Free Republic

Republicans show that they're serious about curbing runaway government. How big has the government grown under the Obama administration? "The average level of U.S. government spending as a percentage of GDP from the end of World War II to the present is 19.6 percent," observes the Heritage Foundation. "In the past two years that level has exploded, reaching 24.7 percent in 2009 and an estimated 25.4 in 2010. . . . Without urgent action the U.S. is on course for national bankruptcy." So as Heritage says, the first urgent action is to get government spending under control, something that the...

America's economy is failing to produce jobs, increase growth or raise confidence, and it will likely get even worse next year. Our federal government's spending has increased to $3.7 trillion this year from $2.98 trillion in 2008. Publicly held national debt is up by $2.4 trillion in less than two years, to about 63% percent of GDP from 40%, and is expected to reach 70% by 2012. Add in the unemployment rate, which has remained above 9.4% for over a year, and America is clearly failing economically. Next January the economy will be further depressed by increasing tax rates. The...

The Republican Party needs serious rejuvenation. Since Ronald Reagan left the presidency in 1989 and Newt Gingrich left the House in 1999, the Republican Party has been in decline. Between 2006 and 2009 it slid from a 55-member Senate majority to a minority of just 40. In 2005 the Republicans controlled the House, 232-203; today the Democratic majority is 257-178. And of course there was a Republican president for eight years; now there is a Democratic one for at least four . On the other hand, the new Democratic president and Congress may be the best thing the Republicans have...

John McCain will be the Republican Party's presidential candidate in November. Most Republicans certainly know who John McCain is, but there still seems to be a question as to just what he is. President Bush said last week that there was "no doubt in my mind he is a true conservative." But is he a Ronald Reagan conservative, or more like a Bob Dole moderate? Or is he like Dwight Eisenhower, who claimed in the 1952 nomination battle that he was "just as conservative" as his opponent, Sen. Robert Taft? Mr. McCain's lifetime American Conservative Union rating is 82, compared...

Ann Coulter wasn't invited to CPAC this year but she's still giving a speech 50 yards away. The speech is only open to 500 attendees but you can watch it live here -- courtesy of uStream. (VIDEO)

It just gets more and more frustrating every day; the more the junk science of the global-warming alarmists gets shredded, the more these liberal dupes and European socialists push this nonsense in our faces. Their famous “hockey stick”, on which all their computer models have been based, has been shown to be a fraud. For every report of the thinning of glacier ice, there are two reports of its thickening. Man-made global warming has become a religion to some people – a leap of faith that historical facts and the scientific method can not breach. Al Gore gets an Oscar...

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said that "America is addicted to oil." But it would be more accurate to say that America is addicted to opportunity, and oil and its products help us seize it.

Bob Dole says that amending the Senate's rules would be unnecessary if only Senate Democrats would forswear use of the filibuster. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Pete Du Pont recounts that many Democratic Senators have had a change of heart when it comes to the propriety of filibusters: "Other Democratic senators have had similar changes in belief: Joe Biden and Robert Byrd, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, Pat Leahy, Chuck Schumer and their erstwhile colleagues Lloyd Bentsen, and Tom Daschle have all vigorously opposed the use of the filibuster against judicial nominations. Mr. Schumer was for voting judicial...

Sen. Barbara Boxer is a longtime opponent of judicial nomination filibusters. Or she was. Suddenly the light has dawned, and she realizes how wrong she was to oppose them: "I thought I knew everything. I didn't get it. . . . I am here to say I was totally wrong." Other Democratic senators have had similar changes in belief: Joe Biden and Robert Byrd, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, Pat Leahy, Chuck Schumer and their erstwhile colleagues Lloyd Bentsen, and Tom Daschle have all vigorously opposed the use of the filibuster against judicial nominations.

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, was recently in Washington to meet with President Bush and release his new book, "On the Road to Democracy." When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Velvet Revolution came to Czechoslovakia, Mr. Klaus became finance minister in the new democracy. He became prime minister in 1992, and later president. His market principles replaced communism with freedom and choice; he liberated prices and foreign trade, deregulated markets and privatized state ownership of assets. Communism was dismantled and prosperity came to his country. But now President Klaus sees an unsettling new challenge: the...

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, was recently in Washington to meet with President Bush and release his new book, "On the Road to Democracy." When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the Velvet Revolution came to Czechoslovakia, Mr. Klaus became finance minister in the new democracy. He became prime minister in 1992, and later president. His market principles replaced communism with freedom and choice; he liberated prices and foreign trade, deregulated markets and privatized state ownership of assets. Communism was dismantled and prosperity came to his country. But now President Klaus sees an unsettling new challenge: the...

In 1945 Clement Attlee led the British Labour Party to victory over Winston Churchill's Conservative Party. He then proceeded to socialize much of the British economy, for he believed that "the creation of a society based on social justice . . . could only be attained by bringing under public ownership and control the main factors in the economic system." Labour's goal was to get rid of the waste and irrationality that, in the socialist view, doomed market economies to failure. Fast forward six decades, and you hear an Attlee echo--Sen. Hillary Clinton telling a California audience last summer that...

Boston Red Sox fans celebrated a World Series victory for the first time in 86 years. Weekly Reader grade school students can celebrate being better pollsters than Zogby, Fox and CBS: in October, as in 11 of the previous 12 elections, they correctly picked the winner of the presidential campaign. And SpaceShipOne became the first private craft ever to reach space--71 miles above the earth. So 2004 was a very good year in America. It was a good year too in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq. On the other hand, it was a very bad year for the United Nations, Russia,...

If the Democratic Party allows itself to be defined by Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore and the editorial page of the New York Times, while Republicans, their president and their strengthened congressional majorities encourage the pursuit of happiness in an opportunity and ownership society, then Mr. and Mrs. America will make sure conservatives are in power for a great many years to come.

President Bush is likely to be re-elected because the American people believe this presidential election is the most important one in memory. A USA Today/Gallup poll revealed that 72% of respondents think it is, compared with 47% who thought so in 2000 and 41% in 1996. Much of that feeling is based on the insecurity created by 9/11, and it is shifting the voting patterns. The veterans' and married women's vote will be stronger for Mr. Bush than they were four years ago. Both perceive, as many Americans do, that a victory for Mr. Kerry would be a signal to...

Pretty damning article in regards to the failed and moronic policies of J F'in Kerry.

Since his death a great deal has been written about Ronald Reagan. About his vision and his ability to communicate with regular Americans. About the extraordinary economic growth his tax rate reductions created, and his belief that Soviet communism was an evil empire, not an alternative form of government that must be understood. About his foreign policy leadership that led Sen. Ted Kennedy to eulogize him as "the president who won the Cold War." But Reagan was something more: a turning-point president who believed that the policy directions of the past were wrong, and that with different policies our future...

Who do ya'll think should run for President after George W leaves office?

Gasoline is a good thing. It gets us to work, to the doctor or hospital, to the charity we volunteer for or to the store to buy food. It makes it possible to visit kids and grandmas at Christmas, and to go on vacations in the summer. And in spite of what you read in the paper--outrageous gasoline prices entered into Google gets you 15,000 links--its current inflation-adjusted price of $2 a gallon is about its median price over its 85-year existence, and with the exception of the 1980s spike, it has been steadily declining over the decades. Better still,...

<p>Wasn't the era of big government supposed to be over?</p> <p>"We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there's not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means. The era of big government is over."</p>