Free Republic

Charles Krauthammer says it right up front in his Washington Post column: “I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier.” He does, however, challenge the notion that the science on climate change is settled and says those who insist otherwise are engaged in “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate.” How ironic, then, that some environmental activists launched a petition urging the Post not to publish Krauthammer’s column on Friday. Their response to opinions they disagree with is to suppress the speech. Brad Johnson (@ClimateBrad), the editor of HillHeat.com and a former Think Progress...

I repeat: I’m not a global-warming believer. I’m not a global-warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30, or 50 years are white-coated propagandists. “The debate is settled,” asserted propagandist-in-chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. “Climate change is a fact.” Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It...

Count Charles Krauthammer out of the Hillary-inevitability caucus. While the Washington Post columnist and Fox analyst concedes that Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner, he argues that the 2016 primary won’t be a coronation, despite the media’s assumption that she’ll waltz to the nomination. If any Democrat who wants to challenge her asks just one question, that status may change quickly, Krauthammer told Hugh Hewitt last night — just one: What did you accomplish in four years as Secretary of State?Besides antagonizing the phlegmatic Canadians, literally our closest ally, that is (via Truth Revolt):CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO HH: That’s...

KRAUTHAMMER: Remember how Democrats were complaining that when Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn't even exist; it exists in Obama's head. It's whatever he thinks, he wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is going to be. That is an understatement, that's not the way it's supposed to work. And we had an editorial in The Washington Post of all places, not exactly a right-wing rag, saying that Obama has really overstepped the lines arbitrarily, changing...

Krauthammer says that delaying the employer mandate simply to ease political pain before an election is the kind of stuff they do in banana republics: But generally speaking you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law lawlessly. This is stuff you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision. It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains. I...

They have a whole heap of regulations still left to write (at least $1.4 billion in annual compliance costs’ worth, by one estimate), but the employer mandate was part of the actual text of the law. Where is it written that they can just make at-will changes ad infinitum? Watch it at RCP: Generally speaking, you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law, lawlessly. I mean, this is stuff that you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which...

Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance. Last week, speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s foreign minister calmly but pointedly complained that the United States owes Canada a response on the Keystone XL pipeline. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” he sort of complained, in what for a placid, imperturbable Canadian passes for an explosion of volcanic rage.

Charles Krauthammer predicted Wednesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that "all hell's going to break loose" if the administration can't fix the problems with the Healthcare.gov website by mid-March. "Right now the insurers are guessing at the subsidy, so all of this is on the honor system and it can be wildly off," Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. "If they undershoot, the insurers are going to go bust. If they overshoot, the government is going to be stuck with a huge bill."

David Kurtz of the lefty website TPM -- to his credit -- published an email he received from a young reader living in New York City. The 32-year-old correspondent wrote that much to his chagrin as an ardent backer of the president and his unpopular healthcare law, he's unable to afford its price tag. He suggests that his personal situation exemplifies the broader problems the program will have attracting the participation of young, healthy people: I'm a 32 year-old healthy male that wants, but can't afford, Obamacare. I think the law is a step in the right direction, it just...

One Sunday night in early November I watched Bret Baier's Special Report in which he interviewed Charles Krauthammer. In responding to a question about his inclusion in his book, Things That Matter, a 2007 column about baseball player Rick Ankeil's fall and return to the major leagues, Krauthammer responded with a reference to a line from that article: "...the catastrophe that awaits everyone from a single false move, wrong turn, fatal encounter. Every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether -- and how -- we ever come back." Several hours later, I had a terrible accident. As...

It seems to be a truth only very selectively acknowledged that, when you tax something, you’ll end up with less of it (the corollary being that, if you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it). Progressives seem perfectly capable of recognizing this truth in the context of sin taxes and green-energy subsidies, yet when it comes to things like the extension of unemployment benefits that is making its way through the Senate at the moment, they seem to think that such policies are immune from the most basic of economics. That’s the point that Charles Krauthammer made last night, pointing...

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer clearly was unhappy with the liberal topics being discussed on PBS’s Inside Washington Friday. At one point, he looked into the camera after mentioning the new deadline changes to ObamaCare announced this week and said, “You won’t hear about this on this show, so try Fox” (video follows with transcript and commentary): Krauthammer Tells PBS Viewers ‘Try Fox’ to Hear What You Won’t On This Show GORDON PETERSON, HOST: We can tell you what they said. They said they don’t like it. The Tea Partiers don’t like it, the Heritage Action doesn’t like it. Erick Erickson...

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Look, as for Harry Reid, I can't believe it's a coordinated campaign. It's too insane. I think it's Harry Reid wearing, trying on a tin hat. And I would just say, Harry, give it up. You can argue all you want but the sunrises in the west, it's not going to work. And you get this sort of speaking against the wind on things that, as Kirsten says, are empirically untrue. People are receiving cancellations. They know they lost their insurance. There is no way to talk around it. The other thing that the Obama administration, the White...

Watch for another really BIG speech from BIG Guy later today: “President Obama will discuss the twin challenges of growing income inequality and shrinking economic mobility and how they pose a fundamental threat to the American dream,” the White House said in a statement. *sigh* We’ve certainly nailed the “shrinking economic mobility” part. Butt regarding the “growing income inequality” - even I, equipped as I am with advanced refraction capabilities, grow weary of deflecting these spurious arguments. So today I’m going to let Charles Krauthammer do it for me:Just where, in the Book of Life, does it say that life...

For all the gnashing of teeth over the lack of comity and civility in Washington, the real problem is not etiquette but the breakdown of political norms, legislative and constitutional. Such as the one just spectacularly blown up in the Senate... The violence to political norms here consisted in how that change was executed. By brute force — a near party-line vote of 52 to 48 . This was a disgraceful violation of more than two centuries of precedent. If a bare majority can change the fundamental rules that govern an institution, then there are no rules. Senate rules today...

Charles Krauthammer says he believes President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran is “the worst deal since Munich.” “This is a sham from beginning to end. It’s the worst deal since Munich,” Krauthammer said on Fox News “Special Report” on Monday. “It’s really hard to watch the president and the secretary of state and not think how they cannot be embarrassed by this deal.” The Munich Agreement of 1938 between Hitler and major European powers expanded Germany’s borders. Today, the failed negotiation is widely considered an act of appeasement.

A president desperate to change the subject and a secretary of state desperate to make a name for himself are reportedly on the verge of an “interim” nuclear agreement with Iran. France called it a “sucker’s deal.” France was being charitable. The only reason Iran has come to the table after a decade of contemptuous stonewalling is that economic sanctions have cut so deeply — Iran’s currency has collapsed, inflation is rampant — that the regime fears a threat to its very survival. Nothing else could move it to negotiate. Regime survival is the only thing the mullahs value above...

In response to the controversy surrounding MSNBC host Martin Bashir‘s suggestion that someone defecate in Sarah Palin to show her the horrors of human slavery, Rush Limbaugh asked Wednesday afternoon what would happen if a Fox News personality had said the same thing about President Obama. After revisiting Bashir’s controversial Friday comments, Limbaugh lamented how “it sat there all weekend long, and there was not one peep from anybody at MSNBC suggesting that it was, in any way, inappropriate.” Eventually, the radio host noted, Bashir “made a big apology,” but the whole debacle asks a larger question: “Why is he...

"...........Respectfully, I disagree. So perhaps it’s best to discuss in letter form to the good doctor, who in fact is highly respected not just here but in many solidly conservative quarters. (And for the record, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Charles Krauthammer has also been honored by many conservative organizations including both The American Spectator and, just this fall, the conservative Media Research Center. It should also, of course, be mentioned that Dr. K. has a bestseller now on his hands, Things That Matter: Three Decades of Pastimes, Passions and Politics) and he was the subject of this recent Fox special hosted...

“Even if it takes a change to the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to those people and let them keep what they got.— Bill Clinton, Nov. 12 So the former president asserts that the current president continues to dishonor his “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” pledge. And calls for the Affordable Care Act to be changed, despite furious White House resistance to the very idea. Coming from the dean of the Democratic Party, this one line marked the breaching of the dam. It legitimized the brewing rebellion of panicked Democrats...