Free Republic

As if last night's Perino and Rove tantrums weren't torturous enough to have to sit through...Now we have Karl 1, 2 and 3(I missed the name of the woman). Am I imagining that I just heard all three of them jump the shark and continue to rip O'Donnell, Angle and other Tea Party backed Conservatives as being weak and unelectable? Barnes said that the main goal of the GOP should not be to elect Conservatives but to defeat Dems. Uh huh, Fred. HOW ABOUT BOTH, Beltway Boy? Maybe living in DC for too long has affected their reasoning powers and...

Two conservative GOP leaders with presidential aspirations, Mitch Daniels and Haley Barbour, both recently stated that they think the GOP should ignore social issues in lieu of fiscal issues. Some think such chatter is a concerted effort emanating from establishment Republicans anxious to win over/hold on to independents heading into the 2010 and 2012 elections. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the much-touted GOP book released that same day, "Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders," is "a manifesto of fiscal conservatism" that "avoids the hot-button social issues, including abortion and gay rights, which have been...

Republicans dismissed as a political ploy Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's announcement Tuesday that he would attach a proposal giving young illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship on an upcoming defense bill.

But this time I wouldn’t even consider volunteering to go to Afghanistan because the Obama administration is no longer fighting to win the war. Many of my closest Army friends have deployed to Afghanistan and they confided in me that they would not want to go again because they felt their hands were tied by restrictive rules of engagement (ROE). These highly-trained Special Operations soldiers have a legion of stories about not being allowed to fight as they had been trained. President Obama’s arbitrary July 2011 deadline for U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan to start drawing down weakens our allies’...

In 1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, a novel about the rise of tyranny in America, whose message was that it indeed can happen here. Just to remind us that in fact it “can happen here”, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer used the occasion of his appearance on noted legal forum, Good Morning America, to suggest that there may not be any First Amendment protection for burning the Koran. “Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theater,” Breyer told me. “Well, what is it? Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And...

WILMINGTON, Del. — On the eve of the primary that would end his electoral career, Rep. Mike Castle was in a reflective mood. He seemed calm and confident, yet almost everything he said sounded valedictory as he offered a prescient analysis that explained in advance a defeat that echoes through the nation. A genial and courtly man in the manner of the elder President Bush (who held a fundraiser for him in Kennebunkport), the nine-term congressman was mourning the decline of both the conciliatory style of politics that animated his career and the moderate Republican disposition that the Tea Party...

Today's AMPC features a look at sculpture in the realm of street art in Chicago, Maynard James Keenan redeeming his awful cover of Imagine by knocking one out of the park with a superb cover of Rocketman, and the incarnation of strange that Joaquin Phoenix has become.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's popular support has softened at home, but he still has plenty of fans in Europe, a poll released Wednesday found. More than three-quarters of those polled in 11 European Union countries said they approve of Obama's handling of international policies, compared with just over half of Americans having that view. The annual survey was conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonpartisan policy institution that promotes trans-Atlantic cooperation, and the Compagnia di San Paolo, a research center in Turin, Italy. The poll found that Europeans were not as enthusiastic about some of Obama's...

Sorry for the vanity. My son is at Hillsdale College as a freshman. They said he could use a wireless router in the dorm but it had to be "Bridge Mode" instead of NAT mode. I asked many people including Best buy and no one had any idea what I was talking about. IT dept wont help him. I bought him two different routers and he has been quarenteened because he is operating in NAT mode. I am now 1700 miles south and can't help him. The one he has is a Linksys Wireless-N router. WRT160N Does anyone have any...

When John Brewer's construction business soured along with the economy, he sought to replace lost income by prospecting for gold from the river valleys of central Idaho to the wilds of Alaska. Armed with the tools of the trade -- a metal detector, gold pan and sluice box, a series of screens that sort gold from alluvial material like sand and gravel -- the Montana man represents the new face of a pursuit that once paved the way for settlement of the Western frontier. The poor economy and a record price of gold have renewed interest in prospecting in Western...

This new report from the liberal group Families USA contains this eye-popping paragraph: Families USA commissioned The Lewin Group to use its economic models to estimate how many individuals would benefit from the new premium tax credits in 2014 and the value of the dollars going to help pay for insurance. We found that an estimated 28.6 million Americans will be eligible for the tax credits in 2014, and that the total value of the tax credits that year will be $110.1 billion. Houston, we have a problem! The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the tax credits to purchase coverage...

States across the country want Washington to stop meddling in their affairs when it comes to the environment, health care and guns, and it's not just right-wingers leading the charge. Last week, Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal fired a shot at the Environmental Protection Agency for its attempt to coerce the state into regulating carbon dioxide as if this naturally occurring gas were a pollutant. In a letter to the EPA, Mr. Freudenthal cited a 1999 act of the legislature that prohibited him from taking any action to implement the Kyoto Protocol regarding reductions in so-called greenhouse gases. Without U.S. Senate...

Barack Obama’s small business jobs bill contains a dangerous loophole that could encourage billions of dollars in fraud in small business contracting programs, and protect fraudulent companies from prosecution. The bill is currently pending in the U.S. Senate. Section 1341 of H.R. 5297, the Small Business Jobs Act, contains provisions that would allow the Small Business Administration (SBA) to develop policies and procedures that would protect large businesses that have misrepresented themselves as small businesses from prosecution for felony contracting fraud. Since 2003, over a dozen federal investigations have found billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts...

"The Tea Party tsunami that just rolled through Delaware is reflected in a new CNN-TIME-Opinion Research poll of likely Nevada voters showing Republican and Tea Party favorite Sharon Angle running slightly ahead of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. THE CNN-TIME-ORC survey of likely voters in Ohio reveals much broader advantages for Republicans in both the Senate and governor races"

Featured Term (selected at random):PEACE OF THE CHURCH The bestowal of privileges on the Church by Emperor Constantine, preceded by the granting of toleration to Christians in A.D. 313. as a result, religion was no longer subservient to the absolute state. Christians were given complete freedom to practice their religion, and the Church was granted possession of all previously seized property. This concession enabled the full liturgy to be resumed, the faith to be preached and proclaimed, and Christian values to infuse the public and private life of the Roman Empire. The term "Peace of the Church" is also applied...

President Obama will select Elizabeth Warren to join the administration in a special advisory role to help form the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency she first proposed back in 2007. The move, first reported by ABC News' Jake Tapper, gives Warren an important role in creation of the bureau, but avoids, for now, a confirmation fight in the Senate. Her selection will appease a slew of prominent lawmakers, progressives, and labor unions who in recent months have clamored for her nomination to the post. After all, the new agency -- part of the sweeping Wall Street reform...

Any culture’s religious ceremonies can seem strange to outsiders: For example, take the indigenous Zoque people of southern Mexico. To ask their gods for bountiful rains during the growing season they head to a sulfur cave where molly fish swim in the subterranean lake. They then toss in leaf bundles that contain a paste made from the mashed-up root of the Barbasco plant, which has a powerful anesthetic effect. When the stunned fish–which the Zoque people consider a gift from underworld gods–go belly-up, people scoop them from the water and bring them home for supper. This fishy protein helps them...

Two sets of numbers tell you a lot about an important difference between election year 2008 and election year 2010. In 2008, 37 million Americans voted in Democratic presidential primaries and just under 21 million voted in Republican presidential primaries. One reason for the difference was that the Republican nomination was decided earlier. But even counting only the early contests, Democratic turnout was 26 million and Republican turnout was 17 million. This year, it's different. Only 13 million Americans have voted in Democratic primaries held before Sept. 1, according to Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the...

The end of the primary season arrived Tuesday amid growing signs that a grass-roots rebellion among conservative Tea Party activists may jeopardize Republican prospects for large-scale, recession-fueled gains from the Democrats. The stunning defeat of nine-term moderate Rep. Mike Castle, a former governor, by Christine O'Donnell, a previous loser with a troubled personal history who was endorsed by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, in the Delaware Republican Senate primary probably dooms whatever chance the GOP had of capturing Vice President Biden's Senate seat and with it, the Senate majority. The low-turnout upset, coming after similar shocks in Alaska,...

Yesterday’s primary victories of O’Donnell in Delaware, and DioGuardi in New York illustrates how the Tea Party is cleansing the Republican Party and installing true believers over professional politicians. It is a healthy trend that will continue to recreate the Party of Reagan. But the conventional media, instead of hailing this trend, warns that conservatives cannot be elected and bemoans the victory of true believers saying that it is equivalent to handing seats to the Democrats and the liberals. This reasoning, which made sense in other times, is badly flawed in today’s political climate.