Free Republic

Obamunistas are saying that Obama is cool, and Romney is not. But cool to whom? Cool is in the eye of the beholder. I have to admit that if you are an aging hippie who never grew up, still think that the counterculture of the 1960s was the highwater mark of American civilization, reject America's capitalist economic system as inherently unfair and uncool in the grubby pursuit of profit, see America's historic world-leading prosperity as crass materialism causing global poverty, and regard America's world dominating superpower military as the tool of global imperialism, you would see Obama as very cool...

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced the approval of a major natural gas drilling project in Utah that the Obama administration says will support more than 4,000 jobs during its development while safeguarding critical wildlife habitat and air quality. During an appearance outside Salt Lake City, Salazar said Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum Corp. would be allowed to develop up to 3,675 new gas wells over the next decade in eastern Utah. "It will help power the American economy," Salazar said. The move comes at a time when the Obama administration is under fire from critics who say his energy...

If you don’t believe rigid mathematical formulas can tell you who will win a presidential election — and I don’t — you should be even more dubious about hunches divined from a stray incident or two. So why do I have the feeling that just such an incident--OK, make it four--made last week a very bad one for President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects? Because they connect to much bigger problems that go to the heart of the Obama campaign’s arguments for a second term. Moreover, the time to repair these problems is rapidly running out. Let’s take the first event,...

U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, who suffered a stroke in January, has gone home. Kirk (R-Ill.), 52, had been hospitalized since he first suffered stroke symptoms on Jan. 21. Since February, he has been at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where his doctors said he has made steady progress and will be involved in a research project that involves more field rehabilitation than normal. Though he will be spending nights at the homes of “various relatives,” his staff said, he will be reporting by day to the RIC to continue his rehab. A lift has been installed on the stairs at...

Entitlement reform is on the lips of every Republican politician these days, and that’s good news for Utah state Sen. Dan Liljenquist. His party’s leadership picked the first-term legislator to reform the state pension system last year. The plan he came up with – along with the methodical way he crafted it – won accolades even from his political opponents. A year later he took on Medicaid reform, with similar results. Now, Liljenquist is preparing a likely primary campaign against Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) in 2012, in his short political career he has two solid achievements to run on. “I...

The two young men had woefully little in common: one was a wealthy Mormon from Michigan, the other a middle-class Jew from Israel. But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the 16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the most formative time of their careers, they sized each other up during the firm’s weekly brainstorming sessions, absorbing the same profoundly analytical view of the world. That shared experience decades ago led to a warm friendship, little known to outsiders, that is now...

This week, President Obama went negative, launching an ad a full year before the election attacking Mitt Romney's character for flip-flopping. Clever, Mr. President. Too clever by half. I'm not going to defend Romney from the charge that he has changed his mind -- on abortion he clearly has. But I do want to take up the one issue I know the most about: same-sex marriage. (snip) I don't mind anyone criticizing Romney for the things he has done. But this particular attack is grotesquely unfair. I know. I was there. In the summer of 2003, when I learned the...

Defense attorneys for Brian David Mitchell, accused of kidnapping Elizabeth Smart, filed a motion Tuesday for their client to be acquitted, claiming prosecutors failed to show "sufficient evidence" that proved their case "beyond a reasonable doubt." Specifically, defense attorneys claim prosecutors, who rested their case Tuesday, failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mitchell transported Smart across state lines for the purpose of having sex. "To the contrary, the evidence suggests that the sexual activity, while foreseen by Mr. Mitchell, was incidental to the primary purpose of the trip," the defense wrote in its motion. Mitchell is facing a...

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah will likely become the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee early next year. From that perch, he’ll oversee the GOP’s tax-writing policy in the upper chamber. Before then, however, Hatch is keeping busy: In coming weeks, he will be one of the leading figures in the battle over extending Bush-era tax rates, which are set to expire at the end of the year. As he looks ahead, Hatch predicts that there could be a “reasonable compromise” with Democrats and the White House. He urges the president to “come in good faith” to the negotiating...

Click on the link, then click on the Print button. Refresh every 20 minutes or so. Lois Smart has finished testifying, Mary Katherine Smart is testifying. The experts aren't sure if Elizabeth will testify today or tomorrow.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — TV One will cover the Democratic National Convention because — and only because — the party's nominee is African-American. And yet, oddly enough, some of the people who will be involved in that coverage took umbrage at the suggestion that the cable/satellite network is, um, covering the Democratic National Convention only because the nominee is Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. "Yes, Sen. Obama running for president is a huge deal at TV One as it is in the African-American community," said Johnathan Rodgers, the CEO of the network that, in his words, "targets African-American adults." According to...

There was a remarkable exchange on the floor of the Senate this past Thursday between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. It offers pretty stunning evidence of how personally petty Reid is, as well as his penchant for defining “partisanship” as anything that keeps him from getting his way. The particulars here aren’t terribly important, but what happened was this: The Senate was voting on a Medicare bill bloated with new spending. The bill was also an attempt to prevent cuts in payment rates to doctors who treat seniors on Medicare, and Democrats wanted to...

Viewers of tonight's season premiere of "History Detectives" will learn that a book about the horrors of "Female Life Among the Mormons" is a work of fiction. And the woman who owns the 1856 volume will be "disappointed" by that news. "History Detectives" (8 p.m., Ch. 7) is a fascinating series in which historical objects are examined to determine if they're authentic. (Tonight's other two segments feature a World War II diary and a coin shot by Annie Oakley.) In the case of the 1856 book about the horrors of Mormon polygamy, Marcie Waterman Murray of Stanfordville, N.Y., bought it...

PROVO — The answers to America's problems aren't found in Washington; they're found in the people of America. That's what radio and TV personality Glenn Beck told a vocal crowd of nearly 17,000 gathered at BYU's Marriott Center Sunday evening for America's Freedom Festival's annual Patriotic Service. "In a time when America is begging for a leader; in a time when America is shouting out, 'Where is the leader, when will he step forward?' I am here to tell you: You are the leader — the leader we seek. The leader we need is you; it always has been. "We...

First draft of Hillary Clinton's concession speech found in her office wastebasket: "It is time. It is time for our campaign to take stock of what we have accomplished and to acknowledge the hard work of thousands of volunteers who brought us so close to the nomination. In the thrust and parry of electoral politics, harsh words are spoken and things are said which perhaps ought not to have been said. But it is time to put all that behind us and move on. Most of all, it is time to come together and consolidate our gains and move forward....

ELDORADO, Texas — He was the man at the gates in the white cowboy hat and the folksy southern drawl. Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran was one of the few outsiders whom the FLDS would initially allow onto the YFZ Ranch, and he cultivated a relationship with them. That relationship has been severely strained in the aftermath of the raid on the YFZ Ranch. "I did not have the power to step in and stop this," Doran said. "The state of Texas had an investigation. They had a call, an outcry of a child they had to investigate and we...

The devil was in the details. Discussions about a proposed order involving the return of children taken from the Fundamentalist LDS Church's YFZ Ranch broke down late this afternoon when attorneys for the families wanted to review proposed changes with their clients. Judge Barbara Walther announced the attorneys had better get all of their clients' signatures before she would sign the agreement and abruptly left the bench late this afternoon. A lawyer for the families, Laura Shockley, said she expected attorneys would return to an Austin appeals court Monday to push for an order returning the children. It was the...

You called Scott McClellan last night. What did you ask him? ARI FLEISCHER, FORMER W.H. PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I did. Actually it was before the story broke about the book. So, it was a social call and Scott brought up the book. We talked about it and he told me he thought it was going to be an honest, brutal, I mean honest, blunt book — he didn't say brutal. And I'm not sure I thought it was going to be as bad as it sounds like it is. HEMMER: What do you mean? FLEISCHER: From what I'm hearing from...

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Lawyers for Child Protective Services have made a proposed agreement to return hundreds of children taken from the Fundamental LDS Church's YFZ Ranch. The agreement is being discussed by lawyers for mothers, children and child welfare authorities in a hearing underway that is in response to a Texas Supreme Court ruling that the children should be returned to their parents. A copy of the order, obtained by the Deseret News, seeks to have children returned to their parents beginning Monday. The proposed agreement also requires parents to complete parenting classes and cooperate with an ongoing investigation...

President George W. Bush landed in Park City in Marine One around 5 p.m. this evening, where a small crowd of both supporters and protestors greeted him. The landing by Bush on ball fields adjacent to Park City Middle School drew the attention of local residents, who were gathering throughout the afternoon. What they saw was the landing of the iconic helicopter, as well as four other identical green U.S. Marine Corp. helicopters. They also got a wave from Bush before he climbed into a waiting SUV. The motorcade then quickly left, bound for the second fundraiser at Mitt Romney's...