Free Republic

Grasping the Libertarian VoteBy John Hood March 04, 2010 RALEIGH – I know quite a few Libertarians. But I know many, many more libertarians. That difference between the upper case and the lower case adds up to millions of votes – and lots of misunderstanding. The Libertarian Party was founded in 1971 by intellectuals and activists espousing several distinguishable but often-allied strands of thought, from Ayn Rand Objectivists and John Locke-style classical liberals to free-market economists of the Austrian and Chicago schools. The party has run presidential candidates ever since. In many states, Libertarians have also made the ballot in...

Learning From the Sin of Sodom By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: February 27, 2010 For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.” Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo. . ....

The European Commission has placed Greece's economic policies under an unprecedented level of oversight within the eurozone. Analyst Peter Zeihan discusses the implications and mounting pressures for France and Belgium. Click link to play video.

This is a funny, musical lesson on Economics. Clink the link.

The Iranian Incursion in Context December 21, 2009 By George Friedman A small number of Iranian troops entered Iraq, where they took control of an oil well and raised the Iranian flag Dec. 18. The Iranian-Iraqi border in this region is poorly defined and is contested, with the Iranians claiming this well is in Iranian territory not returned after the Iran-Iraq War. Such incidents have occurred in the past. Given that there were no casualties this time, it therefore would be easy to dismiss this incident, even though at about the same time an Iranian official claimed that Iraq owes...

Holy Fools By the Editors Sen. Harry Reid has been a kind of reverse Houdini with a talent for getting into traps. To appease Democratic moderates, he proposed to drop the public option, which made liberals furious. To get back in their good graces, he suggested expanding Medicare by letting people as young as 55 participate in it — but that led Sen. Joe Lieberman to threaten to join Republicans in a filibuster. If Reid manages to cobble together a deal that gets 60 votes, he may find that it cannot win majority approval in the House. The Senate and...

President Barack Obama’s speech in Oslo marking his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize was eloquent, as most of his speeches are. It was also enigmatic — both for its justification of war and for his speaking on behalf of the international community while making clear that as commander in chief, his overarching principle is to protect and defend the United States. In the end, it was difficult to discern precisely what he meant to say. An eloquent and enigmatic speech is not a bad strategy by a president, but it raises this question: At the end of his first...

Georgie Anne Geyer 12/10/2009 IS THERE A NEW REVOLUTION UNDER WAY IN IRAN? WASHINGTON -- The American people got a good glimpse of the chaos in Iran in 1979 when Americans were held hostage for more than a terrible year -- but perhaps you really had to be in the Middle East to see and feel what a profound effect the "Islamic Revolution" had in that era on the entire region. From Egypt and the Persian Gulf to Indonesia in the Pacific, there was a sense that the world was shaking and might not right itself for many moons. In...

Olympia Snowe delivered a very good speech on health care shortly before Thanksgiving, not that the press corps noticed. With Majority Leader Harry Reid's announcement this week of a double-secret bargain that Democrats hope will squeeze ObamaCare through the Senate—after nine whole days of debate so far in the world's greatest deliberative body—the Maine Republican's words seem more pertinent than ever. Mrs. Snowe began by noting that this year's health debate is "one of the most complex and intricate undertakings the Congress has ever confronted," and that she, too, has devoted much of her three-decade political career to promoting cheaper,...

Some have speculated that Reid is simply "losing it"--but from the years in which we've been observing Reid, we'd say he never had it in the first place. Yesterday's statement on the Senate floor was vintage Reid. He has a propensity for saying things that are splenetic, inappropriate and ignorant, such as his embarrassing series of claims a few years ago that Clarence Thomas was unintelligent. This, however, raises a question that has long puzzled us about Reid: How did such an unappealing man who says so many foolish things get so far in politics? He has been elected to...

America vs. The Narrative By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: November 28, 2009 What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood? Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the...

DEAR Mr. Liddy, It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context: I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the...

My wife just told me that Fox News announced that Kim Jong Il has had a stroke. I don't see it elsewhere. Does anyone here have any more information?

The window to give money to John McCain directly is closed. Can anyone here provide us with some pro-McCain-Palin 523 orgs where we can send money? Thanks.

McCain Calls Out the Times By Patrick J. Buchanan Friday, February 22, 2008 John McCain just shoved his whole stack into the middle of the table, and put his credibility and candidacy on the line. He just threw down the gauntlet to The New York Times by flatly denying every point of a front-page story that implied McCain had an affair nine years ago with a 31-year-old Washington lobbyist, then used his influence as a committee chair to promote the interests of her client. The Times' front-page story of the alleged romance was based on two anonymous sources the Times...

Back to the Future * "Stock Futures Point to Further Decline"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 3, 7:02 a.m. * "Stock Futures Point to Flat Open"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 3, 8:22 a.m. * "Stock Futures Point to Higher Open"--headline, Associated Press, Jan. 3, 9:21 a.m.

CAIR Goes After Rudy Giuliani You had to know this was coming. The Council on American Islamic Relations, the Saudi-funded radical Islamic front group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial, has put out one of their infamous “Action Alerts” on Rudy Giuliani—because he used the words “Islamic terrorism:” Action: Contact the Giuliani Presidential Committee. Here’s the contact information they’ve published at their web site. I encourage LGF readers to use this information to express support for Giuliani’s unwillingness to knuckle under to the demands of this fifth column group: Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee...

Bearish Voters Get Senate's GoatJuly 8, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist On the eve of Independence Day, the people of this great republic declared their independence from the United States Senate under the stirring battle-cry, "No legislation without explanation!" The geniuses who'd cooked up the "comprehensive" immigration bill's "grand bargain" behind the scenes in the pork-filled rooms had originally planned to ram it through in 48 hours before Memorial Day. And, right to the end, the bipartisan Emirs-for-life of Incumbistan gave the strong impression they regarded it as an affront to be required by the impertinent whippersnappers of the...

Weakness on Iran Bites Us July 1, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist A year or so after the Ayatollah Khomeini took out an Islamist mob contract on Salman Rushdie, the novelist appeared, after elaborate security arrangements, on a television arts show in London. His host was Melvyn Bragg, a longtime British telly grandee, and what was striking was how quickly the interview settled down into the usual cozy lit.-crit. chit-chat. Lord Bragg took Rushdie back to his earlier pre-fatwa work. ''After your first book,'' drawled Bragg, ''which was not particularly well-received . . .'' That's supposed to be the...

Foolish Fuel Follies Why anti-gouging laws and windfall profits taxes won't lower gas prices Ronald Bailey | May 25, 2007 Gasoline prices rose to historic highs this week and Americans are feeling all of that pain at the pump. Trilby Lundberg, the head of the California-based fuel market research firm, the Lundberg Survey, calculates that the national average price per gallon of regular gasoline is now $3.18. In inflation adjusted dollars this price breaks the all-time high record price of March 1981 by three cents. In 1981, regular gasoline sold for $1.35 per gallon which would be $3.15 in today's...