Free Republic

The nature of the threat the Islamic State poses to the West is a subject of much debate. Some indicate that the group is planning to execute attacks in the West at its nearest opportunity, while others say that the organization has designs only on capturing and holding territory in its neighborhood – and that’s a range of confused opinions coming from former and current administration officials. While there is a robust debate over whether ISIS is planning to execute terrorist attacks against Western targets, there should be no debate that the origination is actively seeking the capability to...

The State Department claimed Wednesday that they have been “looking at” developing a long-term strategy to fight ISIL in both Iraq and Syria for a year. The United States has stressed repeatedly that its current limited missions in Iraq against ISIL are not long-term solutions. “We are looking long-term at how we fight ISIL,” said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. Asked by a reporter to clarify, Harf said, “We’ve been looking at that for quite some time. That’s not new.” “We’ve been looking at that for months and months, even before the latest offenses that started in June against Mosul...

U.S. Generals Douglas MacArthur and George Patton were two of the most brilliant military minds in the history of modern warfare. Under their commands, American forces in Europe and the Far East decimated hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers, making way for freedom in countries previously ruled by evil tyrants, and preserving our way of life at the same time. An essential element of their strategic approach to warfare was the knowledge that when an enemy is attacking on more than one front, you cannot rely on a single weapon or plan of attack; you must fight with as...

"Three Cats One Meat" Teaches Us to Always Be the Middle Cat This video might just contain all the answers to life. Three cats are given a single piece of meat, and while two cats play tug of war, the third just starts gnawing at the center. That's some impressive problem solving. The two bigger cats are stuck in a live re-enactment of Newton's Third Law, while the third tries to get in on the action. Props to the smallest cat for eventually realizing that it's better to just eat what it can rather than try to beat the others...

n recent years, the Republican Party has increasingly been described as a shrinking entity dominated by angry white males and southerners. But the problem for the Democrats is that Southern states will likely determine control of the U.S. Senate in this year's elections. Four of the seven seats listed as Senate "tossups" by the polling gurus at RealClearPolitics are in the South -- North Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky and Arkansas. Republican wins in these four states would deliver the magic number required for the GOP to take majority control of the Senate. In North Carolina, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is currently...

The White House and Senate Democrats are preparing an extensive midterm campaign strategy built around one unavoidable fact: Hardly any candidates in the most competitive states want President Barack Obama anywhere near them. POLITICO spoke with nearly every incumbent up for reelection and aspiring Democratic Senate candidates across the country, but only a handful gave an unequivocal “yes” when asked whether they wanted Obama to come campaign with them. “I don’t care to have him campaign for me,” said Alaska Sen. Mark Begich. “I’d rather him come up to see where his policies aren’t working. He’s wrong on ANWR, we’ve...

A Commentary by DoughtyOne based on an article appearing in the Los Angeles Times. For quite some time we have been aware of efforts to reduce the impact of Rush Limbaugh on the psyche of the American Public.  It was rumored that an effort was underway to remove Rush from many stations so that local programming could take center stage  As of the first of the years, it has quietly taken place.  Clear channel has moved Rush off superstations across this nation, placing him on third rate stations. Why is this a big deal, you may ask.  Well lets use...

NOTE: I started writing this in May. Dan wrote something along these lines in August. Read it. He put it down much better than I ever could.Things to keep in mind when running for President as a Republican. Somewhere between 93% to 98% of the people who would be covering the race on behalf of the nation’s largest national and regional news media outlets will be supporting your Democrat opponent – whoever she (or he) may be. This lopsided level of support for Democrats in the news media, especially within the Beltway has been consistent for nearly half a century....

I have a question/observation. The deductibles and co-pays combined with restrictive networks make Obamacare one of the WORST groups of insurance products to come out in history. The redistributive elements of the program make it literally a scam for the majority of users. Yet, the Administration is out there touting it as "high-quality" insurance and everything else as "substandard". Why aren't the GOP challenging this? Shouldn't they be out there using the meme that, in fact, Obamacare is Substandard Insurance. 2nd observation: Why is the GOP letting the dems get away with referring to a federal coercion as a "marketplace"...

If the current polls are any indication, Obamacare and the debt ceiling are the two issues that Americans are overwhelmingly against. Those are the two issues that Republicans need to make the mid-term elections about and force all of the other issues off the front page. With those two issues serving as the cornerstones, the Republicans may increase their chances of retaking the Senate (while maintaining control of the House) and put Obama in a box for the last two years of his presidency.

Short video of Rand Paul stepping in to counsel McConnell on strategy while waiting for live spot.

Five years ago, Jim Simpson informed America of the grand conspiratorial sabotage presenting Barack Obama for the United States Presidency. That is, he presented much more than we already knew, to those who were already awake, aware, alarmed, and looking for more. And we have all continued to tell those who have not been willfully, unrepentantly, and fatally ignorant. This article also introduced to many the very old, Marxist and fascist (some would say Illuminist and Jacobin) strategy of collapsing a nation’s economy through government obligations and debt, recently reprised as the “Cloward-Piven strategy.” Whether reviewing or reading for the...

WASHINGTON — The State Department has hired an alarming number of law-enforcement agents with criminal or checkered backgrounds because of a flawed hiring process, a stunning memo obtained by The Post reveals. The background problems are severe enough that many of the roughly 2,000 agents in State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security can play only limited roles in agency efforts to police bad conduct and prosecute wrongdoers. ... “Department intakes of new . . . officers since the hiring surge a decade ago have reportedly been flawed, with ‘mitigation’ of troubling histories including criminal matters,” according to a December 2012 memo...

Conservatives and Republicans would be unwise to pursue President Obama's impeachment as my colleague Bruce Walker today argues. The odds are the effort would backfire, and there is a much more important goal that should be at the center of our political strategy: sweeping Democrats out of office in 2014 and 2016 in numbers sufficient to enact structural reforms, including replacement of the tax system and junking the IRS and outlawing public employee unions. President Obama is handing his opponents the means, if only they have the wit to pursue the bigger goal. ..... Somewhere along the line, Hillary and...

In recent conversations about girding for the uncertain future I have often suggested that folks accrue the means of productivity, beginning with water, dirt, and seeds to grow food, followed by skills, tools, and raw materials to fix and create useful things. I am not certain if I have mentioned a helpful reference in this matter but it does reflect the course I am following. Thirty years ago I discovered the book "The Alpha Strategy" (available in its entirety at several web sites including http://zombieprepdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/book2-preface.pdf) and have found it to be instrumental in forming my thoughts. Pete Ferron featured it...

In Memoriam: William Van Cleave, 77 by Pamela J. Johnson The former professor of international relations in USC Dornsife is remembered as a Cold War expert with a warm heart. William Van Cleave, former senior adviser to President Ronald Reagan, the United States Department of Defense, Department of State, and former professor of international relations in USC Dornsife, has died. He was 77. Van Cleave died of natural causes at his Idyllwild, Calif., home on March 15. Professor of international relations and director of the Strategic Studies Program in USC Dornsife from 1967 to 1987, Van Cleave had vast...

The President has held two news conferences in three days commenting on the coming wave of gun control initiatives. His presentation has been emotional and properly reflects the anguish that we all feel for the victims of gun crime. It also has been a dazzling display of sophistry. I say that because the President is smart. And if he were not smart, I would say that, so far as his gun ban proposals, his comments were a profound display of ignorance. Responding to the run on guns precipitated by the preliminary proposals floated by his team, the President said that...

In a minute, we'll give you four concrete steps you can take to preserve your guns and your gun rights -- and not coincidentally, make Sun-Tzu, the greatest of ancient strategists, smile. But first, an assessment of the position. We're under attack, but it's not unprecedented. It's just the usual suspects, taking delight in a crisis they won't let go to waste, frolicking in the bloody shirt. If you're young you haven't seen this before. If you're older, you saw it in the mid-nineties. A little older, you saw the 80s hysteria that led to the Hughes Amendment and the...

Some folks have said it’s like 1994 all over again. I disagree. There are many factors that are different. Some play in our favor, and some don’t. But the ones that do: * We have better access to the media than we did in 1994, such as this Dave Kopel article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates. * Back in 1994, the standard competition rifles were the M1A, the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. If people owned a semi-auto, it was probably more likely to be a Mini-14 than an AR or AK. Today those have largely been replaced by...

The key to understanding Barack Hussein Obama is that he does nothing. This proposition is at the heart of a grave misapprehension of this Presidency. An American might be forgiven for feeling that a contribution to the common good is based on performance; productivity, some meaningful place in a functioning enterprise that fulfills one and contributes to the furtherance of some cause, or to one’s family and thus to God. What we cannot be forgiven for is continually attempting to apply this now remarkable cultural artifact; this mindset, to this Presidency. For example, the airwaves resonate as the right-wing talkers...