Free Republic

Both Democratic and Republican strategists are dissecting Tuesday's election results for clues to what might happen in next year's congressional elections. State races in off years are not always good predictors of how a party will do nationally during congressional or presidential elections, but there are some important lessons to be learned. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's reelection win was predictable. He is a popular reformer who reached out to minorities and women running in a state that has had its fill of Democratic corruption and tax hikes. He's a conservative -- a pro-life Catholic who personally opposes gay marriage...

Parts of Northern Europe have had a bit better luck than some other sectors across the pond during the economic troubles of the past decade, but they still have had to deal with the legacy of welfare states and costly entitlement programs. Earlier this year, Mary Katharine looked at Sweden’s attempts to deal with rising debt and costly entitlements, while Erika covered some steps being taken in Denmark to deal with their long term financial issues arising from the same core issues. This sense of realism and worry about the future seems to be spreading across the region, and John...

<p>What a difference four decades makes. In the mid-’70s, New York City’s threat of bankruptcy was a horror that the state, feds and city ultimately avoided. Last week, Detroit declared bankruptcy because Michigan thought it was the best choice — and Washington stayed silent.</p>

Abstract The Heritage Foundation has tracked post-9/11 terrorist plots against the United States in an effort to study the evolving nature of the threat and to garner lessons learned. The best way to protect the United States from terrorism is to ensure a strong and capable domestic counterterrorism enterprise—and to understand the continuing nature of the terror threat. The Boston Marathon bombing was the 59th publicly known terror plot against the United States since 9/11. In a political environment of sequestration on the one hand, and privacy concerns on the other, there are those on both sides of the aisle...

We've compiled 5 things white people can learn from Rachel Jeantel. Take notes. 1. Words like "cracka" and "nigga" don't carry the weight we've associated with them. . . . 4. She's not the hostile ghetto black girl everyone painted her to be. . . . 5. Rachel's not uneducated, we are. Rachel is not in fact the uneducated girl Don West and the Zimmerman team painted her to be. She's a young girl with an underbite, street smarts and a bit of a southern accent. She speaks the same language we speak - the Queen's English, as her opposition...

Sam Andreades ministered at a church in New York’s Greenwich Village  for many years and founded G.A.M.E. (Gender Affirming Ministry Endeavor), which serves those with same-sex attraction who want to follow Christ. Andreades has just finished his Doctor of Ministry work at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, and his dissertation, which grew out of his pastoral experience, is titled “Does She Matter? Emotional Intimacy in Marriage in Light of Gender Distinction.” Andreades interviewed Christian husbands with a gay background who are now happily married to women, asking why they prefer “intergendered” to “monogendered” marriage. He learned that gender distinction contributes depth and intimacy to...

As a child, the first show we ever watched was "Gunsmoke". We watched it as a family, and Marshal Dillon had a profound effect on the way I looked at life then and now. I continue to watch "Gunsmoke" reruns daily; it's a great refresher of the lessons I learned so long ago. True Friends

A Liberal Democrat MP in Britain faces expulsion from the party for saying Jews had not learned from the murder of six million in the Holocaust in their treatment of Palestinian Authority Arabs, the Daily Mail reports. David Ward, MP for Bradford East, wrote on his own website that he was “saddened” that Jews “could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians…on a daily basis.” “Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution...

WHICH Bond villain had the most reasonable plan to get rich? Via Tyler Cowen, I see that New York Magazine asked Jean-Jacques Dethier, a senior economist at the World Bank, to evaluate some of the diabolical plots from the films. He covered the schemes of Auric Goldfinger, Dr Kananga, Max Zorin, Alec Trevelyan, Elliot Carver, Elektra King, Le Chiffre, and Dominic Greene. While an important contribution to the literature (the critique of Mr Trevelyan's plan is particularly astute), his analysis left out quite a few moneymaking ventures from the rest of the Bond canon. In an effort to fill that...

In an article published in 2001, Jude Wanniski, the author of The Way the World Works, noted that since 1896, only Republican presidential candidates running on “pro-growth” platforms have won. Republicans advocating “austerity” have invariably lost. With the defeat of Mitt Romney, the election of 2012 continued this pattern, with one addition. Republican presidential candidates offering clueless confusion also lose. Democracies tend to evolve two political parties, a party of economic growth and a party of income redistribution. If a credible plan for economic growth is offered, the people will vote for it, provided that it does not involve crushing...

Operation Demoralize, the attempt to convince you that conservatism is dead, that you live in a media cocoon, that you are incapable of learning, and that your pundits lied to you, is dominating the media. But are the quick and easy answers — just say Yes to illegal immigration, higher taxes, creeping socialism — based on the reality of why the election was lost? Someone clearly outside the supposed “conservative media complex” suggests that the reasons being peddled for the loss are not accurate, or at least not the full story. Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Center, writes...

Columbus, Ohio — The realities of the electoral map meant that the Romney campaign really had no choice but to bet big on Ohio, and that bet was a loser. In addition to some critical on-the-ground specifics — Ohio is not hurting as badly as the rest of the country — there were three main reasons for that.1. Ohio likes crony capitalism. The automotive bailout is popular in Ohio, and not just among self-interested workers and investors in that industry. Putting General Motors on federal life support is economically daft and morally dubious, but it gave the Obama administration a powerful...

Here's the big lesson from mega-storm Sandy: Mother Nature sneers at high tech, mocks modern convenience and couldn't care less about what kind of person you are. She will smack you if she wants to. As we have become addicted to machines, many of us have forgotten about nature. We must have gizmos. Sandy laughed and took them away. Power, gone. Internet, dark. Cellphones, not happening. Even your landline phone, not available, because "all circuits are busy." Suddenly, it's 1850 with one exception: battery-operated flashlights and radios. So what is the lesson here? Actually, there are a few. First: No...

Last Wednesday, also known as Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, was a very encouraging day for anyone who values the First Amendment and who believes that government doesn’t create marriage and ought not try to deconstruct it...

No Excuses. Stop making excuses replace them with ways to do better. Excuses are a waste of time and energy.....No One is Perfect. The quicker this is realized the faster you can get on with being excellent. Start every morning ready to fight harder than you did the day before and run further than you ever imagine....

Gov. Scott Walker's victory in the Wisconsin recall election this week was no surprise to anyone but Big Labor. Unions were furious when Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature cut back their right to bargain on anything beyond wages. Democratic legislators fled the state for several weeks in 2011 in order to try to prevent a final vote from taking place. Demonstrators took over the state capitol, and when that didn't work, unions and left-leaning groups gathered signatures to force a recall vote. The national Democratic Party initially saw what was happening in Wisconsin as a popular revolt against Republican excesses...

There are a lot of things NOT to like about liberals, but you have to give them some credit. These are people who are badly, dangerously, and devastatingly wrong on almost every issue of consequence and yet, year after year, they hang in there at a rough parity with conservatives. So, they may do a lot wrong, but there are things we can learn from the Left. 1) Fight Harder: Liberals win a lot of battles just because they're willing to fight harder. Look at what happened to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Komen decided not to keep giving...

Every year now for a number of years my wife and I watch the entire six disc extended version of the Lord of the Rings during the gloomy Northwest winter around the Thanksgiving-to New-Years time. It helps us through the winter gloom, but since Obama's election it also helps us maintain hope and courage. I grew up on Tolkien before he was well known, and it probably shaped me in ways I can scarcely appreciate. My wife on the other hand, from the Third World, had no inkling of Tolkien until this movie cycle came out. We are both very...

Bill Clinton's lessons for ObamaBy Julian Zelizer, CNN Contributor updated 5:05 PM EST, Mon December 19, 2011 **SNIP** The first is that President Clinton was very successful at counteracting Republicans when they attacked. One of President Obama's great frustrations has been the "messaging wars." He has frequently been frustrated by how the GOP portrays him to the public and defines his policies in unfavorable ways. Clinton didn't let the GOP do that easily. When Republicans painted the president as left of center early in his term, he responded by aggressively highlighting his centrist credentials, lowering the deficit in 1993 and...

Wanda Bridgeforth was hit hardest on the home front as a child, when her parents couldn't afford to keep her with them. At one point she lived with 19 people—in a six room house. It was in these situations that she learned to conserve what she had, and reuse what she found.