Free Republic

Republicans on the Hill are taking President Obama’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a sign the White House is not serious about cutting spending. Heather Higginbottom, a longtime policy advisor to Democratic politicians, was nominated by the president on January 7 to replace acting Deputy Director Rob Nabors. “I believe it is pretty clear from the opposition that she is seen as a political operative and that members see this as a sign that President Obama has no interest in having a serious discussion about reducing spending,” one Republican staffer told The...

President Barack Obama announced Saturday that he is nominating a retired Air Force general who currently serves as the Pentagon’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, to become Director of National Intelligence, a job that entails great responsibility but has been beset by uncertain authority since its creation in 2005. “Timely, accurate intelligence is uniquely important,” Obama said during a brief morning appearance with Clapper in the sunny Rose Garden. “I’ll be looking to Jim to ensure that we have the most capable and efficient intelligence community possible. Intelligence must be collected and analyzed quickly. It must be shared and integrated...

NEW YORK - NBC News has managed to achieve the near-impossible this election season in getting Hillary Rodham Clinton and George Bush to agree on something. That something, however, is antipathy toward NBC News. Through its unusual public criticism of NBC's handling of Richard Engel's interview with the president, the Bush administration struck at the soft white underbelly of the news division's co-existence with the opinionated personalities of MSNBC. "I'm sure you don't want people to conclude that there is really no distinction between the `news' as reported on NBC and the `opinion' as reported on MSNBC, despite the increasing...

E-Mail this Link by James K. Fitzpatrick Other Articles by James K. Fitzpatrick Who is Being Conned? 08/25/04 I have been waiting for someone to provide validation for the irritation I experienced when watching the recent Democratic convention. My wait is over. A prominent Democrat has come forward to corroborate my suspicions about the con-job being carried out by the likes of John Kerry, John Edwards and the Clintons. For a while, I thought I might be over-reacting, maybe becoming overly skeptical and peevish in my old age. Not so. (At least in this matter.) Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine and...

In Foreign Parts: City that never sleeps grows uneasy without Rudy By David Usborne in New York 18 January 2003 The other night, we were passing a fancy new apartment block in the Chelsea area of Manhattan (units rent for $6,000 (£3,500) a month) when a large rat zipped across the pavement. Nasty, I thought. It was surely even less pleasant for the tramp sleeping in cardboard boxes across the street. It's only an impression, but Manhattan seems to be getting scruffier again. Every night, honking rubbish trucks disturb my sleep, yet the heaps of bursting bin- bags outside never...

<p>When a former Iran-Contra defendant gets appointed to run a little-known Defense Department operation called "Total Information Awareness," then posts a sign on his office stating that "Knowledge Is Power," civil libertarians, not surprisingly, are exercised. Adm. John Poindexter may be suited for the job, but is the job suited for a free society that has, until recently, fastidiously safeguarded the privacy of its citizens?</p>