Free Republic

Imagine government activism during the 11th Century in Europe. This would involve the Sheriff of Nottingham riding out with his men and trying to hang Robin Hood so that he could steal from the poor and give to his drinking buddies, the rich. The truly conservative believe that the essential nature of government activism hasn't changed a whole lot since back when things were rotten and Mel Brooks would have been pincushioned with arrows for having any part of Robin Hood: Men In Tights. No segment of America's overbloated and sometimes highly uncivil government service gives the conservative view of...

The Bush administration is set to take on one of the great scandals of American governance: a system of farm subsidies so perverse that it should get whatever the equivalent of an NC-17 rating is for a federal program. Decent people everywhere should want to avert their eyes. In seeking to cut and reform the subsidies, President Bush will provoke a fight every bit as fierce, in its own way, as that over Social Security, prompting opposition from the forces of greed and political cowardice. Farm subsidies as we know them grew up around the Great Depression, when they didn't...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies. They said the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs. The moves are intended to trim the programs without damaging any essential services, the...