Free Republic

The Mulligan stew Congress is cooking up in the name of funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring is a textbook example of why, as Will Rogers observed, "Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even." This measure has it all, including a favorite of Democrats: "the millionaires' tax" (more accurately, a tax surcharge; more accurately, on 325,000 "millionaires" making $500,000 a year or more). Beyond $163 billion for the war, the House version would provide: $15.6 billion in deficit spending — so much...

What do the following recent events have in common? c The president of the United States has prostrated himself for the second time in five months before the king of Saudi Arabia, pleading for more oil. Despite George Bush's inducements — an array of advanced, offensive arms; the promise of nuclear technology with which the Saudis can expect (like the North Koreans, Iranians, Pakistanis, etc.) to acquire the ultimate weapons; and U.S. help securing Saudi Arabia's borders (something the president has declined to do at home) — the American plea was spurned. The contempt felt by the House of Saud...

Read the constitution, hold it up to the light, squeeze lemon juice on it--you won't see a right to gay marriage in there. It is simply not an enumerated right, nor is it a right that can be clearly derived from other enumerated rights.

Urban Legend--The idea that US Jews could speak with one voice on Israel couldn't have originated within the Jewish community. 'Where there are two Jews, there are three opinions," so the saying goes. And the idea that American Jews could ever speak with one voice on Israel? That could not have originated within the community itself. The single-voice notion came from a non-Jew. The story that follows is partly apocryphal, but it does inform. Accounts differ, but either secretary of state John Foster Dulles or State Department official Henry Byroade is said to have complained that too many requests from...

May 20, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Left in ChurchDeep inside the Wright Trumpet. By Stanley Kurtz Since repudiating his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., at an April 29 news conference, Barack Obama has done everything in his power to minimize the nature of his relationship with Wright. Supposedly, Obama found Wright’s recent and controversial remarks at the National Press Club shocking, unfamiliar, and out-of-character. In fact, we now know that Wright’s controversial remarks were entirely in character, and that regular church attendance, and even limited familiarity with church publications, would have made Wright’s radical views entirely evident....

In 1965, Mancur Olson wrote a classic book called “The Logic of Collective Action,” which pointed out that large, amorphous groups are often less powerful politically than small, organized ones. He followed it up with “The Rise and Decline of Nations.” In that book, Olson observed that as the number of small, organized factions in a society grows, the political culture becomes more divisive, the economy becomes more rigid and the nation loses vitality. If you look around America today, you see the Olson logic playing out. Interest groups turn every judicial fight into an ideological war. They lobby for...

May 20, 2008, 5:00 a.m. Kind of BlueGay-marriage ruling can help McCain. By Mark Stricherz On the day the California supreme court redefined the state’s definition of marriage, a gay activist from New Jersey made the following prediction. “What happens in California does not stay in California,� Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, told the Newark Star Ledger. “And that is a great thing for equality.� Yet it would not be a great thing for Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton, for that matter). In fact, it might well cost him the election. Suppose the California ruling moves forward...

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Connecticut city's right to seize through eminent domain the waterfront homes of long-time residents for private development. The court held that, like the construction of schools and roads, economic development itself constitutes a "public use" under the Fifth Amendment. Both liberals and conservatives were outraged. As dissenting Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory." Some 40 states responded by passing...

Kurt Hauser is a San Francisco investment economist who, 15 years ago, published fresh and eye-opening data about the federal tax system. His findings imply that there are draconian constraints on the ability of tax-rate increases to generate fresh revenues. I think his discovery deserves to be called Hauser's Law, because it is as central to the economics of taxation as Boyle's Law is to the physics of gases. Yet economists and policy makers are barely aware of it. Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution...

Liberals - VS- Troops In Quotes . Liberals Vs. The Troops In Quotes In honor of Tom Harkin's latest moronic comments about John McCain not being a good candidate for President because he spent too much time in the military, I present to you, "Liberals Vs. The Troops In Quotes." Enjoy the Left-Wing version of "supporting the troops!" Quote:"...This NBC report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer - force that thinks it is doing the dirty work." -- Washington Post blogger, William Arkin Quote:"Through every Abu aib and Haditha,...

Last Saturday, Major General Jeffery Hammond, commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, issued a formal apology to leaders in Radhwaniya, in western Baghdad, after an American soldier used a Qur’an for target practice. The soldier said he didn’t know that the book he used was a Qur’an, but military brass rejected this and announced plans to reassign the soldier to duty within the United States.

Americans seem mesmerized by the word "change." And, by golly, they sure got it last week from the California Supreme Court. It is difficult to imagine a single social change greater than redefining marriage from opposite sex to include members of the same sex. Nothing imaginable -- leftward or rightward -- would constitute as radical a change in the way society is structured as this redefining of marriage for the first time in history: Not another Prohibition, not government taking over all health care, not changing all public education to private schools, not America leaving the United Nations, not rescinding...

As Lady Macbeth said, "what's done cannot be undone" -- except by constitutional amendment. In order to appease an intransigent minority group, the California Supreme Court has, in the manner of Roe v. Wade, resorted to inventing a new legal principle to justify their predetermined goal. But one does wish that they had thought the matter out a little more carefully. In creating a mechanism for justifying gay marriage, the justices have set in motion an infernal machine with consequences far beyond their limited imaginations. Cliff Thier has already pointed out that these unintended consequences may include the invalidation of...

Spin doctors were relabeled "strategists" in the early 1990s. And as Mark Steyn wrote last week in National Review, "Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies." The latest attitude to be flouted as policy is indignation. Specifically, Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama's furious indignation at President George W. Bush's address before the Knesset last week where he celebrated Israel's 60th anniversary and extolled the US's alliance with Israel. Beyond praising the Jewish people's 4,000 year-old devotion to the Land of Israel and to liberty, Bush used the speech to warn against those who think that Iran and...

Seeing the Pope driven around in a bullet-proof vehicle reminds me of how much times have changed over the years. I can remember when President Franklin D. Roosevelt rode through Harlem in an open car. A reader's response to my column about the mandated change from incandescent light bulbs to CFL bulbs: "It would be far better to exchange the corrupt hacks in Congress for some winos from the Bowery. Such a transition should open a new bright era for America." Even if you think our presidential choices this election year are between disgust and disaster, anyone who has ever...

The "energy plan" announced by the Democrats offers one thing: a significant slowdown of our economy for at least twenty years. Those who run both legislative branches of the congress, and the energy plans of both of their leading candidates for president clothe themselves in the mantle of righteousness. That the Republicans are allowing this to happen, right before our eyes, tells us much about the sad state of American politics. From their official website, here is the summary paragraph (including the bad grammar) of the Democrat plan to solve the energy crisis: We will create a cleaner, greener and...

John McCain and Barack Obama, the two leading presidential candidates, have set out sharply contrasting views on the role of the Supreme Court and the kind of justices they would appoint. Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), in a speech two weeks ago, echoed the views of conservatives who say "judicial activism" is the central problem facing the judiciary. He called it the "common and systematic abuse . . . by an elite group . . . we entrust with judicial power." On Thursday, he criticized the California Supreme Court for giving gays and lesbians the right to marry, saying he doesn't "believe...

Khalid Yasin is one of the most notorious Islamic hate sheikhs in the world today. He had been widely condemned from the US to Britain to Australia for his virulent Wahhabist extremism, his intense anti-Americanism (despite the fact that he is an American-born convert), his justification of Islamic terrorism, his wild-eyed conspiracy theories, and his outright racial and religious bigotry. And an Australian news investigation found that Yasin had claimed academic degrees that the schools had no record or, and also discovered that he had engaged in outright fraud in his building his international Islamic media empire. So it is...

In their litany of American presidents who met with hostile dictators, supporters of Barack Obama cite John F. Kennedy and his meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961. They leave out how it went. The earnest, young American president wanted to forestall any possibility of misunderstanding and to win Khrushchev's commitment to the international status quo. The blustery, risk-taking Soviet premier wanted to bludgeon Kennedy into making concessions that would further the Soviet goal of global revolution. With such clashing objectives, the two leaders didn't exactly hit it off. When Kennedy thought he was being accommodating, Khrushchev...

Disraeli once said there are lies, damned lies and statistics. After watching recent news coverage and evaluating the isolated statistics that are often cited, one might think the U.S. economy is desperately stranded in the midst of a dire recession.Before diving into an analysis of our economic status, let's talk about the basic elements in a viable economy. My contention is you would still have a healthy economy if all economic factors are bad except the following: 1. People are employed; jobs are available. 2. People have healthy levels of income. Healthy income includes additional discretionary income that they can...

Campaign '08: Barack Obama plans to lower our standard of living to fight climate change and make the world love us. The last time you may be able to drive your SUV may be to an Obama rally.Campaigning in environmentally conscious Oregon over the weekend, Obama lit into Republican John McCain's environmental and energy policies. "For him to come to Oregon as an environmental president, but his big strategy is to do more drilling and to have a gas-tax holiday for three months, that's a phony solution," Obama said. Well, increasing domestic drilling and lowering taxes, even temporarily, doesn't sound...

Politics: With the world awash in disaster, the United Nations is spending money to send a "special rapporteur" to look into racism in one of its member nations. The country? Why, the United States, of course.The rapporteur in question, Senegal's Doudou Diene, will investigate "contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" in a number of American cities. In fact, the U.S. is the least racist nation on Earth. Diene's visit is a calculated insult to both the American people and President Bush, and an attempt to influence the upcoming U.S. election. Sure we have our problems. But...

Climate Change: Nearly 32,000 scientists sign a petition that says they reject the claim that humanity is causing global warming. The media, who are heavily invested in the Gore Consensus, yawn.But a British royal, no scientist he, says we have 18 months to save the rain forests or we will face a climate disaster, and the media are fascinated. That same royal, Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, has also said that the fight against global warming is much like the war his predecessors fought against the Nazis. He noted in a cleverly timed May 1 speech at a...

At this point it’s reasonable to wonder how Jimmy Carter got elected governor of Georgia, let alone president of the United States. To witness him laying a wreath at the tomb of Yasser Arafat, then schmoozing with Hamas in Damascus, is enough to make the sane among us recoil in disgust. On the very day that the peanut-farmer-who-became-president claimed to have scored a commitment of peace from Hamas, the terrorist thugs launched a rocket salvo at Israel, thus leading the former president to claim that at least he gallantly tried to bring about peace and stability to the Middle East....

Congress: What, exactly, does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's latest junket to Iraq have to do with her official duties? Her inability to keep her amateur fingers out of the foreign policy pie suggests a political power grab.Pelosi went to Iraq uninvited Saturday, and her reception was less than warm. Iraq's democratically elected Nouri al-Maliki government wanted nothing to do with her until she admitted the truth about Iraq's progress as a nation and quit braying that U.S. troops must be immediately pulled out, a proposal so naive that even radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr opposes it. Message through, Pelosi admitted that...

The Presidency: It takes little courage — or brains — to join the mob vilifying President Bush. But the Democrats (and Republicans, too) depicting him as villain will one day regret it.In the eyes of members of both parties, George W. Bush seems to be the cause of everything from the recent GOP special election losses to a flagging economy to today's bad weather. Barack Obama plans to reach the White House by claiming the presidency of Sen. John McCain would amount to a third Bush term. McCain, meanwhile, seems to think it a wise campaign strategy to highlight his...

LTC Joseph Myers is a man whose name ought to be on the lips of all who care about victory in the Global War on Terror. For quite some time he has been fighting a lonely battle to get our military to study and counter-strategize against the distinctively Islamic elements in the strategies our enemies use against us.... Only if we understand the enemy's strategic thinking can we anticipate their moves, identify their points of vulnerability, and carry out a winning strategy. Yet our military and political establishment refuses to recognize the religious-based aspects of the thinking of our enemies....

The president makes a clumsy reference to Nazi Germany before Israeli lawmakers Monday, May 19, 2008 E xquisitely timed, this was not. Politicians and commentators do a disservice to history when they evoke the Third Reich to make political points, as if American policy questions can be equated to state-sponsored genocide. Such comparisons dull the uniqueness of the horrors visited upon Jews, gypsies and others during the dark years between Kristallnacht and the Allies' capture of Berlin. But there stood the POTUS, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, addressing that country's national parliament, groping...

But there is a third way: social entrepreneurship. We are at a stage in human development when we’ve tried varying degrees of socialism — systems that have been discredited at each degree. So why can’t we get government out of the poverty business? Why can’t we turn our concern for others to a vibrant philanthropic sector that would be as powerful and prolific as any other industry if we simply took that virtual monopoly away from the state? What I’m suggesting is not altogether new. Before the New Deal put mutual aid societies and “friendly societies” out of business, America...

When it comes to near-term Republican prospects, the punditocracy is divided. On the Left, it is doom, gloom, and gloat, as E. J. Dionne illustrates in a piece arguing that the G.O.P. is a “brand on the run.” On the right, it is doom, gloom, and gripe, as Peggy Noonan illustrates in a piece lamenting that Republicans are “busy dying.” “The brightest of them,” she writes, “see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.” What should we think of...

President Bush’s implied attack on Barack Obama -- comparing those who would negotiate with terrorists and radicals to pre-World War II appeasers -- is being written off as mere heated political rhetoric. That is happening because the president, as is his wont, expressed a correct judgment in incomplete and thus incorrect terms. Speaking to the Israeli Knesset on May 15, the president said: Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks...

Barack Obama insisted that he was going to be the post-racial presidential candidate, the man who was going to bring us all together and make us forget our racial differences. It’s funny how that worked out. I guess he forgot to mention his master plan to his nearest and dearest. First, let us consider his wife, Michelle. If she is, as they say, his better half, I’d sure hate to see his other half.

A few days ago an Israeli air strike killed a member of a Palestinian missile team that had been firing rockets from Gaza. Now the United Nations has come out with an unusual statement of bewilderment and utter shock as the truth has come out. The dead man, Awad al-Qiq, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. He was also the chief rocket-maker for Islamic Jihad. Mr. Al-Qiq — not surprisingly, a science teacher — worked for one of the schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the...

Visitors from other worlds are more common on this planet than sentences containing "the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals" and "sensibly." But they fit together perfectly in describing its ruling this week on school uniforms. In a 2-1 decision, the most liberal court in the land said the dress code established by the Clark County school district in Nevada does not violate students' free-speech rights. Attempting to bring order to increasingly unruly classrooms, the district enacted a dress code that — who else? — the American Civil Liberties Union objected to as unconstitutional. The ACLU sued the district on...

...Now it turns out that states have been goosing their financing arrangements to maximize their federal payouts and dump more of their costs onto taxpayers nationwide. The swindle works like this: A state overpays state-run health-care providers, such as county hospitals or nursing homes, for Medicaid benefits far in excess of its typical rates. Then the federal government reimburses the state for "half" of the inflated bills. Once the state bags the extra matching funds, the hospital is required to rebate the extra money it received at the scam's outset. Cash thus makes a round trip from states to providers...

It made sense for Congress to provide lavish subsidies to Chrysler Corp. as the company veered into a death spiral in the early 1980s, having spent several years building bad cars nobody wanted. It would not have made sense for lawmakers to pour money into the coffers of Ford Motor Co. on top of the pile it already was making after rolling out the enormously successful Mustang in 1964. Times have changed. A cynical, single-minded Congress has no problem bestowing welfare on the fabulously successful in exchange for campaign contributions and votes. How well are farmers doing? The Wall Street...

Women make up almost half of today's workforce, yet hold just a fraction of the jobs in certain high-earning, high-qualification fields. They constitute 20 percent of the nation's engineers, fewer than one-third of chemists, and only about a quarter of computer and math professionals. Over the past decade and more, scores of conferences, studies, and government hearings have been directed at understanding the gap. It has stayed in the media spotlight thanks in part to the high-profile misstep of then-Harvard president Larry Summers, whose loose comment at a Harvard conference on the topic in 2005 ultimately cost him his job....

In a number of areas, Senator John McCain is praised for moderation that he has not in fact shown in his votes. It is true that by comparison to many of the angry right-wingers that have dominated the Republican Party with Senator McCain's general support he is less extreme and he has from time-to-time shown an amiability that contrasts with the snarling demeanor of some of his co-partisans. But all this shows is that it is possible to be prejudiced all of the time and pleasant some of the time when it comes to the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual...

...For decades now, scholars have been writing about the invisibility of whiteness. To be white in America meant that you were a member of the default category that just isn't discussed. In 2000, journalists didn't incessantly mention that George W. Bush was seeking to become the 43rd white male president of the United States. No one even thinks in those terms. It's implied. It's one of the perks of dominance. We generally mention race when we speak of nonwhites. ...To mention whites as an interest group -- in the way we do minority groups -- hearkens back to segregation and...

Leave it to "Hezbollah Helen" to attack the only Middle East democracy on its 60th anniversary. FAIR WARNING/LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Horrific image follows...

The entire world seems to be heading toward points of inflection. The developing world is embarking on the digital age. The developed world is entering the Internet era. And the United States, once again at the vanguard, is on the verge of becoming the world's first Entrepreneurial Nation.

...But we’re living in a world in which oil prices keep setting records, in which the idea that global oil production will soon peak is rapidly moving from fringe belief to mainstream assumption. And Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon — have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world. If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much. Notice...

Did you know…Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican? Every civil rights law, beginning in the 1860s through the 1950s and 1960s, was fought against by Democrats? Or the KKK had links to the Democratic Party? Not only are these questions addressed by the National Black Republicans Association (NBRA), but also more surprising facts.

The U.S. Supreme Court created a huge political backlash when it ruled that local governments could use eminent domain to seize private property and transfer it to other private owners for "economic development." Since the Kelo ruling in 2005, 42 states have enacted limitations on eminent domain — not always effective ones. But like lawmakers in many other states, some California officials are trying to block real eminent domain reform. On June 3, Californians will vote on Proposition 99, a ballot initiative sponsored by groups representing cities, counties, redevelopment agencies and other pro-condemnation interests. It purports to protect property rights...

Let us now take counsel of our fears. We're afraid of ozone and CO2. We're afraid of smog and cigarette smoke. We're afraid of Republicans because they are warmongers, and of Democrats because they are in utter denial of the real world. We're afraid the earth is warming -- or freezing. Our bee populations are now collapsing. A new kind of voracious ant is invading. Only 20,000 polar bears are left in Alaska, way down, from, oh, about 20,000 previously. Flesh-eating bacteria are attacking people in Africa, again. According to the Daily Telegraph of London, we should be afraid of...

In light of the networks echoing Obama-campaign hypersensitivity on how Bush was allegedly comparing Obama to Nazi appeasers before the Knesset, as liberals suggest this is the lowest campaign tactic in years, talk-show hosts will probably notice that on The Huffington Post, it's apparently fine for that old Democratic campaign star Gary Hart to simply compare conservatives to Nazis, not to mention the authoritarian tendencies of those robotic "pre-programmed neo-conservative dittoheads": Historians of early 21st century American politics will remark the degree to which radical forces, usually called neoconservatives, perverted language as recommended by the National Socialist Party in 1930s...

Democrats claim high voter turnout in their primaries is proof positive they'll win the White House in November. It is a familiar claim, made by one party or the other, that pops up every four years, but it contains not a morsel of truth. Many studies show no correlation between party primary participation and general election results. Nevertheless, in a memorandum to its supporters and the news media, the Democratic National Committee is crowing, "record turnout during the primaries has been transformational for the Democratic Party as record numbers of new voters are being registered." In this equation, new primary...

It's springtime, and all God's creatures are ready for mating, but psychobabble killjoys are warning: Don't have kids. They'll make you miserable, and you'll deserve taxation for environmental abuse. On May 8, just as the songbirds were readying nests for their offspring, a Harvard professor tried to put a damper on the joys of human procreation by declaring that having children strips happiness from their parents. Professor Daniel Gilbert announced to the Happiness and its Causes conference in Sydney, Australia, that with each child the barometer of happiness plummets.

'RWANDA on the Mediterranean!" That's how some Beirut residents described Lebanon's prospects last week, as Hezbollah gunmen went on the rampage in Sunni Muslim districts and Druze villages in nearby mountains. They feared that the move would trigger a religious version of the 1990s Hutu-Tutsi conflict. By the end of the week, however, those fears were somewhat alleviated as all factions decided not to cross the Rubicon. Hezbollah withdrew from the areas captured, while Sunni Muslims, Christians and the Druze who back the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora kept whatever armed force they had out of sight. What had...

I know Obama is getting record crowds, estimated as high as 75,000 in Portland, OR.  But is curiosity the same thing as support?  Are these massive crowds going to vote en masse? Obama is a draw, but is he selling liberalism like never before or are liberals simply coming out like never before? Given some of his more ludicrous statements one has to wonder how many Americans are ready for his hard core liberal stances: Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which...