting richer while the rest of the country struggled to get ahead, said on Saturday that Republicans were thwarting a fairer approach. "Republicans in Congress aren't paying attention. They're not getting the message," the president said in his weekly radio and Internet address. Obama, a Democrat, has tried to tap anger at the super-rich, which has sparked Occupy Wall Street protests nationwide, to push congressional Republicans to pass his $447...

Sorry, the story just doesn’t hold together. According to left-wing think tanks, columnist and bloggers—and, of course, the Occupy Wall Street radicals—the top 1 percent have been exploiting the 99 percent for decades. The rich have been getting richer at the expense of the middle class and poor. Really? Just think for a second: If inequality had really exploded during the past 30 to 40 years, why did American politics simultaneously move rightward toward a greater embrace of free-market capitalism? Shouldn’t just the opposite have happened as beleaguered workers united and demanded a vastly expanded social safety net and sharply...

With the US economy suffering through its deepest slump since the Great Depression, the Obama administration has designed a political strategy to match, with echoes of the campaign rhetoric deployed by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s. Throwing out the standard presidential playbook dictating an aspirational pitch to centrist voters, the White House is cementing a high-risk message that strikes firmly at wealth and privilege.

<p>It's like a traditional neighborhood watch, but instead of crime, volunteers will be on the lookout for grime. And they'll put neighbors on notice for basic problems ranging from overgrown grass and unkempt shrubs to parking on the lawn and putting trash out too early.</p>

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Cain Seen As Strongest Leader; Romney As Most Intelligent But: Who Would GOP Voters Rather Have Dinner With? The following is being released by Clarus Research Group: A new nationwide Clarus Poll finds that Republican voters rate Herman Cain as the strongest leader, the most consistent conservative, and the best on the economy and jobs of the top three polling contenders. Mitt Romney is seen as the most intelligent, experienced and electable of the GOP's top three polling contenders for president. They also think Romney best understands foreign policy. Republican voters rank...

THE Taliban is planning a campaign of Christmas carnage in British cities, a warlord warned yesterday. Commander Javed Karmazkhel Wazir — of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan — claimed 200 suicide bombers and assassins are ready to launch attacks. And he said their recruits looked "liberal", adding: "You will not see bearded men or veiled women doing this."

With the most recent GOP presidential primary "debate" just concluded, it's clear that the frontrunner is none other than ... you guessed it, Barack Hussein Obama. The incessant bickering bullpucky and petty assaults among most of the GOP wannabes is undoubtedly a source of great glee for the Obama campaign.