Free Republic

If Mitt Romney wins the GOP presidential nomination, he's going to owe Ron Paul a fee for services rendered. No one has done more to help Mr. Romney than has the libertarian candidate, who has no chance to win the nomination himself but has savaged the rest of the field while giving the former Massachusetts governor a pass.Over the many GOP debates, Mr. Paul has almost never criticized Mr. Romney except in the most general terms when he's referring to the entire field of what he considers to be status quo Republicans. Even when offered an explicit opening to criticize...

ATLANTA (AP) -- Former President Jimmy Carter has some advice for Barack Obama as he gears up for the 2012 election: Don't alienate voters with controversial positions. The Georgia Democrat told The Associated Press on Tuesday that just about everything he did alienated voters, from sealing a treaty to hand over the Panama Canal to establishing diplomatic ties with China.Carter said: "If your main goal is to get re-elected, avoid a controversial subject as much as you can in the first term."

After a $56 billion federal investment in airline security, flying is no safer than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks and the bare hands of passengers may be the best defense once a terrorist gets on board, two members of Congress said Wednesday. Deriding the Transportation Security Administration as a bloated bureaucracy that recruits security personnel with ads on gas pumps and pizza boxes, the two House Republicans said it needed to undergo almost a dozen reforms.“Americans have spent nearly $60 billion, and they are no safer today than they were before 9/11,” said Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-Ga.). “We need...

The Occupy Wall Street movement is not wearing well with voters across the country. Only 33% now say that they are supportive of its goals, compared to 45% who say they oppose them. That represents an 11 point shift in the wrong direction for the movement's support compared to a month ago when 35% of voters said they supported it and 36% were opposed. Most notably independents have gone from supporting Occupy Wall Street's goals 39/34, to opposing them 34/42.Voters don't care for the Tea Party either, with 42% saying they support its goals to 45% opposed.  But asked whether...

The International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to release a report about Iran’s nuclear program this week. Many nuclear experts and diplomats expect the worst. Israel is getting sketchy, and rumored plans of military operations against the Shiite state are increasing—operations vehemently opposed by Russia. Iran’s recent foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador on U.S. soil exemplifies Iranian defiance against the United States and our ally Saudi Arabia. Their continued influence in Iraq sparks grave concerns among many Iraqi citizens. The Arab Spring uprisings induced by Iranian proxies haunts many Middle Eastern nations. The list of reasons to engage...

Watching Rick Perry in the Republican debate at Dartmouth say that the answer to every aspect of economic revival is to "get our energy industry back to work," and watching Herman Cain say that the answer to virtually anything is "my 9-9-9 plan," one's thoughts of course turned to John Belushi's immortal Greek diner owner, Pete Dionasopolis, who defined his world in three words: "Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger!"Perhaps destiny brought these GOP candidates to Dartmouth. After the debate, Gov. Perry attended a Dartmouth frat party. A Dartmouth fraternity was of course the inspiration for "Animal House," an apt metaphor for the...

Editor's Note: This column is reprinted with permission of the Washington Examiner. Click here to read it at that site. Memo to the Rick Perry campaign: If your guy can't win an exchange with Mitt Flippin' Romney over who's stuck to principle more consistently, his debating skills need serious work.That's what happened at Sept. 22's Republican debate in Orlando. After deflating Perry with a "nice try," Romney brazenly proclaimed, "One reason to elect me is that I know what I stand for, I've written it down. Words have meaning.""I've written it down"—I love that. I'm put in mind of the...

The Obama administration chose not to ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to re-hear a pivotal health reform case Monday, signaling that it’s going to ask the Supreme Court to decide whether President Barack Obama’s health reform law is constitutional. The move puts the Supreme Court in the difficult position of having to decide whether to take the highly politically charged case in the middle of the presidential election.

Former U.S. senator Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyoming) passed away on Wednesday at age 78. The Washington Post obit for him has a quote from one of his Cato appearances: Sen. Wallop was unapologetically conservative as a Republican, a position that sometimes drew ire from members of his own party.“Too many Republicans prefer to be a Democrat Lite,” he said in a speech at the Cato Institute in 1994. “As any beer connoisseur can tell you, Lite is a tasteless, repugnant concoction.” Way before the Tea Party came along, he penned a scathing and wide-ranging critique of the expansive growth of the federal government in...

BAGHDAD (AP) — A powerful anti-American Shiite cleric in Iraq with thousands of loyal followers threatened on Sunday that U.S. forces who stay past the Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline are fair game to attack.Iraqi officials, worried about a potential backlash if U.S. troops remain in the country, have tried to portray any American force that does not withdraw as trainers of the still-growing Iraqi military rather than as combat troops.While the security situation in Iraq has improved over the past few years, attacks are still commonplace. In June alone, 15 U.S. soldiers were killed, making it the bloodiest month for...

Candidates never keep their promises once in office. But even by the unlovely standards of his political peers, President Obama has pulled a rather impressive switcheroo from the anti-Bush to Bush-plus. He ran on a platform to undo President George W. Bush’s legacy and restore government accountability, even signing the pledge from the Reason Foundation (where I work) to “fully and robustly” work toward “open, transparent, and accountable government principles.” Instead, he has expanded executive power to czar-like proportions on fronts where even Bush feared to tread. Progressive crazies such as The New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman are chiding...

On Sunday a Kern County, California, sheriff's deputy shot and killed David Lee "Deacon" Turner, a 56-year-old former running back for the Cincinnati Bengals, outside a convenience store in Bakersfield. Police questioned Turner, who was coming out of the store with his 19-year-old son, while investigating reports of teenagers asking adults to buy them alcohol and cigarettes. The Kern County Sheriff's Office says Deputy Wesley Kraft fired twice at Turner after the former football player hit Deputy Aaron Nadal over the head with a bag containing two 24-ounce cans of beer. Turner's son offered a strikingly different account: Turner's son was too shaken...

Days after the Obama Administration’s attempt to seize control of the U.S. budget was roundly shown to be illegal, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) have stepped up to show that Republicans want to tear up the Constitution too. Instead of letting the president usurp Congress’ budget-making authority, McConnell is now offering to give it up freely. AP’s David Espo writes that under McConnell’s plan…

The wounded are especially dangerous fighters. President Obama now occupies the high ground in the debt-ceiling debate, having called the Republicans’ bluff on the debt. He showed that deficit reduction is not now, and never has been, the GOP’s priority. He dare not get overconfident.After thwarting the deal that House Speaker John Boehner was cooking up with Obama, Rep. Eric Cantor, the majority leader and Boehner’s rival, needs to show he knew what he was doing and recoup political ground. Cantor is likely to present Obama with spending cuts that the president once seemed to endorse as part of a...

Mitch McConnell isn't selling out Republicans. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday he's concluded that no deal to raise the debt ceiling in return for serious spending restraint is possible with President Obama, and who can blame him? We've never thought the debt ceiling was the best leverage for a showdown over the entitlement state, and now it looks like Mr. Obama is trying to use it as a way to blame the GOP for the lousy economy.This may have been the President's strategy all along: Take the debt-limit talks behind closed doors, make major spending cuts seem possible...

Almost no one noticed, but around George W. Bush's reelection in 2004, the nation crossed a demographic milestone.From Revolutionary days through 2004, a majority of Americans fit two criteria. They were white. And they concluded their education before obtaining a four-year college degree. In the American mosaic, that vast white working class was the largest piece, from the yeoman farmer to the welder on the assembly line. Even as late as the 1990 census, whites without a college degree represented more than three-fifths of adults.But as the country grew more diverse and better educated, the white working-class share of the...

...The demeanor of the NRCC hotshots in the district near the end of Mr. Freshman’s campaign didn’t help me generate a positive impression of the organization, either. They were young, ambitious, and very well dressed. They were also tin-eared and callow. When they came in, they moved in. Desks were taken, computers were hijacked, and they told all the volunteers who had worked so hard for this candidate to stop coming to the office: the professionals were here and they would handle things. They advised the candidate to stop coming into the office and only speak to staff via email....

No matter how you slice it, the days of milk and cookies are long gone as schools aim to provide students with healthy fruits and vegetables as snacks.But raw onions?That's what several classes of students at Southeast's Turner Elementary were fed Tuesday, instead of the zucchini slices the school's food provider, Chartwells, said it would serve as part of a federal initiative to provide healthy food to young learners.

The debt crisis in Greece has taken on a dramatic new twist. Sources with information about the government's actions have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone. The common currency area's finance ministers and representatives of the European Commission are holding a secret crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night.

The United States is treating Osama bin Laden's body in 'accordance with Islamic practice,' White House official says. President Obama announced Sunday night that American forces killed bin Laden in Pakistan and that they took his body afterward. He said no Americans were harmed in the fight. Asked how bin Laden's body will be treated, a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call that 'we are ensuring that is handled in accordance with Islamic practice.' The official, who refused to be identified, said the matter is 'something that we take very seriously, and so, therefore, this is being...