Free Republic

A hot mic left on during a Senate vote Tuesday morning on the Food Safety Act caught a Democratic senator complaining that the process of setting the agenda during the lame-duck session is “rigged.” “It’s all rigged. The whole conversation is rigged,” said Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. “The fact that we don’t get to a discussion before the break about what we’re going to do in the lame duck. It’s just rigged.” The remark was picked up live on C-SPAN 2,

MICHELLE OBAMA: "Barack knows that we are going to have to make sacrifices; we are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation." (END VIDEO CLIP) Change our traditions and change our history. What did she mean by that? I think we are starting to see it. Changing history means not just telling the same old tall tales of the free market system and the Founders. No, it's the history according to progressives. And it's not merely spinning...

"Bill Ayers isn't out bombing anymore, but he has never stopped being a radical. His ties to hostile Marxist regimes remain, raising more questions about Barack Obama's refusal to fully repudiate him," states Investor's Business Daily. . . . "Obama says he barely knows [Ayers], but in the years when he was meeting and serving together on the Annenberg Challenge and the Woods Fund, as well as launching his career with a fundraiser in Ayers' Che Guevara-festooned house, Ayers made at least four Marxist pilgrimages to Caracas to praise Chavez's dictatorial regime," continues IBD. . . . "[Ayers] sits on...

The U.S. Air Force's B-2 stealth bomber would be able to attack and destroy an expanded set of hardened, deeply buried military targets using a new 30,000 pound-class penetrator weapon that Northrop Grumman has begun integrating on the aircraft. The company is doing the work under a seven-month, $2.5 million contract awarded June 1 by the Air Force's Aeronautical Systems Center, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. Northrop Grumman is the Air Force's prime contractor on the B-2, the flagship of the nation's long-range strike arsenal. The new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), which is being developed by The Boeing Company, is a...

Good evening, my fellow Americans. First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunities they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening. Three days from now, after a half century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor. This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 - In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting. The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery...

TAMPA — Former gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride remained hospitalized in fair condition Wednesday, one day after he suffered sudden cardiac arrest while jogging and had his heart restarted with electric shock. McBride, who lost to Gov. Jeb Bush last November, just completed a workout on a treadmill at Harbor Island Health Club when he passed out on a nearby stretching mat. Longtime friend Bob Bolt said doctors were still trying to determine what caused McBride's heart to stop. Initial tests showed no abnormalities and McBride, 58, was in good spirits Wednesday at Tampa General Hospital, Bolt said. "He was sitting...