Free Republic

Matthew Dowd, former chief strategist for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign, apparently doesn’t have much of a soft spot for CPAC or for Sarah Palin. Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, Dowd likened CPAC to no less than two prehistoric children’s cartoons, and not so subtly compared former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Kim Kardashian. National Review captured the one-minute statement from Dowd: “Matt, you’re just shaking your head. The whole thing, it makes you nervous, what do you say?” ABC host Martha Raddatz asked. “To me, imagery and who’s there [at CPAC] and what you say is...

While participating in a panel discussion Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” President George W. Bush’s former chief strategist Matthew Dowd continued the senseless attacks on former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by political elitists on the right . Dowd was critiquing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) for not inviting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), while welcoming Palin, who he said “wasn’t competent enough to keep a Fox News contract,” according to The Raw Story. “CPAC, to me, has totally diminished its credibility as an organization,” Dowd said. “And you invite Sarah Palin, who wasn’t competent enough to keep a...

Yesterday, I wrote about the silliness of requiring a file clerk to have a college degree. This morning, a friend sent me the following note about the narrowing of opportunity in modern America: Random thought inspired by the NYT article re: requiring BAs for everything and your post, especially the note about your IT team and their varied backgrounds, which is far less likely to be true today. It seems to me that a similar version of that narrowing-entry option is occurring in many fields You've written in the past about how the top banks have steadily narrowed the pool...

According to Politico, “a political colonoscopy is going on before our eyes.” Yuck. Karl Rove has set up a Super PAC to keep controversial conservatives from winning Republican primaries and the Senate leadership has established a “buddy system” to keep Tea Party congressmen in line (“buddy” as in “you should probably vote the way we tell you to, buddy…”). But the most important changes are taking place at Fox where heavyweights Sarah Palin and Dick Morris are out as contributors. A lot of this is post-election house clearing (CNN has moved staff around, too) but it also suggests that the...

What is the difference between Barack Obama and Ignatius Loyola? Not a hell of a lot. I’m thumbing through a copy of The Ten Commandments of Propaganda, a book by my academic buddy Brian Patrick. Aside from being a well-rounded review of the dark art, Brain illustrates historical cornerstones of propaganda, which includes Ignatius. The Roman church originated modern techniques for thought control with their Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, known in Latin as “Congregatio de Propaganda Fide” and hence the modern perversion of the word ‘propaganda’.  In its purest form, ‘propaganda’ means to propagate information. It took...

When President Obama takes the oath of office for the second time, he will also usher in a new era in American power politics. Whereas the old left-wing definition of “who rules” focused on large corporations, banks, energy companies and agribusinesses, the Obama-era power structure represents a major transformation. This shift stems, in large part, from the movement from a predominately resource and tangible goods-based economy to an information-based one. In the past, political struggles were largely fought over how to divide up the spoils generated by the basic productive economy; labor, investors and management all shared a belief in...

One lone trustee objected to the institution’s betrayal of Andrew Carnegie. As Lagemann reports, a Cornell professor presented to the board a proposal that it focus, not on building libraries, but on spreading library science, which would lead to “advancing popular intellectual progress” (read: “smartening up the slack-jawed yokels”). The lonely dissenter, trustee James Bertram, argued that if the board consented to this recommendation, it "would contravene Carnegie’s clear and known wish 'to give libraries to communities and [to] leave the communities absolutely free to manage them any way they might see fit.'” Because Bertram spoke the truth, the trustees...

Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact. The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak. If you dismiss this by saying, "Of course they have armed guards -- they get Secret Service protection," then you've missed the larger point. The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period....

There is a bizarre, sophomoric "rah-rah yay team" dynamic in our culture whereby if the guy presented as being on "Team D" with the donkey mascot holds a position the "Team R" fans boo, while if the guy presented as being on "Team R" with the elephant mascot does exactly the same thing, the "Team R" people cheer. My theory is that this is all a byproduct of the sports culture. People are trained to root for "their team", no matter who the men are that are playing on the team. So, saying "I'm a Cowboys fan" or "I'm a...

Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Protestant Establishment sat atop the American power structure. A relatively small network of white Protestant men dominated the universities, the world of finance, the local country clubs and even high government service. Over the past half–century, a more diverse and meritocratic elite has replaced the Protestant Establishment. People are more likely to rise on the basis of grades, test scores, effort and performance.

Dinners were served in the basement. Ambassadors, generals with many stars, senior White House officials and closely read columnists — all would walk past the yellowing kitchen, which looked as if it hadn’t been updated since the Ford administration, and down a narrow flight of stairs into the dimly lighted dining room. Guests were arrayed around the table according to rank, with the most important ones squeezed in the center. Although the Old World meals could be quite elaborate — venison paté, duck in bitter orange — they were prepared and served entirely by the host, a stickler for protocol...

For Washington, this is definitely not the best of times. The town is suffering from a power outage. The evidence is hard to miss, from Washington’s weeklong struggle to cope with storm damage that knocked out electricity across the region to President Obama’s inability to awaken the economy, as reflected once again in June’s pathetic jobs report. To make matters worse, Washington is out of sync with the country, at least with the noncoastal parts. The usual response is to unleash the president so he can rally America to Washington’s purposes. But the bully pulpit hasn’t been effective since Ronald...

the Supreme Cort will be exclusively filled with judges who earned their law degrees at Harvard or Yale. That seems somewhat remarkable given that there are more than 1 million lawyers in the United States and 200 law schools approved by the American Bar Association (seven of them are provisionally approved). Should we care? Jonathan Turley, a law scholar at George Washington University, does, according to this story from the McClatchy Newspapers. “You’re voiding a wide array of interesting and potentially brilliant nominees,” he was quoted as saying. “It’s like insisting you’re only going to read books by two authors."...

The US has joined ranks with EU officials exploring ways to pump eurozone money directly into Spain's troubled banks instead of having to further burden the state budget. "We were talking about the possibility that the banks, not only Spain's but also in other countries who need it, could access funds directly without intervention from the governments and without conditions," said Spanish deputy PM Soraya Saenz de Santamaria after meeting US finance minister Timothy Geithner in Washington on Thursday (31 May). "The treasury secretary indicated that we are working in the same direction and that we must find a solution...

Even as George Zimmerman stands trial for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin, many Americans argue these laws make us safe. I've had pistols held to my head from Bosnia to Beirut. Your best self-defense is your tongue. Those who put their faith in guns will ultimately be outgunned. Because this is my last column, I want to challenge a deeply held belief that is, tragically, a core one for millions of Americans. [See editor's note at the end of this column.] One of the most common ideas emerging after the Trayvon Martin tragedy with Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is that...

The Romney campaign, renowned for its oppo-heavy strategy, didn’t even have an oppo book on Rick Santorum a few days before the Iowa caucuses, so surprised were they by his surge. Jon Huntsman nearly decided in November to leave the GOP and run as an independent. And before one of the debates, Rick Perry sang “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” in a restroom. These details are from Mike Allen and Evan Thomas’ new e-book, Inside the Circus, as are these additional factoids below. Mitt Romney raised millions in March by warning would-be donors a brokered convention could mean a...

The Constitution says: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. It certainly does NOT say: The Elected officials of the Government of the United States, in order to form a Union that reflects only our elitist views, establish Justice for a select few, suppress any form of protest against it, provide some form of Welfare...

My wife and I went to watch the blockbuster movie “The Hunger Games”. Before going to the movie I already understood that the ruling class, so expertly portrayed in Hunger Games, does in fact exist here in America. Hunger Games is not science fiction; rather it is an eerie reflection of our “new American society”. In Hunger Games the citizens of twelve fictional colonies do not govern themselves but rather are kept in a perpetual state of hunger by a “new upper class” that has arisen from the ashes of a nuclear war. In the book there are rumors of...

CUMMING, Ga. - Newt Gingrich turned the church pulpit into a history class when he addressed the congregation at First Redeemer Church, comparing the struggle of American colonies -snip- "I don't come here as a religious leader and I don't come here as a saint," Gingrich said as soon as he began talking. "I come here as a citizen who has had a life that at times has fallen short of the glory of God, who has had to seek God's forgiveness and has had to seek reconciliation." As such, Gingrich said, he was speaking in the pulpit "as a...

The Confederates of the Southern movement are like the conservatives of the Republican Party, the leaders believe they have no choice! The parallels occurring in America between the 2012 election year, what is occurring in America as a nation and in the South, and the events of 150 years ago are startling. While most Americans have some knowledge of the GOP Primary, few have any idea of the Sesquicentennial (the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War) and the events occurring in the Southern movement. And yet, what is occurring is like mirror reflections of one another. Let's start with what...