Free Republic

Americans trust their doctors, so the White House wants these medical professionals to be a mouthpiece for President Obama’s global warming agenda. “We also need doctors, nurses and citizens, like all of you”President Obama said in a taped speech presented to medical professionals gathered at the White House, “to get to work to raise awareness and organize folks for real change.” The Obama administration has been hard at work trying to draw a link between global warming and public health issues. The summit included the U.S. Surgeon General, top administration officials, and public health experts from around the country telling...

Herman Cain was in the center of a firestorm, largely of his own making, yesterday. He knew before he entered the presidential race that he had a sexual harassment settlement in his past. He knew, ever since Politico started questioning his campaign, that a story was afoot. He knew he had to get the story out quickly and truthfully. And yet, by the end of the day, the business executive peddling his leadership skills and know-how looked somewhat like the hapless PBS executive who eventually got ousted for screwing up the Juan Williams firing. ... Iowans don’t need to believe...

Yeah, Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll, crushing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. And OK, a CBS poll recently found him tied with Romney among likely Republican primary voters. Sure, he also scored a resounding victory in another straw poll this weekend. And Rasmussen just today released the finding that 56% of GOP voters like Cain's 9-9-9 plan. So is that enough to make the Associated Press consider Cain a first-tier candidate? Nah. On MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" this morning, AP's political editor, Liz Sidoti, sniffed "we still consider him a second-tier candidate." View the video here.

Remember last summer when it seemed all the world was out to get Arizona? Countless boycotts were threatened, some of them by Latino Major League Baseball players, who vowed they would not play in the 2011 All-Star Game in Phoenix and the pressure on MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to move the game was intense. Meanwhile, the mainstream media piled on Arizona as a state staggering back to its Wild West origins at a breakneck pace. Despite it all, two days from today, the Midsummer Classic will be played in 105-degree heat at Chase Field. By all accounts, the protests at...

First the liberals destroyed the value of our money - principally through the policies of Roosevelt, Johnson and Carter, which led to hyper-inflation. This is happening again under Obama. Then the liberals destroyed our culture, glorifying the use of abortion as a birth-control method, and glorifying the use of drugs and casual sex. The result of this glorification of abortion, drugs and hook-up sex can be seen all around us as our civilization crumbles. Our movies and television programs reflect this crumbling. Then the liberals destroyed our schools and our colleges, dumbing down the curricula and substituting the study of...

We expect those in government to know how to get things done. They need to understand organizational and political behavior, effective administration, and how to comply with the law. We do not expect or want elitists and moral supremacists who believe that they know so much more about justice, the market, and how we should live. In his recent book Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell explains how the "anointed" believe that their advanced education and depth of knowledge in one field automatically makes them an authority on any field in which they wield an opinion. Thus Noam Chomsky, a noted...

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.” All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real. It...

Senior ultra-Orthodox figures in Jerusalem visit 19-year-old man charged with manslaughter over infant's death, say murder is out of question. Leading ultra-Orthodox judges who visited a 19-year-old Orthodox man charged with manslaughter over the death of his 3-month-old son say they are convinced Israel Valas is not guilty of murder. "It's impossible that the father would kill his son. If he indeed did it, it's a sign he's sick," Orthodox court vice president Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch told Ynet after visiting Valas. Jerusalem Riots Orthodox riot over arrest / Ilan Marciano Jerusalem riots: Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox hit streets Thursday evening, attempt...

The War on Terror is over. What started as a bold campaign to “bring justice to our enemies” across the globe has been redefined as, essentially, a counter-insurgency action in Iraq, the express goal of which is to prepare the new Iraqi government to defend itself, “and then our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.” As President Bush himself stated during his June 2005 speech at Fort Bragg: “Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” “Stand down.” In military parlance, this means to stop fighting. But...

As the war in Iraq winds to its inevitable end, uneasy reflections are taking over Russia's political and military elite. No one in Moscow ever seriously believed that Saddam Hussein might indeed "defeat" the allied forces. But the speed and decisiveness of the offensive has bewildered many. Russian generals were expecting another prolonged so-called non-contact war, like the one against Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2001 or the first gulf war in 1991, when a four-day ground offensive was preceded by a 39-day air bombardment. It was believed that the Americans were afraid of close hand-to-hand encounters, they would...