Free Republic

Ahead of last year’s midterm elections, I suggested to you on this page that Republicans had two years left to decide: Are they the party of Ronald Reagan, or the party of Donald Trump? A party of grounded conservative principles, advanced by Reagan’s high-minded optimism and penchant for compromise? Or a party of authoritarian, populist impulses, motivated by Trump’s dark and pessimistic vision of America as “a nation in decline”? For those of us who hoped that Republican voters would choose the former, recent months have offered little cause for optimism. Sen. Tim Scott’s withdrawal from the presidential primary earlier...

One afternoon a few Octobers ago, I sat with a friend from Spain at a picnic table in an idyllic orchard 50 miles northwest of New York City. As our significant others scoured the farm’s various other goods (jams, butters, donuts), the two of us admired the vast green-and-red foliage blanketing the hills in the distance. Beside us were net bags filled with the dozens of apples we had collected by hand from the property’s dozens of rows of trees — a ritual and scene familiar to many Americans. My friend looked at the bags and gestured toward the sprawl...

The foreclosure crisis that continues to grip our courts in 2010 and that will only get worse in years to come all began in 2005, 2006, 2007, when the mortgage industry and Wall Street colluded with each other to engineer the largest financial fraud in modern history. The facts are simple. Wall Street Wizards figured out a way to monetize then trade billions of dollars in wealth when they figured out how to convert mortgages into currency. Dollars and stocks were regulated, but because mortgages were new currency, they were totally unregulated, unsupervised and completely subject to manipulation. The biggest...

It was a day that would cost and change so much: Sept. 11. Now at commercial airports, we're willing to be scanned and scrutinized so a similar attack will never happen again. But national experts consulted by 11 News say we're making another mistake. Take Mary Schiavo, an expert in general aviation methods and security and the former Inspector General for the U. S. Department of Transportation. "The terrorists have moved onto other plans," Schiavo said. "And there's really nothing to stop them." So what's the problem? While Uncle Sam spends billons a year on commercial airport security, thousands of...