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WASHINGTON – It's no surprise that Democratic lawmakers got an earful about health care legislation when they went home this summer. But Texas Republicans in the House who have already denounced the legislation have also been bombarded by correspondence from highly informed constituents. The office of Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, received an unprecedented amount of mail, spokesman Sean Brown said. In the five weeks prior to the health care debate, Barton received nearly 400 e-mails. In the five weeks after it began, he got almost 2,800. "We have legislative correspondents that are tasked with returning mail, and they have been...

On Today's Show... September 8, 2009   Rush's Post-Vacation Opening Monologue: Don't Get Giddy Over August, Folks One month is not an endgame victory. Sustain your efforts. (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen)   Obama's School Speech Explained (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen) He preaches personal responsibility to these kids. Why doesn't he do that for the rest of us? » This is Why He's Talking Conservative Themes:  Obama's Fast Losing Whites, Independents   "President Obama did not explain to the young skulls full of mush today why he opposes school choice for the poorest among them, unlike his own kids. He...

Naomi Wolf is going back to her roots. The journalist and author, who has seemingly been on a break for the past couple of years from writing books on the kinds of feminist themes that made her famous in the early 1990s, has signed on with the Ecco Press for a project tentatively titled A Cultural History of the Vagina. Ms. Wolf was represented by lit agent John Brockman. Neither was not available for comment. In her last three books—one a memoir about her father, the other two polemics on American politics—the author has departed from the area of expertise...

Think about that for a second. Are they a death panel? I think they are. On a day to day basis...... hourly.... they kill information. They kill A LOT of information. Whatever gets deemed too inconvenient gets omitted and ignored and suppressed. Whatever is unavoidable they propagandize and spin away to make it fit the template, or they just poo poo and down play it. They are a body which keeps rationing and rationing information that they don't approve of. Think about some of those commonly heard talking points regarding the drive bys: "If it bleeds it leads" Except when...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2009 – Iraqi security forces are making tremendous progress throughout southern Iraq, the commander of coalition forces in the region said today. Army Maj. Gen. Richard Nash, who commands the Minnesota National Guard’s 34th Infantry Division as well as Multinational Division South in Iraq, said the Iraqi army, police and border police are performing very well. “The Iraqi security forces have had tremendous success in establishing security throughout the nine provinces of southern Iraq,” Nash said in a video conference with Pentagon reporters today. The spreading security is encouraging local Iraqis to side with the government and...

A major question facing Senate Democrats as they return to Washington this week is whether they are willing to use the budget process to pass health care reform.Normally, Senate rules require 60 votes to end a filibuster necessary to pass legislation. But tumultuous town hall meetings during the August recess, combined with Sen. Ted Kennedy's death, have weakened the chances that 60 can be reached. Under a budget process known as "reconciliation," Democrats would need just a simple majority to pass legislation. But there are key procedural hurdles to this strategy, which would also inflame political opposition. An IBD analysis...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Sept. 8, 2009 – NATO International Security Assistance Force servicemembers have helped Afghan forces in their efforts to aid flood victims in eastern Afghanistan. In Laghman province’s Alingar district, ISAF servicemembers delivered three truckloads of humanitarian aid items to Sundurwa villagers Sept. 3 after a road washed out, destroying a house and killing nine children. Two children were missing after the flood. In an effort to support the Afghan Border Police, who initially responded to the washout and provided humanitarian aid, ISAF servicemembers, including an engineer serving with the Nuristan provincial reconstruction team, assessed the road and...

In the federal lawsuit claiming that Barack Obama cannot legitimately be president, today’s hearing in Santa Ana focused not on documents that allegedly prove he was Kenyan-born but on the conflicts of plaintiff’s attorney Orly Taitz. Judge David O. Carter dismissed Taitz’s motion to have two of her clients removed from the case and also tossed her motion to have Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato removed from the case. Carter said there was no basis in Taitz’s complaint that Nakazato was biased against her in an earlier administrative ruling. Additional, Carter told Taitz that she had no choice but to work...

Barack Obama will cement the new co-operative relationship between the US and the United Nations this month when he becomes the first American president to chair its 15-member Security Council. The topic for the summit-level session of the council on September 24 is nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament – one of several global challenges that the US now wants to see addressed at a multinational level...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2009 – Iran is a problem not just for the United States, but for the greater Middle East and the world, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told the Arabic television network Al-Jazeera in an interview being broadcast this week. Gates long has wanted to speak with Al-Jazeera, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said, because the news network reaches the Muslim world in a way no other network can duplicate. The hour-long interview ran in its entirety yesterday and will repeat through the week. If Iran builds nuclear weapons, it would create an arms race in the Middle...

100% of proceeds from this auction will benefit the Ride 2 Recovery program whose mission is to improve the health and wellness of wounded warriors by providing a life changing experience that can impact their lives forever. He just posted on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/karlrove?ref=nf I'm participating in a charity auction to benefit wounded warriors. Bid on a private lunch for three (3) with me at Bobby Van's Steakhouse in Washington, D.C. 100% of proceeds from this auction will benefit the Ride 2 Recovery program whose... mission is to improve the health and wellness of wounded warriors by providing a life changing...

What do the liberal Jones and conservative Virginia statehouse candidate Bob McDonnell have in common? Ideas—and that's costing them their careers. Plus, Glenn Beck's next targets. My guess is that Van Jones and Bob McDonnell aren't the closest of friends. One is an African-American activist from the progressive left, who's spent much of his adult life in inner-city Oakland fighting The Man; the other is a white middle-aged pro-life Catholic Republican, who has long represented The Man in the deep-red Sunbelt suburbs of Virginia. But I'd recommend that Jones and McDonnell get in touch. Over the past few weeks, both...

WASHINGTON — As the Obama administration and Congress begin a heated debate about how many more American troops to send to Afghanistan, military observers, soldiers on the ground there and some top Pentagon officials are warning that dispatching even tens of thousands more soldiers and Marines might not ensure success. Some even fear that deploying more U.S. troops, especially in the wake of a U.S. airstrike last week that killed and wounded scores of Afghan civilians, would convince more Afghans that the Americans are occupiers rather than allies and relieve the pressure on the Afghan government to improve its own...

David Horowitz's recent appearance on Glenn Beck and the subsequent resignation of former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones has brought a renewed interest in understanding the nature of the political Left. I got an email yesterday from Robert, one of our readers: I am an avid reader and have followed David Horowitz for some time. Just finishing Liberal Fascism, I would like input into what you might consider to be the best 10-12 books an individual could read to best understand the progressive movement. Could you forward some recommendations? I promised Robert a post in which I made my recommendations....

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2009 – Iraq security forces, working with U.S. advisors, arrested eight suspected terrorists in Iraq in the past week, including a suspected terrorist leader who was a general in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, military officials said. Two other suspects were killed Sept. 6 after firing on forces as they tried to arrest them. The special operations forces and U.S. advisors were on a mission in Basra to deliver court-issued warrants to charge them with smuggling and distributing arms to terrorist groups. Here is a breakdown of the missions that led to the eight arrests: -- In Salahuddin...

MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Sept. 8, 2009 – A boy who wanted to become an architect ended up enlisting to be a part of the brotherhood of the Marine Corps. Today, as an officer, he uses his experience as an enlisted Marine to help those in his charge. Growing up, Marine Corps Capt. Alexis Sanchez went to a fine-arts high school to study and prepare his art portfolio to be submitted to a college. But a sudden change of heart led the 18-year-old to become a Marine. Sanchez, the operations officer for Headquarters Company, Combat Logistics Regiment 17,...

Appointments: In a reprise of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, President Obama acts like he didn't know his special adviser, Van Jones, was radical. But video says otherwise.The White House let Jones go after conservative Web sites and Fox News revealed his radical past, including signing a petition circulated by far-left conspiracists suggesting the government was behind 9/11. But soon after hiring Jones, top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett celebrated his appointment, along with his radical activism, before an audience of liberal Democrats. "We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House," she gushed in a...

The Obama Team and the Democrat National Committee have Texas in their sights. They chose to have their annual meeting in Texas’ capital city on September 10th, 11th, and 12th because they think they can turn Texas BLUE in the next election. They want to bring their failed Washington policies to a bedrock Republican state that is still thriving despite Democrat attempts to run our great country into the ground.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2009 – An Air National Guardsman from Cambridge, Mass., knows first-hand the extent to which his co-workers in the city’s fire department support their military brethren. “They all [offer] whatever we need,” said Patrick Haggerty, a lieutenant with the fire department and a master sergeant who serves in fire protection in the Massachusetts Air National Guard. “If work needs to be done at home, … everyone’s like, ‘If any work needs to be done while you’re gone, let us know.’” That’s one of the reasons Haggerty, a 16-year veteran of the fire department, nominated his employer for...