Free Republic

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush said that "America is addicted to oil." But it would be more accurate to say that America is addicted to opportunity, and oil and its products help us seize it.

Sen. Barbara Boxer is a longtime opponent of judicial nomination filibusters. Or she was. Suddenly the light has dawned, and she realizes how wrong she was to oppose them: "I thought I knew everything. I didn't get it. . . . I am here to say I was totally wrong." Other Democratic senators have had similar changes in belief: Joe Biden and Robert Byrd, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, Joe Lieberman, Pat Leahy, Chuck Schumer and their erstwhile colleagues Lloyd Bentsen, and Tom Daschle have all vigorously opposed the use of the filibuster against judicial nominations.

In 1945 Clement Attlee led the British Labour Party to victory over Winston Churchill's Conservative Party. He then proceeded to socialize much of the British economy, for he believed that "the creation of a society based on social justice . . . could only be attained by bringing under public ownership and control the main factors in the economic system." Labour's goal was to get rid of the waste and irrationality that, in the socialist view, doomed market economies to failure. Fast forward six decades, and you hear an Attlee echo--Sen. Hillary Clinton telling a California audience last summer that...

Boston Red Sox fans celebrated a World Series victory for the first time in 86 years. Weekly Reader grade school students can celebrate being better pollsters than Zogby, Fox and CBS: in October, as in 11 of the previous 12 elections, they correctly picked the winner of the presidential campaign. And SpaceShipOne became the first private craft ever to reach space--71 miles above the earth. So 2004 was a very good year in America. It was a good year too in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq. On the other hand, it was a very bad year for the United Nations, Russia,...

If the Democratic Party allows itself to be defined by Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore and the editorial page of the New York Times, while Republicans, their president and their strengthened congressional majorities encourage the pursuit of happiness in an opportunity and ownership society, then Mr. and Mrs. America will make sure conservatives are in power for a great many years to come.

President Bush is likely to be re-elected because the American people believe this presidential election is the most important one in memory. A USA Today/Gallup poll revealed that 72% of respondents think it is, compared with 47% who thought so in 2000 and 41% in 1996. Much of that feeling is based on the insecurity created by 9/11, and it is shifting the voting patterns. The veterans' and married women's vote will be stronger for Mr. Bush than they were four years ago. Both perceive, as many Americans do, that a victory for Mr. Kerry would be a signal to...

Since his death a great deal has been written about Ronald Reagan. About his vision and his ability to communicate with regular Americans. About the extraordinary economic growth his tax rate reductions created, and his belief that Soviet communism was an evil empire, not an alternative form of government that must be understood. About his foreign policy leadership that led Sen. Ted Kennedy to eulogize him as "the president who won the Cold War." But Reagan was something more: a turning-point president who believed that the policy directions of the past were wrong, and that with different policies our future...