Free Republic

An array of powerful legislators from both parties want Gen. Stanley McChrystal to testify about the challenges confronting the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan and his plan for beating back the resurgent Taliban -- as the Pentagon pushes back.

TO listen to the White House and its supporters in and out of the media, you'd think that opposition to "ObamaCare" is the hobgoblin of a few small minds on the right. Racists, fascists, Neanderthals, the whole "Star Wars" cantina of bogeymen and cranks stand opposed to much-needed reform. Left out of this fairly naked effort to demonize many with the actions of a few is the simple fact that ObamaCare -- however defined -- has been tanking in the polls for weeks. President Obama's handling of health care is unpopular with a majority of Americans and a majority of...

...“It’s a job I gladly accept,” he said to applause. “I love these folks who helped get us in this mess. And then suddenly say, ‘Oh, this is Obama’s economy.’ That’s fine. Give it to me. My job is to solve problems -- not to stand on the sidelines and carp and gripe. So I welcome the job. I want the responsibility.”....

Alaska's lipstick-wearing pit-bull is a "Little Shop of Horrors." That's how one longtime friend and campaign trail companion of John McCain, the vanquished 2008 GOP presidential nominee, described veep nominee Sarah Palin. In an expansive story in the August edition of Vanity Fair, a slew of senior members of McCain's campaign team told reporter Todd S. Purdum that they suffer a kind of survivor's guilt following the 2008 presidential election.

Administration blames Bush for GM crisis By Mike Soraghan Posted: 06/07/09 11:24 AM [ET] The Obama administration has a familiar response to criticism of the General Motors bailout – they inherited this mess from George W. Bush. Austan Goolsbee, a senior economic adviser to President Obama, said the administration's options were sharply limited by President Bush's handling of the auto industry, and accused the prior administration of running out the clock. "They shook up the can. They opened the can and handed [it] to us in our laps," Goolsbee said on Fox News Sunday. "When George Bush put money into...

A report on the GQ magazine Web site is quoting unnamed former Bush administration official as blaming former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for many failures, including a delay in military assistance in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The report says "in speaking with the former Bush officials, it becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other nations, the safety of our troops, and the response to Hurricane Katrina. The Washington Monthly highlights more of Robert Draper's article in GQ: "[T]hree years later, when I asked a...

Der Spiegel - other nations helped Germany in Holocaust 20th May 2009 Poland, among other countries helped Hitler mastermind the mass murders, the German weekly says The Der Spiegel weekly claims that Germany would not have been able to prosecute its WWII mass-murder campaign against the Jews on its own and the country required the cooperation of other nations, including Poland. The magazine's front-page story, entitled "Partners. European associates in murdering Jews," cites the case of John Demjaniuk, a former Ukrainian SS-officer, who is currently awaiting trial in Munich, in its bid to prove that without the support of citizens...

The departure of Arlen Specter looks very bad for the GOP. You never want to lose anyone. But could Senate Republicans have stopped it? No, not once it became clear that he was going to be trounced in his primary. Specter's problem is not the party in the sense of its leadership or direction, but rather with the Republican voters in Pennsylvania. Arlen Specter switched from Democrat to Republican in 1965 so that he could win an election. He is now doing the reverse for precisely the same reason. If we take Arlen Specter's word for why he is leaving,...

More than $9 trillion -- in taxpayer dollars -- has been pledged, committed, lent or spent by the federal government in response to the economic crisis. Some say that if the economy continues to deteriorate, trillions more might be necessary to prevent another Great Depression. Yet no one has investigated how this crisis happened. That is irresponsible. A comprehensive investigation is essential to prevent this from happening again.

Just how close to the brink of executive tyranny did the United States come in the panic that swept George W. Bush's administration after 9/11? The answer, it now seems clear, is that we came far closer than even staunch critics of the White House believed. On Monday, the Obama administration released nine legal opinions produced for the Bush White House by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That heretofore obscure office essentially serves as the president's arbiter of what's legal and what isn't. Among other things,...

In the battle to shape the future of the Republican party, many have suggested a move to the center. In a recent interview, for example, John McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, said, “The Republican party wants to, needs to, be able to represent . . . not only conservatives, but centrists as well. And the party that controls the center is the party that controls the American electorate.” Also, David Frum wrote that the GOP must move away from its traditional positions on issues such as abortion and the environment, and adopt a style and tone that is “less overtly...

It's tempting right now to say President Bush will go down as one of the worst presidents ever to dis-grace the White House. But is that fair, or even accurate? Historian renderings of a legacy are often at odds with fluctuating public opinion polls that gauge the heat of the moment. Take Truman. The man had a 22 percent approval rating toward the end of his presidency--due in large part to a highly unpopular Korean War--yet he's among the most popular presidents in history. I'm going to play the devil's advocate and argue that it is at least in the...

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I have friends and colleagues whom I respect deeply who are on all sides of this bailout issue. One of them just spoke. We all to want do what is right for America, and I believe those who have crafted this plan had pure and noble motives. They want this country to succeed. They want prosperity. I just do not believe that this bill gets the job done. In fact, in the long term, I am convinced it will do more harm than good. We are the Nation that has been called the bastion of freedom,...

CNBC just cut to Barack Obama talking extemporaneously following the failure of the Bailout Bill to pass congress. What a great example of the "empty suit"... I can only paraphrase "Let's remember how we got here! Greed... Failure of the regulators!"

Things are supposed to be looking rosy for Democrats this November. But in case Barack Obama loses the Presidency, an excuse is all ready to go: America's too racist to elect a black man. Not even, in his Vice Presidential pick Joe Biden's inimitable description, one so "articulate and bright and clean." This narrative has gained traction with the Democratic Presidential candidate's recent setbacks in the polls. We hear it from the convention crowd in Denver and liberals in the press. The older, poorer, white, often Hillary voter who sounds ambivalent about the Obama coronation is an enticing scapegoat. "Call...

There are several kinds of Washington memoirs: “I Reveal the Honest Truth,” a kiss-up-and-tell designed to settle scores (nod to honesty optional). “I Was There at the Start,” designed to make the author appear to be the linchpin of history. And, most tedious: “I Knew It Was a Terrible Mistake, but I Didn’t Mention It Until I Got a Book Contract.” Scott McClellan’s memoir is the latest entry in the latter genre. Among his far-too-late admissions, President Bush’s former spokesman reveals that he knew the war in Iraq was “a serious strategic blunder,” but the White House decided the best...

Stigma can be a powerful force in changing behavior. Just ask smokers, whose once accepted habit is now so marginalized that the prevalence of smoking has dropped to about 19 percent of U.S. adults from nearly 24 percent just a decade ago. A lot of factors figured into the decline since smoking's mid-20th-century peak, but the sense that smoking is disgusting as well as unhealthful and socially costly has certainly contributed to many people's decision to quit. Now that smokers have been taken care of, the obese are the new scapegoats for a lot of our ills. Last week, a...

Jim Wilson/New York Times A cleanup crew collects oil-fouled sand Monday on Rodeo Beach in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. As oil spill cleanup continued Monday on the San Francisco Bay, state Senate Leader Don Perata rebuked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for undermining the state agency charged with spill response. Perata, D-Oakland, seized upon a 2005 state audit that determined the Office of Spill Prevention and Response, or OSPR, was understaffed despite having a funding surplus. He said the situation has hindered the agency's ability to deter oil spills in advance and react quickly when disasters...

High winds and bureaucratic wrangling kept much needed firefighting aircraft on the ground this week, but whom to blame seemed murkier Thursday than the skies above Southern California. Some legislators accused federal fire officials and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of making a slow-footed response followed by fast dancing and photo ops. Schwarzenegger called the criticism "a bunch of nonsense." But one federal legislator was poised to call for congressional hearings. "We'll wait until the smoke clears until I start raising hell," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach. "We need to put people under oath to find out whether a lack of...

...On Tuesday evening, MSNBC's Don Abrams set up an interview with California Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Cal.) thusly: But the fire storms in California`s raising tough questions about what the National Guard is extended too much to handle emergencies at home. Back in May, before the fire started, "The San Francisco Chronicle" reported that the California National Guard was down a billion dollars worth of equipment. Two hundred and nine vehicles in Iraq, including 110 humvees and 63 military trucks. According to report the California guard should have had 39 diesel generators on hand. They say it had none. The Kansas...