Free Republic

Reporting from Washington -- When President Obama says he has the best healthcare in the world, he isn't kidding. The White House medical unit, with a staff of four doctors plus nurses and physicians' assistants, is steps from his office. Treatment is free for Obama and his family (as well as for the vice president and his family). During the president's travels, a doctor and nurse ride in a limousine in his motorcade. An emergency medical technician comes too, with an ambulance. Air Force One is stocked with equipment for an on-board operating room. On overseas trips, two medical teams...

Covert board called crucial to presidents Report studies security role since Eisenhower by Bill Gertz Presidents need to rely on a little-known group of intelligence advisers that since the 1950s has helped guide policies and oversee the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy, according to a report by former intelligence officials. The book-length report to be released today is an exhaustive historical study of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which was created during the Eisenhower administration and has been used by presidents in different capacities ever since. "In some instances, the Board has played a central role in advising the president...

What will Washington be like when the Barbarians leave town next year? Will this hapless burg feel the relief of an epic enema? Will this home of flagrant hypocrites and BS ejaculators, stuffed from snout to stern with an indigestible lumpen elite of corrupt souls, moral myopics, and wannabe-messiahs — will it actually change? We know what Washington has become since the Barbarians took over in 2000. Who back then, when Bush was campaigning as a "compassionate conservative," could have foreseen what his Cheney presidency would bring us? 1. The turning of our proud Army and CIA into low-life torturers....

Since September 11, 2001, the speaker of the House has been required for security purposes to take government planes for official business. The White House rightly called "silly" recent criticism of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desire to have a plane that could fly to her San Francisco district nonstop, which would be larger than the plane her predecessor used. But this flap raises a more serious issue--that of presidential succession. Pelosi takes a military plane because the speaker of the House is second in line to succeed the president, behind only the vice president. That's what drove the Department of...

Washington -- Like chess players planning several moves ahead, some Democrats in Congress are looking toward what they see as the inevitable clash with President Bush over who has the power to end the Iraq war. Such a confrontation could provoke a constitutional crisis between two co-equal branches of government -- a Democratic-led Congress bolstered by polls showing the war is deeply unpopular and a Republican president who so far won't budge from his position that he is the decision-maker who will control policy for Iraq. "Since the president is adamant about pursuing his failed policies in Iraq, Congress has...

High school civics courses and even college-level political science classes on the separation of powers can sometimes differ radically from the actual practice. In a time when corruption runs rampant throughout Congress, and the legislative branch consistently succumbs to the executive branch’s agenda, change within the government is necessary, say Thomas Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, co-authors of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track. Both Mann and Ornstein spoke about their book at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday, July 12 as part of a panel discussion with former Speakers...

This thread invites all FReepers to engage in a Constitutional debate on this question: Is House Speaker Dennis Hastert correct or incorrect in his interpretation of the relevant Constitutional clauses as they pertain to the FBI raid of Rep. William Jefferson's offices in the Capitol?PREMISE: As conservatives, the one thing we should most try to conserve is the United States Constitution. In order to do so, we need to understand it. The raid on Rep. William Jefferson's Capitol office by the FBI is a very rare case, and it raises extremely important separation of powers questions. Please try to debate...

In the continuing saga of the surveillance "scandal," with some congressional Democrats denouncing President Bush as a lawbreaker and even suggesting that impeachment hearings may be in order, it is important to step back and put things in historical context. First of all, the Founding Fathers knew from experience that Congress could not keep secrets. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and his four colleagues on the Committee of Secret Correspondence unanimously concluded that they could not tell the Continental Congress about covert assistance being provided by France to the American Revolution, because "we find by fatal experience that Congress consists of...

The shocking governmental homicide of Terri Schiavo has many dimensions, twists, and turns--all of which, upon analysis, converge on one inescapable reality: The life of Terri Schiavo is solely in the hands of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. While Terri lies dying by slow execution in a Pinellas Park hospice, Gov. Bush and others have looked mainly to the legislative process for relief--knowing full well that any special law intended to spare Terri's life will likely be overturned or disregarded by unsympathetic courts on the pretext of "separation of powers." Terri's protectors have also appealed repeatedly to the courts themselves to...

WASHINGTON — Bucking the trend to break down walls between law enforcement agencies, the U.S. Capitol Police (search) has asked to be able to decline information requests from the executive branch. The Capitol Police insist this power is important to protect sensitive information from Freedom of Information Act (search) requests. The executive branch is subject to FOIA requests, but the legislative branch, of which the Capitol Police is a part, is not.

JEFF JACOBYThe end of the gay marriage debate? By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist  |  May 16, 2004 THIS IS THE week that same-sex marriage comes to Massachusetts, and thus to the United States. The fundamental building block of civilization is about to undergo a radical change -- a change opposed by a majority of American adults. How did this happen? The joining of gay and lesbian couples in marriage may turn out to be the most consequential development of our lifetimes. How did we get here? The answer to that question has several parts. At the most obvious level, the...

April 2004 Washington’s Biggest Crime Problem The federal government’s ever-expanding criminal code is an affront to justice and the Constitution. William L. Anderson and Candice E. Jackson Michael Paul Mahoney was convicted of selling methamphetamine in 1980 and served 22 months in a Texas prison. Upon his release, he went straight, opening a pool hall in Jackson, Tennessee. After closing up each night, he would deposit the day’s receipts at the bank, carrying a small .22-caliber pistol for protection. In 1992, after the pistol was stolen, Mahoney bought a new one at a pawnshop, filling out the required paperwork....

As the Supreme Court weighs the rights of the captured al Qaeda fighters whose cases will be heard today, we hope it won't forget the rights of the rest of us. Namely, Americans have the right to be protected against enemy attack. This appears to be a more open question than it should be with the current High Court, whose sense of its own importance is such that it just might think it can do a better job of running the war on terror than an elected chief executive. For more than 200 years, the Supreme Court has deferred to...

The Betrayal of Checks and Balances The philosophy of Ayn Rand has taught me and numerous other thinkers of the new intellectual Renaissance the moral groundwork for laissez-faire capitalism as the sole economic system which fully and unequivocally recognizes the individual’s objective prerequisites to survival, his natural rights of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and property. With slight loopholes, this was the implicit philosophy behind the founding of America, and the principal force in its first one hundred fifty years of development. Yet, in the words of Aristotle, "The least initial deviation from the truth gets multiplied later a thousandfold.”...

A new journalism study reveals news coverage about the federal government has plummeted in the last two decades, and the amount provided tends to favor Democrats over Republicans. The report, entitled "Government: In and Out of the News," is being issued by the Washington-based Council for Excellence in Government. The study examined more than 400 hours of airtime from the broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) as well as some 13,000 front-page newspaper articles from national publications (the New York Times and Washington Post), and four regional papers: the Austin American-Statesman, Des Moines Register, San Jose Mercury News, and...

President Bush keeps his cabinet and other top people on a short leash--or tries to. Here's why some appointees succeed and others don't--plus, how the current Bushies have done so far. AFTER THE OVAL OFFICE, the most impressive chamber in the White House is the Cabinet Room. High-backed leather chairs, each engraved with the name of a Cabinet secretary, ring a massive oval mahogany table. The men and women who oversee the vast federal bureaucracy can sit there and gaze out at the Rose Garden. If appearances count, this should be the power center of the executive branch. But as...