Free Republic

Crude prices have plunged by more than 20% in recent months. The fall means cheaper gas, cheaper flights, and generally good news for American consumers. Oil prices have been falling for months, and the slide could easily continue. With unprecedented instability in the Middle East, how could this be happening? The answer, according to analysts who follow the market, is a little bit of everything, from economic fundamentals in big oil consuming countries to growth in output among some oil producers. But much more clear is the effect of tumbling prices: Low oil prices are the equivalent of a massive...

. September 26, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Reflections on the Contract with America – 20 Years Later ===================================================== On Wednesday I had the privilege of meeting with S. Ganbaatar, a member of the Mongolian Parliament. When he entered the room, Ganbaatar walked up excitedly to examine a framed document that has hung for years in my offices. The document is a list of commitments to the people, signed by dozens of candidates for public office who promised to vote on a specific policy agenda if they were elected to office. It's framed alongside a picture of the candidates who signed...

. September 18, 2014 Newt Gingrich : NASA Commercial Crew Plan Is Scant Progress ===================================================== It didn't take a rocket scientist to predict that NASA's plan to pay Russia to launch American astronauts into orbit wasn't going to turn out well. Three years after NASA retired the space shuttle program, relations between the United States and Russia are worse than at any point since the end of the Cold War. Americans have reportedly been paying Russia $70 million a seat to send our astronauts to the International Space Station. That's three and a half times what the Russians charge private...

. September 12, 2014 Newt Gingrich : The Five Strategic Failures in President Obama's ISIS Speech ===================================================== President Obama gave a pretty good speech Wednesday night. Pressured by the American people's overwhelming support for defeating ISIS, President Obama gave a speech his predecessor, President George W. Bush could have applauded. Many of President Obama's words were reassuring. He was dedicated to defeating ISIS. He would pursue anyone who threatened America. He was committed to a long, difficult campaign. Unfortunately for the President and the country, there were five major strategic flaws in his speech. These flaws are so profound that...

. September 10, 2014 Newt Gingrich : 10 Questions for Obama on ISIS ===================================================== President Barack Obama has a remarkable opportunity Wednesday night. The American people have been awakened by the videotaped beheading of two U.S. journalists. Many Americans have also been deeply angered by the killing of Christians and other minorities by the Islamist radicals. Americans increasingly realize that the entire movement of radical Islamism, from Boko Haram in Nigeria through Hamas in Gaza to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is dangerous to Americans and to our civilization. Americans know that 13 years of effort under two...

”President Reagan has long been considered the best modern economic President. So we compared his performance dealing with the oil-induced recession of the 1980s with that of President Obama and his performance during this ‘Great Recession.’

. August 30, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Obama’s Right -- He Has “No Strategy” ===================================================== Americans might be inclined to roll their eyes at this admission from their president given that he spent weeks on vacation while a terrorist group swept away eleven years of work to stabilize Iraq. As I wrote in this newsletter last week, however, the problem has never been the rounds of golf President Obama is playing. It is what has been happening--or rather, what has not been happening--between them. If a month’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard was the price of our Commander-in-Chief realizing at last...

Some people are wondering who is next after Van Jones. But the Van Jones story is not over. And we still don't know who hired this "obscure" official, as some on the left are now trying to refer to him. Some of these controversies are currently being investigated by the new media. Blogger Trevor Loudon, who broke the story about Jones' communist background, thinks White House official Valerie Jarrett needs to be seriously scrutinized. She appears to have had a family connection to Barack Obama's childhood mentor, Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. For the record, this "obscure" official technically...

The numbers are arresting. If Americans under correctional supervision counted as a city of their own, they would form the largest city in the United States after New York. The number of people in prison, on parole or on probation, 6.9 million Americans, exceeds the populations of the second- and third-largest cities, Los Angeles and Chicago, combined. Or the size of the next four -- Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Antonio -- put together. Thirty-eight U.S. states are home to fewer people than live under the corrections system in this country. There are about as many people behind bars as...

. August 28, 2014 Newt Gingrich : What Would Reagan Do? ===================================================== Instead of criticizing President Barack Obama's lack of an effective national security policy as the terrorist threat of the Islamic State grows in Syria and Iraq, it might be helpful to imagine the speech President Ronald Reagan would have given in response to the videotaped beheading of James Foley. There are many things a great power can do if it has leadership. This fictional speech is an effort to describe a Reagan-like grand strategy, clarity of moral purpose and emphasis on effective actions. This is not a speech...

. August 22, 2014 Newt Gingrich : President Obama and the 500 British Terrorists ===================================================== Traveling in Europe this week, I had a chance to see the world through the eyes of the London Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. The view from Britain was startlingly different than the view from Martha's Vineyard, where President Obama is vacationing. There is a consensus in Britain that at least 500 young Brits have gone to the Middle East as jihadists. There is a clear belief, stated by Prime Minister David Cameron, that the ISIS fighter who executed journalist James Foley...

. August 8, 2014 Newt Gingrich : ISIS, Hamas, and Boko Haram ===================================================== Grim, unyielding and violent reality is beginning to confront the American political establishment with facts from which it cannot hide. For 35 years, since Iranians seized the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, and kept the Americans in it as hostages, the United States has been at war with radical Islamists. They knew it. We hid from it. Year after year since then, radical Islamists have grown more militant, more sophisticated and more numerous. Now, in an arc of terror from Boko Haram in Nigeria through Hamas...

For 35 years, since Iranians seized the American Embassy on November 4, 1979, and kept the Americans in it as hostages, the United States has been at war with radical Islamists. They knew it. We hid from it. Now, in an arc of terror from Boko Haram in Nigeria through Hamas in Gaza to ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, there is a clear wave of vicious religious warfare being waged against civilization by fanatics who openly promise and engage in genocidal killing. ISIS has made its murderous intentions painfully clear. It has proven in town after town that it...

. August 6, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Obama, Buchanan, and Baldwin -- The Cost of Rejecting Reality ===================================================== President Obama is in serious danger of joining a select group of disastrous leaders who put their people and their country in desperate circumstances that cost lives and risked ruinous defeat. Almost everywhere you look around the world, the situation is worse for the United States and worse for freedom than when President Obama took office—in many cases catastrophically so. There isn’t much sign that he recognizes this or is particularly concerned. Iraq is the most obvious (and potentially most dangerous) example....

. July 11, 2014 Newt Gingrich : The Bad Neighbor Policy -- Playing Americans for Fools ===================================================== Guatemala and Mexico agreed this week to make it even easier for people to show up at the American border. That's right: EASIER. After all the public outcry against thousands of foreigners crossing our border, you might have thought the Mexican government would help stop the wave of people traversing Mexico to get to Texas. That would be a good neighbor policy. On Monday, however, the presidents of Guatemala and Mexico met to announce a new policy of making it easier and more...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

. August 21, 2014 Newt Gingrich : President Obama's Golf: The Real Problem ===================================================== A lot of people have commented on and made fun of the frequency of President Obama’s golfing. The more I watched President Obama, however, the more I concluded the problem was what was not happening between golf rounds. Two earlier presidents, Eisenhower and Reagan, golfed frequently but their presidencies were stunningly successful. The difference seemed to be that Eisenhower and Reagan were really effective when they weren't golfing. President Eisenhower was a very serious golfer who had been a varsity football player at West Point. Eisenhower...

. August 15, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Congress Needs an Exit Interview with General Flynn ===================================================== Outgoing director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, gave an extraordinary exit interview last week with James Kitfield of the publication Breaking Defense. The interview revealed assessments about the dangers facing the United States that are so unlike what we hear from President Obama or his national security team that relevant Congressional committees should conduct their own exit interview in public hearings with General Flynn when they return from the August recess. For example, General Flynn says plainly the United States...

Via RCP, I want to believe it, I almost believe it — but I don’t really believe it. All the makings of a Democratic clusterfark are there. If O legalizes five million workers, plenty of blue-collar Democrats are bound to put two and two together and wonder what that means for their wages. And plenty of Democratic Senate incumbents in red states, like, oh, let’s say Mark Pryor, are going to panic, knowing what could happen if the backlash among conservatives is as ferocious as everyone expects. In fact, as Newt alludes to, both Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan...

. July 23, 2014 Newt Gingrich : Obama’s Attack on Israel ===================================================== "The success of Hamas in closing Israeli airspace is a great victory for the resistance, and is the crown of Israel’s failure,” a Hamas spokesman said today. When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, the United States became the first country in the world to recognize the Jewish state, just 11 minutes later. That recognition, however, came after one of the greatest foreign policy disputes in American history—a fight in which Secretary of State George C. Marshall told President Truman that “if the President were to [recognize...