Free Republic

Polticians from outgoing coalition say Likud chief's agreement to put Avi Maoz in charge of Israel's Jewish identity is a 'slap in the face,' could 'plunge Israel into the abyss' The prospect of a hardline, ultra-conservative, anti-pluralistic, homophobic nationalist being appointed as the next government's head of "Jewish identity" was met with staunch rebuke from politicians from the outgoing coalition on Sunday, with lawmakers slamming the move by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu as "insanity," "racist" and "unreal". Avi Moaz, the single lawmaker of the fringe Noam party, is one of the Knesset's most far-right politicians, holding non-pluralist Jewish views and...

Conservatives should stop helping ultraconservative Democrats lie by agreeing with the Democrats' false claim that Democrats are liberals instead of ultraconservatives. Conservatives should also stop calling outdated Democratic ideas "progressive". Conservatives, like many Americans, falsely believe there are only two political "attitudes" in the United States. One attitude is called "liberal". The other is called "conservative". There is a third attitude called "ultraconservative" which has at times adversely affected American society. Real liberals are open-minded and sometimes overly optimistic about the positive impact of change. Democrats are closed-minded True Believers who tend to believe they are Right about everything and...

The 14th Amendment requires states to guarantee "the equal protection of the laws." Unfortunately ultraconservative Supreme Court justices such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg don’t believe states should be allowed to protect women from unsafely operated abortion clinics. Supreme Court justices are considering Louisiana's Unsafe Abortion Protection Act, which requires that abortionists in the state have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the facility. Yes, I said "ultraconservative". I know people such as Ginsburg like to call themselves "liberals", but their attitude to abortion regulations is closer to "ultraconservative" than to "liberal". During the last century "liberals"...

An influential political action group in Washington, Heritage Action for America, all but endorsed the presidential candidacy of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Monday, with the release of an analysis of the platforms of the top 12 candidates for the Republican nomination.Cruz has been consistently in the middle of the pack in early polling, typically gathering only a fraction of the support currently being lavished on frontrunners Donald Trump and Ben Carson. However, with backing from well-funded Super PACs, the Texas senator has the ability to assert himself in the race in the event that one or both of the...

Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush — conservatives all year long have been wishing, yearning, even begging people who aren’t in the presidential race to enter the fray and save them from what seems like a frighteningly uninspiring field of candidates. Yet could it be that the sharpest, most accomplished, most campaign-savvy, and most full-spectrum conservative in a quarter-century of presidential contests has been in the contest all along, working harder than anybody, making at least as much intellectual sense as anybody, never blowing a debate, and never failing to stand on...

"Former US vice-president AL gore urged Canadians to be vigilant over their new leader Stephen Harper in light of the newly elected prime minister's pro oil agenda. "The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta....And the financial interests behind the tar sands projects poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election...and to protect their interests."... Gore said he wasn't surprised to hear about the absence of any tar sands talk during the last campaign,or even the oil lobby was pushing Harper's cause in influential financial circles,and...