Free Republic

Now that many Americans realize the Obamacare bills in Congress herald a government takeover of U.S. health care, they can’t afford to relax. Yes, their voices -- raised in town halls and other forums -- sent surprised liberals and “progressives” scurrying to regroup. A few even repudiated the idea that a “public option” (that is, a government health plan) is necessary to fix the system. But now is the most dangerous phase, not the time to celebrate, for those of us who believe real reform doesn’t involve more government control. Watch out. President Obama and the liberals on Capitol Hill...

'Global Cooling' Exhibit Still on Display at the Smithsonian by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York on 09. 8.09 ... Photo via Yglesias The Smithsonian boasts one of the nation's most respected, most visited, and most famous group of museums. So what's it doing still displaying an exhibit based on 1970s-era science--that the earth is undergoing 'global cooling'--in its Natural History Museum in 2009? You're probably most likely to hear about global cooling these days from climate change deniers who sometimes say something along the lines of: "Well, scientists said that there was global cooling in the '70s. Now it's global...

I wish President Obama would say to Congress: Members of Congress, I ask you to address our fiscal emergency. In 1964, President Johnson won a landslide victory -- quite similar to mine. His election also brought liberals into Congress. The next year, they created the first government-run health care plan: Medicare. They meant well, but unfortunately, this was the height of fiscal irresponsibility. I know Medicare is popular with the elderly. Of course it is. Everyone likes getting free things. But it is unsustainable. Retirees believe that their Medicare bills are paid from a "trust fund" that was created with...

Why did The Associated Press -- and newspapers across the country -- run the controversial and disturbing images of an American Marine dying in Afghanistan? The AP said it was "to make public an image that conveys the grimness of war and the sacrifice of young men and women fighting it." It succeeded. Fortunately, we are not a nation of trembling children powerless to discern between news and exploitation. And it is, despite the anger surrounding the AP's decision, the job of the press to offer citizens a glimpse -- albeit slight, in this case -- of the war they...

The man credited as the prophet of the financial crisis has warned of the growing threat of a global, double-dip recession, where the economy briefly recovers before slipping back into contraction.

When the government accuses a doctor of running a "pill mill," prosecutors portray every aspect of his practice in a sinister light. Prescribing painkillers becomes drug trafficking, applying for insurance reimbursement becomes fraud, making bank deposits becomes money laundering and working with people at the office becomes conspiracy. When Siobhan Reynolds thinks a doctor has been unfairly targeted for such a prosecution, she tries to counter the official narrative by highlighting the patients he has helped and dramatizing the conflict between drug control and pain control. But now the government has turned its reinterpretive powers on Reynolds, portraying the pain...

On Monday, Sept. 7, 2009, President Obama's hand-picked "green jobs czar," Van Jones, resigned. It was a week too late to prevent all the revelations about Jones: his admitted agreement with communist philosophy; his membership in the 9/11 "truther" movement; his racist views on environmental policy (he accused "white polluters and white environmentalists" of "steering poison into the people of color's communities"); his ridiculous ideas about school violence ("You've never seen a Columbine done by a black child … a black kid might shoot another black kid. He's not going to shoot up the whole school"); his unmitigated hatred for...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States wants to enlist its 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the effort to combat hurricanes, pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched a campaign Tuesday to entice the blue, brown and green-clad multitudes to be even more prepared, with the promise of a new patch if they pitch in. The young scouts will be able to emblazon their sashes or vests with the patch if they undergo the training which readies them for an emergency. "This new preparedness patch will increase citizen preparedness and enhance our country's readiness for...

Tom Daschle is the human toe fungus of Washington -- a persistent infection that may disappear from time to time, but always comes back with a vengeance. Despite abandoning his secretary of health and human services nomination in disgrace in February 2009, the K Street tax cheat who evaded IRS rules for years remains a top White House confidante and policy strategist. In fact, he's leading the drive to save Obamacare. He climbed up from under the bus back into the Oval Office and onto the sets of "Meet the Press" and "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" to offer his...

If you want some indication of the disarray that the "progressives" find themselves in, consider that disgraced broadcaster Dan Rather will be keynoting a September 23 event sponsored by The Nation magazine on "What Will Become of the News?" The Nation calls Rather "legendary," ignoring how he was put out to pasture by CBS News after he used fake documents in 2004 to smear then-President Bush. Tickets to hear and see Rather are $200 each. Rather is a legend in his own mind-and apparently the minds of those left-wingers who appreciate his effort to defeat Bush's re-election bid and throw...

The president has countless things to worry about, but at least he can be confident his children are safe. Whether the First Family is vacationing in the Grand Canyon or hosting town halls in New Hampshire, Secret Service agents are always on the job. This is true even when the Obama daughters are in about the safest place imaginable: the hallowed halls of the exclusive Sidwell Friends private school, where they attend classes along with the other children of Washington’s privileged elite. Of course, most Washington, D.C. parents don’t have the Secret Service, and most don’t have Sidwell Friends, either....

Morale matters -- especially in a time of war. Morale even matters in an "overseas contingency operation," the hazy bureaucratic phrase the Obama administration sought to substitute for "The Global War on Terror." The GWOT is a poor name in my opinion (terror is a tactic), but at least it sketched the wicked problem al-Qaida's 9-11 attack posed -- a war fought on a global scale, where transportation, weapons and communications technologies had shrunk the planet. Sept. 11 demonstrated that the distance between "over there" (overseas) and "over here" could be easily bridged by a terrorist organization. Knowledge is the...

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is planning to move several hundred Border Patrol agents away from the U.S.-Mexico border and will not secure a single additional mile of the U.S. border in fiscal 2010, according to the department's annual performance report. The document -- "Department of Homeland Security Annual Performance Report: Fiscal Years 2008-2010" -- was originally published by the Bush administration on Jan. 15 and was updated by the Obama administration on May 7. Excluding the border between Alaska and Canada, the combined length of the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada is about 6,000 miles (with almost...

Dear Carrie: My husband died recently, and it's just me now. Who will look out for me if I have issues with Medicare or Social Security? -- A Reader Dear Reader: My heart goes out to you as you adjust to the loss of your husband. The death of a loved one can make everything else pale in significance. But as your question implies, you still need to deal with the practical and financial issues in life, and those can seem a lot more difficult when facing them alone. At this time, it's really important to reach out to friends,...

Community colleges, once the stepchildren of higher education, have become objects of loving attention by the Obama administration, which is looking for ways to shower them with federal dollars. On July 14 President Obama announced a proposal to invest $12 billion in federal spending for community colleges so they could help laid-off workers and others hit by the current recession learn "the skills they need to fill the jobs of the future." Earlier, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had announced a $7 million federal grant competition "to establish innovative and sustainable community college programs that prepare displaced workers for second...

HBO showed the film "Schindler's List" last week. The 1993 Steven Spielberg movie never ceases to arouse my deepest emotions. The perennial question put forth in the film remains: How could people wantonly kill so many others as a matter of state policy? This is more than history, however. There are those who would gladly "finish the job" the Nazis started. The Obama administration -- like previous administrations -- is pressuring Israel in ways that, if the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succumbs, will effectively give Israel's modern enemies the opportunity to destroy its people. Next time it is...

President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It's our system. I like it." Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride. But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic issue is...

With the massive increases in federal spending, inflation is one of the risks that awaits us. To protect us from the political demagoguery that will accompany that inflation, let's now decide what is and what is not inflation. One price or several prices rising is not inflation. Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom. As the late Nobel Laureate Professor Milton Friedman said, "(I)nflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it cannot occur without a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in...

WASHINGTON -- President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It's our system. I like it." Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride. But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic...