Free Republic

Yesterday,  just days after President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus measure, the White House released a statement claiming credit for the reopening of a window and door factory in Chicago. Vice President Joe Biden said, “The reopening of this factory and the rehiring of these workers provide an excellent example of how the money in the Recovery Act is targeted to spur job creation quickly.” If the Obama Administration is going to claim credit for every job created since  Obama and Biden were elected, then if they are honest, they should also take the blame for every job lost....

In 2008, the Bush Administration, responding to litigation from an environmental group, listed the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Bush Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne also made some changes to the implementation of the ESA in order to limit the adverse consequences. But now, the omnibus appropriations bill, first passed by the House and now being debated in the Senate, seeks to reverse these common sense limitations.If successful, this revised polar bear policy would greatly threaten economic growth and serve as a powerful anti-stimulus measure, not just in the polar bears' Alaskan habitat but throughout...

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FoxNews.com: “As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated.” However, only three days earlier, President Obama’s Senior Advisor David Axelrod told Fox News Sunday, “I’m going to leave that issue to Julius Genachowski, our new head of the FCC … and the president to discuss. So I don’t have an answer for you now.” Certainly there is some confusion in the current White House. Where else is there confusion? Are former Presidents confused?Former President Bill Clinton was on liberal radio host Mario Solis Marich’s program...

 "Our massive strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue." --Bill Ruder, Democratic campaign consultant and Assistant Secretary of Commerce, Kennedy Administration[1] "The main thing is the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of [its Watergate coverage]. They have a television station...and they are going to have to get it renewed." --President Richard Nixon[2] Should the federal government mandate "fairness" in broadcasting? "Yes," say some Members of Congress, including...

For the last 35 years, educators and analysts at The Heritage Foundation have been intimately involved in the nation's great public policy debates. In all that time, we have never encountered legislation with such far-reaching and revolutionary policy implications as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act currently before Congress. And never have we seen a bill more cloaked in secrecy or more withdrawn from open public exposure and honest debate. In addition to being the single most expensive bill ever proposed, this measure calls for a massive expansion of the federal government's reach into the day-to-day life of virtually every...

A key argument in favor of the stimulus package is that it contains several measures that are not only good for the environment but will create new jobs and boost the economy. From the people who make wind turbines and solar panels to those who install insulation in buildings or design electric cars, the predicted number of so-called green collar jobs to be created [1] stretches into the hundreds of thousands. But reality says otherwise. In fact, everywhere that these green measures have been tried, unemployment has increased, not decreased. The same will happen across the U.S. if the stimulus...

Remarks as prepared by U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) The Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC January 29, 2009 Good morning. Thank you Phil for that gracious introduction. I also want to thank Mike Frank, Brian Darling, and everyone at the Heritage Foundation for this opportunity to speak on the most pressing issue facing our nation today. I always feel at home at Heritage. Especially since Dr. Feulner stole some of my best people, Nina Owcharenko, Tim Chapman and Charlotte Davis. And I think all Americans owe a huge "thank you" to all of the House Republicans and the 11 courageous...

We are pleased to announce the "Defend America" Rally will be held on May 23, 2009 on the West Front Grassy Area at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This is a "grass roots" rally that will bring any and all Americans who are concerned about the growth of the power of the federal government and the loss of individual freedom in America together for an afternoon that will help to raise the awareness of citizens around the country to this issue and to raise the awareness of politicians that we will not tolerate the transition of America to...

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., criticizes mainstream media for not reporting loads of pork in proposed legislation. Is the new Obama administration taking cues from the Bush administration to get Congress to act? It certainly seemed that way to, South Carolina’s junior Republican senator, Jim DeMint. DeMint, speaking Jan. 27 at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., explained the Obama administration will “create crisis and widespread panic” just like its predecessor in order to get Congress to act expeditiously. “I’ve been around long enough to know whenever someone tells me I have to make a decision right now, my response is...

The $800 billion economic "stimulus" bill may be more appropriately called the "Obama debt plan." It will, after all, dump $6,700 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren. Whether it will actually stimulate the economy is another matter. So perhaps politicians can first answer a few questions from the back of the classroom: 1. President-elect Obama claims that spending approximately $800 billion will create 3.675 million new jobs. That comes to $217,000 per job. This doesn't sound like a very good value, especially with the national average salary around $40,000. Wouldn't it be cheaper...

About a decade ago, when he was vice president, Al Gore explained that our national motto, e pluribus unum, means "from one, many." This was a sad day for knowledge of Latin among our political elite—and after all those expensive private schools that Gore had been packed off to by his paterfamilias. It was the kind of flagrant mistranslation that, had it been committed by a Republican, say George W. Bush or Dan Quayle, would have been a gaffe heard round the world. But the media didn't play up the slip, perhaps because they had seen Gore's Harvard grades and...

Being raised by two married biological parents has considerable benefits for a child. By contrast, simple cohabatation by biological parents is highly unstable and does not deliver significant long-term benefits. On the other hand, sequential cohabitation by single mothers with men unrelated to the child can actually prove harmful to the children. Actual marriage between biological parents continues to decline. In 2006, the out-of-wedlock birthrates among blacks was 70.7%, among Hispanics, 49.9% and among non-Hispanic whites, 26.6%. The American Left has traditionally regarded marriage as an imprisoning institution. Thus the left has watched the steady decline of marriage with indifference...

Paul Weyrich: RIP Paul Weyrich, a leader of the conservative movement, was laid to rest today in Fairfax,Va. Paul was not a household name. He was well known to many in Washington, certainly in Republican circles. For Newsmax readers, he was an old friend. Almost from the beginning, Paul has been a contributing “Pundit” in Newsmax’s online commentary section. When I heard of Paul’s passing last Thursday, I thought of Bill Buckley’s death this year. When Buckley passed in February, he was eulogized as the intellectual father of Reagan conservatism. If Bill Buckley was the intellectual godfather, Paul Weyrich was...

Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation, died Thursday at age 66. Mr. Weyrich, one of the giants of the modern conservative movement, co-founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and founded the Free Congress Foundation the following year. He spent the past three and a half decades working to build political coalitions in support of limited government, a strong national defense and traditional values. Mr. Weyrich was a journalist before coming to Washington as an aide to Sen. Gordon Allott, Colorado Republican, in 1967. Shortly after starting work on Capitol Hill, Mr. Weyrich received by mistake an...

Conservative Leader Paul Weyrich Dies; First to Lead Heritage

The Heritage Foundation issued a harsh rebuttal to Barack Obama’s latest climate change comments, blasting the president-elect for recycling problematic climate change rhetoric from the campaign trail. The Washington think tank also criticized Obama’s plans to address global warming, calling the proposals “fear mongering” based on tainted data. The Heritage Foundation’s statement came in response to comments made at the Global Climate Summit, a meeting arranged by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Los Angeles earlier this week. More than 600 global climate-change experts convened at the summit to try to break gridlock on environmental issues ahead of next month’s United...

Former Airborne Evan Sayet explains how the modern liberal thinks at the Heritage Foundation. Sayet is a Conservative Homorist/Pundit. This video is informative and funny at times. Sayet states, "frankly, if it was just stupidity, they would be right more often. That was the expression, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Evan a blind squirrel finds a nut now and again." He says a lot more meaningful and insightful things, but that one kind of tickled me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaE98w1KZ-c

 The U.S. auto industry is in dire need of a shakeup. All of the Big Three are beset by plummeting sales and market share, high labor costs, aging fleets, and a surfeit of innovative automobiles in the pipeline. With General Motors, and perhaps Ford after it, fac­ing looming liquidity crises, staying the course is no longer an option. But rather than face facts, the auto industry is seek­ing yet another government lifeline: a $25 billion bailout on top of the billions in subsidized loans already approved by lawmakers. While a bailout promises continued stagnation and decline, reorgani­zation is the only...

In a throwback to the 1930s and 1970s, Demo­cratic lawmakers are betting that America's economic ills can be cured by an extraordinary expansion of government. This tired approach has already failed repeatedly in the past year, in which Congress and the President: 1. Increased total federal spending by 11 percent to nearly $3 trillion; 2. Enacted $333 billion in "emergency" spending; 3. Enacted $105 billion in tax rebates; and 4. Pushed the budget deficit to $455 billion in the name of "stimulus." Every one of these policies failed to increase eco­nomic growth. Now, in addition to passing a $700 bil­lion...

In the winter of 2009, the Heritage Foundation will release a high-definition documentary that tells the story of the very real threat that hostile nations and rogue dictators now pose to every one of us. In 33 minutes or less, life as we know it in America could end. That's the time it would take for an enemy's ballistic missile to hit the United States.