Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has challenged many members of his party to take climate change seriously, said Friday that he plans to invite lawmakers and governmental executives from around the globe to California this fall to address solutions to the problem. The governor said he will invite officials from Europe, as well as from Australia, China, India and other countries, in the hope of forming an international alliance of community and regional leaders. He is planning the conference for November, a month before the United Nations holds its next round of international climate talks...

NEW YORK -- The morning after he declared he would suspend his presidential campaigning and return to Washington to deal with the U.S. economic crisis, Sen. John McCain made one last campaign stop, speaking at a conference on global issues organized by former president Bill Clinton. Addressing his dramatic call for a pause in the intense presidential campaign, McCain said he intends to "join" the debate in Washington over how to address the meltdown in the country's financial institutions. "I cannot carry on a campaign as though this dangerous situation had not occurred, or as though a solution were at...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter and member of the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee, will endorse John McCain for president on Wednesday, her spokesman tells CNN. “This is a hard decision for me personally because frankly I don't like him,” she said of Obama in an interview with CNN’s Joe Johns. “I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him.”

WASHINGTON -- For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed to be fine for the nation and for its citizens -- certainly better than government meddling. No longer. Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair,...

Toll road opponents today will ask the Sunset Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislature to abolish the Texas Department of Transportation, saying the agency has become too corrupt and too dysfunctional to fix, 1200 WOAI news reports. "We want to see elected leadership at the helm of Tex-DOT," says long time toll road opponent Terri Hall, the founder of the citizen action group Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom. "We are done with this unelected beaurocracy that is just an arm of private road building companies and the lackeys of this governor." The idea of eliminating TexDOT and establishing a...

Anyone familiar with the threat posed by the advancing American Fifth Column understands all too clearly that our Constitution is under attack. Whether it is the insistence that the Constitution is a living document meant to conform to the will of the times or the institution of political correctness – a shadow set of laws effectively usurping the laws of our Constitutional Republic – the American Fifth Column is slowly, incrementally, systematically, chipping away at the wisdom as set forth by our Founders and Framers. With news that a non-governmentally charged commission is introducing a measure that would impose “group...

The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve By Gabor Steingart in Washington Humiliation for Mr. Dollar: Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Bank, faces a general investigation by the International Monetary Fund. Just one more example of the Fed losing its power. The United States Federal Reserve Bank, or Fed, seems as much a part of America as Coca-Cola or Pizza Hut. But at least one difference has become apparent in recent days. While the pizza chain and soft-drink maker are likely to expand their scope of influence in the age of globalization, the US...

John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support. But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has now abandoned his goal of fixing the problem that led to his historic election in 2003. With the revised budget proposal he released Wednesday, the governor has effectively conceded that California's era of perpetual budget deficits will not end on his watch. --snip-- His trouble started early, when he proposed spending cuts that were politically unpalatable while failing to follow through on a fundamental, top-to-bottom rethinking of the way the state does business. When the economy briefly surged and brought in billions of dollars in unexpected tax revenue, Schwarzenegger lost his zeal for fiscal discipline and...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, with talent on loan from G-d, at the cutting-edge of societal evolution, with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling,...

Calling state government dysfunctional, a bipartisan group launched a reform effort Wednesday that it said would be backed by its own political action committee. The group, called California Forward, will push for passage of a proposed November ballot initiative supported by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to take away the Legislature's power to draw political districts and give it instead to an independent panel. Advocates say this will help moderates get elected. The reform group also plans to address the state budgeting process. Leon Panetta, a former Democratic congressman from Monterey and chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton, is leading...

MIAMI (FBW) – Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush could barely contain his amusement at the Democrat Party’s Florida and Michigan delegate dilemma in its tightly contested presidential race, saying it’s “ironic beyond belief” that the party which accused him and other Republicans of suppressing the vote in the 2000 Florida presidential election re-count now “got themselves in a hole” of “their own doing.” “My thoughts are filled with irony that every vote should count,” Bush said with a broad smile. “I mean this brings back memories of hyperbole and anger, mock anger …. It was a political circus for several...

I'm an elitist. Eighty percent of the critical decisions affecting Israel are shaped by maybe 100 or 200 people, 300. These are my clients. Thus spaketh Prof. Yehezkel Dror, the resident blabbermouth in the Winograd Commission, which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed in the wake of the 2006 war with Hizbullah. Dror made this statement in his interview with the Jerusalem Post last week. In a separate op-ed in Haaretz, Dror expanded on his theme. He explained that of these 300 decision makers who make life and death decisions in Israel, "less than thirty" are elected officials. So as Dror...

He says he's not running for president, but New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg traveled to the delegate-rich state of California Saturday deliver a scorching attack on Washington for failing to keep up with the need for new airports, roads, water systems and bridges across America. While China and other nations are investing heavily in ports and high-speed trains "Washington doesn't have a plan" to address crumbling U.S. infrastructure, Bloomberg said. In remarks clearly aimed at a national audience, the mayor said politics trumps common sense in Congress, where pork-barrel spending takes priority. Washington "spends money to win votes," Bloomberg said....

Welcome to the Monday Edition of the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies! Filling in for Chuck today.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called on lawmakers on Wednesday to pass legislation to allow the private sector to have a bigger role in building, operating and maintaining the state's public works. The Republican governor, who has often spoken in favor of public-private partnerships to improve and expand state infrastructure, urged the state's Democrat-led legislature to approve bills that would expand the types of projects, services and government entities that could enter into such tie-ups. Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers rallied voters last year to support ballot measures authorizing more than $40 billion in general obligation debt to...

AUSTRALIAN scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, researchers say. Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas. -snip- Even farmers who laugh at the idea of environmentally friendly kangaroo farts say that's nothing to joke about, particularly given the devastating drought Australia is suffering. -snip-

We all want progress. We may disagree whether gay marriage or drug legalization constitutes progress or not. But we all want better things for the world -- better food, better health and well-being, scientific and technical advances, wiser political systems, more peace and freedom,  more happy children, more humane treatment of animals, more tolerance, more prosperity for the world, you name it. That's called being a decent person. So what kind of person has to label himself "Progressive?" Obviously somebody who believes he (or she) understands real progress better than the rest of us. Because if you are a Progressive...

For Wayne Logan, a single father of two, being selected for the city's experimental cash-rewards program for the poor was like hitting the lottery. "I'm happy. I'm grateful," he declared, sounding somewhat amazed at his good fortune. "To get paid to do things I'm doing anyway is a welcome feeling." Logan, 49, was among the first enrollees in a daring $50 million pilot project launched by Mayor Bloomberg with private funds to pay poor families as much as $5,000 a year simply to do the right thing. A child getting a library card is worth $50. A student who passes...

It was the breaking-news headline last Friday that three construction workers had died in a coal-mine accident in Princeton, Ind., and maybe the markets melting down too, that congealed in my mind a thought I'd been kicking around for a while now: Our country is having an "Atlas Shrugged" moment. Trapped coal miners in Utah, smashed levees in New Orleans, busted steam pipes and flooded subways in New York City, a collapsed bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, an air-traffic-control system stressed to its break point. Could this really be a description of the most prosperous country on the...

The past two years witnessed a welcome sensitization of the Russian public towards skinhead attacks and ultra-nationalist propaganda. In view of escalating violent attacks and other actions against foreigners, the debate on Russian fascism is currently experiencing a new high in the Russian media. There was a similar debate in the mid-1990s, when the confrontation between President Boris Yeltsin and the “intransigent opposition,” a state of near-civil war in Moscow, the ascent of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the appearance of neo-Nazi parties, and the first Chechen war, gave rise to the notion of a “Weimar Russia.” Even though this construct has made...

Progressivism was the reform movement that ran from the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, during which leading intellectuals and social reformers in the United States sought to address the economic, political, and cultural questions that had arisen in the context of the rapid changes brought with the Industrial Revolution and the growth of modern capitalism in America. The Progressives believed that these changes marked the end of the old order and required the creation of a new order appropriate for the new industrial age. There are, of course, many different representations of Progressivism: the...

Over the past decade, the expression public-private partnership has crept into our publiclexicon. What is a public-private partnership? What purposes were they supposedlycreated to serve? What, on the other hand, is free enterprise? Are the two compatible?In answering these questions we shall see that although advocates of public-privatepartnerships frequently speak of economic development, public-private partnershipsreally amount to economic control—they are just one of the key components of thecollectivist edifice being built up around the idea of sustainable development. Within theeconomic arena of sustainable development is the emergence of what we might call softfascism: a system that fits the dictionary definitions...

What is a "unipolar" world? by Mike Whitney What is a "unipolar" world? It is a world in which there is one master, one sovereign--- one center of authority, one center of force, one center of decision-making. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. It has nothing in common with democracy, which is the power of the majority in respect to the interests and opinions of the minority. In Russia , we are constantly being lectured about...

FALLS CHURCH, Va.--Starting July 1, residents and drivers in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads will be taxed by regional governments in which they have little say or influence. It's all part of a tax hike the Republican-controlled Legislature enacted earlier this year. And it's a sharp break from what the state has allowed in the past.

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, could end up swapping Downing Street for a job as the first full-time European Union president, under a plan being actively touted by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. Mr Sarkozy is understood to have discussed the idea with other EU leaders ahead of next week’s European summit, Mr Blair’s last major international event as prime minister. His support for Mr Blair taking on a big European job is a remarkable sign of Anglo-French rapprochement since Mr Sarkozy replaced Jacques Chirac as president last month. German diplomats say Mr Sarkozy put his plan to Angela...

AUSTIN — Transportation officials on Thursday approved more than 80 toll road projects across the state, many of which probably would use some private financing. State lawmakers recently passed a two-year moratorium on some private toll road contracts. The law still allows local and state planners to move on the new toll projects — with a price range of more than $50 billion — although the rules have changed. Under these projects, local officials would get the first crack at development before the state steps in. And even if privately financed, the government would own and operate the roads and...

Heinsohn is not concerned with the absolute size of populations, but rather with the share of teenagers and young men. If this share becomes too big compared to the total population, we are facing a youth bulge. The problem starts when families begin to produce three, four or more sons. This will cause the sons to fight over access to the positions in society that give power and prestige. Then you will have a lot of boys and young men running around filled with aggression and uncontrollable hormones. And then we shall experience mass killings, until a sufficient number of...

SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Joined by Governor Schwarzenegger, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines, business leaders from the newly formed Coalition to Advance Healthcare Reform (CAHR) today called for passage of market-based healthcare reforms to fix California and the nation's broken healthcare system. The group of business leaders said now is the time to bring all stakeholders together to achieve meaningful results that not only solve the cost and coverage problem, but build a healthier California. Launched at a press conference on Capitol Hill earlier this week, CAHR...

It is a common belief that socialism is rooted in the Bible; but this is not the case. The Bible is certainly full of social protest and animosity to the jabotinsky social order which enables the rich to live in comfort through the suffering of the poor. But socialism is not only a protest: socialism is a concrete plan to solve the problem of social inequality - and this plan is of a kind decidedly not contemplated by the Bible. On the other hand, the Bible does contain a concrete plan for social revolution (or rather, the blueprint for such...

The father of modern economics, Adam Smith, wrote more than 200 years ago about the all-powerful "invisible hand" of the market. It was tough, he said, but good for all. The late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman was the great champion of the invisible hand and free markets. Governments, he said, should just let markets do their work. Economist Duncan Foley, in his new book "Adam's Fallacy," says wait a minute. This is free market theology, he says, and it's producing a value-free society, an unequal society, an immoral society. This hour On Point: the author of "Adam's Fallacy"...

Nearly seven years ago, on the eve of his becoming interim president of Russia, Vladimir Putin published his Millennium Manifesto. Following the collapse of communism and the chaos of the Yeltsin years, this was a blueprint for restoring Russian greatness which traced a "third way" between discredited Bolshevism and Western liberal democracy. The key was the restoration of the power of the state, whose monopoly of violence had been challenged in the 1990s by a combination of mafiosi, politically ambitious oligarchs, media barons and regional governors. As he takes stock more than half-way through his second presidential term, Mr Putin...

The Prime Minister has unveiled the world according to 'Mr Tony' as he launched into a bizarre lecture on life, the universe and everything. Tony Blair left an audience of Arab female university students lost for words as he called for a 'global culture' based on common values of openness, tolerance, equality and fairness. And he revealed the 'theory of Mr Tony' - you cannot please everyone so just press ahead even if others think you are wrong. The oddly-worded remarks came during a tour of a women-only university in the United Arab Emirates. What began an earnest question and...

SACRAMENTO — Expect surprises. It's no longer politics as usual. Want to overhaul the Legislature into a single nonpartisan house? How about creating universal health care or a bullet train? Voters may soon get the chance. Californians are so tired of Sacramento and Washington that they are creating a "unique hybrid democracy" to dissolve political gridlock on key issues — a trend that could spread across the nation. That's the conclusion reached by California's two foremost pollsters, looking back to the Nov. 7 election and ahead to coming sessions of the Legislature and Congress. Californians are backing away from the...

Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he follows California and national politics. STAR BILLING it's not: it's page 102 of the December edition of Men's Journal magazine, to be exact, where Arnold Schwarzenegger expounds on life and politics. California's governor admits that he's gained a girlymanish eight pounds since moving to Sacramento three years ago. Otherwise, the interview is notable for what it doesn't perpetuate: namely, a growing myth that Arnold's brand of bipartisanship can work in Washington. In the aftermath of last week's election, the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal...

What happens in Washington, D.C., can affect state and local elections. That's what happened on Election Day, when Republican voters stayed home in droves, discouraged from turning out to vote by media reports that the Congress was going Democrat, said Stephen Kinney, a partner with Public Opinion Strategy, a Republican polling company. "The Republicans stayed home because the election was nationalized," Kinney told a breakfast meeting of the San Gabriel Valley chapter of the Los Angles County Lincoln Clubs on Friday. Kinney said many statewide Republicans - from lieutenant governor candidate Tom McClintock to Secretary of State Bruce McPherson -...

After Arnold Schwarzenegger lost all four of the initiatives he sponsored in the California special election in 2005, he told the people of the Golden State that “I’ve heard you. I’m going to change.” He did. Since promising to change in his state of the state address in January, Schwarzenegger has become a better bridge builder and has showed an admirable willingness to work across the political aisle to accomplish important objectives. Yes, the governor has alienated some of my conservative friends in the process, but he has also gained quite a few Democratic friends. And as a result, while...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged Sunday the West had changed strategy in the fight against terrorism, telling Pakistan's president that brokering a broad Mideast peace deal was now as crucial as using force to battle militants.Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who switched his country's support from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said "the knot of terrorism will be untied through first resolving the Palestinian dispute."Musharraf also acknowledged that his government's efforts to cut off support for the Taliban in northwestern Pakistan had not achieved "100 percent success." Pakistan...

MEXICO CITY - California's Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, meeting with outgoing President Vicente Fox in Mexico City, hailed the Democratic takeover of Congress as healthy for democracy, saying "Washington was stuck." Schwarzenegger suggested that Washington follow his example in California where he has worked with Democrats to achieve bipartisan agreements, such as placing $37.3 billion in bond measures on the November ballot, which voters embraced and which are aimed at easing the state's traffic jams, aging schools and inadequate affordable housing. "I think this is good that we have new blood coming to Washington, that we have new people with...

As Washington insiders pore over the latest low job-approval ratings for George W. Bush, and as aficionados of British politics ponder the latest low ratings of Tony Blair, let's take a longer look at the political ebb and flow in America and Britain over the last quarter century or so. There is a certain parallelism.In the late 1970s, both countries experienced something like collapse -- a collapse of the Keynesian economics dominant in the post-World War II years, a collapse of the accommodationist foreign policy prevailing since the setback in Vietnam.From that collapse arose two improbable leaders on the political...

IT SHOULD be no surprise that Hugo Chávez prefers to dine with Ken Livingstone rather than Tony Blair on his trip to London: the Venezuelan President plays a similar role in global politics to that once played by his host in Britain. Mr Livingstone has revelled in tweaking the tail of powerful prime ministers in their own backyard while spending vast sums of money to promote his own agenda. Señor Chávez has similarly set himself up as irritant-in-chief to George Bush. Both have an unfortunate predilection for comparing their enemies to Nazis. If the London Mayor accuses a reporter of...

What is it about peace and prosperity and a two term Democratic Presidency that Democrats don't like?According to one of the leading liberal bloggers, Markos Moulitsas (or as he is known in the blogosphere - Kos), it is nothing that terribly significant. The head of the netroots high command suggests in Sunday's Washington Post, "Despite all his successes -- and eight years of peace and prosperity is nothing to sneeze at -- he never broke the 50-percent mark in his two elections. Regardless of the president's personal popularity, Democrats held fewer congressional seats at the end of his presidency than...

"WHO TODAY IS CALLED a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?" Harvey Mansfield asked this question almost 30 years ago in the preface to his Spirit of Liberalism, and the answer was almost self-evident. This was during the Carter administration, and things haven't gotten better since. There have been some exceptions to the rule of liberalism's weakness, but these exceptions have been fleeting, and the rule seems stronger than ever in the America of 2006.Not so in Great Britain. There, Tony Blair has shown strength and confidence in defense of liberty, and it turns out he is...

A week ago yesterday, Ferenc Gyurcsany, the man who would be Hungary's Tony Blair, led his socialist-liberal coalition to victory in the first round of parliamentary elections. He is poised to finish the job this Sunday and become Hungary's first post-communist prime minister to win re-election. It was, however, only his second most impressive triumph in the past two years. The more surprising win came in August 2004 when he was named prime minister. A battle had been brewing all that year within the Socialist party between the young party activists, led by Mr Gyurcsany, and the aging leadership. The...

What is Mr Lukashenko's background?He is a former prison guard and collective farm manager. In the early 1990s he was considered a bit of a reformer and even a democrat. He was part of a group of young politicians who helped to form an independent Belarus after the Soviet Union collapsed. The elections that brought him to power in 1994 were reasonably free and fair, and people genuinely thought he was going to be good for the country. He won on an anti-corruption platform, at a time when everything from the old Soviet Union was being sold off for...

As optimism poured into their hearts and knowledge crammed into their brains, more than 100 local residents peered with a wan smile into their collective future Friday during the first official smart growth educational workshop. Four erudite speakers presented a path toward a near-utopian life for Ukiahans -- full of walkable communities, slower traffic and more prominent greenscaping. But it was the far-reaching, more intimate impacts of smart growth that produced a series of gasps from the audience. A cross-sectional crowd of elected officials, public and private planners, contractors, builders and other concerned citizens took part of the workshop, co-sponsored...

IT'S THE SORT of behavior we have -- sadly -- come to expect from some in Congress. But when Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, announced last week that he was going to work for Gazprom, the Russian energy behemoth, he catapulted himself into a different league. It's one thing for a legislator to resign his job, leave his committee chairmanship and go to work for a company over whose industry he once had jurisdiction. It's quite another thing when the chancellor of Germany -- one of the world's largest economies -- leaves his job and goes to work for...

Joining the furious debate over withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., rejected calls for an immediate pullout while suggesting Iraq may not be stabilized until the new government is told that the U.S. troop commitment is not open-ended. Speaking to supporters in Rye Brook, N.Y., on Monday, Clinton recommended that a decision on U.S. forces be made after Iraq's Dec. 15 elections. "Then we have to tell this new government we are not going to be there forever, we are going to be withdrawing our young men and women and we expect you to start moving towards...

Let’s look at the basic numbers: since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, there have been more than 40 million abortions in America. According to the study, “one of every three American women will have an abortion by the time they reach 45.” Additionally, in a typical year there are 4.1 million live births, 1.3 million abortions and 900,000 miscarriages. The study found that “the average woman who seeks an abortion is 24 years old, unwed, earns a yearly income of about $25,000 and already is a mother…She has religious beliefs and is a Christian…the typical abortion is performed...

Recent developments in Central Asia – with Russian geopolitical influence again rising, while U.S. power in the region wanes – stand to invigorate a long-running debate over the philosophical foundation of the Kremlin’s foreign policy. The turn of events could breathe new life into so-called Eurasianists, who argue that Russia has a unique identity and should thus embark on a development course apart from the West. Since the Soviet collapse in 1991, Russian academics and policy-makers have struggled to develop a concept that could guide Russia’s revival. Westernizers and Eurasianists have played prominent roles in the ongoing debate. Eurasianism as...