Free Republic

This is addressed mostly to members of the media, whether it's Big Media or alternative media. Andrew Breitbart was a member of your profession. He was a brother in arms, so to speak. He announced just 20 days ago that he had tapes that would clarify why Obama is the most divisive, radical president we've ever had, tapes of Obama's college activities and involvement with "the silver ponytails." Don't waste our time on pointless eulogizing. Just pick up where he left off and find out what was in those tapes. Do your own research into Obama's murky past. You have...

<p>Santayana defined fanaticism as redoubling your effort while losing sight of your goal. America’s recent discussions about the war on terror would give him few grounds to change his view.</p> <p>Several GOP presidential candidates have said they would support bringing back waterboarding, a practice the U.S. prosecuted as a war crime after WWII. Apparently it’s only torture when the other side does it.</p>

I just heard on ABC radio news that bin Laden is to be buried at sea. Why in the world, after everything that has resulted from his actions, would they fail to produce a body as proof of his death?

Dozens of nuclear energy experts have joined thousands of troops providing assistance to the Japanese government in the wake of last week’s 9.0 earthquake. Here’s an updated look at how federal agencies and the military are helping:DEFENSE DEPARTMENT:The U.S. military has about 50,000 personnel stationed in Japan, many of whom are providing disaster assistance. Residents of the military’s Misawa Air Base, Japan, are collecting clothing donations in support of their Japanese neighbors. The Navy is using P-3 Orion aircraft to survey the wreckage and the Air Force is providing an RQ-4 Global Hawk based in Guam to conduct similar flights....

Who, if anyone, is to blame for the terrible flooding in Brisbane? Commentators are pointing their collective finger at the usual suspects. For the extreme green magazine Grist, the floods expose mankind’s arrogance in believing that he can build settlements anywhere he likes, even on floodplains... But might there be another, so far overlooked, contributing factor to the floods? Might the politics of environmentalism itself – the contemporary obsession with global warming as the greatest threat to mankind – have exacerbated the impact of the flooding in Brisbane? ... It is worth looking at a document called ClimateSmart 2050, which...

These words are being written before the dust has had a chance to settle on Monday night's naval commando raid of the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla of terror supporters. The raid's full range of operational failures still cannot be known. Obviously the fact that the mission ended with at least six soldiers wounded and at least ten Hamas supporters dead makes clear that there were significant failures in both the IDF's training for and execution of the mission. The Navy and other relevant bodies will no doubt study these failures. But they point to a larger strategic failure that has crippled...

Last year the Obama administration granted oil giant BP a special exemption from a legal requirement that it produce a detailed environmental impact study on the possible effects of its Deepwater Horizon drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico, an article Wednesday in the Washington Post reveals. Federal documents show that the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) gave BP a "categorical exclusion" on April 6, 2009 to commence drilling with Deepwater Horizon even though it had not produced the impact study required by a law known as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The report would have...

I managed to get through to Congressman John Barrow's Washington office to urge him to vote against both the Reconciliation Bill and the Slaughter Rule. The person I talked to said that the Slaughter Rule was dead. I asked when that happened, and he said "As of 15 minutes ago." That was about half an hour ago when I spoke with him. I searched Free Republic for news of this and found nothing. Also nothing on Google News. So was he mistaken? Has anyone else heard anything on this?

The 60 votes are there for ObamaCare to pass in the Senate. The only thing preventing a vote is a blizzard in Connecticut, where Joe Lieberman went home for Sabbath. So you might say that God is the reason, both for sending Joe home and for sending the snow storm. I'm beginning to think that it will take a miracle to stop this massive take-over of the health care industry. So I propose an ongoing Rosary vigil. How it works is that I begin by saying a Rosary. When I finish, I reply to this thread. Hopefully, someone else will...

In New York's 23rd Congressional district, Democrat Owens finished with 49% , making him the winner of a plurality of the votes. What's being overlooked by Republicans and conservatives is that Scozzafava, despite having withdrawn from the race, still garnered 6% of votes, with Hoffman getting 45%. I'm guessing that most of Scozzafava's 6% were absentee ballots which had already been mailed before she dropped out. Other votes could have come from die hard fans of hers, or voters who simply didn't know she was no longer in the race. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that Owens won with...

The divide grows deeper every day, both sides seething with contempt and even hatred for the other side. No good can come from this. In my more benevolent moods, I sometimes find myself seeking a more radical approach to coping with the next 3+ years. I offer these suggestions, which I myself have decided to try: Pray for Obama. Pray--not only that he will not carry out his socialist agenda, but that he will do the right thing. Pray that he will not only do the right thing, but that he will be an extraordinarily good president. Pray that he...

By HAMZA HENDAWI – 51 minutes ago CAIRO (AP) — One of Iran's most powerful men may be playing a key role behind closed doors in the country's escalating postelection crisis. Former president and influential cleric Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani has made no public comment since Iran erupted into confrontation between backers of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformists who claim he stole re-election through fraud. But Iranian TV has shown pictures of Rafsanjani's daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, speaking to hundreds of opposition supporters. And Rafsanjani, who has made no secret of his distaste for Ahmadinejad, was conspicuously absent from an address...

HOUSTON — A Mexico City toddler on a family trip to visit relatives spent his last three weeks critically ill in Texas hospitals, finally becoming the first U.S. death from the swine flu that has killed hundreds in his home country and sickened thousands worldwide. The boy, who was nearly 2 years old, arrived in the border city of Brownsville with "underlying health issues" April 4 and developed flu symptoms four days later, the Texas Department of State Health Services said. He was taken to a Brownsville hospital April 13 and transferred the following day to Texas Children's Hospital in...

WASHINGTON: It popped out casually, a throwaway line as Barack Obama talked to reporters about finding the right puppy for his young daughters. But with just three offhand words in his first news conference as president-elect, Obama reminded everyone how thoroughly different his administration — and inevitably, the United States — will be. "Mutts like me." In American English, a mutt is a mixed breed dog. By now, almost every American knows that Obama's mother was white and his father black, which will make him the U.S.'s first African-American president. Still, there was something startling, and telling, about hearing his...

What's so funny about Barack Obama? Apparently not very much, at least not yet. On Monday, The New Yorker magazine tried dipping its toe into broad satire involving Senator Obama with a cover image depicting the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and his wife, Michelle, as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office. The response from both Democrats and Republicans was explosive. Comedy has been no easier for the phalanx of late-night television hosts who depend on skewering political leaders for a healthy quotient of their nightly monologues. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and others have delivered a...

The new format for browsing comments includes the entire reply, as opposed to the old format, which had only the titles of the comments. The new way presents several problems: First, because of images, it takes longer to load. Secondly, because of long URLs posted in these replies, all text scrolls off the edge of the screen, making it very difficult to read. Third, it's harder to get a sense of what the hot threads are, because there are fewer per page. Fourth, if someone hasn't read the article, the reply makes no sense, so there's no good reason to...

White House hopeful Barack Obama suggests he would have left his Chicago church had his longtime pastor, whose fiery anti-American comments about U.S. foreign policy and race relations threatened Obama's campaign, not stepped down."Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying at the church," Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, "The View." The interview will be broadcast Friday.In his...

WASHINGTON: At the core of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars, and build a new governing majority. To achieve the change the country wants, he says, "we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done."

The Democratic study on the "real costs" of the wars in Iraq ($1.3 trillion) and Afghanistan ($300 billion) from 2002 through 2008 will almost assuredly lead to a common perceptual pitfall. An explanation: Let's assume that the numbers on Iraq are more or less accurate. And let's stipulate for a moment that when you take into account "hidden costs" such as interest payments on new debt to pay for the war, the expense of long-term healthcare for our injured warriors, and the impact of higher oil prices, the total cost of Iraq is indeed twice what the White House has...