Free Republic

One way to know that President Oba ma's much-hyped "fiscal austerity" speech bombed is that even members of his own deficit-reduction commission apparently felt betrayed. Sure, Erskine Bowles, the commission's Democratic chair, and Alan Simpson, the Republican, made some nice public statement about Obama's deficit-reduction plan after they met with him yesterday -- one day after the president unveiled his scheme to miraculously cut $4 trillion without reining in the looming catastrophes of Medicare and other entitlements. But people I spoke to in corporate America got a more unvarnished reaction in private from the debt-committee chieftains. "What these guys can't...

There was a moment of supreme truth during Obama's speech Wednesday night, lamentably for Obama, it rolled off the tongue of the very charismatic Rep. Joe Wilson as he interrupted Obama, mid-lie, with the utterance, "You lie!!" The catalyst that apparently ignited Joe Wilson's enthusiastic interjection was Obama's deceptive statement that illegal immigrants would not be covered under his universal health care program. Joe Wilson, apparently temporarily possessed by the Holy Ghost of honesty, was left no choice other than to attempt to cast out the demonic spirit of misstatement that had set up shop in Obama's vocal chords.

The swearing in of Barack Hussein Obama got off to a shaky start when the oath of office administered by Chief Justice John Roberts was flubbed not once, but twice. Perhaps they should have had a teleprompter. With the swearing-in successfully executed, Obama is officially the 44th President of the United States of America. So help us God. The frigid cold may not have deterred crowd turnout, but the 2-4 million people expected on the mall fell short of media-hyped predictions. Obama was lauded for having written his own speech, a speech that was promoted by the media as one...