Free Republic

One of the many topics of debate that came up during Thursday night’s debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont was Dr. Henry Kissinger, one of Clinton’s predecessors. Clinton has expressed admiration for Kissinger in the past, particularly of his opening to China. Ms. Clinton expressed the view that one should listen to a variety of opinions, including that of the 92 year old former Nixon era cabinet officer.

Donald Trump won the New Hampshire Primary and he made sure to savor his victory to the full. The bleeding that resulted from his loss in Iowa and his subsequent unseemly reaction to it has been staunched, at least for the time being.

The Obama Administration has put forth its FY 2017 NASA budget proposal, according to GeekWire. The overall spending level is $19 billion, an almost $300 million cut from the current fiscal year. Much of the money comes out of the development for the Orion deep space vehicle and the heavy lift Space Launch System, the very basis of the space agency’s plans for exploring deep space beyond low Earth orbit.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, is famous for his advocacy of a single-payer health care, such as prevails in Canada. However, one feature of such systems is the long wait times that patients have to endure before they get medical care. A case in point exists in the United States, with the Veterans’ Affairs Department health care system, government run, that has featured secret waiting lists upon which veterans have all too often died while in line for vital health care services. Sanders, at first, seemed to think that the story was a partisan plot to undermine the case for government-run...

Monica Crowley, a columnist for the Washington Times, speculates that when, as many expect, the FBI recommends that Hillary Clinton be indicted for various crimes surrounding her private, unsecured email server, her husband former President Bill Clinton will also be up on criminal charges. The idea is that if Bill Clinton stored the email server on his property and paid for it and if he saw any of the classified documents contained on it, he may be liable for criminal prosecution. The server was also used for Clinton Foundation work. If the FBI finds out that any of the classified...

The first mistake that Gloria Steinem, the aging feminist icon, made was appearing on Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time.” The second mistake she made was offering an opinion as to why young women are flocking to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the venerable avowed socialist. “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,' she said."

The good news for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida was that he entered Saturday night’s GOP debate in New Hampshire with the wind at his back, having gotten an unexpected third place performance in the Iowa Caucus. The bad news for Rubio was that he arrived at the debate with a target drawn at his back. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fired at that target with both barrels, staggering the young presidential candidate. Rubio did not help himself by making the rookie mistake of repeating a line about President Barack Obama at least four times, suggesting that he was preprogrammed and...

Former President Jimmy Carter has weighed in on the 2016 presidential race. Taking off from his campaign to eradicate Guinea worm disease, Carter responded to a question put to him by a BBC reporter about who he would prefer on the Republican side. Donald Trump, he said, because he is “completely malleable,” unlike that Ted Cruz fellow who has all of those right-wing policies he would enact as president.

President Barack Obama, when he leaves office in less than a year, will no doubt choose to believe that his legacy will consist of deliberate accomplishments, such as Obamacare, efforts to fight climate change, and the Iran nuclear weapons deal. However, the Washington Post recently suggested that Obama’s main legacy will be making more Republican voters. The implications will be far reaching for the course of American politics for decades to come.

Testimony at a hearing before the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Space suggested that NASA’s Journey to Mars lacks a plan to achieve the first human landing on the Red Planet almost six years after President Obama announced the goal on April 15, 2010. Moreover, two of the three witnesses argued that a more realistic near term goal for the space agency would be a return to the moon. The moon is not only a scientifically interesting and potentially commercially profitable place to go but access to lunar water, which can be refined into rocket fuel, would make the Journey...

An old saying exists in military science that says the amateurs study tactics, whereas professionals study logistics. The equivalent in politics is that amateurs study rhetoric while professionals study turnout. Because Ted Cruz had become the master of the latter, he won the Iowa Caucuses when most of the pundits had concluded that Donald Trump was going to edge out the senator from Texas.

While Republicans debate whether Ted Cruz is Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, Democrats are faced with a similar conundrum concerning Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont. Some more elderly Democrats, with memories going back decades, wonder if the angry, white-haired socialist is the second coming of George McGovern.

One of the strangest battles of Election 2016 is not Donald Trump vs. Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton vs. Bernie Sanders, or even Jeb Bush vs. Marco Rubio. The squabble everyone is talking about pits Trump, the mercurial businessman who wants to be president of the United States, and Megyn Kelly, the rising star of Fox News and one of the most fearsome interviewers on the airwaves

Could a Mars colony become a nation? That question was posed by Michael Byers, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia in a Washington Post article. Byers’ answer to his question was yes. A body of international law has evolved over time that recognizes the rights of people to self-determination.

Just when Sarah Palin’s enemies thought they would not have her to kick around anymore, she dropped the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb and endorsed Donald Trump for president. Her 20-minute speech at a rally in Ames, Iowa while the Donald stood by like a fidgety school boy was a stream of consciousness production that so violated the conventional rules of rhetoric that Cicero would have opened his veins had he heard it. But Hunter Schwarz caught the poetic cadence of chiasmus, a Hebrew form of parallelism which she likely picked up attending church. The Washington elites may have...

Why are the Washington elites flocking to Donald Trump in preference to Ted Cruz? Trump, who has thus far been running as an outsider businessman who was going to upend the political order, even boasted about the phenomenon recently. Cruz may be an outsider who is interested in shaking things up, but at least he has been a Republican all of his adult life. Trump, not too long ago, was a liberal Democrat, who favored partial-birth abortion and high taxes.

Charles D. Walker (a former commercial astronaut), kicked up something of a fuss recently when he opined in the pages of the Arizona Daily Star that NASA should lead the way in space exploration and not leave everything to the private sector. The reasons he cites are risk and lack of a clear profit motive, particularly related to going to Mars. The commercial space sector should be encouraged to bring down the cost of space travel, particularly by operating a space taxi service to the International Space Station, in his view. But NASA must lead the way in exploration, particularly...

Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) announced that 2015 had the hottest global average temperature ever measured, shattering the previous record held in 2014. The news was widely reported in the media, including the New York Times, which declared that global warming, which had paused since 1998, is back and with a vengeance. The clear implication was that the sooner we stop using fossil fuels and putting all that carbon dioxide in the air, the better

With the revelation that Hillary Clinton stored above top secret documents on her unsecured email server, the question being discussed on the news talk shows is not whether she will be indicted but when. Two scenarios have arisen concerning a possible Clinton indictment under the Espionage Act and perhaps other, related charges

One of the interesting aspects of any modern presidential campaign has been the lack of detailed policy positions from the candidates on NASA and space exploration. The reason for this can be illustrated by what happened to Newt Gingrich when he made an exception and proposed building a moon base when he ran for president in 2012. More of that anon.