Free Republic

Our president came down from the mountaintop. He had applied the freshness of his independent thought to the critical matters at hand. He had convened his seminar, reviewed the reviews, analyzed the intelligence every which way, thought anew about everything, and lo and behold, he finally emerged to tell us some stuff we already knew.

For the sixth time in 11 days, President Barack Obama was back before the cameras Thursday, talking about airline safety and anti-terrorism. He then left quickly for a second White House room to meet with Senate chairmen and press them to have a health care bill on his desk no later than next month. Two very different issues with one common thread: Obama engaging, shedding his famous detachment after watching the intensity of his support drop dramatically since last spring. To get health care, he must be both a broker and a buffer, absorbing the heat for difficult decisions at...

The Pentagon is spending £70 billion on a programme to build heavily-armed robots for the battlefield in the hope that future wars will be fought without the loss of its soldiers' lives.The scheme, known as Future Combat Systems, is the largest military contract in American history and will help to drive the defence budget up by almost 20 per cent to just over £265 billion in five years' time. Much of the cash will be spent computerising the military, but the ultimate aim is to take members of the armed forces out of harm's way. They would be replaced by...