Free Republic

President Barack Obama's job approval is the worst of his presidency to date, with 46% of Americans approving and 48% disapproving of the job he is doing as president in the latest Gallup Daily three-day average.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich said Wednesday that he will continue to work toward a single-payer program, despite his decision to reverse course and support President Obama's health care plan. "This was a detour," the Ohio Democrat told CNN's "Larry King Live." "I'll work with the president in getting this bill passed and the president has committed to working with me to seeing further health care reforms after this bill is out of the way."

The tea partyers certainly aren't "dropping out" of the system; if they were, we wouldn't be talking about them. And they aren't reading Marxist tracts in a desire to "tear down the system" either. They're reading Thomas Paine, the founders and Friedrich Hayek in the perhaps naive hope that they'll be able to restore the principles that are supposed to be guiding the system (to the extent they're reading radicals such as Saul Alinsky, it's because they've been told that's the best way to understand his disciple in the White House).

The Obama agenda scares people. "I do not believe the president fully supports the free-enterprise system that I support," Rubio says. Florida Republicans, Rubio believes, know in their hearts that Crist "is not going to go to Washington and stand up to this agenda and be part of offering an alternative -- he's just not going to do it." Crist's recent praise for the stimulus and tendency to accommodate Obamacare suggest Rubio is right.

Then along came Sarah, and the attacks became particularly heinous. And I realized something even more chilling about the Left. Leftists not only sacrifice and disrespect women, but it's far worse: many are perpetuators. The Left's behavior towards Palin is not politics as usual. By their laser-focus on her body and her sexuality, leftists are defiling her. They are wilding her. And they do this with the full knowledge and complicity of the White House. The Left has declared war on Palin because she threatens their existence. Liberals need women dependent and scared so that women, like blacks, will vote...

What drives Palin Derangement Syndrome to such intensity? Did anyone except John Edwards feel this passionately about John Edwards after he concluded a losing campaign as a vice-presidential candidate? Certainly Palin has remained more prominent than most such candidates, writing a blockbuster autobiography and launching a daring raid against the Death Panel Star from her Facebook page on Yavin-4… but has she really done anything to inspire this level of personal venom?