Free Republic

September 25, 2005 The Sunday Times Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist. Sure, he has cut taxes, a not-too-difficult feat when your own party controls both houses of Congress. But spending? You really have to rub your eyes, smack yourself on the forehead and pour yourself a large gin and...

George W. Bush, after five years in the presidency, does not intend to get sucker-punched by the Democrats over race and poverty. That was the driving force behind his Katrina speech last week. He is not going to play the part of the cranky accountant--"But where's the money going to come from?"--while the Democrats, in the middle of a national tragedy, swan around saying "Republicans don't care about black people," and "They're always tightwads with the poor." In his Katrina policy the president is telling Democrats, "You can't possibly outspend me. Go ahead, try. By the time this is over...

Alaska's Gravina Island (population less than 50) will soon be connected to the megalopolis of Ketchikan (pop. 8,000) by a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge. Alaska residents can thank Rep. Don Young, who just brought home $941 million worth of bacon. A mess of thorny devil's club and salmonberries, along with an old chicken coop, surrounds the 40-year-old cabin where Mike Sallee grew up and still lives part time on southeast Alaska's Gravina Island. Sallee's cabin is the very definition of remote. Deer routinely visit his front porch, and black bears...

AP - 2 hours, 30 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The White House and its GOP allies in Congress will have to be creative if they're going to use spending cuts to defray the cost of Hurricane Katrina rescue and recovery efforts. Many of the ideas circulating are likely political nonstarters like delaying the start of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or favorite White House cuts that have previously been rejected by Congress — some of them several years in a row.

House conservatives called for broad spending cuts yesterday to offset emergency funding in response to Hurricane Katrina, a move that triggered heightened friction between leadership officials and the right wing of the GOP conference. The tensions illustrate a growing divide within the party about how to handle hurricane relief as another storm heads for the battered Gulf Coast region. Yesterday’s rally was an echo of the so-called Republican Revolution, when the current majority first swept into power behind their brash new Speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), after the 1994 elections. Conference conservatives pointed to a number of government programs, both big...