Free Republic

Yes, of course it is. Three weeks ago John McCain was ahead, and a furious attack on Sarah Palin was underway. And Americans were several trillion dollars richer. Our stocks will recover if the American economy, powered by democratic capitalism's relentless innovation and productivity, is allowed to work its magic again. That is the record of our often disparaged but inevitably triumphant attachment to economic liberty. The task for John McCain between now and the time the last vote is cast on November 4 is to speak this truth and articulate this record and thus help repair the damaged confidence...

HH: To discuss it all and get the day started off, the hour started off, Mark Steyn, Columnist To the World. Mark Steyn, another terrible day. We’re now down to about 20% in a week, which is getting to rival the big day in 1987. What’s your sense from the experts you’ve been talking to and listening to of whether or not we’re at the bottom?  MS: Well, a few days ago, there was an argument about these swings and roundabouts in the markets as to whether they were going down because Congress wouldn’t pass the bailout package, or because...

Fired Up Crowd Cheers Warning To McCain Palin About Obama-Pelosi

Hugh Hewitt just reported on his show that Dean Barnett of The Weekly Standard, and Hewitt's substitute on his radio program, is hospitalized in serious condition with cystic fibrosis. Prayers are requested.

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Because the country cannot afford the greatest gamble in its modern history at this moment in time. A confrontation with Iran looms and instability in Pakistan grows. The Islamist threat has been beaten back in Iraq, but continues to nurse its fanatical hatreds in many other places, from Waziristan to London. Israel is ringed not with an enemy that wants a state but by two enemies that want Israel to be destroyed. The world's financial system is teetering, and the estrangement between the American people and their government has never been this deep in modern times. The cost of energy...

In her first radio interview since becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin joined Hugh Hewitt on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”  (Listen Here)Hugh Hewitt: Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media. Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?Sarah Palin: I think they’re just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying, “You know what? It’s time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency.” I think that that’s kind of taken some people...

HH: Governor Sarah Palin, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Great to have you. SP: Hey, thank you so much. Nice to hear your voice. HH: Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media. Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to? SP: Oh, I think they’re just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It’s time that normal Joe six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that’s kind of taken...

"I will air an interview with the governor at the top of the first hour and repeat it in the third hour."

Wednesday, September 24, 2008 The Summary Of Today's Events Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:59 PM The financial crisis continues and Congress is deadlocked. John McCain leads by suspending campaign, postponing the debate, and urging the president to call a key leaders summit, to include himself and Barack Obama. Obama refuses McCain's call, demands the debate go forward, and sputters about being available if he's needed. President Bush convenes the meeting that John McCain suggested. Obama blinks and agrees to attend. The president addresses the nation, explains the history of the cris, and describes an outline of the proposed action....

Either Obama's dim as can be, or he is angry at having been thrown bckwards week after week. When Obama denies having targeted Palin, keep in mind that everyone instantly made the connection. Is Obama really that clueless? An angry outburst does less damage than his pleading he didn't mean it that way.

There was a lot of audio today, including Barack Obama's tutorial on the Second Amendment, which began with his declaration that he believed the Second Amendment was an "individual right," and which concluded with what was intended to be the reassuring declaration that there was no need to worry because he didn't have the votes he needed in Congress to take away your guns even if he wanted to. Which he doesn't want to. He just wants to take away the guns of kids in inner city Philadelphia. Though he neglected to provide us with the test for determining which...

What a rout. Up early to watch the pundits on parade for a couple of hours, and the lefty talking heads and the MSM anchors are fleeing Sarah Palin like a building on fire. No more chants of "inexperience," and only the most indirect of references to her family. Until yesterday the collective MSM sneer was that Palin was "Hello Kitty," reeling backwards under the pressure. Now she's Gorgo, smashing up the MSM's cars. The dismayed punditry is pondering the "meanness" of her attacks and her lack of details on health care refom. A complete triumph over the Beltway-Manhatan media...

Those who listen to my radio show know that I spend my mornings and some evenings practicing and teaching law. For the 20 years since I left Washington, D.C., I have been a land use and natural resources lawyer, guiding landowners –principally home builders but also churches and commercial developers—through the maze of federal, state and local regulatory permitting that blankets the use of land in the U.S. I have had clients throughout the west, and this has meant appearing hundreds of times before city councils, county boards and regional and state commissions and agencies. It has meant thousands of...

Scan the lefty blogs and you will see furious, even unhinged, attacks on Governor Palin. Which has to mean that the Obamians are unsettled, perhaps intuiting that every time they raise her "inexperience," they indict the resume of their own presidential nominee. The Palin-Obama contrast is sharpest when it comes to battling corruption. Obama is a product of cronyism, and has never lifted a finger to battle the corrupt practices of the Cook County/Daley machines. Read Freddoso's book where it is all spelled out, or just ask yourself how Obama came by his house. Obama talks of reform but has...

Memo To Team Obama Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 1:24 PM Please keep talking about Sarah Palin's inexperince in foreign affairs. By reason of just her work with Canada, she's light years ahead of Obama.

Conservatives are thrilled with the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running-mate. Scroll through the postings at RobinsonandLong.com, or listen to the hosts and callers on any of the talk shows today. There are six reasons, all of them huge and enduring. First, over the past month we have gone from hoping Senator McCain would win to thinking he might actually be able to win. With the selection of Governor Palin most of us are convinced he will win. Which means the country will be well led on the war for at least another four crucial years. The reason...

Romney, of course. The same factors in Romney's favor -- pull in Michigan, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire, the energy brought by his organization-- are still there, but the pick of Biden calls for a very experienced debater as the only thing Slow Joe has going for him is the thousand or so primary season debates he has under his belt. Romney has the same sort of experience in the one setting where the veep nominees get the nation's undivided attention. There is also the stark contrast between Romney's experience outside of politics --business and the Olympics-- and the emerging...

As Obama's very big adventure gets underway in Denver, he has a problem. Lots of problems, actually. First, Obama appears to be prompter-dependant. The story that he cannot string together coherent arguments away from a prompter surfaced on Thrusday and Rush gave it huge legs. Now even the MSM will be watching to see if The One is using a virtual cheat sheet on the road. Then there's the lingering triple play of scandals: Obama's vote and speech against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act that stuns and repulses even moderate pro-choicers; his ties to Bill Ayers and the ongoing...

And that, in my opinion, is a very good thing. Here is a transcript of the Archbishop's recent appearance on  Hugh Hewitt's radio program. And here is an excerpt: HH: Now Archbishop, let’s dive into the book. Again, for the benefit of people tuning in, it’s Render Unto Caesar: Serving The Nation By Living Our Catholic Beliefs In Public Life. And I want to emphasize, it’s not just for Catholics, though that’s obviously the intent of this. I was trying to figure out your motive, and then I came across a quote from a Vietnamese bishop, later made a...

That's what Mike Allen is reporting, and Mike knows his stuff. [snip] Plus, whispers from my Dem friends about the Obama collapse. They know he'll give a great acceptance speech (but what if he doesn't?) but untethered to the prompter, his ums and ahhs have begun to be noticed far and wide.

I am reading through the Obama push-back on the Corsi book to get ready for an appearance on Hannity and Colmes tonight, and the shoddy work product put out by Obama could well throw fuel on the fire. Corsi's certainly got errors in his book, but Obama's team is trying too hard when they assert about unrepentant terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn in response to Corsi that "AYERS AND DOHRN ARE MEMBERS OF THE ESTABLISHMENT WITH TIES TO THE MAYOR" (p. 16 of the Obama document) or that with regard to Alice Palmer --the Illinois State Senator that Obama's...

Hugh was just notified by email that the Mexican army is preparing to mount a coup in Mexico City. Does anyone have any information concerning this?

<p>That's from John McCain's statement on Georgia yesterday, and in those few words is contained a large argument why voters should elect the Arizona senator and not Barack Obama.</p> <p>The world in which we live cannot be captained by a rookie without any meaningful executive experience, an enormous ambition, a radical agenda, and a long record of hard-left freinds and mentors that we have to expect would dominate his administration from day one. The irsk Obama represents is huge.</p>

The blast-off didn't materialize, and the Dalibama found his numbers falling in Ohio, Pennsylvania an Florida. Even worse, the late night comics were having a field day with his "inflate your tires, end the energy crisis" pronouncement. Michelle Obama returned to the political lists, and is her habit, she portrayed a grim America the outlines of which just don't register with most voters, even among many of the single moms and working mothers she was appealing to. Mrs. Obama told a crowd she didn't want Obama to run, but then changed her mind: But then I had to take a...

Obama, extolling a new approach to education in Pennsylvania this past weekend: "When you start working with teachers, tapping into their creativity, then you start designing curriculums that tap into the childrens' creativity. I was at a wonderful charter school in Colorado, ah, that had designed the entire school year --each year was designed around a theme-- and this is a majority Hispanic school, but the theme that year, they called it "Passages." And it was all about the African American experience. And so they incorporated music, you know, ah tracing sort of the history of African music through blues...

Thursday's 5-4 decision awarding "unlawful combatants" at Gitmo --terrorists-- the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" has left millions of Americans stunned. What in the world is the majority of the Supreme Court thinking? Justice Scalia, writing in dissent, was blunt: America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United...

Thursday's 5-4 decision awarding "unlawful combatants" at Gitmo --terrorists-- the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" has left millions of Americans stunned. What in the world is the majority of the Supreme Court thinking? Justice Scalia, writing in dissent, was blunt: America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United...

Interviewed by Hugh Hewitt today, Mark Steyn said that posts from FreeRepublic were introduced into evidence in the Canadian proceeding against him.

HH: The two big issues of the day, four justices of the California Supreme Court, by a vote of 4-3, have imposed gay marriage on 30 million Californians, imposed it. It’s a judicial coup. More on that, and then George Bush talks about appeasement to the Israeli Knessett, and all hell breaks loose in the Democratic Party back in the United States. To discuss all this and more, Mark Steyn, Columnist to the World. You can read all of Mark’s material at www.steynonline.com. Mark, I think we should probably start with the President’s Knessett speech. Have you had a chance...

After 18 years of a law practice devoted to counseling landowners, home builders and commercial interests affected by the long arm and severe penalties of the Endangered Species Act, I am used to incredulous looks and outraged oaths from clients coming to grips with the Act's incredible burdens on impacted private citizens. "Are you telling me I can't build my Burger King because a Delhi Sands flower-loving fly that has never been seen and is above ground only a few days a year might be near-by?" "I can't build a connector road because the noise from construction might damage the...

Senator Obama is running as a biography/character candidate, not as a candidate of accomplishment because he has accomplished little except obtaining office. As a biography/character candidate the four corners of that biography that illuminate Obama's character --Michelle Obama, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, the unrepentant terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and Obama's mentor, financier, friend and neighbor Tony Rezko-- are all extremely relevant to the debates of the next six months, and we need to know much more about each corner of the square within which Obama has moved.

HH: We begin this Wednesday as those Wednesdays when we are lucky with Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair fame. Christopher Hitchens, you thought that Hillary's relentlessness would in the end get her back into the White House. What are you thinking this morning after she barely survived last night? CH: What I'm thinking is that in a little while, people will be marveling over who well she's done in West Virginia and Kentucky. And by that time, the vote will have become thoroughly racialized, if you don't mind that rather disgusting expression.

HH: Thanks to Mark Steyn, Columnist to the World, who joins us as he does every Thursday when we’re lucky. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com, and of course, you can get America Alone, now out in paperback. Mark Steyn, I saw you on Hannity & Colmes last night. You’re having far too much fun with the meltdown on the Democratic side. MS: Yeah, I was, because I think it is terrific fun, and I think actually, that last Obama-Clinton debate was the best debate we’ve had on either side of the aisle since this thing got...

The issues that remain concern Barack Obama's judgment and his credibility. If Pastor Wright agrees to be interviewed by other than Bill Moyers, the questions should ask not for his opinions on various controversies, but for facts about his relationship with the senator. For instance, did Pastor Wright discuss Louis Farrakhan with Obama before during or after they both attended the Million Man March? Were they together during that trip. Did Senator Obama indicated unease with or criticism of Farrakhan? How often did you see Obama at Trinity on Sunday over the past twenty years? Any particular dates you can...

John Mark Reynolds has the words. The opening:

So, was Obama just as naive as a child for 20 years, or as disingenuous as any major political figure of the last forty years when he denied knowing the real Pastor Wright this morning? Either way it creates a huge issue for voters. Is Obama a dupe, or just duplicitous? Do you want him in charge of the nation's security, making judgments about our enemies? Follow-up reporting should focus on the depth of the relationship between Wright and Obama. In Philadelphia Obama described a deep, strong and personal bond. How deep? What did they talk about all these years?...

I conducted a lengthy interview with major General Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division yesterday. The transcript is here. The audio is here. The enormous progress that the surge has brought to Iraq is detailed by the general, but so was Iran's continued operations in Iraq, operations that kill Americans: You see, what we're trying to do, Hugh, is to trace the rat line back where it came from. See, I've lost 147 soldiers under my command since I've been here in the last fourteen months. Many of those soldiers were killed by explosive foreign penetrators that are...

That's the speculation.

Lefty Obama-supporter Joe Klein, from Time's Swampland blog: Wright's purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself--the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton--and destroy Barack Obama.

Start your week off with a laugh!

Jim Geraghty of NationalReview.com's Campaign Spot listened to the new Jeremiah Wright audio posted immediately below (with transcripts being added as Duane can get to them). His reaction:is reacting in the same way as Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke and many of my callers did yesterday when I played both of the sermons over the air. Now will MSM allow the public to hear the "context" Pastor Wright has complained he has been denied? It isn't like the cable channels are stuffed with can't miss material. One of them should play the audio.

AEI scholar Michael Rubin's very sober analysis of Iran April 16, 2008 HH: Joined now by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country’s leading authorities on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Michael Rubin, last week, Vice President Cheney was on the program, and I talked to him about 12th Imamism, and about Ahmadinejad. And the left has gone crazy, and they’ve been throwing bricks at him, because he said we should take very seriously what Ahmadinejad says, and we should be concerned about sort of a millennialist outlook. And I’ve been waiting to talk to you...

Incredible. I knew his politics were radical from his memoir. But I had no idea that his contempt for middle America was so complete. Do the Democrats dare nominate someone so completely clueless about the heartland?

Transcript: HH: It’s Thursday, that means we begin as we do most Thursdays when we are lucky with Columnist to the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com. Mark, when does America Alone come out in paperback? MS: It comes out on Monday, in fact, Hugh, so you catch me right on the eve of getting ready for the big paperback launch. HH: Do they make you go flog it on a second book tour? MS: Yeah, well, they’re having a kind of, I would say a kind of modified mini-relaunch of it. I’m going...

HH: It’s a special program, one of a couple I’m going to be running in anticipation of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States. Benedict was elected Pope on April 19th, 2005, and much has happened in the succeeding three years. To discuss what has happened in those three years, and what to expect when he visits the United States, we’re joined by Father Joseph Fessio, SJ. If you’ve listened to this program in the past, Father Fessio has often been here, and we really appreciate it. He received his doctorate in theology in 1975 from the University of...

A must see video of YouTube meet Obama/Wright

At my urging, the brains at Kithbridge put together Rezkorama.com on Thursday to provide a continually updating news feed on all things related to Tony Rezko --Barack Obama's friend, finacier and next-door empty-lot owner. It took about a nano-second for Rezkorama to be denounced as "Swiftboating" by Obama fans at Newshoggers.com, which leads me to believe that any coverage of any democratic scandal from now until the end of time will be known as "Swiftboating," for which I think the Swiftboat Veterans for truth should charge royalties. In any event, faux outrage among the Obamians won't be stifling interest in...

HH: On the day after Super Tuesday, and she’s out of her box, the vampire got out of the dungeon before the light came up or the stake went through her heart, and Hillary Clinton is alive and taking to the wing. To talk about this ominous development, Christopher Hitchens, columnist for Vanity Fair, also writes at Slate and he knows the Clintons like few people. Christopher Hitchens, you must have been a little perturbed last night when Hillary got off of the ground and started gaining ground. CH: I had, just for a minute, let my attention wander. HH:...

Governor Romney is an incredibly gifted man --intelligent in the way very few people are, charismatic, and blessed with an amiable openness and determined, strong character. He is a good man, and his very successful run towards the presidency is a testament to his talents. His magnificent family represents an achievement in the private sphere that he shares with Ann Romney and which was reflected in his accomplishments in business, at the Olympics and in Massachusetts. Because he is a very good man, a great conservative and an extraordinary patriot he is standing aside to allow Senator McCain's national campaign...