Free Republic

Mount Rushmore National Memorial's famous stone carvings of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt are about to receive a sculpted visitor: a massive bust of Barack Obama. According to Black Hills Today, the statue is made of steel and concrete, tops 20 feet tall and weighs roughly 12 tons. Crafted by artist David Adickes of Houston, Texas, the Obama bust left Adickes' sculpture center earlier this month, shipped in two pieces on the back of a truck , making its way along a 10-state, 40-city tour. The statue has been spotted in St. Louis, took a rest in Chicago's...

I've lived with being "George Bush's son" all my life. Growing up, I probably didn't want to be like him. Today it's ironic that much of my career parallels his. He went to Yale. I went to Yale. He was a Navy pilot. I flew F-102s in the Texas Air National Guard. I like to say I've inherited half of his friends and all of his enemies. Of course, there will be some who will prejudge me, but that's OK: I don't expect to get all of the votes anyway. Being George Bush's son is a tremendous plus. The greatest...

THIS IS AN EXCERPT. The Obama administration is certain to prolong and deepen the economic recession, with the result that unemployment and inflation will increase, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert contends. ... "Now, as president, Obama has repeatedly blamed the current economic recession on President Bush, alleging his administration 'inherited an economic mess' that will take years to resolve," Corsi wrote. "However, a close look at the table below shows that the Misery Index under President Obama is increasing, as unemployment edges close to 9 percent." The Misery Index, created by economist Arthur Okun, is obtained by adding the unemployment...

— George H.W. Bush is going to celebrate his 85th birthday Friday in style. Bush Sr., is a veteran skydiver has made some tough jumps especially as a 20-year-old Navy pilot in World War II when he was shot down over the Pacific. But the sky dive he will make on his birthday should be a lot more fun with Headline News anchor Robin Meade strapped to him for a tandem jump. I guess this will be George’s ‘Private Stimulus Package.’ In return Meade will get to interview Bush Sr. before they make the jump. “It is both a thrill...

<p>Former President Jimmy Carter will visit Syria, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza this week to promote constructive dialogue on the Israeli-Arab conflict, a spokeswoman for the Carter Center said Sunday.</p> <p>Carter, 84, is already in the region, where he joined scores of foreign observers monitoring Sunday's elections in Lebanon, expected to present an early test of President Obama's efforts to forge Middle East peace.</p>

President Obama likes to see himself as a pragmatist, but in foreign policy he is proving to be a supreme idealist of the Woodrow Wilson variety. Like Wilson's, Obama's foreign policy increasingly seems to rest on the assumption that nations will act on the basis of what they perceive to be the goodwill, good intentions or moral purity of other nations, in particular the United States. If other nations have refused to cooperate with us, it is because they perceive the United States as aggressive or evil. Obama's job is to change that perception. From the outreach to Iran and...

Recent articles have raised questions about whether or not it is ethical for David Chicoine to continue in his position as South Dakota State University president while at the same time receiving $400,000 per year as a member of the Monsanto board of directors. First of all, it should be noted that Chicoine's $300,000 yearly salary as SDSU president is quite modest by the standards prevailing in academia today. Salaries for university administrators are shooting up at an unprecedented rate. During the 2007-2008 school year, compensation packages for public university presidents averaged $427,000 per year. Topping the list: Ohio State...

First President in US History to Have Voted to Filibuster a Supreme Court Nominee Now Hopes for Clean Process May 30, 2009 1:08 PM President Obama's expressed hope today in his weekly address "that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this (Supreme Court nomination) process, and Congress, in the past" runs against another historical first for the 44th president: his unique role in history as the first US President to have ever voted to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. So while there is little indication Republicans intend to filibuster President Obama's nominee for...

FOR George W Bush, life after the White House has meant scooping up Barney the dog’s business on a neighbour’s lawn near his new home in Dallas. “There I was, the former president, with a plastic bag on my hand, picking up that which I had dodged for eight solid years,” he said last week on one of his first public outings since he left office. For Bill Clinton, the president he replaced, it meant being called “Hillary’s wife” and the absence of the anthem Hail to the Chief: “All of a sudden nobody plays a song when you walk...

George W. Bush hadn’t even begun the 2000 campaign, but, in his methodical way, he was already looking ahead to his presidency. At lunch in Austin in 1999, he mused aloud about lessons to be drawn from his dad’s one-term tenure. The Liberator of Kuwait had enjoyed sky-high approval ratings, but lost the election the next year because he was seen as indifferent to the plight of workers. “I learned that you can’t save political capital,” Bush said. “It doesn’t last. You have to spend it—or lose it.” Are we about to witness a father-son version of “Groundhog Day”? ...

Ex-presidents defend each other during first public joint appearanceFormer President George W. Bush called former President Bill Clinton "his brother" and the two rarely disagreed in their first-ever appearance together on stage. The Republican and Democratic ex-presidents defended each other at a Toronto forum on Friday, disappointing some in the crowd of 6,000 who expected a more heated debate. Bush said that he never liked it when previous administration officials criticized his government but said Clinton was respectful and never did. Bush declined to criticize the Obama administration, in contrast to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has been a...

It seems it will always be John F. Kennedy's deathday in Dallas -- not his birthday -- that we will observe, and that which, even now, almost 46 years later, still fills a dark, anguished corner in the national psyche. JFK, the most famous initials of our lifetime. Strange that Lincoln's deathday goes by with barely a whisper. But today is Kennedy's birthday, born 92 years ago at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. Can you imagine, a 92-year-old Jack Kennedy?

Please Watch. There is still hope (well I believe). I'm heading off to bed and I'm sorry to post and run, but I'll catch up with ya'll tomorrow.

Three descendants of Venus' son, who was called West Ford, say that according to a family tradition two centuries old, George Washington was West Ford's father. They hope to develop DNA evidence from Washington family descendants and his hair samples to bolster their case... There is, however, reason to believe that if the child's father was not Washington, it might have been someone closely related to him. The cousins' claim has several elements of truth, enough to set up a historical mystery as to the identity of West Ford's father and to add a new strand to the emerging links...

No, she’s not planning to attend a fundraiser for the president . . . Sara Jane Moore, who in 1975 attempted to assassinate then President Gerald Ford, is out on parole after serving 32 years in prison. Asked by Matt Lauer on Today this morning what she would say to people who think that an attempted presidential assassin should spent the rest of her life in jail, her response began with this cryptic remark: “Well, I’m going to go to the Obama thing.” View video here.

LOS ANGELES — Barack Obama was standing on a riser inside a warehouse here, delivering an inspirational speech about the blessings of freedom, when his left index finger began to twitch uncontrollably, unnerving his aides. - snip - In that Hollywood building here, the life-size, three-dimensional figure was being put through its final tune-up, its chin rising and hands gesturing in response to technicians, in preparation for shipment to the Hall of Presidents exhibit at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. - snip - The public is to get its first glimpse of “Robobama,” as it is known among some handlers,...

Mimi Beardsley Alford, a retired New York church administrator who had an affair with John F. Kennedy while she was an intern in the White House, is breaking a silence of more than 40 years to tell her story in a memoir to be published by Random House. Ms. Alford’s secret was initially divulged six years ago when a biography of Kennedy was published with portions from a 1964 oral history that described the president’s 18-month sexual affair with a young intern named Mimi Beardsley. The Daily News tracked her down and discovered that she was Marion Fahnestock, who was...

All the talk lately about how Governor Palin needs to forgo running for reelection as governor in 2010 if she wants to run for President in 2012 got me thinking (particularly because a lot of the talk seems to be coming from those folks who would love to see her not run again for governor -- opening the field for either them or their favorites). Anyway, I decided to do some research to find out how many Presidents over the years have served as governors prior to ascending to the White House, how many had run for President (or Vice...

First let me say - - it most certainly is an “obsession.” At least, given the verbal assaults that come my way when I so much as raise a question about the President's policies, it most certainly seems like an "obsession" to me. “Obsession,” by the way, is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.” And doesn’t it seem that to you that many of our fellow Americans are “obsessed” with the “persistent idea” that our 44th President, Barack Obama, is something more than human? It may be...

The trouble with many of the past ratings of America's presidents is that the "consensus" has been arrived at by academics who act alike, do alike, and think alike. In the view of many, they are suspect of viewing history exclusively through the prism of Ivy League faculty lounge discourse. Alvin Stephen Felzenberg (Ph.D.) — who has taken a fresh and comprehensive look at the nation's chief executives in his book The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game — does not challenge the credentials of the conventional historians. Rather, as he explains in...

There's something about former Vice President Dick Cheney that's been struggling to get out like a rare bald eagle chick ready to hatch. After listening to his remarks this weekend about Rush Limbaugh (loves him) and Colin Powell (doesn't), and his jut-jawed "I don't regret anything" moment on CBS, I know what it is: Mr. Cheney is now replacing Richard Nixon in the national political and cultural consciousness as the Gorgeous George of our era, the guy whose very existence makes some people furious and who brings to the surface all those intense and complex emotions about power and the...

If you could tamper with history to prevent any past US President from becoming President...who would it be, and why? Here's the rules: It can't be Obama. We already know that virtually everyone on FR can't stand him. I want to know who you'd pick besides the anointed one. Whoever you pick experiences a scandal sufficient to remove them politics forever. The candidate that got the second-most electoral votes in the real world then becomes President, so if you pick FDR in 1936 Alf Landon wins. "I don't want to disturb the space-time continuum" is not an acceptable answer. We're...

by D. James Kennedy A.B., M.Div., M.Th., D.D., D.Sac.Lit., Ph.D., Litt.D., D.Sac.Theol., D.Humane Let. TEXT: "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Romans 5:1 The most perfect speech ever uttered by mortal man was delivered on the battlefield of Gettysburg. It has been learned by unnumbered millions of children in school. It is actually an extended personification, where America is personified as a man who is conceived, born, dedicated, lives his life, engages in dangerous and perhaps mortal struggles, is born anew, and lives thereafter gloriously. Abraham Lincoln is immortal in the...

President Thomas Jefferson's own words (the right-wing extremist that he was!):"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government." "Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state." "I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." "No free man shall ever be debarred the use...

Cavuto reports that donations are pouring in for the presidential library of former President George W. Bush. In 100 days, he's raised $100 million - an amount that former President Bill Clinton planned to raise in one year.

He set several records as President. Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest person, so far, to become President of the United States (POTUS). The youngest to be elected remains, as of this writing, John F. Kennedy who was 43 when elected. Roosevelt was 42 when he took office as the 26th President following the assassination of his predecessor in 1901. Although other Vice Presidents had taken office following death of the President, TR was first to go on and win an election in his own right, preceding Harry S Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson in the feat. He also remains (as...

"Here's what I think of the atom bombs. I think if you dropped an atom bomb fifteen miles offshore and you said, "The next one's coming and hitting you," then I would think it's okay. To drop it on a city, and kill a hundred thousand people. Yeah. I think that's criminal."

April 28, 2009 After 100 Days... Obama Is the Second Most Reviled President in 40 Years The radical Barack Obama ran as a moderate. At each of the three presidential debates he promised to cut the US deficit. Instead, Obama will quadruple the deficit this year. If you look past his cheerleading squad in the mainstream media you'll see that President Thin-Skin is the second most reviled president in the last 40 years. James Delingpole at The Telegraph reported: It's official: Barack Obama is the second most reviled newbie president of the last forty years. A gallup survey today published...

The Long Detour A review of Richard Nixon and the Quest for a New Majority, by Robert Mason By William A. Rusher Posted July 13, 2005 This article appeared in the Summer 2005 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment. In 1964 the American conservative movement made its first bid for national political power, by seizing control of the Republican Party and nominating Senator Barry Goldwater as its candidate for president. The attempt failed disastrously: Goldwater carried only six states and won just 38% of the popular vote. But far from disappearing, the conservative...

Ronald Reagan became president at a time of recession: the early 1980s when the nation faced double-digit unemployment and a dire economic outlook. So it is only fitting that he return to Washington now, lawmakers said Wednesday as they passed a resolution giving California approval to put a Reagan sculpture in the National Statuary Hall Collection inside the Capitol building. Each state is allowed two statues in the hall. "Just as we find ourselves today struggling with hardship and conflict, Reagan was also confronted with a troubled economy and uncertain times," said Inland Rep. Ken Calvert, who has championed the...

There aren’t any sex scenes or vampires, and it won’t help you lose weight. But House Republicans are tearing through the pages of Amity Shlaes’ “The Forgotten Man” like soccer moms before book club night. Shlaes’ 2007 take on the Great Depression questions the success of the New Deal and takes issue with the value of government intervention in a major economic crisis — red meat for a party hungry for empirical evidence that the Democrats’ spending plans won’t end the current recession. “There aren’t many books that take a negative look at the New Deal,” explained Republican policy aide...

But what to do now? Exactly what the U.S. could have done before: recognize the cease-fire as a false peace, present the Iraqi Army with an ultimatum -- to get rid of Saddam Hussein or the U.S. will resume the air attack on military targets and every high officer will be tried for war crimes. With the killer gone, Iraqis can be left to their own political settlements. The only duty of the U.S. is to allow those who trusted us to return to their homes, free of terror. But to do that, Mr. Bush must show true strength --...

Abraham Lincoln was Born a Muslim, Says Film Maker Apr 20 12:26 PM US/Eastern ATLANTA, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Barack Hussein Obama is not alone. The 16th President of The United States, Abraham Lincoln, was born a Muslim, says Faruq Masudi, producer and director of the new Islamic movie, Quran Contemporary Connections. In a casting coup, Abraham Lincoln shares equal footage with luminaries of Islamic history like Saladin, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and the former President of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed. What do they have in common? Faruq Masudi said, "According to the Quran, everybody is born a Muslim....

Lots to compare between the current situation and the situation during the depression of the 1930s.

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) successfully completed acceptance sea trials April 7-9 off the Virginia Capes and is in final preparation for delivery. Acceptance sea trials are the final test of the ship's readiness to begin fleet service. Navy representatives from the U.S. Navy Board of Inspection and Survey tested and evaluated the ship's systems and performance. Acceptance trials will formally conclude April 10. George H.W. Bush is the nation's 10th, and final, Nimitz-class carrier. The ship is designed to carry all current and future aircraft in its embarked air wing until the completion of her...

Know your presidents? If you need to brush up on your history before taking the quiz, check out our portraits of America's leaders.

Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Great Society, in "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream": In his determination to get Congress and America moving again, Johnson demanded support for the Great Society and confidence in the capacity of government to improve all the conditions of society as matters of faith. . . . The intensity of his own belief strengthened his formidable persuasive powers. . . . In so expansive an era, filled with such benevolent intentions, the boundaries between fact and fiction, between the present and the future, no longer held. . . . And so...

Golden Age: After 25 years of record-setting economic performance around the world, set off by President Reagan's free-market policies, the world has fallen into a recession. Is this the inevitable end of an era?Let's go back to 1982, in many ways the bleakest year since the Depression. The economy had emerged severely damaged by the stagflation of the 1970s. Americans' confidence, both in government and in the economy, had reached a low ebb in 1980. Many felt our best years lay behind us. On the nations' campuses and even in some of its boardrooms, people were talking about capitalism as...

The video speaks for itself. No additional commentary is necessary. So, instead of commentary, I merely provide some of Thomas Jefferson's wisdom to introduce this fine piece: "Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases." "The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." Video after the jump.

On the outskirts of Jimmy Carter's ancestral home, miles from the nearest interstate, sits a state shrine to Georgia's native president. The Plains Visitor Information Center pays tribute to the peanut farmer-turned-president, and it also stands as a reminder that even one of the most sacred names in Georgia politics can fall victim to a budget crisis. It is the least-visited of Georgia's 11 state-run visitor's centers, attracting 65,000 people last year.

Ten years ago Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and said, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Not long afterward, the wall came tumbling down and the most formidable empire in world history collapsed so fast that, in Vaclav Havel's words, "we had no time even to be astonished." With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the most ambitious political and social experiment of the modern era...

A close aide to Ronald Reagan has claimed that the former US president tried to convert the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Christianity.A new biography that draws on recently declassified documents discloses a secret exchange between the two leaders that left at least one official present convinced that Reagan had tried to persuade his counterpart of God's existence. The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, by the former Los Angeles Times reporter James Mann, provides fresh insight into the former US president's religious convictions and the role they played in foreign policy. Reagan had apparently reached a conviction, which has since become...

I am quite certain that this is not the protocol, and is most unbecoming a President of the United States. Update (for the doubters who claim this was not a bow). Here is a video of the unmistakable bow: (hat tip: Michelle Malkin) Update: See Miss Manners on the protocol. Americans do not bow to foreign monarchs because that act signified the monarch's power over his subjects. Here is the protocol from the Queen of England's website -- which applies even to her own subjects: "The Queen meets thousands of people each year in the UK and overseas. Before meeting...

The Mike Church take on the Simon & Garfunkel classic, "Mrs. Robinson"

Program Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, we take pride in presenting a thoughtful address by Ronald Reagan. Mr. Reagan: Reagan: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you and good evening. The sponsor has been identified, but unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks. I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that...

Here is video from twenty-eight years ago today, March 30, 1981, when John Hinckley attempted to assasinate President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was shot and came perilously close to death, but recovered. The video also has Reagan talking about being shot, and shows him speaking before a Joint Session of Congress on April 28, 1981 after recovering from his wounds. Reagan was one-of-a-kind! How we need someone like him again today. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Barack Obama last month enlisted Theodore Roosevelt in his campaign for increased governmental control of health care, arguing that TR "first called for reform nearly a century ago." Google "Theodore Roosevelt, universal healthcare," and you'll find The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, DailyKos, and many other stalwarts of the left suggesting or claiming that Obama is carrying the Republican Roosevelt's banner. That's nonsense. The propagandists take as their one piece of evidence a plank in the Progressive Party platform of 1912: "The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of...

“Never before in our history have Americans been called upon to face three grave threats to our very existence any one of which could destroy us. We face a disintegrating economy, a weakened defense, and an energy policy based on the sharing of scarcity.” - Ronald Reagan Time to Recapture Our Destiny (RNC Address - July 17th, 1980) The story goes that Governor Reagan, while strategizing with his political allies in a Beverly Hills Hotel in early 1980, found the moment opportune (as he so often did) to make a point. Leaning over to Dick Allen, his soon-to-be national security...

"Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti republican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people--a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword...

Two UCLA economists are blaming the length of the Great Depression on President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who instead of being blamed has always been thought of as the main catalyst who brought the country out of the Depression. Instead, in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude that the New Deal policies FDR signed into law thwarted economic recovery for the country. See UCLA Newsroom. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into...