Free Republic

Remarks to Students and Faculty at Alice Deal Junior High School 1991-10-01 Thank you, Ms. Mostoller, and thanks for allowing me to visit your classroom to talk to you and all these students, and millions more in classrooms all across the country.You know, long before I became President I was a parent. I remember the times that my kids came up with a really tough question or a difficult decision. I tried my best never to shut them down with a quick ``no.'' I would simply say those three magic words that made that problem disappear: ``Ask your Mother.'' [Laughter]Let...

From a reader: Jonah, The following quote from your column was spot on: "This suggests that the White House still thinks it has a communication problem, and if only it dispels the cloud of “lies” belched up by the opposition, there will be nothing but blue skies ahead. Funny how the people who run the most sophisticated communication operation in the history of the presidency keep concluding that their difficulties stem from their inability to get their message out and never from what their message actually is." Marketers make this mistake all the time, which ensures that marketing consultants like...

The old man had long ago given up fixing shoes and tried other occupations, but always at the same location, and usually with the same customers. But he never found any other work that gave him as much satisfaction as putting new soles on a pair of old uppers. Or a pair of Cat's Paw heels on shoes that still had a lot of good wear left in them. You could be sure he'd do the job neatly, surely, carefully -- to last. He loved the feel and aroma of new leather, the grain in the old. He was seldom...

Some major donors and GOP strategists have approached Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe,” about a national run, according to party sources. Read More:

Finally, some debate over U.S. war policy in Afghanistan. Or at least debate over George F. Will's call to pull the plug on U.S. war policy in Afghanistan, headlined "Time to Get Out of Afghanistan." The negative response from conservatives was revealing. It showed that after eight years of America's post-9/11 war efforts, which started out as President Bush's vaguely named "war on terror" and never crystallized into a cogent strategy against the jihad driving the "terror," ambiguity and confusion still cloud the prevailing thinking, from the conventional wisdom to war strategy. Most conservative rebuttals ignored Will's reckoning of just...

School districts across Texas are pondering whether they'll have their students watch a national address by President Barack Obama next week. The speech on the importance of education is aimed directly at the nation's school children at 11 a.m. Tuesday. Obama has asked school districts to carry the live webcast. Districts in North Texas have received complaints about the speech, and most are not broadcasting it to their students. "There appears to be a curriculum associated with the speech," said Fred Moses, chairman of the Collin County Republican Party. Parent Bobby Lochner said he wouldn't mind his children hearing a...

The health care bill under consideration in the House of Representatives would give President Obama the authority to name a new federal “Health Choices Commissioner” who would have sweeping power to govern the health insurance plans offered in a so-called "exchange" where millions of Americans would get their health insurance if the bill is enacted. These powers would include deciding which treatments are covered, which companies can participate, which states can run their own exchange, and enrolling individuals into the public exchange. Though the bill, House Resolution 3200, faces many political hurdles, it has passed three House committees and could...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama's government-run healthcare plan has been hooked up to life-support systems as he prepares to make one more desperate attempt to pull it back from the brink of death. The president's decision to remake the case for its passage before a joint session of Congress next Wednesday is based on the mistaken belief that his plan lost public support because it lacked a clear, compelling message. But the centerpiece of his presidency was brought down by much bigger and far more strategic weaknesses than Obama's confusingly vague and often contradictory arguments in its behalf. Americans instinctively rebelled...

Follow this link and Freep for Palin! http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/09/petraeus_scarborough_palin_who.html

TEL AVIV – The U.S. was an "apartheid regime" that civil rights workers helped turn into a "struggling, fledgling democracy," according to President Obama's controversial environmental adviser, Van Jones. In a video screened by WND, Jones also called for a new "theology of resistance" and "theology of liberation" aimed at transforming American society. Jones was speaking at the July 2005 Conference on Spiritual Activism in Berkeley, Calif., organized by radical activist Michael Lerner, the founding editor of the far-left magazine Tikkun. Stated Jones: "We forget sometimes that the people who poured out their blood on the ground in this country,...

If you hate the hubbub of crowded airports, you might want to consider flying out of Johnstown, Pa. The airport sees an average of fewer than 30 people per day, there is never a wait for security, you can park for free right outside the gate, and you are almost guaranteed a row to yourself on any flight. You might wonder how the region ever had the air traffic demand to justify such a facility. It didn't. But it is located in the district of one of Congress's most unapologetic earmarkers: Democrat John Murtha. In 20 years, Mr. Murtha has...

The unemployment rate rose to 9.7 percent in August, the highest since JUNE 1983, as employers eliminated a net total of 216,000 jobs.

Andy Levy provides this quotation. I haven't seen it anywhere else.

The United States has no alternative to oil to meet its massive energy needs and should recognize its energy interdependence with the Middle East, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote in an article on Friday. U.S. President Barack Obama has been pushing to boost green energy which cuts emissions of heat-trapping gases and reduces the use of fossil fuels. In his election campaign, Obama raised some potentially disturbing issues for the Saudis, such as ending dependence on Middle Eastern oil. In the article translated into Italian and published by Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Turki said energy independence was...

I have some liberals telling me this: Socialized health care will be fine because we have the following socialist programs in place: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Public Parks, Public Schools, WIC, highway system and infrastructure, etc... Is there any way to refute that. I do know that medicare was forced on America by a democrat, LBJ. Any advice would help. Thanks

Failing miserably in his quest to convince America’s grown-ups of the virtues of government-run health care, President Obama has set his sights on a much more captive audience: the millions of children embarking on another year in America’s often dismal government-run schools. The White House says the president’s address to students next Tuesday is supposed to “inspire” and challenge them to “work hard, set educational goals and take responsibility for their learning.” Obama’s speech, to be broadcast live on the White House’s website, will be by the administration’s own admission an unprecedented event. As Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, stated...

Lunch time rolls around for me at work and it is time for me to grab up some grub, get a cold diet coke, and close the door to my office to work on this blog or to read up on the Volunteers for a little while. It's the 30 minutes or so of solitude in an otherwise crazy hectic day for me. So today as I sit down to eat a spicey italian from Subway I am in a football frenzy. It is just 2 days till the Big Orange hit the field and so I journy over to...

What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

There's no "I" in "team," but there is definitely one in "Biden." With President Obama off on vacation, his second in two weeks, unofficial Acting President Joe Biden has stepped into the vacuum, claiming credit Thursday for the successes of the administration's $787 billion stimulus package and fielding questions on health care reform something his boss hasn't done in nearly two weeks. The vice president, borrowing Mr. Obama's teleprompter for a speech before a friendly audience at the Brookings Institution, said "I" more than a dozen times as he pointed repeatedly to progress on the economy and to his lofty...

Van Jones, Barack Obama's Green Czar, was part of the organizing committee for a leftist effort to undermine the United States in the war on terror just months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.Jones signed a statement by the organizing committee in early January 2002 accusing the United States of having "mercilessly bombed Afghanistan" in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks by al Qaeda, which at the time was being protected by Afghanistan's Taliban-led government.The statement, found on Rense.com, is part of an appeal for funds to start a bi-weekly newspaper dedicated to undermining the United...