Free Republic

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain dropped out of the presidential race on Saturday after accusations of sexual misconduct overwhelmed his bid to win the Republican nomination as an anti-Washington tax reformer. Cain's departure set off a competition among other candidates to win over his conservative supporters with voting to start next month in the race to determine the Republicans' presidential pick for 2012 to oppose President Barack Obama. Cain, a former Godfather's Pizza chief executive, told followers in his hometown of Atlanta that "false and unproved" sexual accusations had forced him to suspend his White House bid. He said he...

While it is clear from the outset that a large percentage of lurkers and posters on FreeRepublic are staunch supporters of Sarah Palin, there are nonetheless a significant if considerably smaller number who avidly support Herman Cain. My curiosity piqued by this fact, I decided to watch Herman in his interview yesterday on “2012 One-on-One” with Chris Wallace, FOX NEWS Sunday. As the show opened, Chris ran a videotape of Herman at a campaign stop where he commandeered the stage with an undeniable presence, arms spread expansively, and said “Once I am president, Americans will be able to say, “Free...

House Republicans have been relatively successful this week at presenting a united front around their “Pledge to America,” but only through a strategic outreach campaign to lawmakers, media and outside groups, that has managed to keep deep dissatisfaction over several key issues largely under wraps. Still, interviews with Republican aides reveal that many in the GOP caucus are unhappy that there was no earmark ban and no promise to pass a balanced budget amendment in the proposal, which was unveiled Thursday by House Minority Leader John Boehner. The inclusion of a health insurance provision considered to be mandate angered many...

Karl Rove -- When did FreeRepublic learn to hate you? Please explain why we hate Karl Rove.

War on Iraq was started in 1991 by the war criminal George W Bush the father which then reinforced by the subsequent attacks by the war criminal Bill Clinton. Along the time there was the most criminal act against humanity is the long run genocide and inhumane act of the blockade on Iraq since 1991. The barbaric inhumane act of sanction by the UN on Iraq and its consequences led to the death of hundred of thousands if not millions of Iraqi children especially if that was taken with the use of the weapons of mass destruction such as DU...

Conservative superstar Sarah Palin opened the door yesterday to joining forces with Mitt Romney for a 2012 White House run - a hot ticket that has some Republicans licking their chops at the prospect of unseating President Obama. “Sounds pretty good,” Palin declared at yesterday’s Tea Party Express rally on the Common when asked about pairing up with the former Bay State governor - giving the idea a big thumbs-up as she left the stage after her headline speech.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has disappointed many social and cultural conservatives with his call for a "truce on the so-called [sic] social issues. We're going to just have to agree to get along for a little while," until the economic issues are resolved, Daniels told the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson. But as the American Spectator's Joseph Lawler has observed, it's doubtful that Daniels' truce would change anything. After all, Lawler rightly asks: "What typical Republican policies would he [Daniels] have to suspend and they [social and cultural conservatives] have to sacrifice? It's not clear to me that it would be...

If I had my druthers, the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine would be but a small news brief in American newspapers. But since we police the world, we must always monitor our global police scanner, where not only Israel's conflicts, but those of North and South Korea, the nation of Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey, and pretty much everywhere else is the United States' business because we insist on making it so. What many Americans bizarrely consider national "defense" is actually an aggressive and enduring offense, and yet we are always surprised when other nations get offended. Last week,...

It’s hard to imagine a greater victory for the conservative legal movement than the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which overturned D.C.’s ban on handguns. Not only did the Court definitively settle the long-contested question of whether the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep and bear arms, but it did so using the language of “originalism”—the school of thought, long championed by conservatives, that says the Constitution should be read according to its original public meaning. It was therefore surprising when a leading conservative jurist, Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson III of the U.S....

It was not Palin's fault that she was woefully unprepared to be the Republican vice presidential nominee. For that one, blame the petulant, impetuous John McCain. But Palin has had ample time now, outside the crash course of a presidential campaign, to develop and exhibit some understanding of the issues. Her learning curve, from all the available evidence, is a flat line. Three unattractive Palin traits have, if anything, been amplified since the election: her unwillingness to buckle down and do the necessary preparation; her tendency to adopt what McCain adviser Steve Schmidt described as a "down is up and...

I would also remind any Conservative that America is in the hole it is today because we have forgotten so much of our history. We are right to demand that our representatives remember the founding documents, we are right to demand these documents be taught in school. Again, how is studying the Confederacy any less important? Is not the essential question right now, on so many issues, NOT States rights? And what was the fight from 1861-65 over again? Yes, States rights.

He did discuss COIN principles, which begin with "securing and serving the people." Not the American people, mind you; but local populations within and of the Islamic world. It is the disastrous vacuousness of COIN doctrine that it ignores the existence of Islamic culture, Islamic law, as I've written many, many times, but it is the disastrous vacuousness of COIN doctrine that now, by the general's telling, influences all US military thinking. Worse than thinking, however, is how COIN doctrine manifests itself in unconscionable rules of engagement predicated on "courageous restraint" as a means, COIN theory goes, to make them...

The one main benefit to the financial reform effort so far is that it helps further do away with the false paradigms of "left" or "right" and "Democrat" or "Republican" - fewer and fewer people are falling for those lies anymore. Try to get an ideological conservative to explain why Republicans love spending and so eagerly give welfare to banks. Try to get your local liberal to explain why it was a good idea to make backroom deals with abhorrent corporations and drill, baby, drill. Heck, even try to get a Tea Partier to explain choosing bailout-lover Sarah Palin to...

For true conservative victory, simply voting Republican won’t do Barack Obama is the most socialist president in American history. Before Obama, George W. Bush was the most socialist president in American history. Before Dubya, it was Bill Clinton, then Bush Sr., Reagan, and so on. Each successive administration, by and large, has presided over a federal government that has assumed more power and spent more money than the last. [...] Conservatives who continue to make the case that Obama is worse than Bush are right, but the fact that Rush and like-minded pundits and politicians are unable to find fault...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wants to allow the government to interrogate U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism without warning them of their right to remain silent—a proposal that would dramatically rewrite the rules regarding suspects captured inside the United States. “Miranda warnings are counterproductive in my view,” Graham said at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday. “The homeland is part of the battlefield. So this idea that you get to America, the rules dramatically change, to the benefit of the suspect – the terrorist – makes no sense,” he said. Graham told POLITICO he is working on...

I posted this first to the latest Glenn Beck thread. I think it embodies what Glenn is talking about in a concentrated summary and deserves notice, IMHO: A right-wing progressive can be defined as one who joins with the left in promoting the all-encompassing all-powerful Commerce Clause in order to push a social "conservative" or religious agenda, primarily today in the federal War on Drugs. (Right-wing Progressivism predates left-wing Progressivism in the alcohol temperance movement of the 1870s and also in the premature ending of Reconstruction and Plessy v. Ferguson institutional and statute-enforced segregation.) The right has been willing to...

Nearly two years after the Wall Street meltdown drove the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse, and forced the U.S. government to prop up major financial institutions with hundreds of billions of dollars, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now claims that the Bush Administration prohibited its own top officials who were handling the emerging crisis from briefing Congress until a complete financial collapse was only hours away. In little-noticed statements to reporters over the last few weeks, Pelosi has alleged that the Bush administration knew well in advance of its intervention that the financial crisis would hit, and that Congress...

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist. Socialism is a system where the government directly...

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist. Socialism is a system where the government directly...

Roger Roth, Wisconsin Assemblyman and Candidate for Congress, Wisconsin’s 8th District, had this observation about the U.S. Constitution: “The Constitution is a wonderful document. It’s a great piece of paper that’s got a lot of words on it. But you know, at the end of the day, it’s just a piece of paper that’s got a lot of words on it. And we need to elect representatives that believe in that.” “It’s not so much ... I asked a class of, of, uh, you know, I go around to my local schools and talk to fourth, fifth, sixth graders, and...