Free Republic

This administration is abusive enough when it acts outside its constitutional authority, but it is even more tyrannical when it affirmatively thwarts the express will of the Congress on matters within the legislative domain. When Congress denied Obama authority to transfer money to the International Monetary Fund, he did so anyway, issuing an executive order promising to give that body $140 billion for redistribution to Third World countries. Now he's made another mockery of bipartisanship and the Constitution in making six recess appointments, including two people so objectionable that a near supermajority of Democratic senators wouldn't confirm them: James Cole...

If I had to single out one thing that played the greatest role in initially convincing me of the Bible's authenticity and the truth of Christianity, I'd choose the Old Testament prophecies, especially those concerning the Messiah. The specificity of some of the individual prophecies is powerfully probative, but the odds against so many of them being fulfilled in the person of Christ by coincidence are utterly breathtaking. In about 700 B.C., the Prophet Isaiah specifically named the king (Cyrus) who would rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, some 114 years before Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it and some 150 years...

I'd like to challenge you to consider that the "good news" we celebrate during the Christmas season really is true. You may choose to believe the Bible is merely a book of fables with nice moral lessons, but there is more abundant and accurate manuscript evidence for the New Testament than any other book from antiquity. Moreover, the number of witnesses to Christ's life, death and resurrection, as well as the nature of their testimony, is strong evidence of the reliability of the scriptural accounts, as are the corroborating secular testimony and archeological evidence. In fact, the New Testament writers...

It's that time of year when we are reminded just how indebted we are to the left's mega-tolerant cultural warriors. Annually, they jolt us out of our complacency to notice how imposing, intolerant and dangerous Christmas and Christianity are. If it weren't for these valiant soldiers, this disturbing proliferation of Christmas celebrations and other Christian symbols would proceed unabated. Each year, the examples are too voluminous to document exhaustively, but permit me to share a few highlights, which will enhance your appreciation for the sheer magnitude of the effort being undertaken by these selfless watchdogs committed to liberating our culture(s)...

Conservatism and responsible government won a resounding victory in November's elections, and yet just a month later, we're witnessing legislative arrogance on a scale you wouldn't expect if voters had ratified the ruling class' sprint toward national bankruptcy. Can you imagine how it would be acting if it hadn't received a "shellacking"? It seems that Washington is embracing all the principles and practices the voters soundly rejected, without the slightest indication it either received the message or cares. Are we seeing any evidence of greater transparency, a rejection of earmarks, budgetary restraint or legislative deliberation? To me, it looks more...

Everywhere we turn these days, it seems, leftists are undermining and attacking capitalism on moral grounds. Their criticisms are directed not at merely certain corrupt corporations or individuals who abuse the system, but at the system itself. Sadly, few conservatives, even conservative Christians, are willing or prepared to defend capitalism's virtues. Rather than tout it in terms of liberty, they sheepishly apologize for its allegedly inherent greed. It's a testament to the power of propaganda and the appeal of emotion over reason that a system that has produced the greatest prosperity in world history is castigated on moral grounds, while...

There's a lot of noise today about promoting political squishiness to a virtue and endorsing the notion that compromise for its own sake is noble. I uncompromisingly dissent. First, let's understand that compromise for pragmatic purposes or out of political necessity is wholly different from compromise for its own sake. It is the latter I reject, recognizing that the former is, by definition, sometimes the best of the bad options. Those types of decisions have to be made on a case-by-case basis with a thorough evaluation of the available options and the short- and long-term implications of settling for the...

Have you noticed among the Obama-supporting elite a desperate agony upon realizing that he is not quite the messiah he made himself out to be and which they so willingly embraced? Many leftists are disgusted with Obama for supposedly betraying the cause on a number of issues, which tells us how irredeemably liberal they are. But their sense of betrayal runs deeper than ideology. It's not just their belief that he's abandoned them on numerous policy issues. It's also their belated discovery that he's not superman. So we're witnessing a number of liberal and conservative elites scapegoating Obama for their...

If White House press secretaries are windows to the presidential mindset, Robert Gibbs continues to reflect President Obama in an unpresidential light. Here the entire nation is in an uproar over the release of stolen U.S. State Department documents by WikiLeaks bad boy Julian Assange, and how does the White House respond? Well, it does not respond through President Obama himself, who prefers to reserve his bully pulpit for weightier matters, such as the arrest of his friend Henry Gates by Cambridge, Mass., police. Instead, he trots out the ever-snarky Gibbs to present the administration's position. Or maybe Gibbs trotted...

With the advent of the tea party movement and President Obama's recent "shellacking," the left's long-established effort to marginalize mainstream conservative Americans as fringe extremists has reached a new stage of desperation. For at least the past half-century, the dominant media culture has portrayed minority liberalism as mainstream and conservatives as shrill malcontents. From the time I started paying attention to politics as a young kid, liberals have been demonizing conservatives as reactionary throwback Neanderthal knuckle-dragging, warmongering extremists. I'll never forget the "Daisy" ad from the LBJ presidential campaign, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in...

Super-genius political science professor Charles H. Franklin of the University of Wisconsin, Madison recently gave loud voice to a widely held liberal belief: Ordinary Americans, especially conservative ones, are stupid. At a conference by the Society of Professional Journalists, alternative newspaper editor Bill Lueders asked Franklin why "the public seemed to vote against its own interests and stated desires, for instance by electing candidates who'll drive up the deficit with fiscally reckless giveaways to the rich." Franklin responded: "I'm not endorsing the American voter. They're pretty damn stupid." (Excuse my impertinence, but is there a grammatical glitch in the genius's...

While we focus our scrutiny on President Obama's domestic agenda nightmare, we'd best not take our eyes off another big ball: Obama's frantic effort to get the New START ratified during the Senate's lame-duck session. As usual, Obama is engaged in a full-court press, pretending that there is some urgency to formalizing this ill-conceived nuclear arms treaty with Russia, when the sole urgency is the upcoming change in the Senate's partisan composition. To his credit, Republican Sen. Jon Kyl announced his opposition to a vote on the treaty this year, which sent Obama into overdrive. He dispatched Defense Secretary Robert...

President Obama's fiercest obstacles as chief executive are neither recalcitrant Republicans nor the increasing complexity and demands of the job; they are his ideology and his political allegiances. Newsweek sees it differently. In its latest issue, it laments: "The presidency has grown, and grown and grown, into the most powerful, most impossible job in the world. ... The issue is not Obama, it's the office. ... Can any single person fully meet the demands of the 21st-century presidency?" Can you imagine any "mainstream" media publication interposing such a lame excuse for a Republican president's failures in office? Of course not,...

If preliminary rumblings from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform's upcoming report are accurate, I'm afraid the conservative agenda -- though overwhelmingly victorious in last week's elections -- might be against the ropes again, especially with GOP congressmen praising the report. Our astronomical deficits are the result not of low taxes, but of profligate spending. So why do we accept the premise that the starting point for deficit and debt reduction discussions must be various tax hikes, tolerating unacceptably high levels of spending, and seeming to take off the table the eradication of programs the government was never...

Many commentators are speculating whether President Obama will move to the center or "triangulate" in order to salvage part of his agenda and increase his chances for re-election. I don't believe he has either the inclination to move or the political skills to successfully pretend to (or otherwise outmaneuver Republicans), which leads me to conclude his re-election will depend less on his shenanigans and more on how the GOP acquits itself. Dick Morris recently argued that Obama will not be able to move to the center or triangulate "because -- even if he wanted to -- he can't. The issues...

I take no great pleasure in having been correct in predicting Barack Obama's reaction to his Tuesday "shellacking." To borrow his terminology, he is wired not to hear the American people's opposition to his radical agenda, as painfully demonstrated in his postelection news conference. Unhappily, Obama's answers showed even deeper intransigence than I had thought he would be willing to reveal. He is every bit as committed to his destructive agenda as he was Nov. 1 and, despite his claims, is not looking for "common ground." He said that every election "is a reminder that in our democracy, power rests...

I'll never forget how Al Gore's Democrats tried to steal the 2000 presidential election and then spent the next eight years complaining about Republicans stealing their "democracy." Liberals: Projection is your name. We've watched their behavior since, from the Democrats' suppression of military voters to Al Franken's larcenous Senate victory to the flagrant voter intimidation of the New Black Panther Party members in Philadelphia to untold stories of voter fraud already emerging in these congressional elections. We just saw a Delaware TV station "forgetting" to broadcast Christine O'Donnell's 30-minute campaign ad. Sadly, Democrats are often what they accuse their "enemies"...

Riddle me this: How can anyone take Obama seriously when he says he will focus on the deficit in the next two years, seeing as his economic and social philosophies dictate that he continue to spend our money like a drunken floozy? With Obama so intent on punishing "the wealthy," producers, and small businesses even at the expense of hurting everyone else (for example, with his insistence on increasing capital gains tax rates despite acknowledging it would decrease revenues), nationalizing health care despite its now-proven severe fiscal shortfalls, handing out $50 billion more in stimulus money though the first $868...

Many are preoccupied speculating about the magnitude of the impending Republican electoral victory, but I don't think it's putting the cart before the horse to caution that we also ought to be concerned -- now -- about what Republicans will do if they do recapture control. The Republicans' power will obviously be limited, even if they emerge with majorities in both chambers, because Obama will remain in charge of the coequal executive branch. So how should the GOP proceed? The reflexive Beltway response is that it ought to compromise with Obama to produce legislation. But there are a number of...

Memo to those who believe Obama is going to move to the center following his upcoming electoral smack-down: Dream on! Many of you also told us he wouldn't be that liberal in the first instance. Is that egg on your face sticky yet? I'm not denying that Obama might pretend to move to the center on some issues. As an accomplished Alinskyite, he'll do what he has to do to move the socialist football forward. But if he feints to the center, it will not be real. He will not deviate from his relentless quest to advance his leftist agenda....