Free Republic

Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio, rising star of the Republican right, on everyone’s short list for VP, called for a unanimous vote, without debate, on a resolution directing President Obama to accept Georgia’s plan for membership in NATO at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago. Rubio was pushing to have the U.S. Senate pressure Obama into fast-tracking Georgia into NATO, making Tbilisi an ally the United States would be obligated by treaty to go to war to defend. Now it is impossible to believe a senator, not a year in office, dreamed this up himself. Some foreign agent of Scheunemann’s...

New Ron Paul Ad ("Big Dog")

Pressed in the interview about how that was not "a point of view one normally associates with conservatives," Mr. Gingrich replied that there are times "when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development." He cited electricity and telephone network expansion as similarly effective private-public purposes. "It's not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism," he said. He added, "I'm convinced that if NASA were a GSE, we probably would be on Mars today."

The Iowa corn growers association released a report card today, rating Republican primary candidates on their support of "corn grower's legislative priorities." Candidates who oppose subsidies, like Representative Ron Paul and Herman Cain got "D." grades (Only their criticism of the EPA spared them "F"s. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich got the highest grade. He and President Obama were praised for their support of economically disastrous policies like ethanol subsidies.

“You’ve got to give it to Ron Paul," Palin said. "Whether you agree with everything he says or not, at least he is one there in Congress trying to make our President stick to the law and understand that Congress does have a role to play in these foreign policy decisions that are made and Ron Paul, I think hit the nail on the head, when he came out and said Obama had better be careful when he interjects himself and our country in other nations’ business.”

The killing on Friday of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen described as a powerful al-Qaeda terrorist, has stirred considerable debate about whether it's appropriate for a president to order an American assassinated. Evidently, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain shares those concerns. The above video was recorded just after the first nationally televised GOP presidential debate of the 2012 campaign cycle, held in Greenville South Carolina on May 5 of this year, according to its YouTube page. "He should be charged. And since he's an American citizen, he should be tried in our courts," Cain said of al-Awlaki. When asked if...

BEIRUT: U.S. Muslims are more likely to reject violence than Christian groups in the country, according to data released Thursday by the U.S.-based polling firm Gallup. Over the course of interviews with 2,482 Americans, Gallup found that 78 percent of Muslims believe violence which kills civilians is never justified, whereas just 38 percent of Protestant Christians and 39 percent of Catholics agreed with the sentiment. Fifty-six percent of atheists answered similarly. A rewording of the question led to responses that were more similar across the groups. When asked if it would be justified for "an individual person or a small...

See here: I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness. Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city. Orders from Libya and Iran...

Someone must have imagined that my hopes for improved economic understanding might be excessively optimistic today and thus needed to be curbed to restore my normal emotional balance, because that person undertook to smash any such hopes to dust by e-mailing me a link to a HuffingtonPost article by Paul Abrams, “Economically, World War II Was Stimulus on Steroids.” This screed turns out to be an ostensible macroeconomics lesson composed in equal measure of economic foolishness, historical ignorance, and ideological tendentiousness – the veritable epitome of a worse-than-worthless contribution to public enlightenment. The opening paragraphs indicate the direction of Abrams’s argument: The next time someone argues that the...

In return for his call for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, without defining the size of these lands, Obama accepted Netanyahu's demands for strict security arrangements and a gradual, continuous withdrawal from the West Bank. He suggested beginning negotiations on borders and security arrangements, and delaying discussions on the core issues such as Jerusalem and refugees. More importantly, Obama scornfully rejected the Palestinian initiative to attain recognition at the United Nations and to isolate Israel, demanded the Palestinians return to negotiations, and called on Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist....

Earth to taxpayers! Owning stocks in banks is not nationalization of the banking industry. It’s trying to solve a problem. The unprecedented financial crisis has caused the Treasury of the United States to take unprecedented measures to help solve the problem of frozen credit and cash flow for U.S. businesses. Most of us had dreams of what we wanted to be when we grew up as children. Some of us wanted to grow up and become a fireman, a policeman, a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a teacher, an actor, an engineer, a writer, a dancer, a chef or any...

<p>The tornado that tore through here late last month left 41 dead and 12 still missing. Whole neighborhoods now resemble bombed-out postwar Tokyo or Berlin. But this devastation is only part of the story. Tuscaloosa is now the scene of an inspiring volunteer relief effort taking place without the guidance of any central planner.</p>

Many historians depict the Great Depression as a turning point when bitter economic realities finally led the middle class to break from laissez-faire tradition and demand bigger government. This is not entirely untrue, but it's only part of what happened. In its initial phase, the Depression also spawned a powerful movement for smaller government that included tax revolts. These revolts were not only more widespread but often more extreme than any sponsored by the tea party. Depression-era taxpayers had perhaps even greater reason to be angry than their modern counterparts. Property values plummeted after 1929 but tax reassessments lagged. Overall,...

See line 72-75 and scroll over to the box that asks about citizenship. Theodore Agnew, Spiro's father, indicates in the box that he is an "al" (for alien). Young Spiro is shown on line 75. We now have two precedents against the birthers. The other is Chester Arthur. Both had non-citizen fathers and NOBODY in either case cared at the time. The controversy over Arthur was solely related to his alleged foreign birth.

As I've noted, the 2012 Republican presidential primary will be vastly different from the 2008 race. Back then Ron paul was roundly derided for endorsing the traditional conservative approach toward foreign policy. This time around, a lot of the others are going to have to make a choice between conservatism and the liberal internationalism of the so-called "neo" conservatives. This piece on Haley Barbour from The Hill shows that the debate has begun: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) may have set the tone for the foreign policy debate in the Republican presidential nominating contest when he questioned the war in...

Tea party-backed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) isn’t sure that congressional Republicans have the guts to make the big budget cuts they’ve promised and, he said, members of the movement are becoming frustrated. “There’s a disconnect between Republicans who want a balanced budget but aren’t maybe yet brave enough to talk about the cuts to come,” the freshman senator said in an interview with ABC News, responding to the spending plan released Thursday by the House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which would cut non-defense discretionary spending by $58 billion for the rest of fiscal 2011. “I go to...

Gamal and Hosni Mubarak are reported to have built up huge fortunes, including properties in London. President Hosni Mubarak's family fortune could be as much as $70bn (£43.5bn) according to analysis by Middle East experts, with much of his wealth in British and Swiss banks or tied up in real estate in London, New York, Los Angeles and along expensive tracts of the Red Sea coast. After 30 years as president and many more as a senior military official, Mubarak has had access to investment deals that have generated hundreds of millions of pounds in profits. Most of those gains...

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is poised to axe or significantly restructure a number of high-profile weapons platforms, and otherwise rein in the Pentagon’s budget. The reports present these initiatives as intended to preempt greater scrutiny of the military’s budget by Congress. The cuts will be announced later today, but it seems pretty clear that Gates will call for terminating the unnecessary Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), a Marine Corps program that is more than 176 percent over its original per-vehicle cost. Unhappily for taxpayers, the Pentagon has already spent $3 billion on the program, which has managed to deliver only...

Everybody is freaked out about this man. They’re terrified of the mere thought of what secrets he might expose about them on the Internet. The truth shall set you free. But it will make you miserable first. We’re about to hit the misery part. Many people would rather have slave chains to secrecy than endure the misery required to live in the truth. And so, they will fight, oh, they will fight – which puts Assange straight in the crosshairs. But who is aiming at him? I want you to come with me and hear this tale. I don’t think...

Another international conflict, another horrific taxpayer-funded sex scandal for DynCorp, the private security contractor tasked with training the Afghan police. While the company is officially based in the DC area, most of its business is managed on a satellite campus at Alliance Airport north of Fort Worth. And if one of the diplomatic cables from the WikiLeaks archive is to be believed, boy howdy, are their doings in Afghanistan shady. The Afghanistan cable (dated June 24, 2009) discusses a meeting between Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and US assistant ambassador Joseph Mussomeli. Prime among Atmar's concerns was a party partially...