Free Republic

My friend Lawrence W. Reed is one of Earth's biggest optimists. The legendary free-market scholar recalls flipping his vehicle at age 26 on an icy Michigan road in February 1980. As he rolled over inside his Ford Fairmont, he smiled: ”Hey, I'll get a new car out of this!” Thus, his recent essay for the Foundation for Economic Education, of which he is president emeritus, is a surprise. Reed has gone from cheerful to chilly. ”There's an awful lot of bad behavior going on — and perpetrators getting away with it, too. From lying to looting, it feels like an...

I support a woman’s right to choose whether or not to cook on a gas stove. Too bad allegedly “pro-choice” Democrats disagree. Preventing women (and men) from using natural gas has become all the rage among today’s totalitarian Democrats. Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr. just proposed to ban gas stoves. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy “The Hack” Hochul wants to prohibit gas stoves, heaters and hookups to small buildings by 2025, with larger structures to follow. Leftist autocrats are killing pipelines and otherwise restricting gas in some 77 cities across America. President Joe Biden lept from this speeding...

Top Democrats claim that nothing in America is more dangerous than white racism. As President Joe Biden said Oct. 21, “According to the United States intelligence community, domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland.” “In the FBI’s view,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said June 15, “the top domestic violent-extremist threat comes from . . . those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.” House Armed Services Committee member Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) complained that the federal government insufficiently screens “servicemembers and other individuals with sensitive roles for white-supremacist and violent-extremist ties.” So...

President Joe Biden is the kind of man who deliberately would steer his car into a ditch, crawl from the wreckage, and then probe the ditch for criminal conduct. Such nonsense mirrors Biden’s recent instructions to the Federal Trade Commission. Citing “mounting evidence of anti-consumer behavior by oil-and-gas companies,” Biden told the Federal Trade Commission to “bring all of the Commission’s tools to bear if you uncover any wrongdoing.” Is Biden cynical enough to blame Big Oil for a national fiasco that he concocted? Or is he so touchingly self-unaware that he misses the connection between higher pump prices and...

One hundred years from now, a fair-minded assessment of Trump’s presidency will recognize his abundant domestic and international accomplishments. Liberals unborn may be appalled. Conservatives unconceived may applaud. But both should agree that Trump was a consequential president whose sleeplessness achieved significant things, often while astonishing foes and friends alike.

Notwithstanding the catastrophic congressional appearances by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's nervousness about impeachment, 118 die-hard Democrats (plus renegade former Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan), are hell-bent on prying President Trump from the White House, long before Election Day 2020. But for what? "Trump-Russia collusion” turned out to be a bad acid trip, although the attendant hallucinations still reverberate among fervent Democrats. As for obstruction of justice, there was none. Somebody should explain this to these Trump haters — perhaps with crayons and butcher paper. Here’s what impeachment-grade obstruction looks like. On June 17,...

Veteran GOP political operative Roger Stone pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he obstructed an official proceeding, made false statements, and engaged in witness tampering. Before and after his arrest by a veritable SWAT team, we exchanged e-mails about his legal woes and the tremendous attorneys fees he faced, even before his indictment.My questions and his answers follow.Deroy Murdock: Please give me some details on your legal bills. How much are you paying per hour? What, specifically, do your lawyers do for you? Are they producing documents, practicing your testimony with you? Please be specific.Roger Stone: I won a...

"It’s about stopping the GOP,” House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said on election night. Voters turned her minority into a majority Tuesday evening. But Democrats do not get their hands on the lower body until January 3, which lets Republicans write this story’s final chapter. Democrats will stop the GOP. Pelosi, or whoever becomes speaker, will convert the House into a giant rubber stamp that says, “HELL NO!” Aside from an infrastructure bill, anything that slips past filibustering Democrats and passes the GOP Senate will be machine-gunned the second it reaches the House. The Trump/GOP legislative agenda, as...

Never Trump equals Hillary, plain and simple If Never Trump Republicans succeed on Election Day, Donald J. Trump will return to real estate, his political dreams shattered. Hence, the bigger headline on Wednesday, November 9, would read: hillary clinton elected 45th president. Neither independent Evan McMullin, nor the Green party’s Jill Stein, nor Libertarian Gary Johnson will leapfrog Clinton and Trump to win the White House. So, ipso facto, Never Trump = President Hillary Clinton. Full stop. A President Hillary Clinton would be Obama with a work ethic. Rather than slacking off on putting greens, she will dedicate her impressive...

Dear Black Thugs: To each of you I echo what actor Terrence Howard’s character told his gangbanger brother in the film “Crash”: “You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself.” From Ferguson to Baltimore, the whole world is watching as you run wild. Thanks to you, plate-glass store windows shatter into shards. You pry ATMs from walls to drain them of cash. And you enjoyed a 100-percent-off shopping spree — damn the consequences. How does ripping off a bottle of whiskey from a smoldering liquor store help us overcome? Look at your devastation: You burned 17 businesses to the ground in Ferguson,...

As a declared presidential candidate, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) should generate even bigger headlines when he addresses black audiences, as he has at Howard University and other venues. When he was executive of mainly Democratic Milwaukee County, Governor Scott Walker (R., Wis.) appealed to black voters; his reelection majorities consistently increased. These and other Republicans should ask black Americans for their votes from now through November 2016. They should do so by challenging blacks to ask themselves an honest question: “What, exactly, have you gained by handing Obama 95 percent of your votes in 2008 and 93 percent in...

How does one explain liberals’ relentless obsession with race? Democrats and left-wing activists clutch the notion of racism as America’s defining characteristic just as streetcorner drunks cling to their fifths of cheap booze. No matter what, neither community can unhand those bottles. In fact, this debilitating liberal addiction deserves a name: raceaholism. Advertisement Raceaholics like President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, New York mayor Bill de Blasio, overexposed circus barker Al Sharpton, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, their allies, and their media enablers cannot stop talking about race. They refract almost every issue through that prism. According to them,...

Historical filmmaker Ken Burns recently penned a column for New Hampshire’s Union Leader titled, “Why I am voting for Barack Obama.” Burns rehearses several of the most common arguments for Obama’s re-election, and in doing so, he unwittingly exposes the flimsiness of the rationale for subjecting America to four more years of Obamaism...

...In the 18 days between the Sept. 22 and Oct. 11 Republican debates, Cain granted interviews to six broadcast-network programs, the Media Research Center reports, plus 18 national cable-TV news shows. Cain appeared twice on CNN, thrice on the Fox Business Network, and 11 times on the Fox News Channel. He also butted heads with an especially confrontational Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC on October 6... Since Ronald Reagan left Washington in 1989, Republicans have yearned for a presidential nominee who could present free-market ideas with passion, energy, and commitment. They have longed for someone who would labor for limited government....

Republicans recently have watched multiple Mitt Romneys at war with each other over abortion, ethanol, global warming and more. Alas, this is nothing new. Various Romneys have battled themselves on issues as old as the Vietnam War. "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam," Hawkish Romney said in the June 24, 2007, Boston Globe while running as a conservative for 2008's GOP nomination. But Romney sang a...

This fiasco disgusts Americans. A February 1 Rasmussen survey discovered that only 16 percent of likely voters want terrorists to enjoy the same legal rights as U.S. citizens, while 74 percent disagree. Meanwhile, HumanEvents.com (which often posts my columns) has gathered 126,665 signatures on its online petition demanding KSM and company’s ejection from civilian court. “These proceedings will make the O. J. Simpson trial look like a traffic-court hearing,” says Marc Thiessen, author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack , a new bestseller on the Obama administration’s soft-on-terror...

Americans finally getting fed up with big-government foul-upsTEMECULA, Calif. - Where is Nelson Mandela when we need him? In the fine new film "Invictus," South Africa's first black president inspects his first official paycheck. "This is terrible," Mr. Mandela says. He decides he earns too much and subsequently donates a third of his salary to charity. Mr. Mandela's humility and fiscal restraint would be as exotic in the nation's capital as a giraffe atop the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Washington's lavish self-aggrandizement and relentless march toward bankruptcy cruelly mock Mr. Mandela's sacrifice. Today's thoughtless and corrosive spend-o-rama began under...

November 16, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Dede Scozzafava Is No GOP ModerateShe is a donkey in an elephant costume. By Deroy Murdock Re-canvassed votes in upstate New York’s 23rd Congressional District foreshadow the second coming of third-party candidate Doug Hoffman. As Mark Weiner of the Syracuse Post-Standard reported Thursday morning, Conservative nominee Hoffman’s 5,335-vote deficit behind Democrat Bill Owens has shrunk to just 3,026 after Election Night tabulation errors were corrected. Some 10,200 absentee ballots remain uncounted. State Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin told Weiner, “All ballots will be counted, and if the result changes, Owens will have to...

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis told Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday that her group "absolutely pays its taxes." Not true: The IRS and Louisiana's taxmen have imposed nearly $2 million in liens against ACORN for failing to fork over taxes at its New Orleans national headquarters. The IRS recently filed a $548,000 lien against the group, and Louisiana state tax officials have slapped $334,000 in liens on ACORN since last October. Evidence that ACORN ignored its tax obligations may be less exciting than its branch offices' eagerness to help a self-professed pimp break multiple laws, or the voter-registration fraud for...

Betsy McCaughey reads massive health care bills so you don't have to. New York's former lieutenant governor, now chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, fired the torpedo that ultimately sank Hillary Care. Though the sheer girth of that 1,431-page legislative juggernaut intimidated nearly everyone, Ms. McCaughey devoured it. Her resulting January 1994 New Republic article unmasked Hillary Care's previously overlooked warts and sores. The horror Ms. McCaughey revealed eventually spelled that initiative's doom. Ms. McCaughey has done it again. In a June 19 Wall Street Journal Op-Ed column, she dissected the 615-page draft of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's...