Free Republic

It may be too soon to label it a trend and there is insufficient data to confirm it, but President Obama and his party may be losing their iron grip on their most loyal and enthusiastic voting bloc: African-Americans. Last Friday in Chicago, a group of black residents of the city's South Side, staged a protest against the violent shootings that are becoming as commonplace as White Sox games at Cellular Field. It wasn't just the protest that should concern the administration and Democrats; it was the language used by some of the protesters, many of whom at the time...

I recently returned home after two weeks of engagements in New Zealand and Australia focusing on empowerment through reading. The Kiwis and Aussies are not very different from Americans, even though they inhabit the opposite side of the globe. I was struck by the way many people perceived the political atmosphere in the United States. Although the well-educated individuals who have access to all of the American cable channels tend to be well informed on the issues, most people had only heard that America has finally repaired its broken medical system with the advent of Obamacare and now everyone, including...

The Islamic terrorist army often referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has made a faster womb-to-superstardom ascension than Justin Bieber. Largely unheard of just a few weeks ago, the group is now the self-proclaimed new ruler of an Islamic caliphate, or republic, extending across Iraq and Syria. These countries currently have internationally recognized heads of state -- but, you know, whatever, man. It's not like U.S. President Barack Obama is going to stop ISIL. In fact, he's asking Congress to give it $500 million, under the guise of funding the "Syrian opposition." Recipients...

When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Americans were told it would be a quick, simple project. When asked how long the war might last, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said airily, "Six days, six weeks, I doubt six months." So what's the complaint today from those who advocated the war most vigorously? We left too soon. Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte put out a statement the other day blaming the recent rout of Iraqi government forces on "President Obama's decision to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq in 2011." That final pullout...

Considering how easy it would be for the Iranian regime to get everything it wants from the current administration, it's a little startling to see the "supreme leader" brazenly poking his finger into the president's eye. President Barack Obama's fond hopes -- nurtured since before his first inauguration -- to forge a new, better relationship with the "Islamic Republic" have come to this: Speaking to a large crowd assembled to mark the 25th anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death, "Supreme Leader" Ali Khamenei declared his continuing belief that America is the Great Satan. "Battle and jihad are endless," he...

What is this incessant nonsense over Keystone XL? It’s a pipeline, for crying out loud. The United States already has 185,000 miles of liquid petroleum pipelines, 320,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines, and more than 2,000,000 miles of gas distribution pipelines. Using the latest steel, valves and other technologies to build another 1,179 miles of pipe – to move 830,000 barrels of oil per day safely from Alberta, Canada oil sands country and North Dakota’s Bakken shale territory to Texas refineries – should not be an earth-shattering matter. KXL would create jobs – in an economy that grew at...

WASHINGTON - America remains adrift under Barack Obama's presidency, without any sustained or effective focus on the sea of troubles that afflict our nation. Obama goes through the ceremonial motions of being president, while ignoring the consequences or making excuses about the most serious, long term challenges we face here at home. Instead, he is devoting more and more of his time delivering political speeches attacking his adversaries and raising money for besieged Democrats who face severe election losses in the fall. Meantime, the U.S. economy all but stopped growing in the first three months of this year; the nation's...

Surprise, surprise, the labor force participation rate in April for young adults between the ages of 25-29 hit a record low. Liberals continue to tout that young people are doing just fine under the Obama economy, but alas the data shows otherwise. Young people have been the hardest hit by Obama and his leftist policies. Young Americans are the ones expected to pick up the tab for the reckless spending coming from Washington while facing an increasingly tough job market. Each year Young America’s Foundation releases its Youth Misery Index (YMI), which adds together youth unemployment, average graduating student debt,...

President Obama is passionate about education, especially for underprivileged kids … or so he says. An ardent opponent of school choice, except when it comes to his own kids, one of his first acts was to try to kill the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship that provides poor kids in the nation’s capital the chance to escape failing schools. He’s repeatedly tried to ax the program, only to be blocked by Republicans. But the President’s assault on education doesn’t end with just young kids, it continues throughout the entire education system. For the last few years, the Obama administration has waged a...

"What Would America Fight For?" That question shouts from the cover of this week's Economist. It is, asserts the magazine, "the question haunting its allies." While most agree that America would fight to defend her treaty allies and to protect vital interests if imperiled, the question is raised by President Obama's reticence in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. Asked in Manila how he answers critics who say his foreign policy appears to be one of "weakness," the president, stung, replied: "Typically, criticism of our foreign policy has been directed at the failure to use military force. And the question ... I...

Earlier this month, CIA-operated drones killed as many as 55 people in Yemen in several separate strikes. Although it was claimed that those killed were “militants,” according to press reports at least three civilians were killed and at least five others wounded. That makes at least 92 U.S. drone attacks against Yemen during the Obama administration, which have killed nearly 1,000 people including many civilians. The latest strikes seem to contradict President Obama’s revised guidelines for targeted killings, which he announced last May. At the time he claimed that drones would only be used against those who posed a “continuing...

When liberal pro-Obama scholars question the legality of President Barack Obama's actions to implement Obamacare, the issue of illegal presidential use of power moves from partisan to frightening. George Washington Law School's Jonathan Turley is the second most quoted law professor in the nation and a two-time Obama voter. He recently testified before Congress on Obama's extensive use of executive orders and administrative actions to make unilateral changes in Obamacare, immigration policy, minimum wage and the IRS qualifying standards for non-profit status. As to Obamacare, Obama, so far, changed it in at least a dozen major ways, including, but not...

Last week the House of Representatives passed yet another bill with an awkward, acronym-enabling title: the Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments of the Law Act. The ENFORCE the Law Act (get it?) would allow either chamber of Congress to authorize litigation aimed at correcting the president's "failure to faithfully execute the laws." While the bill's name is ridiculous and its mechanism is dubious, the basic premise of its supporters, almost all of whom are Republicans, is correct: As the House Judiciary Committee's report on the bill puts it, Obama has engaged in a "pattern of overstepping...

When George Mallory was asked in 1924 why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he snapped, “Because it is there.” Fourteen years later, Adolf Hitler might well have given the same answer if asked why he wanted to annex the Sudetenland. And nearly a century later, Vladimir Putin is swallowing up Crimea for the same reason: Because it is there for taking. Putin knows when it comes to invading and annexing Crimea, no one is going to stop him. Consider the three candidates you might think at first glance would stand in Vladimir Putin’s path. First, there’s Ukraine. But its...

With each passing day, President Barack Obama, leftism personified, demonstrates that leftism is characterized by anything other than the human compassion it claims as its exclusive possession. I've always said leftists are about not compassion or treating people with sensitivity and respect, much less equally, but control and bullying, all with an arrogant, mean-spirited air of superiority. For Obama, there are at least two aspects to his control-freakishness. He not only pushes policies that give the federal government vastly more control over our lives but also is inordinately dictatorial in the manner in which he ramrods his agenda through, displaying...

The Obama administration is showing it can be tough on foreign policy. Unfortunately, that toughness is not directed at Russia and its incursion into Crimea, but at Israel, America's ally.

"A simple recipe for violence: promise a lot, deliver a little. Lead people to believe they will be much better off, but let there be no dramatic improvement." The brilliant political scientist Aaron Wildavsky wrote these words in 1968 while America was engulfed in race riots and anti-war protests. Sadly, his words from long ago eerily describe the politics of 21st-century America. President Barack Obama and his recent predecessors have been good about promising a lot but delivering little. The current crusade to raise the minimum wage is a perfect example. Regardless of whether or not it makes sense, the...

The political philosopher Edmund Burke once remarked that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good folks to do nothing. A glaring example of the impending triumph of a constitutional evil that could be stopped by folks who have been largely silent is the tyranny coming from the White House. And the folks who can stop this and are doing nothing about it are our elected representatives in Congress. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It established the three branches of government, and it delegated "all legislative powers" to Congress. American law rarely...

Take a look at the graph below. From the end of World War II until 1964 the poverty rate in this country was cut in half. Further, 94% of the change in the poverty rate over this period can be explained by changes in per capita income alone. Economic growth is clearly the most effective antipoverty weapon ever devised by man. The dotted line shows what would have happened had this trend continued. Economic growth would have reduced the number in poverty to a mere 1.4% of the population today ? a number so low that private charity could probably...

Last week, Moody’s rating agency lowered the outlook for health insurers from stable to negative, blaming Obamacare. Few Americans will shed tears for insurance companies. But the Moody’s announcement is a warning sign to taxpayers. They’ll be getting clobbered. Section 1342 of the Affordable Care Act forces taxpayers to make insurers whole for most of the losses incurred selling Obamacare exchange plans through 2016. The bailout is designed to conceal the failure of the president’s signature health law until he is out of office. No one in the Obama administration talked up the advantages of bailing out insurers. It was...