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But when Hannity asked if House Republicans would consider defunding Obamacare -- since efforts to repeal it have not worked -- Cantor's confusing response did not answer the question:

DAD, WHAT's UNABHÄNGIGKEITSTAG? "Is that when the thirteen colonies broke away from England?" My ten year inquired out of nowhere at 6 AM German time this morning. "Yeah, why do you want to know, eat your breakfast," I mumbled, too sleepy to be very curious. "Because I am afraid my teacher will ask me, since I am wearing this T-shirt and I'm the only American in the class." With an effort, I adjusted my gaze upward to his white T-shirt. It was brand new. Prominent on his breast was an image of the flag and below that: OLD NAVY FREEDOM...

How Would Democrats Use These Scandals against Liberty If the Tables Were Turned? The first thing the left would do is recognize that these scandals are occurring 18 months before the next congressional elections and three years before the next presidential election. Therefore, the left would seek to taint the entire Republican Party with the scandal and, in particular, it would attempt to discredit potential presidential candidates such as Senators Cruz, Paul, and Rubio. The Democrats would declare that such abuses arise out of the very culture of the Republican Party. They would say that the Republican party will inevitably...

The debates, the conventions, the storm coverage, Benghazi, the state of the economy, jobs data and all other events that affected all fifty states mattered. But the paid media, the in-person campaigning in swing states, and the massive ground game deployed by both sides accomplished nothing. Obama lost all the votes he was going to lose anyway in the swing states and Romney gained of the votes he was going to gain anyway in the swing states.

Obama was handily favored every single day of the race. The closest thing to a game changer (by far) was the early disastrous debate in early Ocrober. But at no point, did Romney's odds of winning hit 50%. And by the middle of October, Obama was back on the re-ascent. Sandy didn't change anything. The 47% tape didn't change anything. Benghazi didn't change anything. Paul Ryan's selection didn't change anything, and so forth. Romney didn't lose because of a glitch in his election day Get Out The Vote app, which is something a lot of folks are talking about right...

The loss of this presidential election under these economic circumstances is so appalling that it raises existential questions about the Republican Party and the future of conservatism in America. With unemployment through the roof, with housing through the floor, with nearly 50,000,000 people on food stamps, with the government hemorrhaging money and the debt soaring, the Republican Party must ask itself, if we cannot win today can we ever win? It is important to identify the reasons for this epic fail so that the conservative movement can go on. The first item of business is to distinguish between failure which...

The art of getting useful answers is the art of asking the right question. The right question to ask in the wake of this debate is not who "won" but who advanced his candidacy? If one pursues the right question the answer must be that Mitt Romney advanced his candidacy more than Obama. In order to advance his candidacy, Barack Obama had a dual task: He had to rehabilitate himself from his disastrous performance in the first debate and demonstrate that he actually has a claim to continue as president; he had to dominate the transaction and virtually disqualify Mitt...

I think I misjudged the debate in real-time. As the debate commenced Paul Ryan appeared to be nervous and he appeared nervous to a diminishing degree throughout the entire debate until the end when he recovered well, as witnessed by his frequent reaching for the water glass. As a result of his nervousness I thought he was tentative. Ironically, Biden might have sensed this nervousness or tentativeness in Ryan and overstepped. When Biden made his first "buffoonish" intrusion I said to myself, "thank God!" I felt that Biden had made a signal error but I misjudged its impact by regarding...

What do the polls tell us, is Romney enjoying only a bounce from the debate which will eventually subside leaving him where he was before or at slightly behind Obama? Or was the debate the precipitant of a momentum wave which will carry through with increasing force to election day? My hunch is that it is the latter. Many of us were perplexed by our inability to explain why Romney was unable to gain traction against Obama for so long when Obama's record was so execrable. We looked at the bias in the media, we considered the demographics of dependency...

The Idea That Barack Obama Was Stoned Is Not Outlandish. The man has lost a lot of weight. He has a history of drug abuse. By his own admission he has been unable to focus on one of the most important events of his life, scheduled to occur in front of 70 million people. His published schedule reveals a pattern of empty hours. His image has deteriorated markedly with dark shadows under his eyes, sagging cheeks, and generally a hangdog look which is commonly associated with drug abusers. He was listless in the debate. He could not maintain eye contact,...

It will not be necessary to adduce arguments to conservatives on these threads that America was on the brink of the precipice and liable to cascade over into the void of debt. We must either radically change course or surrender this great experiment in liberty to the statists led by Barack Obama. The odds that Obama could be stopped seemed to be lengthening as the Romney campaign was running out of time and out of geography. I believe that as at 9:29 PM Eastern standard Time America was hurtling toward that void. An hour and a half later it might...

This is an occasion in which the vituperation of the pontificators is exceeded only by their ignorance. The inescapable reality is that no one no knows whether Todd Akin could have survived his gaffe and gone on to win what should have been an easy victory in Missouri against a hapless opponent. Yet it is precisely that level of ignorance over what has blithely been assumed in this controversy that lent confidence to self-appointed pundits like Ann Coulter to venture onto national cable television and presume for all of America, not to mention all of Missouri, that Todd Akin was...

DAD, WHAT's UNABHANGIKEITSTAG? "Is that when the thirteen colonies broke away from England?" My ten year inquired out of nowhere at 6 AM German time this morning. "Yeah, why do you want to know, eat your breakfast," I mumbled, too sleepy to be very curious. "Because I am afraid my teacher will ask me, since I am wearing this T-shirt and I'm the only American in the class." With an effort, I adjusted my gaze upward to his white T-shirt. It was brand new. Prominent on his breast was an image of the flag and below that: OLD NAVY FREEDOM...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows Mitt Romney earning 46% of the vote and President Obama attracting 45% support. Four percent (4%) would vote for a third party candidate, while another four percent (4%) are undecided.

A couple of thoughts about the upcoming Supreme Court decision. First, full disclosure requires that I admit a bias, I have gone past skepticism concerning how the Supreme Court comes to its decisions and I have moved right into flat out cynicism. There is no question in my mind that four Justices will work backward from a desired result to create the rationalizations necessary to adorn their opinion. They will use words like "emanations" and "penumbras." Their opinion will be written upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare and it is in all probability fated to appear either as a minority or...

What’s the difference between price controls on milk and price controls on rent? Do landlords in Manhattan and trailer-park owners near San Diego have the same rights? Is rent stabilization in New York City a foolish racket or a rational policy to help tenants? The fate of New York City’s rent laws could hinge on answers to these questions. As the Journal reported Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court is taking a surprisingly serious look at a federal lawsuit in which a Manhattan couple is trying to overturn the regulations shielding their tenants.

Obama is scheduled today to deliver a much ballyhooed speech to AIPAC, which bills itself as the most influential foreign policy lobby in America. According to various news articles, Obama will reiterate his recent boasts that "he does not bluff" and that it is "unacceptable" to America for Iran to develop the bomb. How should we conservatives react to the speech? First we should understand Obama's motivations for the speech and our own misconceptions about Obama himself and his foreign policy. Our misconceptions about Obama are easy to state, we conservatives regard him in the realm of foreign policy to...

With the election about two quarters away history tells us that Obama's fate might well be decided by the unemployment count. After all, no president has been reelected with unemployment higher than 7.3% since Franklin Roosevelt. Recently, the Obama administration has claimed progress in unemployment citing a decline in the unemployment number to 8.3%, the best in three years. Republicans counter that this apparent improvement is illusory because so many job seekers have dropped out of the census figures only because they have simply quit looking for work. Republicans say that the number of workers who have "dropped out" jiggers...

Seven decades after Pearl Harbor and one decade after 9/11 we Americans dare not remain willfully oblivious to the threat of the Black Swan. Our grand American experiment is more vulnerable now that it was in 1941 and it is certainly more precariously balanced than it was in 2011. These conundrums are what Donald Rumsfeld might describe as the "known unknowns" but by definition a Black Swan event is as surprising as it is earth shattering. So all of these threats which beset us are by definition not Black Swan events. They are known risks. There are many more risks...

Help! I am being held hostage in a foreign land with no access to Fox News. If you receive this message do not call 911 but cut and paste a link to Fox news and forward to Nathanbedford by private Freepmail. Thanks from your FReeRepublic embattled but undaunted bridgehead in Bavaria.