Free Republic

Kleenex sales may have shattered records in the DC metropolitan area this weekend thanks to The Washington Post’s nearly 5,000-word pity party for Hunter Biden. The Post revealed that “Hunter’s relationship with his own last name has . . . invited burdens and scrutiny.”

In the wake of the massive raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, politicians and pundits are hectoring Americans to blindly trust the FBI. “The men and women of the FBI,” Attorney General Merrick Garland proclaimed, “are dedicated, patriotic public servants.” But the FBI would be more credible if it didn’t claim a right to secretly wield almost unlimited power. Most Americans (53%) view the FBI as “Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo,” a recent Rasmussen poll found. FBI actions 30 years ago at Ruby Ridge help explain the G-men’s fall from grace. Randy Weaver and his family lived in an isolated cabin...

The January 6 Capitol clash may be the gift that keeps on giving to cynics everywhere. In the coming months, Americans will likely see jaw-dropping bureaucratic debacles, stunning abuses by federal prosecutors, and appalling bloodlust by angry Biden supporters. Perhaps the least likely outcome is that the coming train wreck will restore faith in American democracy. The Justice Department declared last week, “The investigation and prosecution of the Capitol Breach will be the largest in American history, both in terms of the number of defendants prosecuted and the nature and volume of the evidence.” The feds are sorting through “237,000...

The late Sen. John McCain is being lauded far and wide for his long career of public service. Rep. John Lewis, the famous civil rights activist, hailed McCain as a “warrior for peace.” In reality, McCain embodied a mix of moralism and militarism that worked out badly for America and the world.

Last Thursday, President Obama proposed new federal jobs and job-training programs for youth and the long-term unemployed. The federal government has experimented with these programs for almost a half century. The record is one of failure and scandal. In 1962, Congress passed the Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA) to provide training for workers who lost their jobs due to automation or other technological developments. Two years later, the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered that any trainee in this program who held a job for a single day was counted as "permanently employed"—a statistical charade by the Department of Labor...

LONG BEFORE THE AGE OF OBAMA, FEDERAL SPENDING became the panacea for social problems. Not content with new spending for new ideas, from high-speed passenger-rail services to bankruptcy bailouts, the Obama administration has revived spending for bad old ideas. Nothing better illustrates this folly than federally funded summer-job programs. Congress torpedoed such programs a decade ago, but President Barack Obama's team revived them in the stimulus package passed in February. The federal government is providing $1.2 billion to hire 125,000 teens and young adults this summer. Local and state governments are plowing in many millions of dollars more to hire...

September 13, 2004 issue Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative New Era of Big Government The Bush Betrayal, James Bovard, Palgrave-Macmillan, 330 pages By Bob Barr If someone described for you a national incident involving unprecedented loss of life, poor government planning, the failure to hold any government official accountable for mistakes, and Congress responding to the crisis by throwing money at the problem, chances are you’d conclude they were speaking about the causes and aftermath of 9/11. Actually, they could just as well be describing the siege and invasion of the Branch Davidian Compound at Waco, Texas, in 1993,...

From the much republished article: (you can read the whole article on SFGate) Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light of the Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential terrorists. In a May terrorist advisory, the Homeland Security Department warned local law enforcement agencies to keep an eye on anyone who "expressed dislike of attitudes and decisions of the U.S. government." If police vigorously followed this advice, millions of Americans could be added to the official lists of suspected terrorists. The section actually reads... May show arrogance and...

An interview with scholar James Bovard will be broadcast tonight on C-SPAN's Booknotes program at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST.Mr. Bovard will be speaking about his new book, Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil.The publisher's blurb for the book posted on C-SPAN's Website will surely provide fodder for a lively, hopefully thoughtful discussion here on FR:""The war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new Millennium." So begins Jim Bovard's newest and, in some ways, most provocative book as he casts yet another jaundiced eye on Washington and...

Great New Book If you want to know what is really going on in President Bush's War on Terror, read "Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil," by James Bovard. What is so valuable about Bovard's work is that it is just plain, fact-based, footnoted reporting. He is not a polemicist, and you will find no shrill arguments, no straw men, no rants, no name-calling such as you find in most of the quickie political books that people grind out these days. Instead, you get a sober recitation of the facts set within...