Free Republic

The 2016 election has opened an extraordinary chasm between supporters of the two leading candidates over the direction of the country, well beyond the divisions that existed in the 2008 campaign, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. According to the poll, 8 in 10 registered voters who support Republican Donald Trump say that the United States is less great than in the past, compared with just about 2 in 10 of those who support Democrat Hillary Clinton. Among all voters, 47 percent say the United States is less great than in the past, while 35 percent say it...

Obama and Hillary are evil and some Republican candidates are bad. Stay mad, but laugh occasionally because it's refreshing. Then, let's take America back.Sometimes life is hard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm68ga5yR4w Yeah, but wouldn't it be terrible if everything always happened just as we want it to? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R1RS7xfGT8 This is pretty much how government really works. They just aren't this good as telling us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5cR6JpRCnM Jimmy Buffett manages to offend just about everyone while being funny as he does it. That's good! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wneCa_yIuzg It's about time for a drink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBtjoRpmOjc   OK, it's time to get serious again. Obama said, "You didn't build...

“It's hard to be humble,” Muhammad Ali rationalized, “when you're as great as I am.” In Sunday's contest between No. 1s, the Super Bowl's two most visible faces - Bronco Peyton Manning and Seahawk Richard Sherman - are case studies of Ali's theory. Manning is football's undisputed heavyweight champion whose "aw-shucks" humility belies - and explains - his unrivaled ownership of five NFL MVP awards. Quick to credit his teammates, even after a seven-touchdown performance, the 13-time Pro-Bowler and comeback king leaves it to others to laud his game. With his legacy on the line in his third Super Bowl,...

Of course, we know the answer. Freedom isn't the only thing that isn't free... Created for OMG! for America...

Today is the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington's greatness was the rarest and the most needed. At this remove in time, it is also the hardest to comprehend. Take, for example, Washington's contribution to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington's mere presence lent the undertaking and its handiwork the legitimacy that resulted in success. The convention's first order of business was the election of a presiding officer. Washington was the delegates' unanimous choice.

In a different day and age, Jeff Hart would be the most famous American in our country right now. He would be honored at the White House. Schoolchildren would learn of his skill and heroism. But because Jeff Hart works in an industry under fire by the Obama administration, more people in Chile will celebrate this symbol of American greatness than in American itself. Jeff Hart is a driller based in my home state of Colorado. The father of two has been drilling water wells in Afghanistan at U.S. Army bases. When the San Jose Mine in Chile collapsed in...

With all due respect to Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and even Bear Bryant and Vince Lombardi, John Wooden was in a class by himself. Wooden will go down as the most accomplished coach anywhere. Ever. The Wizard of Westwood won 10 national titles in a 12-year span, including a remarkable seven consecutive from 1967 through ’73. Wooden’s success is almost unfathomable. Wooden passed away on Friday night at the UCLA Medical Center, just months prior to his 100th birthday on Oct. 14. Wooden was still mentally sharp in his 90s and was spotted at UCLA games and other events.

I wrote this blog in October 2009, and never has it been more true than it is today. November 2010 will be historic on a scale not seen in our lifetimes! Consider what will happen as the following massive voter groups begin to fuse and, at an absolute minimum, strongly trend AWAY from big government liberalism. Irritated republicans. Angry conservatives. Ron Paul libertarians. Registered independents. Disaffected democrats. Frightened Medicare seniors. Disillusioned Jews. And drum roll: Conservative youth (18-26). Pray, just for a moment (or longer, it's OK), reflect and analyze these energized groups. While political trends are often difficult to...

It doesn't buy what it used to, but will this swap-out be granted? Remember when Grover Norquist was on that tear to have one thing in every state named for former President Reagan? So adorable. We thought he mostly gave up but in truth, we quit paying attention when the plan to add Reagan to Mount Rushmore fell through. It's an election year, though, so any and all ways for Republicans to ostentatiously honor the nation's 40th president must now present themselves and be heard. Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from North Carolina, wants to boot Ulysses S. Grant from...

"[W]e are born to be happy, to be abundantly supplied with every good thing, to have fun in living, to consciously unite with the Divine Power that is around us and within us, and to grow and expand forever. " -- Ernest Holmes

Praise the Lord. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands. Psalm 112:1 Have you ever been in the presence of someone truly great? The greatness I'm talking about is not someone who’s powerful or influential or famous or rich. I'm talking about someone who you admire so much that you hang on his/her every word. You write down what he/she says. Sometimes you understand everything she/he says and there are times what he/she says is a complete mystery to you. You inquire more about the person. You ask others what they know...

I was driving near the border of Nevada about a week ago, when I saw a sign, Martin Luther King Jr. Highway. My mind instantly raced back 40 years. I remember being moved as I watched this mesmerizing orator on television as he spoke outside the Lincoln Memorial. Even Walter Cronkite said about him, ''I only met Martin Luther King on a few occasions but I was always struck by the obvious force, the power of his character.'' King's life and death is the stuff of legend now. But it's what he couldn't do that causes me to wonder today....

Heroism: To leap in front of a 370-ton locomotive to save a stranger in a dank New York subway pit takes a kind of courage we'd all like to think we have but don't. Wesley Autrey showed it Tuesday and elevated us all. The new year has begun on a high note from Harlem after Autrey, 50, a construction worker on his way to work with his two little daughters, headed into Manhattan's 137th Street-City College station. Before he got through the turnstile, Autrey spotted a young man thrashing about in a seizure and called for help. But he didn't...

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - July 19, 2006 - A University of Illinois researcher had discovered a fourth copy of a rare letter Abraham Lincoln had written by to the nation's governors in 1861. The letter John Lupton found Tuesday in the Lehigh County Historical Society's holdings was one Lincoln wrote as part of an unsuccessful ratification process for a constitutional amendment Congress adopted during the term of his predecessor, President James Buchanan, that would have made slavery the law of the land. The president remembered for abolishing slavery had been willing to push the amendment as "kind of a carrot...

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2006 – Three years after his brigade seized control of Baghdad's international airport from Iraqi forces' control, Army Col. William Grimsley said he believes that country is taking the critical first steps toward reclaiming its past greatness. Grimsley, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Combat Brigade Team during the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, said history - not current events - will tell the true story of Iraq's metamorphosis. And that story will show how Iraq ultimately emerged from almost 40 years of a regime that ignored the people's needs and undermined its potential, Grimsley,...

Lessons from Lincoln By Joseph Knippenberg Last month, I made the argument that the debate over the Bush Administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping would ultimately be resolved politically, not legally or judicially. The question, I argued (following John Locke), was whether “the public good” was better served by a rapid and unencumbered response to new intelligence, or by strict adherence in all instances to legal procedures. When this occurs, the ultimate safeguards of our liberty reside in the character of those acting on our behalf, and in the capacity of our political system to rein them in—either through the legislative...

Bush personifies all that pseudo intellectuals detest President George W. Bush is reviled by the Lib-Left media and its adherents and the pseudo-intellectual set in much the same way as President Ronald Reagan was reviled by the Lib-Left media and the pseudo-intellectual set. As we now know, Reagan was actually smarter than all of his detractors, and it may well be Bush will turn out that way, too. The likes of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul ignored the hyenas and the catcalls of the Liberal-Left and backed Reagan to the hilt and thereby brought down one...

I just heard that Ronald Reagan, our 40th President, was named as the greatest American by a Discovery channel poll. I just heard it on Fox News a few moments ago.

But What Made Him Great? Even the secular world against which he stood so defiantly recognized his greatness. But what was it that was so special about John Paul II, the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church? What set him apart and above all the secular leaders of his time? At 84, he was old, stooped, suffered from Parkinson’s and slurred his speech. He was decried by our media and cultural elites as a moral reactionary who had failed to bring his church into the 21st century. Yet, even as the editorial writers fulminated and the dissident clergy fumed,...

George Washington was born 273 years ago today in the British colony of Virginia. At his death in 1799, after an active life as soldier, surveyor, planter, politician, revolutionary, and first Chief Executive of the greatest republic since Rome, he was widely regarded as the greatest man of his time. And although he was once routinely voted the “best” president by Presidential scholars, recent surveys of the public unaccoutably have demoted him. Very few average Americans, one would venture to guess, would be able to give a cogent reason why. Perhaps this is simply a further example of our dismal...