Free Republic

During the Punic Wars Cato and other notable Romans argued that Carthago Delenda Est, that is, Carthage must be destroyed. Substitute sympathetic ordinary Americans, like Cliven Bundy, Joe the Plumber, and the superbly talented Sarah Palin for Carthage, and you have the rallying cry of the Democrats and their media enablers who will use any pretext to demonize those who dare to challenge their power.......... ........... This week’s victim was a nice rancher, Cliven Bundy, who got the sort of isolate and target Alinsky-style treatment we’ve seen others get. His opponents hurl a false charge against him, rely on doctored...

Ben Franklin opined that there was nothing certain but death and taxes. I’d add a third to the list of certainties, anti-Semitism, and this week reminds us of that. As Americans struggled with preposterously complex federal income tax regulations and ever-higher tax burdens, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney tweeted “That’s the price we pay for 7 of the 10 richest counties being within commuting distance of DC.” Right he is. As the rest of the country struggles to keep on producing -- cattle, grain, merchandise, services -- hamstrung by ever more regulations and executive and judicial branch overreaching, DC...

From the beginning of the week to the end, the president made crystal-clear to anyone who paid attention that he was over his head in this position and that he was startlingly disengaged in all but the most trivial of ceremonial matters. Obama's agents hammered out a proposed tax deal in which he seemed to play no significant role and which totally undercut his promise to end tax cuts for the rich. That redistributive, economically ridiculous position is one of the few things on which he has not heretofore been a slippery, tilting-at-straw-men con man. It is perfectly consistent with...

We are exceptional then, but not because we are so special, so much better than people of other nations. Rather it is because God graced us with founding fathers who were brilliant at understanding human nature and who had spent considerable time studying what constitutes good governance and they codified those thoughts in a gorgeous federal republic guided by a written constitution. Founders who, perhaps alone in history ceded their power to the people in the belief that self governance by free men beat any other system known to man, It is our obligation in every generation to preserve and...

Shirley Sherrod’s recent frenetic rollercoaster ride is only a “teachable moment” if people are really willing to learn. By all accounts, this wonderful lady was first, thrown under the proverbial bus, then scooped from the pavement and ceremoniously dusted off, all because something she said was taken out of context. Context, by definition, includes surrounding words, related circumstances, and vital background information. To ignore these while quoting a few words arranged in apparent order is to move from context to pretext. The words cease to mean what the person has really said, but instead are manipulated to other ends. Sadly,...

Dean: Fox News “racist” The Fox News Channel’s handling of the Shirley Sherrod controversy “was absolutely racist,” charged former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Dean, who is also a former Democratic National Committee chairman and hero of liberals, asserted Fox News failed to vet video footage of a speech misleadingly excerpted to make it appear that Sherrod was boasting of using her post as an Agriculture Department official to discriminate against a white farmer. “I don’t think Newt Gingrich is a racist and I don’t think you’re a racist,” Dean told Fox News host Chris Wallace,...

Clarice Feldman David Greene of NPR reports that Hillary and her entourage swept into an Iowa diner, had a meal on the house, spoke to her waitress who reported she had to work two jobs to support her family then left without leaving her a tip and (without permission to do so) used that woman's story in a campaign speech. "I wished I would have been asked first," the waitress, Anita Esterday, said of Clinton's decision to insert her in a speech. "I wish she would have asked if she could talk about me later. I didn't like it when...

Has the American Thinker website been hacked? The URL serves up a weird page I've never seen before. Anyone else have the problem?

First , he eschews the mealy mouthed response to the Libby pardon--arguing, rightly I think, that the President should remedy this travesty by immediately pardoning Lewis Libby. Then he argues that it's a horrible idea for the Dems to keep trying to reduce the power of the Executive right now: Amidst all this foolishness there is a serious question here. Considering the times we live in, do we really want to continue to try to chip away at the traditional powers of the president? Regardless of who wins the White House, don't we need a strong president? And topping off...

In this week's episode of Rome (a superb HBO series which increasingly reminds me of the Nation's Capital), Servilia, whose son was killed in a power grab, knelt before the door of manipulative Attia, mother of Octavian and lover of Marc Anthony, the two men responsible, calling out in a haunting cry, "Attia of the Julii, I call for justice." She did so because the unavailing legal system was broken, and curses (which were taken seriously in those days) were the one remaining way most people had to redress grave wrongs. I call for justice for Scooter Libby because he...

Yesterday I outlined the peculiar and suspicious genesis of the Foley matter which is the Dem-Media’s scandal of the day.Now Speaker Hastert has asked for an investigation by the Department of Justice, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is asking for a House Ethics Committee investigation  to find out what the Republican House leadership knew and when they knew it. (Not very original is it?)She’s insisting the Republican leadership be placed under oath, and suggesting that by failing to act earlier they endangered children.I think there should be an investigation, but the subject of it should not be the Republican leadership which—like the...

Yesterday I outlined the peculiar and suspicious genesis of the Foley matter which is the Dem-Media’s scandal of the day. Now Speaker Hastert has asked for an investigation by the Department of Justice, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is asking for a House Ethics Committee investigation to find out what the Republican House leadership knew and when they knew it. (Not very original is it?) She’s insisting the Republican leadership be placed under oath, and suggesting that by failing to act earlier they endangered children. I think there should be an investigation, but the subject of it should not be...

Pardon me, but I smell something very peculiar in the way we have learned of the disgrace of Rep. Mark Foley. The email scandal which led to the resignation of the Republican Congressman is reverberating throughout the capital and the nation, as Democrats attempt to capitalize on bad news for Republicans. The seamiest of the released emails, which Foley has not denied, are right up there with Rhodes Scholar and Illinois Democratic Congressman Mel Reynolds’ taped phone conversations lusting for 15 year old Catholic school girls in their uniforms

The CIA leaker has been found. No law was broken. Why is the prosecutor still going after Scooter Libby? The New York Times and Washington Post are hard at work airbrushing history to obscure their role in promoting Joseph C. Wilson's incredible tale of his Mission to Niger and subsequent fantasy of martyrdom at the hands of Karl Rove. Both add insult to injury. While minimizing their own responsibility for the three-year witchhunt for an imagined White House conspiracy, they still suggest that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby--Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff and the only man indicted in the...