Free Republic

The Obama presidency has not led to a post-racial America, says Toby Harnden, but black Republicans in Congress could help break down barriers . Campaigning a few miles from Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, Tim Scott described last week how he was born into poverty and a broken home, much like Barack Obama. But the conclusions that Scott, 45, drew were very different from those of Obama. When he was 15, a man who ran a Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant taught him "that there was a way to think my way out...

Barack Obama's firing of Stanley McChrystal showed weakness and will backfire He may have been hailed for his decisiveness, but Barack Obama sacked the wrong man and has yet to sort out his Afghanistan policy, writes Toby Harnden in Washington Published: 4:37PM BST 26 Jun 2010 For the Washington cognoscenti, the appointment of General David Petraeus marked the crescendo of President Barack Obama's Wonderful Week. In firing General Stanley McChrystal, Obama, the ultimate cool cat, was transformed into Mr Angry. The law professor finally became commander-in-chief. Obama, so the Beltway groupthink goes, turned a lose-lose situation into a political victory...

Thanks to my mother-in-law, commenter VinceP1974 and @JenFidel via Twitter for alerting me to the fact that Rush Limbaugh highlighted this blog post of mine about Colin Powell and Tom Ridge on his nationally-syndicated programme yesterday. With an estimated 13.5 million listeners a week, Limbaugh is the most popular talk radio host in America. Here's what he said, according to the transcript on his site: RUSH: Interesting piece - it's a blog - by Toby Harnden at the UK Telegraph. The headline of his piece here: "What Right Do Colin Powell and Tom Ridge Have to Lecture the Republican Party?"...

The first time I met Senator John Forbes Kerry was shortly before 9/11, when I was sitting in the office of a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talking to a young staffer about European defence. Suddenly, the Massachusetts senator strode into the room and plonked himself, hands on hips, between us. Then he just stood there, clearly expecting us to jump up because he had graced us with his hallowed presence. He turned his back on me and I studied his perfectly arranged thatch – this was a man who has spent some time on coiffing his...

Whatever else you might think about the war in Iraq, the fact is that the Iraqis have stopped supporting Islamic terrorism outside their borders and no longer pose a threat of using or supplying WMD to these monsters. Al Qaeda violence in Iraq has been quelled, and the problem there has shifted to the traditional enmity between Shi’as and Sunnis that has led to extreme violence in the presence of a weak government and our reluctance to use overwhelming force. The scene has now shifted to Iran, where major Islamic terrorism against America started in 1979, and where, fortunately, we...

Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier. His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow's commander aimed 12 feet high. Click to enlarge A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 metres, well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold...