Free Republic

On Sunday night, a video began circulating showing a Republican-turned-Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Karen Bedonie saying her Republican rival Mark Ronchetti “cannot win” with her in the race. Both are running to unseat Democrat first-term Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. In the video shared on Twitter, Bedonie says, “The only comfort I find in this race is that man (Ronchetti) cannot win with me in the way. That man cannot win this race. He will never be governor as long as I am alive and well and in this race. The snippet appears to be taken from a previous live stream Bedonie...

Independent Utah Senate candidate Evan McMullin said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he will not caucus with either party if he beats incumbent Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) on November 8. McMullin said, “I am running as an independent. I’m building a coalition of Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and members of third parties to better represent Utah and to help lead our country forward. And I’m not going to Washington to join a party or to caucus or to play the party power game. I’m going to represent our coalition, and that’s a commitment that I’ve made to our coalition...

Can libertarians be of the Left? Many would laugh at such a question. After all, libertarianism tends to be a fervently pro-free market ideology. But all ideologies have their shades of grey. With libertarianism being no exception to the trend. The left libertarian tradition is one that champions equality and social justice under the framework of a free-market economy. The leftist libertarian political economy stresses a separation of economy and state while championing mutual ownership of resources in a voluntary manner.

My review of 2000 MulesBy Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)June 30, 2022In 1993, I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor’s degree in math, and a minor in computer science. Sometime during my four years at the school, I attended a speech by Dinesh D’Souza. The thing that I remember most about his speech was that he said he immigrated to the United States because he “wanted to live in a country where the poor people are fat.”On the one hand, I did not vote for Trump. I voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson in 2016, and...

You can rarely be sure that judicial incompetence will kill people, but Federal District Judge Terry Doughty crossed that line when he issued an injunction blocking the Biden administration's requirement that nursing home personnel be vaccinated for COVID-19.(The injunction, which the administration is appealing, has since been modified by a higher court to apply only in the 14 states that sued.) This week, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch produced something worse than incompetence. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that nursing home patients are far more likely to die of COVID if there are many...

The way to solve America's issues and connect with Republican voters is not to parrot libertarian talking points that enable leftist power.I am always wary of those who purport to speak for their respective generation, and a recent New York Post op-ed by a self-espoused libertarian student at New York University put on full display exactly what the Republican Party must abandon in the years ahead. In close to 700 words, writer Rikki Schlott calls for the GOP to “compromise on social and environmental issues and stand up to leftist extremism,” ignoring that these two are different sides of the...

By JOHN STOSSEL The media obsess about Trump/Biden, but another candidate will be on every state ballot: Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen. Dr. Jorgensen, a psychology lecturer at Clemson University, is very different from Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Instead of promising government solutions, she tells people, “You can spend your money better than the politicians.” I like that. I start with COVID-19. Libertarians are skeptical of government action, but a pandemic may be the rare situation when government should act. People need protection from contagious people. No one wants medical facilities overwhelmed. When politicians issued lockdown orders, their actions...

While incumbent Matt Bevin has not conceded the Kentucky governor's race, Democrat Andy Beshear declared ...

Rep. Justin Amash is celebrating this Fourth of July in a manner years in the making: by declaring his independence from the Republican Party. “No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us,” Amash wrote in a Washington Post op-ed posted Thursday morning. “I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system — and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it.” Amash, perhaps the most fiscally conservative member of Congress, has increasingly been...

Republican Congressman Justin Amash said President Trump deserves to be impeached. A closer look at the representative’s finances, however, show his motives may be personal. One America’s Joseph Dupnik has more. See video at https://youtu.be/u9gAOOGQqmc From Wikipedia: "Born in Grand Rapids, and raised in Kentwood, Michigan, Amash is the son of a Palestinian Christian father and a Syrian Christian mother.[2]" Amash ran for the Michigan House of Representatives in 2008 in Michigan's 72nd House District. During this time, he donated to the campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and John McCain.

Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan says he enlists social media to do something unusual: explain why he bucks his party in terms his constituents can understand. The 39-year-old Republican, who was the youngest member of the freshman class in 2011, states his approach succinctly: “I defend liberty and explain every vote here.” The simple formula has turned the libertarian, who rode into the House on the tea party wave, into something of a sensation. In 2012, the Independent Voter Network called Amash the “coolest member of Congress.” Amash’s latest decision — to state publicly that President Trump engaged in activity...

Republicans are moving fast to squelch Justin Amash's rebellion against Donald Trump before his conclusion that the President "engaged in impeachable conduct" -- the first by a GOP lawmaker -- can gather momentum. But Democrats who want a more hardline strategy against the President are seizing on the Michigan congressman's sudden intervention to pile pressure on their own leaders for tougher action. Amash's act of conscience on Saturday sparked immediate speculation over whether a tiny leak in the Republican dam could grow into a torrent of support running away from the President.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a close ally of President Trump who has supported the president’s desire to pull U.S. troops out of the Middle East, says national security adviser John Bolton is a “malign influence.” Paul, who believes the U.S. should reduce its military presence in Syria and Afghanistan, says he is alarmed by the recent mobilization of U.S. combat troops to counter what some Trump officials see as a rising threat posed by Iran. Asked about Bolton’s role in the recent deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and an Air Force bomber task force, Paul said, “I fear...

President Donald Trump’s only major Republican primary challenger said Saturday that the recent spate of abortion laws being passed in states like Alabama has him feeling “terrible,” and declared that abortion is a decision the government should not come anywhere near. At a campaign stop in Exeter, New Hampshire, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld told a crowd of voters he’s “the most pro-choice person you’re ever going to meet.” “The way I look at it, it’s kind of a power issue,” Weld said. “And who wants a lot of big, fat, white guys who live in Washington 700 miles away...

In the race for governor, it’s not just Republican versus Democrat — there’s a new voice trying to elbow in. WGN’s Courtney Gousman talks to the Libertarian candidate fighting for your vote in November, Chad Grimm.

Conservative comedian Evan Sayet explained why the American left is so opposed to argument or debate, arguing that liberals view thought as so inextricably bound to race, identity and orientation that they “have actually turned thinking into a hate crime.” Sayet spoke at the Unite IE Conservative Conference in Riverside, California this weekend, where he discussed how liberals consume and process information very differently from other political ideologies. “Liberals only do well when they lecture to you,” he asserted. “They do just fine on the 23-minute nightly news, where [NBC's] David Gregory dictates the truth to you. Take those same...

Voters in the Republican primary will have two very different candidates to choose from in the 9th Congressional District, as David Earl Williams III and Susanne Atanus vie for the right to face Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the fall. […] Williams said he also is pro-life, but said the decision should be between a woman and her doctor without government involvement. “I am a conservative Republican and I believe in God first,” Atanus said. She said she believes God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on earth as punishment for gay rights...

In a surprising win on Tuesday night, the White House and top Senate Democrats successfully defended provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would loosen restrictions on transferring detainees out of Guantánamo Bay, advancing President Obama’s goal of closing the facility by a margin of 55-43. . . . . . . As recently as early November, Democratic Senate aides participating in the fight to loosen the transfer rules described the politics of the vote as “difficult” but “not impossible” and said those whipping the vote were five or six votes short of the bare majority they needed...

Towards the end of an outspoken 24 hours of media appearances, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) appeared via phone on Fox Business Network with Melissa Francis and made a bold prediction about NSA leaker Edward Snowden's future. "I'm worried about somebody in our government who might kill him, with a cruise missile or a drone missile." "We live in a bad time where American citizens don't even have rights and that they can be killed," Paul continued. "But the gentleman is trying to tell the truth about what's going on, he is not defecting, there's no signs of that happening....

Could President Obama have read this op-ed by Ron Paul before his joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron this morning? The president’s assessment of the Benghazi scandal was remarkably similar to that of the former congressman. Both men called the controversy a “sideshow.” While Obama primarily went after Republicans for trying to politicize his administration’s response to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya last September, Paul chose a more equal opportunity approach in his article, published this morning on the website of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. “Congressional hearings, White House...