Free Republic

On the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the U.S. The Stiletto wondered why President George W. Bush was expanding a program that brought young Saudi men to study in our universities – quintupling the number to 15,000: "The Stiletto doubts that exposing young Saudis to American education and culture will make them more sympathetic to us – it may well have the opposite effect, and reinforce the fundamentalist Muslim view of America as a decadent and immoral society." Well, guess what Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told CIA interrogators about the effect that an American college education...

Twenty years after the 1989 murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins by a white mob in Bensonhurst, the Rev. Al Sharpton joined the victim’s family and friends at the Brooklyn cemetery where he is buried. ...Two years from now will mark the 20th anniversary of the murder of Jewish rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum during the Crown Heights riot – which Sharpton helped instigate. ... The Stiletto will have to wait another two years to learn how Sharpton plans to commemorate Rosenbaum’s murder, seeing as how he protested civil rights charges being brought against his killer. [NOTE: There was media bias...

Americans who remember the 1973 and 1979 oil crises – being allowed to buy gas on alternate days, depending upon whether their license plate ended with an odd or even number, and waiting an hour or more in a line that stretched several blocks until getting to the pump – understand healthcare rationing all too well. They also know that conservation and increased fuel efficiency did little to mitigate gas shortages in 2004 and 2008 – caused in part by government meddling in the free market - nor to slow down the rate of growth in the price of domestic...

Just seven months into his term -- and 14 months before the 2010 midterm election -- and could it be, is President Obama already a lame duck? With his passive management style -- which inevitably led to overreaching and heavy-handedness by Congressional Democrats Obama has made himself largely irrelevant on many of the issues he ran on, from health care "reform" to "resetting" our foreign relations. Here are seven signs that Obama's political suasion is waning.[NOTE: Copying and reposting this in full is a copyright violation, which is why I posted only the introductory bit.]

On a Facebook post, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) puts the lie to The New York Times’ assertion that “the rumor that government-sponsored ‘death panels’ to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere." Had Times reporters Jim Rutenberg and Jackie Calmes read her commentary – which was posted the day before their article was published, they would have known that the death panels are real, and where to read up on the details. Palin makes a solid case that healthcare “reform,” as originally envisioned by Democrats, would lead to rationed care and put a price...

Commenting about the recent shooting at a fitness center near Pittsburgh in which three women were killed and nine others wounded by a gunman who then killed himself, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes: We’ve seen this tragic ritual so often that it has the feel of a formula. A guy is filled with a seething rage toward women and has easy access to guns. The result: mass slaughter. ... Herbert is right about one thing: Men are much likelier to commit violent crimes – as well as gun homicides – than women. ... Unfortunately - and predictably -...

The U.S. Postal Service is projected to lose $7 billion in 2009 and the same amount in 2010 – this after a succession of postal rate increases since 2006 (first class postage rose 2¢ to $0.39 for the first ounce and is now $0.44) – and thousands of branches coast-to-coast are curtailing services and may be shuttered. Is government-run mail delivery really the best analogy Obama could have come up with to assuage people’s fears about government-run healthcare? Maybe he’s been hanging around Joe Biden too long. Oh, and, contrary to Obama’s assertions, FedEx and UPS are not “doing just...

As Dems fan out across the land to try to explain healthcare “reform” and why the legislation must be written and passed at breakneck speed, they are being met by skeptics and dyspeptics ... In an E-mail this morning, Free Us Now’s BettyJean Kling reminded The Stiletto of a very fitting quote from Thomas Jefferson: “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” ... As for The Stiletto, when it comes to healthcare “reform” give her liberty or give her death – literally, because should she become gravely ill her...

Clearly, the White House hoped Obama’s beery bonhomie would induce all of us to put on beer goggles and continue to view him as post-racial. For Crowley and Gates, however, it was an invitation they could not refuse. While Obama and Biden – in shirt sleeves, dressed down to come off as a regular guys – offered their guests a beer, they apparently did not invite the two men to take off the jackets and loosen ties they wore out of deference to the office of the presidency. Just another phony photo op.

Responding to a call from a homeowner, Boonton, NJ, police were forced to arrest a Marmotan-American male ... The Marmota was combative from the moment the officers arrived on the scene ... According to the police report, the Marmota was exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, directed at a police officer, and accused the officers of profiling, demanded their names and badge numbers and insulted the mother of one of the officers. It was then that police maced the Marmota and took him into custody. Authorities later euthanized the Marmota, and shipped the carcass to the Department of Health and Senior...

At the root of Gates’ encounter with Crowley is not racism, but elitism. Just as elites look down on former AK Gov. Sarah Palin, both Gates and Obama reflexively saw Crowley as “a dumb cop.” ... Gates obviously feels superior to Crowley and his workaday ilk and didn’t have the manners or brains to squelch his hubris, even in a situation that could have potentially gotten him killed. [NOTE: This is the second item on the page.]

With President Barack Hussein Obama’s economic policies being called his Hurricane Katrina, and healthcare reform being called his Bay of Pigs and his Waterloo, he’s starting to get worried. Obama reportedly told one Congressman who warned him that Dems would break ranks if the Senate Finance Committee draft wasn’t revenue neutral, “You’re going to destroy my presidency.” As workaday Americans are questioning the cost and wondering whether the same pols who made a hash of the economic stimulus can be trusted to fix healthcare, Obama’s decided to get more hands-on instead of continuing to leave the details to Congress –...

Joe the Plumber is not a fluke. Having perfected the politics of personal destruction Dems and their MSM army of winged monkeys are now employing a more frightening iteration: The politics of workaday citizen destruction.

In its editorial marking the 233rd year since the founding of our nation, The Washington Post notes; “The men who produced the Constitution were preoccupied with the abuse of power. They talked in terms of restraint, division of powers, limits on government. They were ever mindful of the ways in which a majority could impose its will on a minority.” But as Ricci v. DeStefano demonstrates, sometimes the abuse of power occurs when the government seeks to impose its will on a majority.

Is Mark Sanford's behavior contemptible enough to make him King of Heels, or does that (dis)honor belong to John Ensign, Eliot Spitzer or John Edwards? ... Let's compare [them] low-blow by low-blow ...

President Barack Hussein Obama addressed an audience of 2,500 people at Cairo University for 55 minutes, fulfilling a campaign promise to deliver a major address from a Muslim country.Obama’s speech was translated into 13 languages and disseminated by E-mail and Web video worldwide, in “an effort to turn technology, which has been a powerful recruiting tool for radical Islamic terrorists, to a tool of outreach and influence for the U.S.,” notes The Washington Times. Here, nine passages from the speech and what they mean in English...

President Barack Obama met with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia,, he did not bow (video) obsequiously before the Muslim king – at least not physically: “I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty's counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East.” As leaders of Muslim nations, Obamah and Abdullah have a lot in common. Whatcha talkin’ about, Willis?

Red State America bitch-slapped Perez Hilton by proxy. (Note: This is the second post on the page.)

The “duel” on Thursday wasn’t Obama vs. Cheney, it was Obama vs. Obama. His speech could only have been given by someone with multiple personality disorder – or a deeply conflicted liberal who (to borrow a phrase from the 1964 Goldwater campaign) in his heart knows Cheney is right.

A new Gallup poll of 1,015 adults finds that a razor-thin majority (51 percent) of Americans are now "pro-life" vs. “pro-choice" (42 percent) ... Perhaps no convert to the pro-life view is more high profile than Norma McCorvey – AKA “Jane Roe” in ... Roe vs. Wade ... [S]he was at Notre Dame University Sunday protesting the school’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to give the commencement address. ... In his speech, Obama said that ... we are imperfect beings prone to “all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be...