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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There is no immediate decision pending on resources because one of the things that I'm absolutely clear about is we have to get the strategy right, and then make determinations about resources. So we are going to proceed and make sure that we don't put the cart before the horse. (END VIDEO CLIP) BRET BAIER, HOST: President Obama today talking about U.S. forces inside Afghanistan and when that decision would be made, if he makes it. Now, that's coming as we hear from our sources on Capitol Hill and in the military telling FOX...

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is privately requesting between 30,000 and 40,000 more troops, a request that has produced "sticker shock" and "huge resistance" among key lawmakers, sources told FOX News. Congressional liberals who led the charge against the Iraq war are starting to turn their attention to Afghanistan, putting pressure on the Obama administration to scale back even as it prepares to consider a likely request to increase the U.S. troop presence.

How many times during the last eight years did you hear that George W. Bush was a dangerous right-wing extremist? Probably too many to count. What you heard less often were expressions of the deep reservations some conservatives felt about Bush's governing philosophy. Conservatives greatly admired Bush for his steadfastness in the War on Terror -- to use that outlawed phrase -- and they were delighted by his choices of John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court. But when it came to a fundamental conservative principle like fiscal discipline, many conservatives felt the president just wasn't with them....

As citizens' outrage over the torture memos heats up, and the US Congress is barraged with calls to appoint a special prosecutor, Americans may be about to commit an egregious miscarriage of justice. Republicans have now accused Democrats in Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the escalating calls to investigate. I would go further: not only do Congressional Democrats have blood on their hands – but so do we, the American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to assuage their – and our – actual and associative guilt. The suddenly urgent...

THE evolution in public policy concerning the manufacture, sale and possession of semiautomatic assault weapons like AK-47s, AR-15s and Uzis has been very disturbing. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and I all supported a ban on these formidable firearms, and one was finally passed in 1994. When the 10-year ban was set to expire, many police organizations — including 1,100 police chiefs and sheriffs from around the nation — called on Congress and President George W. Bush to renew and strengthen it. But with a wink from the White House, the gun lobby prevailed and the ban...

Do you think homosexuality is a choice? Oh, no. I don’t think I’ve ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there’s a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can’t simply say, oh, like, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay.” It’s like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.” So your feeling would be that people are born one way or another. I mean, I think that’s the prevailing view at this point, and...

WASHINGTON -- Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely. Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros...

The GOP's top Internet official is leaving the Republican National Committee. Arguably the most respected technocrat in the Republican Party, Cyrus Krohn is just the latest in a string of officials to resign from the RNC; last week, the RNC's finance director quit. But because GOP Chairman Michael Steele made leveraging the Internet to attract voters to the Republican Party a top priority ina tech summit two weeks ago, Krohn's departure comes as an especially heavy blow -- not just to the RNC, but to the conservative blogosphere. A veteran of Microsoft and Yahoo, Krohn joined the RNC in July...

The drug war is on. On the same day that the secretary of homeland security told Congress that drug-related violence along the Mexican border had grown beyond the ability of the department to handle, the DEA announced an operation against a major Mexican drug cartel that netted more than 750 suspects - almost all of them in the U.S. "I believe this is going to require more than the Department of Homeland Security," Janet Napolitano said Wednesday during her first Capitol Hill appearance since her confirmation last month as homeland security secretary. "So we are reaching out to the national...

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times. Having been elected to the job that the Bush White House and its political guru, Karl Rove, once denied him, Mr. Steele is running the show his way. To those who claimed he can't make the...

Phoenix — “Senator McCain, what do you make of Arizonans who think that for the last ten years you’ve been America’s senator, and not Arizona’s senator?” That, from a local reporter here in Phoenix, was one of the opening questions last week when John McCain held his first press conference since losing the presidential race on November 4. McCain’s purpose was to announce that he will run for reelection in 2010 and to say, in effect, “Remember me? I’m your senator.” The reporter’s question was to remind McCain that a number of people in this state aren’t entirely happy about...

...Governor, let me ask you about immigration. How many undocumented immigrants are there in Alaska? I don't know, I don't know. That's a good question. As governor, how do you deal with them? Do you think they all should be deported? There is no way that in the US we would roundup every illegal immigrant -there are about 12 million of the illegal immigrants- not only economically is that just an impossibility but that's not a humane way anyway to deal with the issue that we face with illegal immigration. Do you then favor an amnesty for the 12 or...

Yeah, crazy Joe and his crazy ideas. Here’s the source for his “dysfunctional” comment. Try to contain your outrage. Joe Biden shared his views on illegal immigration with an Iowa crowd, saying that the solution starts with big changes in the Mexican economy. “They’re being irresponsible. This is the second-wealthiest nation in the hemisphere - we’re not talking about Sierra Leone,” the Democratic presidential candidate said. “This is a dysfunctional society.” The full translated script follows below. Exit question one: Who exactly is supposed to take exception to what Biden said? If Mexican immigrants turned U.S. citizens didn’t (fundamentally) agree...

Referencing my column yesterday on illegal immigration and the mortgage mess, Hans Bader at Open Market shares his experience. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails with similar stories. Tip of the iceberg: When I and my wife, a legal alien, bought our house, the mortgage company told me that if my wife were an illegal alien, rather than legal, we would have qualified for certain loan programs with big banks. But because she was a legal alien waiting for her green-card (which she had recently applied for), we didn’t qualify. Mark Krikorian, an activist against illegal immigration, argues that...

AS panicked politicians prepare to fork over $1 trillion in taxpayer funding to rescue Wall Street, they've fingered regulation, deregulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, greedy banks, greedy borrowers, greedy short-sellers and minority-home-ownership promoters for blame. But there's one villain that has slipped notice: how illegal immigration, crime-enabling banks and open-borders Bush policies fueled the mortgage crisis. It's no coincidence that the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave - Loudoun County, Va., California's Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix - also happen to...

But, talking about secure borders... -Sure. -You voted for the construction of the wall between Mexico and the United States. However, the Mexican Government has just confirmed that every year, at least half a million Mexicans come to the United States. How exactly are you planning to secure that border? Every single minute there is an immigrant coming into the United States illegally. -I didn't vote for, I am not sure what you are talking about, but we can secure... -...about 700 miles. -I say we can secure our borders with walls and/or fences in urban areas, and then virtual...

Well before Senators Barack Obama and John McCain rose to the top of their parties, a partisan shift was under way at the local and state level. For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all. Jim Webb, arms crossed, at a rally in 2006, won his Senate race in Virginia with strong support from inner suburbs. While the implications of the changing landscape for Mr. Obama...

KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 30 -- Sen. John McCain last week delivered one of his sharpest critiques yet of Sen. Barack Obama's Iraq policies, carefully reading a prepared speech that accused his Democratic rival of failing the commander-in-chief test and promoting ideas that would force American troops to "retreat under fire." But just hours after his crisp performance, the Republican presidential candidate blurred his own message with an offhand comment to a television interviewer that Obama's proposal for a 16-month time frame for removing combat troops from Iraq might be a "pretty good timetable." That seemed to run counter to...

"Too close to call." "Within the margin of error." "A statistical dead heat." If you've been following news coverage of the 2008 presidential election, you're probably familiar with these phrases. Media commentary on the presidential horserace, reflecting the results of a series of new national polls, has strained to make a case for a hotly contested election that is essentially up for grabs. Signs of Barack Obama's weaknesses allegedly abound. The huge generic Democratic Party advantage is not reflected in the McCain-Obama pairings in national polls. Why, according to the constant refrain, hasn't Obama put this election away? A large...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - \Barack Obama is trouncing John McCain in the race for the White House -- at least in sales of T-shirts, badges, baseball caps and other campaign merchandise. "Everyone is going for Obama," a sidewalk vendor whose stand was smothered in Obama and McCain T-shirts, along with garb for visitors to Washington, told AFP. "We sell about 70 percent Obama stuff -- way more than McCain," said the vendor, who asked not to be named. Obama-embroidered baseball caps sat in the center of the stand; the absence of a McCain equivalent was striking. "I don't think our wholesaler...