Free Republic

Donald Trump says he's not blaming George W. Bush for 9/11, but he claims that if he'd been president, the attacks never would have happened. In an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," the real estate mogul said that since he's "extremely, extremely tough on immigration" the attackers wouldn't have been in position to commandeer U.S. flights. "So there's a good chance that those people would not have been in our country," Trump said. He took another shot at Jeb Bush for claiming that Bush's brother, the 43rd president, kept the nation safe. "I'm not blaming George Bush," Trump said. "But...

Early this morning, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's designated fact-checker gave the left's claims that Republicans alone were responsible for alleged "cuts" to Ebola research four Pinocchios (i.e., a "whopper"). That's nice, but it hardly undoes the damage news outlets like the Associated Press have inflicted on the truth in the apparent name of ginning up resentment among low-information voters. I'll get to that, but first, here are the key passages from Kessler's critique, which essentially gets down to who's responsible for sequestration (the correct answer is that it was President Obama and the White House; bolds are mine throughout...

In Scialabba v. Cuellar de Osorio, both Justices Kagan and, to a lesser extent, CJ Roberts use some pretty strong language to characterize Justice Sotomayor’s dissent. From Kagan’s opinion: •The dissent responds to this fact only with a pair of non-sequiturs. Post, at 18–19 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). •but cf. post, at 14 (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting) (wrongly stating that under that rule conversion occurs upon the agency’s re- ceipt of proof of the change). •It is, therefore, impossible to understand the dissent’s statement that conversion of such a petition to an appropriate category requires “ ‘substantive alteration’ to [the] petition.”...

In a shocking declaration on her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell asserted that one of America's fiercest enemies was actually a friend to the U.S. before George W. Bush came along: "Up until that moment, Iran was cooperating with the United States on the border of Afghanistan, it was post-9/11, Iran was more or less an American ally. By being included in the Axis of Evil, it turned the Iranian government in a completely different direction." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] The topic came up when The Washington Post's...

The former mayor of London took to Press TV, an Iranian state-run network, recently to express his disdain for the Bush White House and his assurance that the Boston Marathon bombings were brought upon the United States because of its injustices abroad.

The administration also argued Friday night that the cost of the Western Regional Conference increased sharply under the Bush White House -- from $93,000 in 2004 to $323,855 in 2006 to $655,025 in 2008, then $840,616 in 2010, or just 28 percent under Obama.

President Obama is pointing to problems in Japan and Europe as challenges for the U.S. economy, placing some blame on events abroad for a domestic recovery that is showing signs of slowing down. Photo by: Pete Souza Government data released Friday showed employers in May hired the fewest number of workers in eight months and U.S. unemployment rose to 9.1 percent, up from 9.0 percent in April. That bump is a political challenge for the president, whose re-election in 2012 may depend on his ability to convince voters that his economic policies have been successful. Part of his pitch will...

Inspired by an interesting thread regarding an actor who refused to do love scenes with an attractive female actress. Inevitably somebody thinks its "funny" to throw in a picture of Helen Thomas. This extremely tiresome "joke" has been run into the ground. Looking it up she was born in 1920. So every day someone feels the need to point how that a 90 year old woman isn't a babe. And we have to shout that out a dozen times a day in threads that have no relation whatsoever to the Washington Press Corps. Aren't we so clever. It's nothing clever,...

Vice President Joe Biden said Friday at at a Dallas fundraiser that the Obama administration's political troubles are rooted in the failures of the Bush years. “We inherited a cynical republic,” he told a room full of supporters at a Northwest Dallas home. “And I can’t blame them. Eight years of collapse, eight years of being misled about wars.” But he defended the administration’s first 14 months and argued that the enactment of health-care legislation “put a big stake in the heart” of Republican opposition.

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to...

10 days from Obama marking his first year in office and the economy is still Bush's fault, a majority blame former President for the bad economy. New Poll this morning from Rasmussen

North Korea has become a fully fledged nuclear power, with the capacity to wipe out cities in Japan and South Korea. The uncomfortable truth has been confirmed by a number of experts, from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the US Defence Secretary. According to intelligence briefings shown to academic experts, North Korea has successfully miniaturised nuclear warheads that could be launched on medium-range missiles. This puts it ahead of Iran in the race for nuclear attack capability, and significantly alters the balance of power between North Korea’s large but poorly equipped military and the South Korean...

With the deluge of threads being posted, and slated to increase greatly as the election heats up, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE .. especially if it's a news/breaking thread ... add the appropriate keywords to your posting form. So, if someone's looking for the latest string of "Obama" or "Sarah Palin" articles, let's say, they just click on that particular keyword at the top of the page, and those articles containing the keyword will come up chronologically. Thank you! Popular keyword options at the top of the main page: ~~~~ *110th *2008 *2008polls *ayers *bailout *barackobama *biden *bo *democrat *democrats *demron *economy...

Earthquake

An aggressive, non-stop campaign by China to penetrate key government and industry databases in the United States already has succeeded and the United States urgently needs to monitor all internet traffic to critical government and private-sector networks “to find the enemy within,” SANS Institute Director of Research Alan Paller told SCMagazineUS.com. “They are already in and we have to find them,” Paller said. Paller said that empirical evidence analyzed by researchers leaves little doubt that the Chinese government has mounted a non-stop, well-financed attack to breach key national security and industry databases, adding that it is likely that this effort...

Consumer Spending Posts Better-Than-Expected Gain While Inflation Eases WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers shrugged off a rash of bad news to spend more than expected in August while a key measure of inflation eased to the slowest pace in 3 1/2 years. The Commerce Department reported Friday that consumer spending rose by 0.6 percent in August, the best showing in four months and better than the 0.4 percent increase that had been expected. Incomes rose by 0.3 percent last month, slightly lower than had been expected. A closely watched gauge of inflation was up just 1.8 percent in August, compared to...

Jack Cafferty was just on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and said that if we weren't spending a total of 1 Trillion dollars in Iraq we could have repaired that bridge and all of the bridges in the U.S.A. instead of building new bridges for roads in Iraq. He laid blame on...guess who? But of course...Bush! When all else fails...CNN and the Liberals find a way to blame Bush. Don't the Democrats run that state for the most part?

"And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man, that man, he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin', sometime's the shark goes away, sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometime's that shark, he looks right into ya, right into your eyes. And another thing about that shark. He's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites you." Quint from Jaws

WASHINGTON - While it is not unprecedented for a president to be ostracized by Congress, abandoned by even most of his own party's members, it's still pretty rare. It was a delegation of congressional Republicans who convinced Richard Nixon that his days were numbered and that it was time to step down. Certainly Gerald Ford was not in a comparable situation after his pardon of Nixon, but many Republicans on Capitol Hill were still dismayed by the move, although Ford's decision to grant clemency to Nixon has been vindicated by history, and he was given his due at his recent...

On Dec. 5, Newsweek magazine touted an interview with then-incoming House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes as an "exclusive." And for good reason. "In a surprise twist in the debate over Iraq," the story began, Mr. Reyes "said he wants to see an increase of 20,000 to 30,000 U.S. troops as part of a 'stepped up effort to dismantle the militias.' " "We have to consider the need for additional troops to be in Iraq, to take out the militias and stabilize Iraq," the Texas Democrat said to the surprise of many, "I would say 20,000...