Free Republic

For some inexplicable reason, conservatives rush towards fratricide with the same kind of urgency that drives lemmings over the cliff. It’s what they do, even when it’s counterproductive and costly. Conservatism wasn’t made better off by the four-year campaign waged against Speaker Newt Gingrich by some House conservatives who considered him ideologically unreliable. It wasn’t helped by John Boehner’s premature departure from Congress, brought about by political headaches caused by House Republicans on his right flank. A small group of so-called purists on the right even crossed swords with President Ronald Reagan, without whom modern conservatism would have emerged stillborn...

In the main, the American media do not think highly of our current president. This matters. Whether they admit it or not, their personal views shape their reportage. They regard him as a pretender to the throne, an accidental occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue who has done more to discredit his office than most any of his predecessors. In their eyes, he's a bombastic boor and a bumbler whose reckless disregard for the dignity of his office has cheapened the nation in the eyes of the world. Not everyone holds that opinion. A goodly number of his supporters probably don't...

Earlier this month, President Donald J. Trump signed a space policy directive to "restore American leadership in space." To the excitement of many, this directive includes sending men back to the Moon and perhaps even Mars. The prospect of making dreams a reality once again is enthralling, something we will do, echoing a previous chief executive, not because it is easy but because it is hard. To do all this, to optimize performance and ensure a successful, modern-day space program, government appropriators must adhere to a standard set of business protocols. It is essential NASA and the White House have...

... There are lots of reasons the partisan division has become so lopsided in favor of the GOP. The Democrats and their friends in the government departments of elite universities and on the editorial desk at the New York Times will say it's because the legislative district maps are drawn unfairly, because the votes of non-whites are suppressed in the South and in rural areas, and just about any other excuse they can think of to suggest the Republicans are cheating. In truth, the voters just aren't buying any more what the Democrats have to sell. The Democrats, from FDR...

The tradition of taking stock of presidential accomplishments after the first 100 days of a new administration goes back to Franklin Roosevelt, who invited the assessment as part of his effort to combat what has become known as The Great Depression. The flurry of legislation he pushed through Congress at something close to the speed of light obscures his promise to have sought what we might refer to now as dictatorial powers should his initial attempts to work with and through Congress fail. He needn't have worried. The public demanded action and Roosevelt gave it to them, concerns about the...

President Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats have fallen flat on their face, a victim of their own arrogance. Believing their own press clippings, the Democrats misinterpreted the 2008 election as a realigning mandate in support of fundamental, major changes in the way America is governed as well as an endorsement of the need to grow substantially the size and scope of government. In point of fact it was neither of those things. The 2008 platform on which they ran was long on slogans and concepts and short on actual ideas for governing. It is true that America voted for...

Sending Anita Dunn—who is probably not enjoying her proverbial 15 minutes of fame—out onto the north lawn of the White House to attack Fox News is serving its purpose. The responsibility for determining which of the national news networks are legitimate and which ones are not is something the founders did not include in the executive powers section of the Constitution. One might even argue that the inclusion of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights is a pretty clear sign they thought that giving any part of the federal government the power to do so would not, to...

"Truthers" are the people who believe the 9/11 terror attacks were an inside job. That the Bush administration had advance knowledge of them and let them occur. In the more extreme version of an already extremist theory, truthers believe the U.S. government itself carried out the attacks as an excuse to take the nation to war. At the very least the truthers question the official version of events and want the government to reopen the investigation. In a way, they have a lot in common with those who to this day refuse to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the...

A doctors' group and an organization that advocates for the interest of the inner-city poor have joined forced to sue the Obama administration, charging that its abortive effort to collect criticisms made by those opposed to President Obama's plan to change the U.S. health care system infringed on their First Amendment rights. In a complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education said the White House had attempted to "unlawfully" collect information on protected political speech when it asked Obamacare supporters to report any negative comments...

In what can fairly be described as an admission that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin knew what she was talking about, the Senate Finance Committee Thursday dropped language from its bipartisan healthcare reform package that Palin and others had suggested would eventually lead to mandated end-of-life counseling sessions for seniors. Supporters of Obamacare, including President Barack Obama, had accused Palin and others of being dishonest in suggesting the counseling sessions would somehow lead to the government encouraging euthanasia as a cost-cutting measure as part of rationed care. "The rumor that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow...

Intensity matters in politics and, at times, is more important than approval. It may be, and the ratings certainly suggested this was the case, that the television viewing public preferred Jay Leno to David Letterman when choosing which late-night talk show to watch. From a political standpoint, however, it would do a candidate for elective office little good at the polls to announce he was a "Leno person" or to denounce Letterman. Preference in late-night talk show hosts is simply not an issue on which people vote. On the other hand there are issues which, while they matter little to...

In her remarks bringing the debate over the climate bill to a close, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California urged her colleagues to vote in favor of the cap and trade bill, saying the measure was about four things: "jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs." She was right—the House-passed version of cap and trade is all about jobs: jobs lost, jobs never created, jobs sent overseas, and, unbelievably, jobs people will be paid for doing long after they cease to exist. According to Friday's Washington Times, the legislation includes language that provides, should it become law, that people who lose their...

Angry Republicans on Capitol Hill are charging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California with putting the interests of international lending organizations ahead of the needs of U.S. troops in the field. Democrats in the House have put supplemental legislation to support troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on hold as they try to round up the votes they need to put a $108 billion global bailout of the International Monetary Fund onto this piece of "must pass" legislation. The House passed an initial troop funding bill in May on a 368-0 bipartisan vote. Capitol Hill Republicans say the only reason for...

One of the more interesting things about blogging every day, as I do here for Thomas Jefferson Street, is the comments that people provide about what you write. It's a chance to get instant feedback. On Monday, in my post dealing with Meghan McCain's advice to the Republican Party to be more moderate, I mentioned the close to 1 million, by some estimates, angry taxpayers who turned out for the April 15 Tax Day Tea Parties. That produced a comment from a reader in New Jersey who asserted, "Voters aren't outraged over Obama high taxes, and aren't longing for Reagan's...

Say what you want about Meghan McCain, the girl knows how to grab a headline. Speaking Saturday to the Log Cabin Republicans, McCain pronounced her belief that the GOP is too far behind the times to be relevant to the American electorate. "I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes," the 23-year-old McCain said. "There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being 'more' conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait...

The mighty New York Times has seen better days. Journalism’s “Great Grey Lady,” the grand dowager of the printed page, has experienced a steady decline in its reputation since admitting that one of the paper’s most celebrated up-and-comers had something of a problem keeping the facts in and the fiction out of his news copy. The decline in the paper’s reputation has been accompanied by a turn for the worse in its economic health. It has been slow to adapt to competition from “new media” that we are told is giving fits to newspapers all across America. Subscription rates at...

The Peter Principles: Sanity clause By Peter Roff UPI Senior Political Analyst Published May 9, 2005 WASHINGTON -- Within the next two weeks, say those in the know on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., is going to pull the trigger on the so-called constitutional option and break the logjam over judicial nominations. Unless something happens. Frist and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who refuses to yield on the filibuster as a matter of party policy, are staring across the abyss at each other with no way to move ahead without falling in. They are also limited...

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WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court is faced with the challenge of threading a very thorny needle now that the initial round of briefs in what has become known as the Grokster case has been submitted. At issue is a U.S. 9th Circuit Court decision that failed to halt the distribution of peer-to-peer file-sharing programs that, according to some estimates, have been used to circulate millions of copies of pirated movies, songs and computer software. The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the companies that develop or provide peer-to-peer file-sharing programs should be held responsible...

Listen While You Freep! All programs are replayed for 24 hours and again on weekends so tune in when it’s convenient for YOU! Call In Number – 866-884-TALK (8255) 1pm EST – The War on Terror: Buzz interviews David Horowitz, author of "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left." Horowitz is a nationally known author and lifelong civil rights activist. He was one of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s. In his new book, Horowitz argues the only way to win the Great War on Terror is to defeat the enemy at home - the...