Free Republic

I have worked in or with every Congress since 1970 and it is now clear that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi continue to preside over the worst Congress in living memory. This is particularly true in the most serious area a legislator must tackle: national security. No intelligence bill has been passed, now for the second straight year. The FISA reform bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, continues to be bottled up. And the prospect of a Defense Authorization bill becoming law is also bleak. On the most important duty they are sworn to do -- provide for the common...

Why Bush really demoted Richard Clarke by Jack Cashill This is the fourth in a six-part series detailing the risks to American national security if Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) should ever choose to let Richard Clarke back into government. Clarke is currently one of Obama’s top national security advisors. “When George Bush came into office, though he kept Clarke on at the White House, he stripped him of his cabinet level rank.” So lamented Leslie Stahl during the March 2004 60 Minutes profile that would make Richard Clarke ace crowd surfer in the intellectual mosh pit of the anti-war...

Sen. John Kerry's campaign defends his proposals to eliminate major U.S. weapons systems during his career as a senator by claiming Vice President Dick Cheney proposed similar cuts as secretary of Defense during the first Bush administration. The spin-doctors in the Kerry campaign responsible for these claims obviously know nothing of history. These claims are baseless for the following reasons: (1) Mr. Kerry proposed eliminating 65 major U.S. weapons systems in 1984, including the ships, planes and missiles we currently have in our inventory that are the backbone of both our nuclear and conventional deterrent. If these proposals had been...