Free Republic

On Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced he would be stepping down after nearly seven years on the job. This makes it a good moment to assess Duncan’s legacy, especially since his tenure has been shrouded by more than its fair share of puffery and overheated PR. This was predictable when it came to the usual Obama cheerleaders (Tom Friedman wanted Duncan to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state). But it also showed up at times as generous, even fawning, laurels tossed by the likes of David Brooks, Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Lamar Alexander. ... Duncan —...

And why the catastrophes are so consistent. Russia’s armed intervention in the Syrian civil war is but the latest foreign policy disaster of Barack Obama’s tenure. Yet Obama has been nothing if not consistent. What many see as bungling, naiveté, or evidence of a plot to destroy America is simply the consequence of a particular view of interstate relations he has openly and frequently endorsed. Obama came into office chanting all the mantras of idealistic internationalism. In contrast to the caricature of George W. Bush as a unilateralist cowboy disdainful of diplomacy, Obama promised to “rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and...

By now the reader is well-aware of the recent school shooting that took place at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Another mass shooting, another excuse for the left-wing vultures to prey on the carcasses of the dead. Another opportunity for Pres__ent Obama to grandstand and huff and sigh and affect an air of righteous indignation. Another occasion for left-wingers to roll their eyes and complain about how even after this shooting, those dastardly right-wingers still won't support "common sense gun laws." The reason we don't, of course, is because the left-wingers are still making the same old, nonsensical, discredited...

The United States should threaten to retaliate if Russia does not stop attacking U.S. assets in Syria, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in a Financial Times op-ed published Sunday, urging "strategic boldness," with American credibility in the Middle East and the region itself at stake. Moscow's apparent decision to strike non-Islamic State targets and those of Syrian rebels backed by the Central Intelligence Agency "at best" reflects "Russian military incompetence," and worst, "evidence of a dangerous desire to highlight American political impotence," wrote Brzezinski, the national security adviser for former President Jimmy Carter and a strong supporter of...

In his speech on the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon last week, President Obama sounded more upset about America's gun laws than about the horrific massacre. We barely had the preliminary facts about the shooting, the shooter and the victims, and he was already lecturing the nation again on gun control. Instead of calling the nation to prayer, he said we would learn about the victims in the coming days and then "wrap everyone who's grieving with our prayers and our love." Those words out of the way, he immediately pivoted to complaining that "our thoughts and prayers are...

Remember the much-maligned Tea Party movement? These were the patriotic Americans -- millions of them -- who took to the streets and the town halls across America and revolted against Bush's corporate bailouts, Obama's stimulus spending blowout and Obamacare, and the Fed's policy of tossing trillions of dollars out of helicopter windows (figuratively). Good news: They helped change and maybe even slightly fix America. The latest budget deficit numbers -- for the fiscal year that just ended -- find that the deficit has fallen by $1 trillion since Obama's tragic first term. The deficit is still near half a...

Not all important public policy reforms come from Washington. Really lasting reforms can percolate from the bottom up, brewed by citizens with a grievance pushing state and local governments to act. Consider the case of Right to Try legislation. These are state laws that allow doctors to prescribe investigational medicines being safely used in clinical trials for patients diagnosed as terminally ill. You may not have heard about these laws. But you may have heard a lot if a loved one or Facebook friend is facing advanced cancer or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and cannot obtain medicine that might alleviate...

The downside of being governed by idiots is that people start to think that any idiot can be president. Speaking of idiots, what exactly qualifies Hillary Clinton to be president? Is it that she’s a woman? Guess what, Paris Hilton is a woman, too! Is it that Hillary was a senator for five minutes and then became Secretary of State? Guess what, Paris Hilton has exactly as many significant accomplishments as a senator and Secretary of State as Hillary, which is zero. Is it that Hillary slept with Bill? Well, she has Paris beat there….probably. Who really knows at this...

Team Bush argues they're built to go the distance in the primary, but that won't matter if Jeb has nothing to offer.The Jeb Bush “Don’t Panic, Everything Is Fine” campaign is up and running. With his poll numbers in decline, Jeb is rolling out endorsements and assuring reporters that he’s meeting fundraising targets and will have plenty of money to take the Jeb 2016 machine all the way through the primary season. The arc of Jeb’s campaign is following a very Bush-like trajectory – he started the nominating contest with a “shock and awe” strategy of winning the primary early...

Exposing the foibles of the Kennedy family has been a cottage industry since old Joe Kennedy made a bundle during Prohibition and caught a glimpse of Gloria Swanson. The Kennedy story, equal parts triumph and tragedy, has been hawked by serious historians and shameless hucksters alike, gobbled up by an insatiable public that never seems to tire of tales where wealth, power, and misfortune collide to produce a quintessentially American saga. It was amazing to me how much the Kennedys tried to control their narrative. They couldn’t do anything to stop the books, movies, and supermarket tabloids. They could, however,...

RUSH: This is not gonna be a shock to some of you, but the very fact that it appears in the Associated Press... It's a paean to Ted Kennedy and his foresight in the 1965 Immigration Act. "It was considered a symbolic move -- President Lyndon Johnson going to the Statue of Liberty and signing an immigration bill that gave people from every country in the world an equal chance to come to America. "The president himself described the legislation as less than revolutionary. 'It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our...

RUSH: As I mentioned earlier and as you may have heard, 19 people were injured, three killed, three children, when a hospital in Afghanistan was bombed, and it apparently was one of ours. I mean, we did it. And I mentioned that if this had happened when George W. Bush was president, that's all you'd be hearing about right now. You'd be hearing what a horrible, reprehensible country we have and military we have, and how the mission is unjust and the mission is unnecessary. This is a classic example. "This is not who we are," Obama would say and...

Critics have begun using the words “war crime” to describe a US airstrike in Kunduz that hit a Doctors Without Borders facility, killing 22 people, including children. The US pushed back against the allegations, claiming that they were responding to a call for close air support from Afghan forces and did not know of any civilian medical facilities in the area: Afghan forces called for U.S. air support while fighting the Taliban in Kunduz shortly before a hospital was struck, killing 22 people, the U.S. commander of international forces in Afghanistan said on Monday. …“We have now learned that on...

The calendar for new House leadership elections has been pushed back, meaning that the scrambling for position, internal sniping and various bits of dirty laundry being aired is going to stretch on for nearly two more months. Originally we expected to see nominations for the new Speaker and the election of the new Majority Leader and GOP Whip taking place this Thursday, but this afternoon John Boehner threw a wrench in those plans and pushed things back to after he’s left the building. (Washington Post) Outgoing House Speaker John A. Boehner said Monday that lawmakers will elect his replacement on...

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Obama took the same attitude towards executive amnesty. Either Congress could give him what he wanted by legalizing illegals or he’d give himself what he wanted by legalizing illegals unilaterally. The president no longer loses in our system of (giggle) separation of powers, at least if he has a complacent caucus from his own party in Congress that’s willing to defend him on every power grab at their branch’s expense. Hillary’s building on that precedent now, in the middle of a surprisingly tough primary campaign, to stroke one of the few political erogenous zones...

One of the many painful signs of the mindlessness of our times was a recent section of the Wall Street Journal, built around the theme "What's Holding Women Back in the Workplace?" Whenever some group is not equally represented in some institution or activity, the automatic response in some quarters is to assume that someone has prevented equality of outcomes. This preconception of equal outcomes requires not one speck of evidence, and defies mountains of evidence to the contrary. Even in activities where individual performances are what determine outcomes, and those performances are easily measured objectively, there is seldom anything...

RUSH: There's a new movie on Steve Jobs. It's an Aaron Sorkin movie, stars Michael Fassbender, and it's the same people basically that did the movie The Social Network. And apparently this movie, depending on who you listen to, just savages Steve Jobs, just makes him out to be the biggest reprobate that may have ever lived, just a horrible human being, inhumane, mean, heartless, no compassion, just the most rotten, vile guy you can imagine. So now executives at Apple and friends and family of Jobs are begging, they're imploring Hollywood not to do this. They're trying to get...

One of the secrets of successful magicians on stage is directing the audience's attention to something that is attractive or distracting, but irrelevant to what is actually being done. That is also the secret of successful political charlatans. Consider the message directed at business owners by Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama — "You didn't build that!" Assuming for the sake of argument that a man who owns a business simply inherited it from his father, what follows? That politicians can use the inherited resources better than the heir? Such a sweeping assumption has neither logic nor evidence behind...

The prevailing social dogma of our time — that economic and other disparities among groups are strange, if not sinister — has set off bitter disputes between those who blame genetic differences and those who blame discrimination. Both sides ignore the possibility that groups themselves may differ in their orientations, their priorities and in what they are prepared to sacrifice for the sake of other things. Back in the early 19th century, an official of the Russian Empire reported that even the poorest Jews saw to it that their daughters could read, and their homes had at least ten books....

RUSH: Try this headline in The Politico: "Illegal Immigrants Could Elect Hillary." Now, stop and think about that: "Illegal Immigrants Could Elect Hillary -- How non-citizens decrease Republican chances of winning the White House next year." That's published with absolutely no concern for the fact that we are talking about noncitizens, people here illegally voting. In fact, it's written as though it's just a standard, ordinary, everyday facet of our elections and campaigns, that on Election Day, illegal immigrants are going to vote. "Noncitizens." It's the word in the subhead. "Illegal immigrants -- along with other noncitizens without the right...