Free Republic

Like an onion being peeled, each week seems to reveal new layers of odious conduct by the Obama Administration that increasingly offends the senses. Only five months into the second term of the hope and change presidency, few are hopeful of any positive change. The scandals that have dominated the headlines should concern all Americans, regardless of political persuasion. So much baggage so early in a second term presages only more scandal and acrimony. And there’s reason to be suspicious that we’re in for more of the same. At first we were told that the Benghazi attack was carried out...

WASHINGTON - Americans are by nature an optimistic, hopeful people, but the persistently dismal economy of the Obama years has crushed that spirit to debilitating levels. As President Obama plunges into his second, four year term, Americans are more depressed about the future than at any time since the Carter years, according to the Gallup Poll. Only 39 percent of Americans rated the nation's climate as positive, the lowest level Gallup has recorded since the end of Jimmy Carter's single term in office in 1979. That's when inflation was soaring and the U.S. economy was in shambles. Only 48 percent...

The lesson from the State of the Union address is this: Barack Obama has no second term agenda. Oh, sure, he campaigned furiously for the job, starting in about January of 2011. But his campaign almost never outlined his plans for a second term, focusing instead on interest group payoffs and demonization of his rival. Late in October of 2012, as if recognizing that they'd forgotten to attend to it, the Obama campaign released a 20-page glossy handout called a "blueprint for America's future." It featured splashy photos of the president on nearly every page, along with generic promises like...

Rarely have second terms lived up to the hopes and expectations of presidents or their electorates. FDR's began with an attempt to pack the Supreme Court by adding new justices and a second Depression of 1937. He was rescued only by the war in Europe in 1939 and the GOP's nomination of "the barefoot boy from Wall Street," Wendell Willkie. What can be called Harry Truman's second term was a disaster. In 1949, the Soviets exploded an atom bomb and China fell to Mao. In 1950, the Rosenbergs were convicted as atomic spies for Stalin and North Korea invaded the...

A rule of the modern age: all confident, reelected presidents trip up in the second term. LBJ was sunk by Vietnam. Reagan faced Iran-Contra. Bill Clinton had his comeuppance with Monica. George W. Bush was overwhelmed with the Iraqi insurgency and Katrina. And Obama will have his as well, obsequious media or not. Supposedly fundamental partisan swings of an era usually prove transitory: LBJ’s landside led to Nixon four years later, whose landslide then led to Carter in 1980, whose supposed new politics of humility and apology led to Reagan, whose small government-paradigm shift nonetheless by 1992 gave us Clinton,...

President Obama is putting a symbolic twist on a time-honored tradition, taking the oath of office for his second term with his hand placed not on a single Bible, but two -- one owned by Martin Luther King Jr. and one by Abraham Lincoln.

The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and so on) wins reelection, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years — mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the Iraqi insurgency, and Hurricane Katrina. Apparently, like tragic Greek heroes, administrations grow arrogant after their reelection wins. They believe that they are invincible and that their public approval is permanent rather than fickle. The result is that Nemesis zeroes in on their fatal conceit and with a boom corrects their hubris. Or is the...

After failing to deliver a line by line economic plan, the Obama campaign stepped up to the plate this week and delivered a glossy memo with 27 points on how he would use a second term in office. It's called The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan For Jobs & Middle-Class Security and millions of copies have been printed and shipped off to swing states. The plan is broken up into seven different parts, focusing on topics that include manufacturing, energy, small businesses, education, taxes and the deficit, healthcare, and Medicare and Social Security. While a lot of crucial details are...

If you suffered whiplash after Team Obama's sudden change in strategy after the last debate, you weren't alone. After waiting until almost literally the last moment to release Barack Obama's second-term agenda, suddenly the campaign rushed out an ad and a 20-page booklet that consists of mostly full-color pictures out to the press --- not coincidentally, the day after the last debate in which Obama might have been able to make its case to a national audience. Politico reports that few are impressed with this move, not even Obama’s fellow Democrats: Everything was going great for Barack Obama until about...

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Ask voters to describe what a second Obama term would look like, and even some of the president’s most ardent supporters have a hard time painting a picture. “I don’t know,” said Cynthia Malbon of Manchester. “I’m skeptical that anything much is going to happen. It’s probably going to be worse next time around.” Mrs. Malbon was attending a rally with the president Thursday in Manchester, as President Obama tried to answer criticism from Republican nominee Mitt Romney — highlighted again in the GOP challenger’s first rally after Tuesday evening’s debate — that the president lacks an...

Former Israeli delegate for Congressional matters in Washington and a top expert on relations with the U.S., Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, thinks Israeli fears of a hostile second term Obama presidency are overblown. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Ettinger explained that contrary to popular perception, "The bottom line is that a second term president is always weaker than a first term president. This is true for all second term American presidents other than one – James Monroe. A second term president becomes less and less relevant for both chambers of Congress from the day of his reelection. This this...

Dear Friend, In this video commentary, I discuss what Obama will do if we re-elect him…and he can’t talk about it. Tune in!

How will he tax us? Let us count the ways: • Most basic, of course, will be an increase in tax rates. Those paying 33 percent will now pay 36 percent. People paying 35 percent will now pay 40 percent. Most people accept and expect that Obama will raise these brackets if he is reelected. But they don’t realize what else he will do. • As he advocated in the 2008 campaign, he will eliminate the ceiling on wages that must be taxed for Social Security. Currently, wages are taxed at 6.2 percent (now, temporarily, at 4.2 percent) up to...

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan takes a look at President Obama’s Martha's Vineyard vacation and speculates on his thoughts in view of declining poll numbers, and disillusionment among his supporters. "How could he not be depressed? He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He's got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do. His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust...." "Nothing worked! And nothing's going...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is getting ready to make one of Washington's worst kept secrets official: He wants a second term. Democratic officials familiar with the plan say Obama will file 2012 campaign papers with the Federal Election Commission as early as this coming week. It's a long-anticipated but formal step that will allow him to start raising money for the campaign, which will be based in Chicago. The fundraising effort has begun. Obama raised $1.5 million at a Democratic fundraiser in New York City this past week and he'll headline events in the coming weeks in Chicago,...

Wasn’t that the message of the midterms, especially after Barack Obama went out of his way to defend Democrats by warning voters that his agenda was at risk? In this case, it was the same as waving a red cape in front of a bull — or a whole Pamplona village of them. Quinnipiac’s latest survey shows that only 43% of voters say Obama deserves a second term, but that number changes a bit when specific alternatives are mentioned: President Barack Obama does not deserve a second term, American voters say 49 – 43 percent, and he is in a...

After 5 years of enduring enjoying my vitally important yet otherwise meaningless ramblings, I thought the time was right for me to sit back and let you have your say. From time to time, I will pose a question for discussion and debate. Post your opinions and P.O.V.'s in the comments section. For your consideration: Will Obama serve a second term?

Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her home Friday morning. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor's Picnic at the end of the month, Palin said.

I planned to write today's commentary on the state budget, but then I read Assemblyman Chuck Devore's e-mail to his supporters that Nicholas Romero posted yesterday afternoon and realized that there wasn't much to say beyond what DeVore wrote (or the San Diego U-T or the OC Register). But I do have a few thoughts on the matter. While the Legislature and the Governor can campaign this year as having passed and signed the state budget into law before July 1 as required by the state's constiution, no one should be throwing a party. Sure, this year's budget is not...

The Hundred Days is indelibly associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Thousand Days with John F. Kennedy. But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush's last term -- days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran.The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may...