Free Republic

Will Bush back lifting payroll tax cap? January 8, 2007 BY ROBERT NOVAK Sun-Times Columnist More than the ascension of Nancy Pelosi & Co. was disturbing congressional Republicans last week. They ask this question: Will President Bush embrace a tax increase that would produce potential economic disaster and guaranteed political catastrophe? Henry M. Paulson Jr. is a shark on Wall Street but a rookie on Pennsylvania Avenue. As Bush's third secretary of the Treasury, he has engaged in secret bipartisan talks discussing an increase in the current $97,500 limit on personal income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That...

Riots in Hungary, a coup in Thailand, genocide in Darfur, threats against the Pope and terror bombs shattering life and limb throughout the Mideast - it all happened yesterday. Imagine the world without the United Nations. Actually, it would be pretty much the world we have now because the UN is next to useless. Its only function is to give a stage to the world's troublemakers and throw up obstacles to those seeking solutions. As for really doing something, fuhgeddaboudit! So even as the world seemed on the verge of exploding yesterday, there was no real news from, and no...

The outgoing United Nations secretary general said it himself yesterday as he addressed the General Assembly for the last time: Current events, sadly conceded Kofi Annan - specifically those in Darfur, but Darfur could be read as a metaphor - "make a mockery of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the worst abuses." Mockery indeed. Which is about the same thing President Bush told his collected audience of the crooked, the incompetent, the imbecilic and the asleep - the "community of nations" he has repeatedly urged "to defend civilization and build a more hopeful future." Yesterday,...