Free Republic

Part of the allure and fascination of politics is that you don't know what's going to happen until election night is over and all the votes have been counted. It is real-life, high-stakes drama. In the 1970s, it was volunteers who would call in the vote tallies from the precincts. They would be written on the blackboard and the totals calculated as the votes were called in. Nowadays we rely on the Internet to give us information on where the races end up. Unless you know what counties come in first, it's hard to decipher the status of the races....

The title of leader of the free world has traditionally been held by an American President. But since America does not have a suitable candidate for such a title at the moment, which world leaders qualify to be leaders of the free world? These are possible candidates - Stephen Harper (Canada), Angela Merkel (Germany), Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), Vladimir Putin (Russia), and David Cameron (Britain). Non-Western leaders can include 1. The new right-wing Hindu Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, who passionately opposes Islamic extremism. His party, the BJP, is very pro-Israel. As Chief Minister of Gujarat State, he implemented small...

Fall is in the air. The leaves are changing colors, football season is in full swing and people in battleground states are being inundated by candidates and commercials. In Washington, the GOP is already breaking out the champagne. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is already measuring the drapes in the majority leader’s office. The anticipation is that the Republican Party will sweep the midterm elections. The common wisdom is that the GOP will gain seats in the House of Representatives and more importantly take control of the Senate. But not so fast. Right now there are 45 Republicans in the...

The leftwing New York Daily News blasted President Obama on its cover Thursday morning. Referring to the federal government's appallingly incompetent response to the American Ebola outbreak, the front page headline next to the president's photo read, "For God's Sake, Get a Grip." After three weeks of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) happy talking its Ebola preparedness and wrist-flicking the potential threat, 3 people in America have been infected with Ebola, two nurses and the man they cared for -- who died last week.

This month, I turn fifty years old, which is surprising to me. At twenty-five, I never thought I would see thirty. I also never expected this period of life to be the best – but it is by a long shot. Perhaps that is best explained by the fact that, over the years, I have made some very serious mistakes that have taught me some very important lessons. Among the most important lessons I have learned is that personal happiness is not possible without a concerned effort to focus on two key factors: gratitude and encouragement. If one makes a...

What would President Obama say in such an interview? How would he answer a question like: “What would you say you do here?” This is not an entirely rhetorical question. Obviously being president is an incredibly grueling job that no well-adjusted individual would ever apply for, but looking back on some of the Obama administration’s most noteworthy accomplishments and scandals, what role, if any, did Obama play? And what does it say about his leadership? In his new memoir, Obama’s former defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta describes the president’s “most conspicuous weakness” as “a frustrating reticence to engage...

November 19. That's the date a bust of Vaclav Havel is to be dedicated in National Statuary Hall at this country's Capitol, and it's perfect timing -- for November 19 will also be the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution he led and embodied in his native Czechoslovakia. Oh, the euphoria of those days when the Cold War was drawing to a close and the Soviet Union with it, and one after the other its captive nations were breaking their chains -- none more peacefully, successfully and triumphantly than the one this playwright turned dissident led in his little country....

Derek Jeter aka "The Captain" of the New York Yankees played his last game on Sunday. He ended his career with an RBI single in Boston, after ending his career at home in Yankee stadium with a game-winning, walk-off, RBI single. Jeter defines a leader. He has the 6th highest hit total in the history of baseball. He was the captain of five World Championship teams. But his qualities go so much deeper. Jeter never bragged. He never used words like "I." He gave credit to others for his achievements. He never demeaned or denigrated others. He always made the...

Should any Republican step to any microphone and announce he has changed his mind on global warming, the press will hail him as a hero. He has taken new evidence, processed it, and changed his mind. Should any Republican do the same on gay marriage, tax increases or a host of other matters, the same will happen. The media heralds changed minds, particularly when the mind changed is to the right of center and the change moves the person to the left of center. The ability to process new data, reinterpret existing data and reach different conclusions has value to...

"Boast not thyself of tomorrow; For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." Proverbs 27:1. President Obama is a great leader. Really. Just ask him. Seemingly ignored in the coverage of the president's ISIS speech last night was the moment when President Obama claimed that the ISIS threat was being met with "strength and resolve," then boasted that his strategy—and by extension he himself—represented "American leadership at its best." Can anyone imagine truly great American leaders--from Washington to Lincoln to Reagan--feeling the need to brag about "strength and resolve" and claim that their plans represented "American leadership at...

<p>The Democratic Party and the mainstream media joined to run interference for Barack Obama when he became a national figure. Obama was painted as a charismatic, competent, new kind of politician. The passage of time destroyed this image. Now, the public increasingly sees Obama as incompetent, untrustworthy and unmotivated.</p>

Call this the wages of dithering. After a summer spent mainly on the golf course and at Democratic fundraisers while terrorists seized vast swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria — and butchered two American journalists on video — Barack Obama returns to work to find his popularity at its lowest ebb in the Washington Post/ABC News poll series. Americans now take a dimmer view of Obama’s leadership capabilities than ever before, and a majority see him as a failure: Barack Obama’s rating for strong leadership has dropped to a new low in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll,...

The world is on fire. But don’t go telling that to Secretary of State John Kerry, spending Labor Day on Nantucket, kiteboarding in his stylish bloomers before a late dinner at the Chanticleer. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. Let them eat … whatever they want, as they can pay for it with their EBT cards. Did you ever think you would live to see the day when the United States would be in grave peril, under attack, and the White House would be treating the crisis as if it were a shortfall of three votes in a farm...

The vast majority of Americans have never met Phil Weinberg. But that isn't because he's unimportant. It's because he is important. Like millions of Americans who toil largely in anonymity, participating daily in acts of courage and generosity, Phil has never been on CNN or Fox News; while he subscribes to The Wall Street Journal, he's never had his picture dot pixelated. That's because he, like so many other Americans, is too busy making the country work. Phil was born at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston in 1951, just down the block from Fenway Park, and grew up a...

Political ad for Allen Weh.

The Clinton-Obama Benghazi Rule is as follows: “1.) ALWAYS STAND DOWN WHEN MUSLIMS ATTACK, 2.) WAIT FOR THE MUSLIMS TO FINISH THEIR BLOOD SPORT KILLING, AND 3.) THEN DO NOTHING.” Since September 11, 2014, Obama has: * Invoked the field-tested, Clinton-Obama Benghazi Rule for the US in order to allow the ongoing genocide of Christians, and Yazidis in current US Ally Iraq; * Refused to keep his Word on his Redline in Syria; * Released the GITMO FIVE to supervise the rapid growth of ISIS; * Repeatedly proclaimed that HIS "American People" are war weary; * Ordered the dismissing of...

A young black man dies from a police gunshot, and a community bursts into presumptuous anger as if it knows racism is afoot. That community contains rioters who are not sufficiently condemned by officials at any level, local, state or national. As images of tear gas clouds in suburbia subside, we are hit with fresh pictures of an Islamist monster beheading an American citizen while warning our President and our people that he and his brethren are just warming up. Attorney General Eric Holder responds by opening a criminal investigation, as if this were a stabbing on a Georgetown street....

As Barack “Eldrick” Obama approaches his 200th round of golf since his election as president, here’s a fact to put that into perspective: Since January 2009, Tiger Woods has played 269 rounds of golf. And Tiger, beleaguered by injury, is almost certainly done for the year. So that means the president, if he keeps up with his pace of play during his 15-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard (a round a day) and his normal weekly round, will pass Tiger sometime next spring. Think about that for a minute. The president of the U.S., juggling the American economy and the entire...

In 2008, Americans appointed a president they expected to unify the country, lift the oppressed and restore America's economy and relations in the world. But almost halfway through his second term in office, Americans are more polarized, and the oppressed are more hamstrung. And our country is more unstable than ever among the global community; Iraq is only symptomatic of the greater problem. But a single professional review of Obama's personality profile could have shown us exactly what was in store for us with his leadership style. I ended last week's column by citing Samuel Barondes, a leading psychiatrist and...

Everything that Barack Obama touches seems to turn to dross. Think of it for a minute. He inherited a quiet Iraq (no American combat deaths at all in December 2009). Joe Biden bragged of the calm that it would be the administration’s “greatest achievement.” But by pulling out all U.S. peacekeepers — mostly for a 2012 reelection talking point — Obama ensured an ISIS wasteland. He put his promised eye on Afghanistan at last, and we have lost more soldiers there than during the Bush administration and a Taliban victory seems likely after more than a decade of lost American...