Free Republic

Very strong stuff from Bob Woodward criticizing The One's administration regarding Libya. These (the first link and this one) are two excellent videos. In the second, Woodward concludes that "anyone in the intelligence community knows that [Obama's brags about having hobbled al Qaeda] are not true." [T]hose in the know have always said that Woodward has always had particularly good sources in the intelligence community, going back some 40 years. Plus, as the perfect leading indicator for Washington conventional wisdom, Woodward signifies very bad news for a liberal if he comes down as hard on said liberal as Woodward did...

Mideast in Flames -- And Obama Still Can Do No Wrong ANDREW B. WILSON on 9.18.12 In the eyes of a worshipful press, of course. The Middle East is in flames, our embassies are under attack, and four American diplomats have come home in coffins. So who is to blame? It's time for the MSM to round up all the usual suspects -- and to exonerate a president who cavorts with Hollywood celebrities and goes on the David Letterman show to demonstrate his famous cool under fire. Perhaps he will do a Top Ten list on why the U.S. should...

With a second term for Obama, the world-leading America we have known and hoped to leave to our children will be gone. Last Friday's jobs report confirms that Obama is well on his way to transforming America into a third world country, with declining living standards and perpetual economic stagnation. Argentina enjoyed the world's fourth highest per capita GDP in 1929, on par with America at the time. But then the nation lost its way in embracing a leftist, union allied government, which took control of the economy and imposed wildly irresponsible taxes, spending, deficits, and debt. After World War...

Obamacare tax confusion a warning sign: the peril of playing it safe. Thomas E. Dewey. The president who might have been. The Romney campaign's stumble over Obamacare (it's a penalty…no…wait…it's a tax! Yes! Yes! We're sure now…it's a tax!) was both unnecessary and avoidable. If the Romney campaign isn't careful (as our friends at the Wall Street Journal noted here), the morning after the 2012 election they may well find themselves linked forever to the famously hapless 1948 campaign of Tom Dewey. The campaign everyone expected to be a hands-down winner -- which turned into the greatest upset in American...

Now that the Rally for Rush is in full swing -- and winning the day -- let's focus on four things. Lifelock. Transgendered persons. The Washington Post. You. Huh? Say what? Stick with me. Let's start with Lifelock. Rush fans know it well. Lifelock -- the company's "About Us" section found here is all about protecting their customers from identity theft. A decidedly big deal in the day and age of cyber pick pocketing of entire lives. In a way one suspects the Lifelock people could never have possibly conceived a mere week ago, their symbolic image of the little...

For the second straight year, members of the UW-Madison Teaching Assistants' Association will express their love for the university on Valentine's Day. The teachers' union plans to hold an "I ♥ UW" rally, marching from the Memorial Union to the state Capitol at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday. Last year's rally by the same name touched off a series of historic protests in opposition to Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to curb the power of public employee unions. In August, the T.A.A. chose not to seek state certification under the new law, which curtails collective bargaining for most public workers. The T.A.A. is...

2011 was a year of worldwide turmoil and great change. I expect -- and to a certain degree fear -- that last year was the warm-up act to 2012 which, both internationally and domestically, seems likely to be one of the most consequential years in recent history. *BREAK* On the global scene, some of 2011's most significant events pose very different short- and long-term results. For example, the Arab Spring initially appeared to be a move toward freedom in an historically repressive part of the world but is now drifting toward other forms of tyranny. The Middle East remains likely...

The thought startles. Is Newt Gingrich America's Winston Churchill? The former Speaker has repeatedly dazzled in the ongoing series of GOP presidential debates. He is "the adult in the room," the man Republicans keep saying they would like to see on the debate stage with Barack Obama. The latest polls (Wall Street Journal, CBS, and Marist) have him vaulting into a tie with Mitt Romney behind Herman Cain or leapfrogging Cain to barely trail Romney. This video of a Frank Luntz focus group that appeared on Sean Hannity's TV show following a recent GOP debate is typical of the changing...

Living in housing he (and we) can scarcely afford. If President Barack Obama were a legal document, he'd be a sub-prime home loan. The nation's housing crisis seems an apt metaphor for the president and his political position one year before he stands for re-election. Like nearly a quarter of the mortgage loans outstanding on U.S. homes, Obama is under water. His poll ratings are low and sinking. Gallup records 43 percent approval, 49 percent disapproval. Three-quarters of American voters think the country is on the wrong track under his leadership. In moving into the White House -- a very...

Herman Cain's "9-9-9" tax reform is attracting enough attention to become the focus of this week's Presidential debate. As a plan for overhauling revenues and unleashing the private sector, it's a bold gambit that shows Cain is willing to take chances and shake up the Capital. The 9 percent business tax is a stroke of genius. It would give us the lowest business rates in the world and would make us the "tax haven" for investment from everywhere. The stock market would barely be able to stay abreast. The 9 percent personal income rate would eliminate all the deductions and...

Odious Conservatives By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. WASHINGTON -- A major proposition that I advance in a book that will be published later this month, After the Hangover: The Conservatives' Road to Recovery, is that there exists an odious subgroup of conservatives who since the beginning of the conservative movement have made their way to prominence in the mainstream media by a cheap act. They disparage with great melodrama other conservatives. Liberals love it -- and for a while love the disparagers. In the late 1990s Arianna Huffington exploited this instrument of self-promotion brazenly. For several years David Frum has...

<p>"Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the President," says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. "My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill."</p>

Tea Party activists are planning a major rally Tuesday on Capitol Hill, with protesters planning to visit their Congress members' offices to ask them to vote against the health-care bill. Blogger Adam Brickley obtained an e-mail from a staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, telling Democrats how to deal with the protesters: As many of you have read, tomorrow, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, tens of thousands of conservative and Tea Party activists will be on the Hill as part of what they are dubbing a "Surge Against Obamacare." . . . Many of the conservative activists are not opposing...

A bombshell has just exploded in the 2010 elections. For the second time in five months, the Obama White House is being accused -- by Democrats -- of offering high ranking government jobs in return for political favors. What no one is reporting is that this is a violation of federal law that can lead to prison time, a fine or both, according to Title 18, Chapter 11, Section 211 of the United States Code. The jobs in question? Secretary of the Navy and a position within the U.S. Agency for International Development. The favor requested in return? Withdrawal from...

"Whoever solicits or receives … any….thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both." -- 18 USC Sec. 211 -- Bribery, Graft and Conflicts of Interest: Acceptance or solicitation to obtain appointive public office

Sarah Palin has undoubted political skills. In fact, that's what one should expect from someone who defeated an incumbent governor in the primary and a former governor in the general election. But her common touch and winning speaking style do not mean she is a reincarnation of Ronald Reagan.

It has been nearly a year and a half since Sarah Palin became a household name in America and the world over. Despite the fact she was on the bottom half of a losing ticket and hasn't held public office in more than half a year three cable networks provided live coverage of her address to the Tea Party Convention last Saturday night in Nashville. Is there any other private American citizen who could command that sort of undivided attention? The answer is nobody else could and liberals know it all too well. [...] During Reagan's lifetime he was at...

Rep. Patrick Kennedy has come out swinging against the man who now sits in the Senate seat his father held for 47 years. Telling a blog for the Hill newspaper that Senator Scott Brown was "in the tank for the Republicans," the Rhode Island Democrat called Brown's candidacy a "joke." The putdown is a familiar one for the Kennedy family. Forty-eight years ago, a thirty-year-old Ted Kennedy heard the same taunt from his primary opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Edward McCormack: "If his name was Edward Moore, with his qualifications -- with your qualifications, Teddy -- if it was Edward Moore,...

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- Karen Wright stood behind the counter at Mighty Subs and explained why she plans to vote for Republican Scott Brown in Tuesday's special election. "He loves our chicken parm," Wright said, referring to an Italian-style parmesan chicken sandwich that is a house specialty at the diner near Brown's Senate campaign headquarters here. Brown is a regular at Mighty Subs, which boasts of its oversized sandwiches, "Our Small Is Their Large." Wright says of the three-term state senator, "He's a nice guy, very down-to-earth." Brown's nice-guy likeability may be his strongest advantage in the race to fill the...

<p>On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and new White House counsel Robert Bauer, ordered staff to begin researching similar breakdowns -- if any -- from the Bush Administration.</p>