Free Republic

In Republican-leaning circles in Washington, the question of the moment has been "Does this Solyndra thing have legs?" -- in other words, will the news media keep running stories on the subsidized, politically connected solar power company that just went bankrupt? When Republicans ask this question, they mean, "Will this significantly detract from President Obama's re-election chances?" The brief answer is: Probably not, because too many Republicans are asking the wrong questions and drawing the wrong conclusions.

"Mrs. Judd? How come they flew into the towers?" Joan Judd spent her summer vacation preparing for questions like that from her fourth-grade class in Milford, N.Y.

Congressman Allen West said Wednesday the nation hasn't learned the lessons from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks largely because political correctness is hobbling political leaders from confronting the threat he sees from Islamic extremists. West, a Republican who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, made his comments at a Washington, D.C., event at which he hosted the screening of a conservative Christian group's film "Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mega Mosque." "My fear is that maybe we could end up forgetting what happened on 9/11 because of certain things like political correctness or this desire...

GAZA, March 2 (UPI) -- Gaza's government has accused a U.N. agency of overstepping its role by including lessons about the Holocaust in U.N.-run schools in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-led government said it would do everything in its power to prevent children from being taught about the Holocaust, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported. Gaza Education Minister Mahammad Ashquol said his ministry "will never allow teaching Holocaust to Gazan refugee camp children." The children are being urged to leave class if their human rights lessons include any information about the Holocaust, Ma'an reported.

During Knesset session ahead of Int'l Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu asks "Where is the fury, international uprising" of the world against Iran for calling for destruction of Jews? Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday slammed the international community, saying that "it has not put into practice the lessons learned from the horrors of the Holocaust." Speaking during a special session of the Knesset to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Netanyahu said, "One thing is clear. The fact that global anti-Semitism is increasing is a well-known phenomenon. New anti-Semitism is washing over the world and it is important to fight it."...

Children are to be taught about homosexuality in maths, geography and science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to "celebrate the gay community". Lesson plans have been drawn up for pupils as young as four, in a scheme funded with a £35,000 grant from an education quango, the Training and Development Agency for Schools. The initiative will be officially launched next month at the start of "LGBT History Month" – an initiative to encourage teaching about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual issues. The lesson plans, spread across the curriculum, will be offered to all schools, which can choose whether...

Now that someone with mental illness has shot one of Washington's own, maybe Congress will start to pay attention to its abysmal failure to provide care for the most seriously mentally-ill Americans. We'll see. Lawmakers took a brief lunge in that direction after mentally-ill John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, and an even smaller step in 1988 when Russel Weston, another mentally-ill man, entered the Capitol and shot two police officers. But most mentally-ill people are not violent -- and Congress seems content with ignoring those who are. I fear legislators will react to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' shooting by...

Our president's analysis of why he received a shellacking at the midterms put the blame squarely on us: He may have failed to communicate how wonderful his programs were, but we were too thick-witted to understand that he was leading us to nirvana. Now the Congressional Democrats are offering their own analyses: Pelosi will lead Democrats "in pulling on the president's shirttails to make sure that he doesn't move from center-right to far-right," said Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., a co-chair of the liberal Progressive Caucus in the House. "We think if he'd done less compromising in the last two years,...

Now that the dust has settled on the 2010 midterm elections, it’s slowly becoming clear just how monumental the results really are. We saw an extreme left-wing agenda suffer a crushing defeat. At the ballot box, voters took Obamacare and the stimulus and wrapped them right around the necks of those same House members and senators who had arrogantly dismissed the concerns voiced in countless town halls and Tea Party rallies up and down the country. Voters sent commonsense conservatives a clear mandate to hold the line against the Obama agenda. Does that mean Republican candidates can look forward with...

Dean 3.0: What the Tea Party Can Learn from Democrats in 2010 and BeyondAri Berman Oct 27 2010, 11:54 AM ET "The first rule of change is controversy," famed community organizer Saul Alinsky once said. "You can't get away from it, for the simple reason of, all issues are controversial. Change means movement, movement means friction, friction means heat, and heat means controversy." Alinsky is not the only liberal icon Tea Party Republicans now admire. They've also belatedly fallen in love with Howard Dean, who they generously mocked for the better part of a decade until Democrats picked up six...

<p>Unlike most of the world, Australia did not have a recession during the last two years. In fact, it has not had a recession in the last 19 years. Its economic growth rate is higher than in the United States, and the unemployment rate there is only 5.1 percent. From the middle 1800s until the early 1900s, Australia enjoyed a higher per-capita income than the United States. It then fell behind, but in the last couple of decades, it has gone through an economic revival. There are positive and negative lessons for the U.S. and the rest of the world from Australia.</p>

Lessons In Iconography : The Chi Rho - Christ The Chi Rho may well be one of the most recognized of Christian symbols, and it represents Christ himself. This simple symbol is made up of a superimposed "X" (chi) and a "P" (rho), the first two letters of Christ's name in Greek. Used from the earliest days of Christianity on lamps, liturgical objects, sarcophagi, and in catacomb painting, and still in wide use today, the Chi Rho is linked to the conversion of the Roman empire in the fourth century. In 312 AD, on the eve of his battle against...

  Lessons The most enduring memories I have of my father are the lessons he taught me. Dad taught me little things. Like how to tie my shoes when I was four. Or the time when I was around five, and he noticed that when I washed my hands, it was a matter of splashing them with a little cold water, then moving on. He showed me how to adjust the water temperature and scrub thoroughly with soap. Then there was the time when I was about ten when he noticed that I handled money by crunching bills in my...

1. Take a 10-30 minute walk everyday. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant. 2. Sit in silence for at least ten minutes each day. Talk to God about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to. 3. When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, 'My purpose is to __________ today. I am thankful for______________' 4. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants. 5. Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon,...

Republicans who were already planning their Nancy Pelosi retirement galas for November may want to cancel the caterer. The GOP lost the most important election that was held on Tuesday, and if it fails to learn from the experience the party will lose in the autumn too. The GOP lost the one race in which a seat in Congress was up for grabs, the contest to replace the late Jack Murtha in the 12th House district in southwestern Pennsylvania. John McCain had carried the seat with 49% of the vote in 2008, President Obama's approval rating was well below 40%,...

NEW ORLEANS -- A more soft-spoken and humble Michael Steele assured his party faithful Saturday that he has learned his lesson from the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) recent troubles. “In life, you realize that you can’t please everyone, but you can certainly make them mad at you the same time, and that’s a lesson well-learned,” Steele said at the outset of his speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. Steele then offered a quasi-apology for the distractions that have plagued the RNC and led two members of the committee to call for his resignation. “Folks have been mad at us...

A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the girl's washroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror, leaving dozens of little lip prints. Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the Headmistress decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the washroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for...

I will start this with: Beltway pundits, especially so-called conservatives, are clueless. They have spent so much time in DC thinking all this stuff is a game that they could not recognize ideologues when it smacked them in the face.

WASHINGTON, March 19, 2010 – The Marja operation has served as proof of principle for operations in Afghanistan, and commanders are working to adopt the principles in other areas in the country, a senior military official said here today. The official, speaking on background, said that although much remains to be done, operations in Afghanistan’s Helmand province have proved that the counterinsurgency strategy does work. Still, actions in the region are in the early stages. Clear, hold, build and transfer are the steps in the strategy, the official said, and operations in the region are still in the hold and...

KABUL, March 8, 2010 – The Taliban flag no longer flies over Marja, and the operations in the central region of Helmand province have lessons for the rest of Afghanistan, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in the country said today. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and Ambassador Mark Sedwill – NATO’s senior civilian representative in Afghanistan – spoke with reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates at International Security Assistance Force headquarters here. The Marja operation is a tactical and operational effort to liberate 75,000 Afghans from Taliban tyranny, the general said. “There was a Taliban flag...