Free Republic

September 7, 2008, the 10th anniversary of the Federal Reserve arranged bailout of the infamous hedge fund Long-Term Capital, is now a more infamous date. This is the day that our government chose socialism over free market capitalism. Our elected leaders increased the national debt from $9.6 trillion to $15 trillion, a 56 percent increase in one weekend. Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, seems to have a penchant for committing U.S. taxpayer dollars on weekends. On one weekend he engineered the bailout of Bear Stearns. Just this last weekend he oversaw the forced sale of Merrill Lynch, a desperate...

The more Matt Damon talks, the more apparent it is that the Hollywood of patriots such as John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart is gone, gone, gone. Indeed, the city that once hosted Ronald Reagan's search and destroy mission for Communists now hosts $30,000-a-plate-dinners for every anti-American, anti-capitalist group in need of a sponsor (which is just a fancy way of saying they host Democrat fund-raisers). It was not so long ago that Hollywood actors believed it was as much their duty as others to fight the wars in which America was involved. Men such as Glenn Ford, Charlton Heston, Ronald...

You knew it was just a matter of time before the Democrats played their quadrennial election trump card by claiming they (and, by extension, their voters) are -- well, you know -- smarter than the other side. This has been going on at least since the brilliant Adlai Stevenson lost consecutive elections to the dull-witted Dwight Eisenhower back in the 50s. It continued through the decades as that “amiable dunce,” Ronald Reagan (as Clark Clifford described him), vanquished two far-more-cerebral opponents, and that vacuous frat boy, George W. Bush, did the same. As one of the latter pair of victims,...

I'm a Director in Hollywood. I've also created visual effects for movies and commercials for 23 years. I'm not disclosing my name at this point, because frankly I've already suffered enough job loss because I was "outted" as a conservative. But enough about me. I caught a commercial teaser for the Charlie Gibson interview of Sarah Palin and something caught my attention as a Director immediately: The use of the position and choice of lenses to minimalize Governor Palin. To be objective to see if I was jumping to conclusions, I immediately reviewed Mr. Gibson's interview with Senator Obama. Take...

The United States is mired in a "once-in-a century" financial crisis which is now more than likely to spark a recession, former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan said Sunday. The talismanic ex-central banker said that the crisis was the worst he had seen in his career, still had a long way to go and would continue to effect home prices in the United States. "First of all, let's recognize that this is a once-in-a-half-century, probably once-in-a-century type of event," Greenspan said on ABC's "This Week." Asked whether the crisis, which has seen the US government step in to bail out...

Anyone who said that Charlie Gibson might go easy on Sarah Palin might want to quickly delete those comments. What the ABC newsman conducted yesterday was a serious, professional interview that went right at the heart of what we want and need to know about the governor: Could she be president? Does she understand the nuances of international affairs? Does she have a world view? He was all business, respectful but persistent. ~snip~ Lots of conservative ridicule for this sentence in a Wendy Doniger piece on Palin for WP/Newsweek's On Faith blog: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that...

One wonders: What did Sarah Palin ever do to inspire the rage and bile that exploded on her selection by John McCain? What is there either in this woman's record or resume to elicit such feline ferocity? What did we know of her when she was introduced? That she was a mother of five who had brought into this world a baby boy with Down syndrome, thus living her Christian beliefs. That she was a small-town conservative who had risen from mayor of Wasilla (Pop. 9,700) to be governor of a state twice the size of Texas. That she was...

NO MITT FOR VP More than 20 leading social conservatives signed an open letter to Senator John McCain expressing their displeasure over the prospect of an “M&M” ticket being pushed by Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and others in the economic wing of the Republican Party. Among the signers are those, such as Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, who once supported Mitt Romney and now publicly regret it. “If Governor Romney is on your ticket, many social conservative voters will consider their values repudiated by the Republican Party and will either stay away from the polls this November or...

When John McCain and Barack Obama appear on the same stage Saturday at the sprawling religious campus of Orange County's Saddleback Church, their presence will vividly underline the reach that has made Pastor Rick Warren among the most significant evangelists of his generation. ~snip~ But Warren's willingness to soft-pedal political issues once central to U.S. evangelicals, such as opposition to abortion, has opened him to criticism that he has strayed from his calling to spread the Gospel. It's likely that both fans and critics will be watching closely when Warren plays host to the two presidential contenders at his church...

TICKET CHOICE SEARCH With the nomination for the Republican solidifying mightily, Sen. John McCain has asked his senior advisers to begin pulling together short lists for Vice Presidential choices. At the top of list, according to one senior adviser: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. "There are others that need to be on that list, but you have to believe the Haley is a frontrunner," says the adviser, who knows both McCain and Barbour well. Barbour would be one name that puts many conservatives at a bit more ease, one of the criteria McCain understands he must meet, according to another adviser:...

So it's getting close to crunch time. John McCain by now should be cutting down his big field of vice presidential contenders to a short list of six to eight names. To stay a step ahead of him, then, in order to make sure our criteria and our favorites at least make the cut, we on the outside should be explaining how the candidate should be reaching his final choice. ~snip~ Choice #1. Former House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich: More and more, the Pennsylvania native and former Ohio congressman looks like, all things considered, the wisest choice. Compare Kasich...

I distinctly remember when my phone at my Washington hotel room rang at 1 AM during the spring of 1996. A distraught President Clinton was calling. “We’re getting killed on radio,” he blurted into the phone as soon as I picked it up. “What do you mean?” I answered blearily trying to get a grip on what he was talking about. “Hillary’s mothe r just drove here from Pennsylvania and all during the trip she heard them saying the most awful things about me on radio,” the president explained. “On whose show?” I probed. “Rush Limbaugh,” Clinton replied. “He’s been...

Growing up with a father who is an irritable traveler notoriously obsessed with avoiding traffic, I developed a habit of always preparing myself for the worst whenever embarking on a journey. ~snip~ Despite all of the problems faced by the current incarnation of the Republican Party, America is still a right of center nation, which explains Obama's need to abandon many of his liberal positions. Although it's something I would rather not find out, what this means is that Obama's ability to govern as a liberal if elected president would largely be a function of how well conservatives can mobilize...

This week John McCain officially released the details of his economic recovery tax plan. The howls of protest from the left were both loud and predictable. The Obama campaign ripped into the McCain plan with the mantra of "tax cuts for the rich," while leftwing special interest groups claimed that McCain would blow a supersized hole in the budget deficit. Yes, that bogeyman issue of the budget deficit is back again. That's the issue that's never an issue except when Republicans want to cut taxes, in which case deficits are suddenly one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Never...

Denver Last January, a "confidential" memo from a Democratic political consultant outlined an ambitious scheme for spending $11.7 million in Colorado this year to crush Republicans. The money would come from rich liberal donors in the state and would be spent primarily on defeating Senate candidate Bob Schaffer ($5.1 million) and Representative Marilyn Musgrave ($2.6 million), who are loathed by liberals for sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The overarching aim: Lock in Democratic control of Colorado for years to come. Leaked memos have a way of revealing who's on top and who's not in politics and...

Both candidates are predicting an election of “change.” Strangely, they both are correct--but the change will be almost the exact opposite of what either expects. The law of unintended consequences is one of the most important in political science and America is headed for a dozy. It all has been so predictable. Red state conservatives supporting limited government, traditional values and strong defense battle blue state liberals for big new government programs, government-guaranteed libertine lifestyles and diplomacy over military force. President George W. Bush has mixed things up a bit with his spending spree but the political divide of red...

Senator Obama's tax plan is a dramatic redistribution of the nation's tax burden, according to a new Tax Foundation analysis. In Tax Foundation Fiscal Fact, No. 132, Tax Foundation president Scott Hodge uses revenue estimates from the Tax Policy Center to show that Obama's plan would greatly accelerate the decades-long trend toward a federal government that depends for tax revenue almost exclusively on a few high-income people. This contrasts starkly with the McCain plan, according to Hodge, which would give every taxpayer a cut and leave the current tax burden distribution approximately where it is. "Under the Obama plan for...

Sen. Joe Biden, piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today: “This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset . . . and make this kind of ridiculous statement.” Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." "We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland...

WATERTOWN, S.D. (AP) - Barack Obama has called President Bush's comments on appeasement "exactly the kind of appalling attack that's divided our country and alienates us from the rest of the world." Obama criticized Republican rival John McCain and President Bush for "dishonest and divisive" attacks in hinting that the Democratic presidential candidate would appease terrorists. Obama strongly responded Friday to the comments Bush made in Israel on Thursday and McCain's subsequent words. Obama told a town hall meeting, "That's the kind of hypocrisy that we've been seeing in our foreign policy, the kind of fear-peddling, fear mongering that has...

I’m happy to be back with you in this annual event after missing last year’s meeting. I had some business in New Hampshire that wouldn’t wait. Three weeks ago here in our nation’s capital I told a group of conservative scholars that we are currently in the midst of a re-ordering of the political realities that have shaped our time. We know today that the principles and values that lie at the heart of conservatism are shared by the majority. Despite what some in the press may say, we who are proud to call ourselves "conservative" are not a minority...