Free Republic

America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade. While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009...

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour got a hug. Gov. Kathleen Blanco was lucky to get a hello. The friction between state and federal officials has been brewing for the past few days and bubbled to the surface with President Bush's visit to Baton Rouge on Monday. In fact, Blanco did not learn Bush was coming to Louisiana for the second time in three days until informed by an Advocate reporter late Sunday night. The news prompted Blanco to scrap her plans to visit Houston on Monday with former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, her spokeswoman, Denise Bottcher, said....

At the Washington Post, in a story with a headline that gives no indication of the important information it contains, we discover that federal officials were desperately trying to get Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco to do something about the disaster in New Orleans—but she refused to act: Thousands Remain To Be Evacuated.