Free Republic

A welcome breath of fresh air from Mark Davis.

video 8:03

Mark Steyn: Things only a Kennedy could get away with And by not calling his bluff on Chappaquiddick, Americans became complicit in it. We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation – or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture – declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a...

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation — or, at any rate, its “mainstream” media culture — declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s passing, America’s TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there’s a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it. In this case, the unmentionable corpse is Mary Jo...

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation – or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture – declines to speak the truth about the dead, we are certainly entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In its coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it.

WeÂ’ve never had more personal sexual liberty. And less freedom of almost every other kind. The other day CTV reported the astonishing statistic that in the whole of Canada there are just 33 sperm donors. That seems awfully low for a nation of 30 million people. Three sperm donors per province plus one per territory? Surely we can do better than that. All hands on deck! Ah, but itÂ’s not as simple as that. Apparently, the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act makes it illegal to pay donors for sperm. I mean, it wasnÂ’t even the usual Canadian Wheat Board-type racket...

The other day CTV reported the astonishing statistic that in the whole of Canada there are just 33 sperm donors. That seems awfully low for a nation of 30 million people. Three sperm donors per province plus one per territory? Surely we can do better than that. All hands on deck!

HH: We begin this Thursday as we do the Thursdays when we are lucky with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. Hello, Mark, how are you? MS: Hey, great. I’m glad to be the warm-up act for that all-star lineup. That’s pretty impressive. HH: I want to bring to you a complaint since you just wrote about a blacklisted screenwriter for McLean’s. I’ve been blacklisted. Jonathan Klein has told CNN producers that they can’t have talk show hosts anymore. “Complex issues require world class reporting.” He added that talk radio hosts too often add the noise, and that what they...

The intersection of the environment and demography continues apace. In the old days, we worried about “overpopulation” in general, which, if only by implication, indicted the fecund mothers of Asia and Africa at least as much as the developed world, if not more. But eco-demography is a more exact science these days. Issuing a stirringcall for the British to breed less and doing it from the exalted perch of The British Medical Journal, doctors John Guillebaud and Pip Hayes explain the arithmetic: Every new baby born in the United Kingdom will in his or her lifetime produce 160 times more...

The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several "stimulus" projects -- every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said, "Putting America Back to Work" with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed readers that what they were about to see was a "Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned scarified pavement, followed by an "End of...

The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several "stimulus" projects – every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said "PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK" with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a "PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT." There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned scarified pavement, followed by an "END OF...

The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, NH 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several “stimulus” projects – every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways. The orange strip at the top said “PUTTING AMERICA BACK TO WORK” with a silhouette of a man with a shovel, and the green part underneath informed you that what you were about to see was a “PROJECT FUNDED BY THE AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT”. There then followed a few yards of desolate, abandoned scarified pavement, followed by an “END OF...

For the gals (especially RWI)

If that's correct, I can't think events in 2009 will do anything to diminish the flow. What I wonder is: Where did those 2 million go? Britons, Canadians, Europeans, etc, who seek "greener pastures" generally wind up in the U.S. For most of us immigrants, this is the last stop on the tour: There's nowhere else to go. So where on the planet do a couple of million Americans go to find somewhere "greener"?

...but you can't have both. On the matter of McCarthy vs the Editors, I'm with Andy. I think Sarah Palin's "death panel" coinage clarified the stakes and resonated in a way that "rationing" and other lingo never quite did. She launched it, and she made it stick. So it was politically effective. But I'm also with Mrs Palin on the substance. NR's editorial defines "death panel" too narrowly. What matters is the concept of a government "panel". Right now, if I want a hip replacement, it's between me and my doctor; the government does not have a seat at the...

Here is video of Mark Steyn talking about the possible end of Obama-Mania with Sean Hannity. They talked about the fact that Obama's talk of moving away from full-blown Government Health Care could be a feint, and that he will now try to pass a Health Care Bill that will be a foot in the door for Government Health Care - an "embryo" of Government Health Care as Steyn put it. Steyn also talked about the fact that a Government Health system essentially becomes a "Death Panel" deciding who is still worthy of treatment, and what kind of treatment, and...

Some years ago, when I was a slip of a lad, I found myself commiserating with a distinguished American songwriter about the death of one of his colleagues. My 23-year old girlfriend found all the condolence talk a bit of a bummer and was anxious to cut to the chase and get outta there. "Well," she said breezily. "He had a good innings. He was 85." "That's easy for you to say," he said. "I'm 84."

Obamacare means treatment rationing, so getting Grandma plugged in in the first place is the greater peril. By MARK STEYN Syndicated columnist Comments 1| Recommend 4 Some years ago, when I was a slip of a lad, I found myself commiserating with a distinguished American songwriter about the death of one of his colleagues. My 23-year old girlfriend found all the condolence talk a bit of a bummer and was anxious to cut to the chase and get outta there. "Well," she said breezily. "He had a good innings. He was 85." "That's easy for you to say," he said....

In fact, we’ll blame anything rather than confront the truth about what’s happening Christopher Caldwell’s new book is called Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. And, if you don’t quite get the Burkean allusion, his subtitle spells out his real concerns: “Immigration, Islam and the West.” Given my own obsessions in recent years, you’d expect me to be favourably disposed to it. And I am, my enthusiasm only slightly tempered by the instant conventional wisdom that, if you’re only going to buy one Islamophobic Euro-doom-mongering diatribe this summer, Caldwell’s is the sober and respectable one, in striking contrast to certain...

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI… No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20th. -snip- "The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!" warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: -snip- Senator Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama's health care proposals as too "well-dressed" to be genuine. -snip- Thankfully, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has seen through the "manufactured anger" -snip- Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, added her own distinctive wrinkle to the Brooks Brothers menswear. She disdained the anti-Obamacare protests as fake grassroots. "I think...

What’s the end-game here? I suppose it’s conceivable that there are a few remaining suckers out there who still believe Barack Obama is the great post-partisan, fiscally responsible, pragmatic centrist he played so beguilingly just a year ago. The New York Times’ David Brooks stuck it out longer than most: Only a few backs, he was giddy with excitement over the President’s “education” “reforms” (whatever they were). But now he says we’re in “the early stages of the liberal suicide march”. For a famously moderate moderate, Mr Brooks seems to have gone from irrational optimism over the Democrats’ victory to...

Conformity is now the new dissent Community Organizer wants to organize us all. DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI… No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20th. Under the stimulus bill, there's a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful ("QUESTION AUTHORITY"), you can trade them in for a new "CELEBRATE CONFORMITY" sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you.

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI- . . . No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20. Under the stimulus bill, there’s a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful (“QUESTION AUTHORITY”), you can trade them in for a new “CELEBRATE CONFORMITY” sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you. “The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!” warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They’ve been directed to show up at...

Re my earlier post, an Arlen Specter defender (the loneliest march down Main Street?) writes: Every CEO in the country, including Ronald Reagan as President, reads executive summaries of important documents. The idea that any Senator has to read an entire bill is nonsense. He needs staff not only to read it but to relate how items on page 3 relate to provisions on page 1009. Did George Bush read every line of the bills he signed? Bill Clinton signed Welfare reform and I bet he did not read the final bill (though to be fair he is wonky enough...

August 01, 2009, 7:00 a.m. A Liberty IssueGovernment health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” By Mark Steyn My conservative friends — and even a few media liberals — are agreed: The bloom is off the Obama rose. He’s not the Obamessiah, just another 50-percent president. He tried to do too much too fast, and his numbers are sinking. The Europeanization of health care is dead. Fuhgeddabouddit. I wouldn’t be so sure. President Obama has no choice but to move fast, in part because the image he presented during the campaign — a post-partisan, post-racial, post-anything-unpleasant-and-controversial,...

Even a watered-down version of Obama's plan would shift the country permanently to the left.My conservative friends – and even a few media liberals – are agreed: The bloom is off the Obama rose. He's not the Obamessiah, just another 50 percent president. He tried to do too much too fast, and his numbers are sinking. The Europeanization of health care is dead. Fuhgeddabouddit.I wouldn't be so sure. President Barack Obama has no choice but to move fast, in part because the image he presented during the campaign – a post-partisan, post-racial, post-anything-unpleasant-and-controversial pragmatic centrist – was a total crock....

Health care is a game-changer. The permanent game-changer. The pendulum will swing, and one day, despite their best efforts, the Republicans will return to power, and, in the right circumstances, the bailouts and cap-&-trade and Government Motors and much of the rest can be reversed. But the government annexation of health care will prove impossible to roll back. It alters the relationship between the citizen and the state and, once that transformation is effected, you can click your ruby slippers all you want but you’ll never get back to Kansas.

By common consent, the most memorable moment of Barack Obama's otherwise listless press conference on "health care" were his robust remarks on the "racist" incident involving professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. The latter "acted stupidly," pronounced the chief of state. The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of...

By common consent, the most memorable moment of Barack Obama's otherwise listless press conference on "health care" were his robust remarks on the "racist" incident involving professor Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. The latter "acted stupidly," pronounced the chief of state. The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of...

Walter Cronkite died almost three decades after stepping down from his anchor gig. CBS pretty much stiffed him in retirement, the promised special reports et al mostly coming to naught (as they did rather more quickly for Dan Rather). But his death afforded his old colleagues, the rival networks and the rest of the legacy media to go into full eulogistical overload. There are a few dissenters, of course, and I've written more about "Uncle Walter" in this week's issue of Maclean's. But I was reminded of the last time the MSM (though not yet designated as such) bade farewell...

On September 11th 2001, about an hour after the planes hit the twin towers, Jo Moore, a senior advisor to Britain’s Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, turned away from the TV and fired off a departmental e-mail: It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. I’m not sure where Ms Moore is these days, but June 25th and all the following week were even better days to get out anything you want to bury. The House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, which dramatically distorts the market in...

In an Iranian prison, marriage is till death do us part: He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so "impressed my superiors" that, at 18, "I was given the 'honor' to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death." In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her...

Government housing, federally funded contraception now the fate of many wild mustangs. On Friday, July 17, the House of Representatives met to debate … Go on, take a guess: Health care? The cap-and-tax racket? Stimulus Two? No, none of the above. Don't worry, they're still spending your money. Wild horses couldn't stop them doing that.

Our ‘funny creative people’ adore our social safety net, not that they stick around to use it To mark Dominion Day (as you’d expect a squaresville loser like me to call it), the New York Times asked 11 Canadian expatriates to write on “what they most miss about home.” The cutting-edge funnyman Rick Moranis riffed on toques and beavers and the lyrics of God Save the Queen, raising the suspicion he’d simply recycled his beloved Dominion Day column of 1954—which is not just environmentally responsible but very shrewd given New York Times rates for freelance contributors. But thereafter the expats...

The parent company of the Eagle Times (of New Hampshire), the Message (of Vermont), and the Connecticut Valley Spectator (of both) has gone out of business, taking all three titles with it. No big deal. Happening all over the country. This is from the Rutland Herald's editorial on the closures: "The closing of a newspaper means a little piece of democracy has died." That was the comment of Edgar May, former state senator and a community leader in Springfield. May knows what he is talking about. He earned a Pulitzer Prize in the early 1960s for articles about poverty in...

THE NEW RIGHT, ER, LEFT Steyn on Britain and Europe Monday, 13 July 2009 HAPPY WARRIOR from National Review Are you getting just a teensy bit tired of the ol’ “Whither The Right?” navel-gazing? Even with our good friends at The New York Times, The Washington Post et al so eager to offer helpful advice, there’s a limit to how much pondering of conservatism’s future a chap can take. So how about, just for a change, “Whither the left?” Exhibit A: The European parliamentary elections. The Continent’s economy has taken a far bigger clobbering than America’s: Capitalism is dead, declared...

According to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, we only have 96 months left to save the planet. I’m impressed. 96 months. Not 95. Not 97. July 2017. Put it in your diary. Usually the warm-mongers stick to the same old drone that we only have ten years left to save the planet. Nice round number. Al Gore said we only have ten years left three-and-a-half years ago, which makes him technically more of a pessimist than the Prince of Wales. Al’s betting that Armageddon kicks in sometime in January 2016 — unless he’s just peddling glib generalities. And,...

According to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, we only have 96 months left to save the planet. I’m impressed. 96 months. Not 95. Not 97. July 2017. Put it in your diary. Usually the warm-mongers stick to the same old drone that we only have ten years left to save the planet. Nice round number. Al Gore said we only have ten years left three-and-a-half years ago, which makes him technically more of a pessimist than the Prince of Wales. Al’s betting Armageddon kicks in January 2016 – unless he’s just peddling glib generalities. And, alas, even a...

MARK STEYN HOSTS Posted early due to work commitments.

Global warming is so last century Obama, Democrats willing to wreck U.S. economy to battle a nonthreat. President Barack Obama was supposed to be "cool." But he isn't. He's square. Not just mildly so, but embarrassingly square. He's squaresville squared. It's like you're having a party with your friends, and he's the cringe-making middle-age parent who wants to show he digs where the young people are at by grooving around in the middle of the dance floor all night long. How do I know? I've been there, and I've been square. By "there," I mean I've been in places that...

President Obama was supposed to be “cool.” But he isn’t. He’s square. Not just mildly so, but embarrassingly square. He’s squaresville squared. It’s like you’re having a party with your friends and he’s the cringe-making middle-aged parent who wants to show he digs where the young people are at by grooving around in the middle of the dance floor all night long. How do I know? I’ve been there and I’ve been square. By “there,” I mean I’ve been in places that have tried all the cool Obama dance moves and eventually wised up to what utter clunkers they are....

With respect to many of the Palinologists below, I think they're getting way too hepatomantic over the entrails. As a political move for anything other than the 2010 Senate race, today's announcement is a disaster. And I'm not sure it's a plus for the Senate - and, even if it were, the manner and timing suggest it was not a professionally planned event and therefore is unlikely to have any grand strategy behind it. So Occam's Razor leaves us with: Who needs this? In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a...

The other day Iris Evans, the Finance Minister of Alberta, gave a speech to the Economic Club of Toronto. And right at the end she suggested that parents ought to be prepared to make some economic sacrifice in order to be at home with their young kids. “When you’'re raising children,” she said, “you don’t both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise.” For some reason, David Swann, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, felt this warranted an official statement from him. Can you guess what it said? Okay, stand well back:

'A Funeral To Die For" declared the front page of The New York Post, as Aaliyah departed this mortal coil in a traffic-snarling horse-drawn cortege with silver casket and ceremonial release of 22 doves, one for each year of her brief life. Like almost everybody else, I'd never heard of the bestselling r'n'b'n'movie star until her Cessna crashed just after takeoff a week ago. But that's okay. Nobody's that popular any more: Popular culture is more accurately characterized these days as a lot of mutually hostile unpopular cultures.

For a while, the weirdness exercised a global fascination. The prestigious Oxford Union invited him to address their members, and Michael Jackson flew in to Britain wearing his trademark surgical mask, a wise move considering the country was then in the grip of Mad Cow Disease. On an official tour of Blenheim Palace, which must have been a bit of a comedown after Neverland, they rolled out the red carpet, but he insisted it be heavily disinfected, and it squelched under his crutch. Crutch, not crotch. Due to some domestic mishap, he was grabbing the former rather than the latter....

Driving north out of New York the other day, I heard a caller to Mark Levin’s show discuss his excellent book Liberty and Tyranny. The word she kept using was “inevitable”: The republic felt exhausted, and there was an “inevitability” to what was happening. A quarter-millennium of liberty seemed to be about the best you could expect, and its waning was—again—“inevitable.” As she spoke, the rich farmland of Columbia County rolled past my window. To many of its residents, the caller would have sounded slightly kooky. Were any of the county’s first families suddenly to rematerialize from their centuries of...

In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor's news conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media's pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on — or at any rate one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford's. Not that the governor didn't do his best to keep his end up on the pop culture allusions: "I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed, in presumably unconscious homage to Evita. The plot owed less to Tim Rice and Andrew...

Jackson, Sanford and weirdness Big government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits In a lousy week, Mark Sanford had one stroke of luck: Michael Jackson chose the day after the governor's news conference to moonwalk into eternity, and thus gave the media's pop therapists a more rewarding subject to feast on – or at any rate one of the few stories whose salient points are weirder than Sanford's. Not that the governor didn't do his best to keep his end up on the pop culture allusions: "I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed,...

For a while, the weirdness exercised a global fascination. The prestigious Oxford Union invited him to address their members, and Michael Jackson flew in to Britain wearing his trademark surgical mask, a wise move considering the country was then in the grip of Mad Cow Disease. On an official tour of Blenheim Palace, which must have been a bit of a comedown after Neverland, they rolled out the red carpet, but he insisted it be heavily disinfected, and it squelched under his crutch. Crutch, not crotch. Due to some domestic mishap, he was grabbing the former rather than the latter....

NET LOSSES Steyn on America Monday, 22 June 2009 A mere year ago the notion that the government would take over General Motors would have seemed incredible. Yet here we are, with the president of the United States firing the CEO and personally calling the mayor of Detroit to assure him he has no plans to move the head office out of the city. Not literally, not yet. But in any practical sense it’s now headquartered in Washington. In another twelve months, I wonder what currently unthinkable scenarios will have become faits accomplis.