Free Republic

The Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons football team, was recently crowded with cheering fans and adrenaline-filled competitors. A thrilling competition crowned new champions. But this was not a football game. It was a robotics competition for high school students interested in engineering, a program that now attracts about 200,000 student-competitors and nearly 100,000 volunteers. Known as FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), this program demonstrates that there is no shortage of American engineering minds. Started nearly 20 years ago by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the clever Segway that officials scoot around on, this competition...

How can we explain continued public support for Barack Obama's extremist spending plans, even though it is painfully obvious that his much touted "remaking America" means mortgaging the financial future of young people with trillions of dollars in debt? Are the American people really willing to let the government be our nanny, manage our economy, federalize our schools, decide which businesses can keep their doors open, what health care we will be permitted, who will get new jobs, and how extravagant will be the foreign handouts as Obama "rejoins the world community"? One answer to these questions may be what...