Free Republic

WASHINGTON — The historic blunders of President Barack Obama’s embarrassing healthcare rollout demonstrate spectacularly the utter failure of what? Let me tell you. They are the blunders of what was once called the “Brightest Generation” in American history, the 1960s generation. It did not start with Obama. His blunders were just a continuance of their blunders. By the 1960s generation I mean the pot-smoking, war-protesting, guitar-strumming kids of the left—not the majority from the 1960s generation, not the silent majority, but the minority. They were the miracle workers in politics: Jean-François Kerry, the Clintons, Al Gore, Joe Biden, and all...

Dear Roger, Since 9/11 I have been mulling over the words of Georgi Arbatov pinned on the wall above my desk. I don’t believe in conspiracies, and I strive to keep my distance from the sophisticates of the Chomsky school of conspiracy-peddlers. But I do believe in what Barbara Tuchman described so well in The March of Folly. Folly, it seems to me, is the most severe and unforgiving sin of politicians, especially politicians responsible for the security of societies in advanced cultures of relative freedom, such as ours at this time in history. As Martin Walker, then the...

Even though I’m embarrassed to have been a Democrat for so many years, I’m proud that even in my 20’s, I thought the 60’s was the worst decade in America’s history. Because I was born in 1940, I was at UCLA for some of those years and had a bird’s eye view of my fellow college students. It was not a pretty sight. What makes that time the source of so much nostalgia for so many people of my age -- the incessant folk songs, the tie-dyed shirts and blouses, the granny glasses, the bongs, the infantile anti-establishment content that...

<p>Breaking news just announced - 200 Taliban fighters killed this morning in Afghanistan.</p>

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." -Yogi Berra With all due respect to Yogi, the question is which fork to take. With Election Day approaching, and the very real possibility that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid may retake Capitol Hill, conservatives reply that Republicans must quit hiding and start behaving like Republicans again. This is always the right thing to do. But midterm elections are "base" elections, and since the GOP's conservative base outnumbers the Democrats' liberal base, motivating it and turning it out will ensure a November victory, preparing the way for the bigger...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - More than 2,000 protesters arrested for clogging city streets to demonstrate against the war in Iraq could see all charges against them dropped.</p> <p>San Francisco court commissioner Paul Slavit signaled Thursday he would dismiss charges against 2,300 people arrested in protests the day after the war started - unless the district attorney's office files new charges.</p>