Free Republic

There is a point at which one’s contempt for the environmentalists and their allies is irredeemable. There is no longer the usual excuse that’s there’s room for argument or discussion regarding global warming. Having been labeled “deniers” for years, the sense that the end of this hoax is in sight brings no desire to forgive and forget. Recently, Dr. Roy Spencer, an atmospheric scientist who formerly worked for NASA, testified before a Senate committee. Free now to speak without the impediments of bureaucratic oversight, Dr. Spencer told the committee, “I am pleased to deliver good news from the front lines...

The theory is that by providing sanctuary to those who've entered the U.S. illegally and not notifying federal authorities, the police get cooperation and intelligence from the illegal alien community in fighting crime. Never mind that certain crimes would never happen if the illegals committing them weren't here in the first place. How many crimes would be prevented if those who shouldn't be in this country had their immigration status checked in encounters with police, and those found to be illegal were sent home? We know of at least one. Edwin Ramos, now 21, is being held on three counts...

Last week, radio talk-show host Michael Savage talked about autism: I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, `Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.” I’m not an impartial observer here. My six-year-old son has high-functioning autism. He is exactly the...

Birds and power companies adapt to climate change; scientists downgrade its role in hurricane formationSo it looks like it's not all gloom and doom after all. A few recent studies have managed to find the slim silver lining of climate change. Below, a look at the three small positive outcomes of global warming. Ice Power The melting glacier is the poster boy of global warming, but Nordic countries might be able to use all that extra water flow to boost their hydroelectric industry. “It’s not surprising that the warming effects of climate change can be beneficial for a cold country...

The New York Times is miffed. They aren't happy that there has been a dearth of news photos showing dead American soldiers in the war in Iraq. The Times is lamenting that there have been "4,000 U.S. Combat Deaths, and Just a Handful of Images," so more carnage and death is their druthers. Well, more American dead, anyway. They aren't interested in the dead of the enemy, to be sure. Using the story of photog Zoriah Miller who had his embed status removed when he publicized photos of dead U.S. Marines after a suicide bombing, the Times reveals their pique...

Oil was selling for $123 a barrel on May 7, and that's where it closed this week. Sounds like a calm and rational market, except for the fact that just last week it was going for $145. Which price was right, $123, $145, or something else? Before you let anybody give you an answer to that question, try to get them to comment first on the following two facts. (1) According to the Energy Information Administration, China consumed 7.6 million barrels of petroleum each day of 2007, which is 860,000 barrels/day more than in 2005. (2) EIA also reports that...

Most recent news of suicide bombings’ tragic harvest that shows Iraq as number 1, Pakistan number 2 and Afghanistan number 3 (In the number of attacks, Afghans are a little ahead but in number deaths Pakistan is second to Iraq): A region that once stifled renaissance is now on the verge of silencing its second chance of enlightenment. Will these lands ever come out of ignominy? Pakistan, after Iraq and Afghanistan, has become both a target and a staging ground for terrorism. Pakistan has become as blood-soaked and as dangerous as Iraq. The bombing of Jirga, funeral procession and prayer...

Early in July, OK! magazine featured a cover story about Jamie Lynn Spears and her new baby, Maddie. Newsweek reported that the magazine paid $1 million for the rights to publish photographs of the baby and mother. The young mom, now 17, is shown on the magazine's cover declaring, "Being a mom is the best feeling in the world." A good number of parents were understandably outraged.   This week, Newsweek is out with an article that questions how Hollywood is presenting teenage motherhood. The magazine reports that teen moms and their babies have become "a hot plot device lately."...

Bam! The amount of time it took to read the first word in this editorial — less than a half a second — is the amount of time a police officer has to make a life-and-death decision when confronted by an individual with a gun. We believe this is the core issue surrounding the recent controversy regarding the sale of air-powered toy and pellet guns that are designed to mimic real guns. These guns propel plastic BBs at various velocities using carbon dioxide canisters or batteries. They are intended for use in target practice and military combat simulation games. This...

About seven years ago, University of Chicago economists Kerwin Kofi Charles and Erik Hurst were researching the “wealth gap” between black and white Americans when they noticed something striking. African Americans not only had less wealth than whites with similar incomes, they also had significantly more of their assets tied up in cars. The statistic fit a stereotype reinforced by countless bling-filled hip-hop videos: that African Americans spend a lot on cars, clothes, and jewelry—highly visible goods that tell the world the owner has money. But do they really? And, if so, why? The two economists, along with Nikolai Roussanov...

By Burt Prelutsky It seems to me that when it comes to foreign policy, the U.S. has two separate problems. To begin with, there are those two billion foreigners in places like China, Russia, North Korea, and all the various Islamic nations that give America and much of the rest of the world non-stop migraines. But compounding the problem for us are the millions of illegal aliens who have been flooding across our southern border for the past 25 years or so. It’s bad enough that they’ve placed a terrible burden on our schools, our prisons, and our health care...

THE principal reason why former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has climbed to the top of Sen. John McCain's wish list for vice president is the possibility that he could bring Michigan's 17 electoral votes to the Republicans for the first time since 1988. Private polls show Romney could make all the difference in Michigan. A McCain-Romney ticket carries the state by a moderately comfortable margin.

Gerard Baker reads his 'He He ventured forth to bring light to the world' Video at link

Interesting TNR article here. The thing is about how the Obama campaign's hubris is starting to piss off the media. In particular an incident with a NYT reporter is written about in some length. When you get lefty rags like TNR openly making admissions like the quote below, and whining about how closed and controlling the Obama campaign is, it sounds to me like the campaign's honeymoon is just about over....The press certainly helped Obama get so far so fast; the question is, how far can he get if his campaign alienates them?... ...But, as Obama ascended from underdog to...

On March 27, 2008, the U.S. Department of State's International Information Programs in Washington D.C., the Public Affairs Office at the U.S. Embassy in Israel, and the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center jointly held an international videoconference seminar focusing on Iraq. Brief biographies of the participants can be found at the end of the article. This seminar is part of the GLORIA Center's Experts Forum series. Barry Rubin: For good reasons, people are often focused on the military side of the war and the issues in Iraq, but the political side determines what will happen in terms of...

A jury this week ordered RoseMary Shell's ex-fiance, Wayne Gibbs, to pay her $150,000 after he broke off their engagement three days before the wedding by leaving her a note in their bathroom. Do you think she should receive financial compensation?

The average American voter understands no more about the contributing factors of the current price of gasoline, than they do the falling value of their national currency. That makes them easy targets for political manipulation in a very important election year. Simple Supply and Demand Economics Most Americans kind of get this one, though they are often misled about the ups and downs of natural free market cycles and how much impact government has, or should have, on the matter. In short, the cost for one gallon of gas (or one loaf of bread) is dramatically increased when there is...

Note to readers who may not understand my position regarding climate change and environmentalism: I support conservation and responsible ecology and action. I do not support alarmism, pseudo science, hypocrisy concerning special interest and excessive governmental intervention into matters which a free market will easily handle much better without imposing additional and unecessary taxes. Please read this post with that in mind. I haven't taken the time to put together a round up of the Enviro-nitwit Supreme and all the other fun, so now seems like a good time. I do want to note one thing though, and that...

McCain began by recalling the beginning of the surge: "Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed. We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since...

Would it be a great disaster if Iran had nuclear weapons? As a habitual contrarian, I pose the question because almost everyone seems to believe that it would, and that it must be prevented at all costs. But is that true? John Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, said in April that "if the choice is [Iran] continuing [toward a nuclear bomb] or the use of force, I think you're at a Hitler marching into the Rhineland point." Bush, too, has compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler. But these so-called statesmen never consider what might...

Religious faith has long been valued as an essential contributor to our national greatness. Thomas Jefferson, in his second inaugural address, declared: “I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life, who has covered our infancy with His Providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power.” Jefferson believed that God had led “our fathers” and blessed the nation’s birth and growth. President George Washington, in his...

Barack Obama at least has one thing right: the author of "The Audacity of Hope" is certainly audacious. The junior Illinois senator has been telling us for months now: "We are the hope of the future. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." If I believed that about myself, I'd be pretty audacious. Not to mention messianic. And so the political savior went to Berlin to stand on the shoulders of giants, and didn't even have the courtesy to tip his hat to the president of the United States -- Ronald Reagan...

Anyone who wants to understand Barack Obama would do well to stay away from the radio and the TV. Obama is a theatrical presence. That's what it means to be "charismatic": To an unnerving degree his appeal relies on sight and sound rather than sense. Better, in my opinion, to stick to the printed word. On paper (or the computer screen) his words can be thought about and chewed over. You can understand him at your own pace, undistracted by that rich baritone, the regal bearing, the excellent drape of his Burberry suits. The printed word has its problems too,...

The detention center at Guantánamo hangs on the US like a ball and chain. Both presidential candidates and President Bush want it closed. But that won't be easy without broad consensus on how to deal with current and future detainees. On the tip of Cuba at a US naval base, the facility was set up in 2002 for the interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. It now holds about 265 prisoners, including 14 of "high value." It may have helped prevent any other 9/11-style attacks, but Guantánamo has cost America considerable moral standing in the war...

WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There's a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won't be hearing it in the House of Representatives -- certainly, you won't find lawmakers voting on it -- anytime soon. Instead of dealing with the issue on the merits, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a staunch opponent of offshore drilling, has simply decreed that she will not allow a drilling vote to take place on the House floor. Why not? "What...

Amid the rolling hills and verdant pastures of south central Virginia an unlikely new front in the battle over nuclear energy is opening up. How it is decided will tell us a lot about whether this country is willing to get serious about addressing its energy needs. In Pittsylvania County, just north of the North Carolina border, the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States -- and the seventh largest in the world, according to industry monitor UX Consulting -- sits on land owned by neighbors Henry Bowen and Walter Coles. Large uranium deposits close to the surface are...

In the rush to bulldoze the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac and housing bailout bill through Congress this week, scant attention has been paid in Washington to how the U.S. system fell into this hole. Thus it was refreshing to see Senator John McCain step up and speak rude truth to his colleagues about the fiasco in an op-ed piece this week. "Americans should be outraged at the latest sweetheart deal in Washington," the Republican presidential hopeful wrote in the St. Petersburg Times, stating the clear but all-too-often unspoken reality about this greatest of boondoggles. Yesterday 80 Senators voted to end debate...

If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

Sen. John McCain said Friday that Sen. Barack Obama has "failed" the test of leadership posed by Iraq, ridiculing his Democratic presidential rival for continuing to reject the troop surge even as he acknowledges it has helped stabilize the troubled nation. Continues...================================================================== Obama: I'm ready to take Training Wheels off me! Obama insists he's trying to "reassure" Americans he's ready to be POTUS by conducting his week-long staged circus. Obama posed for pictures in Afghanistan and Iraq and shook hands with Sarkozy -- I feel so reassured! As if that's not enough, he drew large, cheering crowds in . ....

Isn't it enormously ironic that Sen. Barack Obama now finds himself the unintended beneficiary of the Iraq surge he so vocally — and wrongly — opposed? It seems that Mr. Obama's untimely calls for a withdrawal timetable have lingered long enough to have some merit in the eyes of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Mr. al-Maliki told Der Spiegel, a German magazine, that U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal,...

Obama has a problem: What do you do when you're a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments and are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief? Pose, of course. What else can a guy like Mr. Obama do? So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as...

The headline on the website of German magazine Der Spiegel about Barack Obama's speech in Berlin: "Huge crowds left with mixed feelings." Obama turned out 200,000 in Berlin. However, CNN's Candy Crowley, reporting from the event, went on in her report to her TV audience about an absence of "euphoria." As Sen. Obama went global with "yes, we can" and "change we can believe in," he left at least some in the huge crowd in Berlin scratching their heads. Perhaps these Germans, out to hear what all the excitement was about regarding this unusual American presidential candidate, were looking for...

[T]here's no reason to be afraid of these people [the liberal establishment]. There's no reason to cower. Whenever somebody is coming at you with lies and a false premise, you don't accept the lie, you don't accept the false premise. You just laugh at them, and you fight back, and you ram it back down their throats. ~ Rush Limbaugh, Oct. 19, 2007, interview on FoxNews' "Hannity and Colmes" Harvard University, circa 1988 My first memory of Rush Limbaugh was 20 years ago. I was an idealistic young man of 26 walking around the campus of what many consider liberal...

Leadership: When it comes to giving relief at the pump by drilling for more oil, this is truly a "do-nothing" Democratic Congress. President Bush should give 'em hell like Harry Truman did. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the president "may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses" of Congress. On more than two dozen occasions in our history, presidents have done just that, forcing the Senate and House of Representatives to meet on extraordinary matters of defense or economic peril. Sixty years ago this month, President Truman called such a special session to shame into action what...

Big Freddy collapsed his oversized umbrella after coming through the door, shook himself like a St. Bernard and made his way to our booth. "Don't drip on me," I said as he heaved into the bench seat. "Making a weather statement," Freddy said. 'Enough already with the rain. This is July — not September." "With another three months to go before we vote." I said. "You noticed," Freddy said. "How could I not?" I asked. "TV played Obama's whirlwind trip as though he had won all ready." "And why not?" Freddy asked. "He's a fresh face. Great theater. Made for...

The nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, attracted 9,000 delegates to its annual convention in Washington, D.C., over the July Fourth weekend.--snip--NEA resolutions cover the waterfront of all sorts of political issues that have nothing to do with improving education for schoolchildren, such as supporting statehood for the District of Columbia, a "single-payer health care plan" (i.e., government run), gun control, ratification of the International Criminal Court Treaty and taking steps "to change activities that contribute to global climate change."...

The silver lining in the cloud of high energy prices is the growing public support for domestic development of natural resources. Opinion polls, including data from California, show Americans are increasingly inclined to support drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In an effort to increase the domestic supply of oil and also to pressure Congressional Democrats not to extend the offshore ban, which expires September 30, on July 14 President Bush eliminated the executive order preventing offshore drilling. Not surprisingly, Democratic congressional leaders and their special interest allies oppose adding new areas for...

Federalism, a system of dual sovereigns and multiple levels of government, was envisioned by the founders a method of protecting and securing individual rights. The concentration of power in a single sovereign was viewed with much skepticism by the founders, inasmuch as concentrated power was apt to be abused (which is what they’d fought a revolution over, after all). Federalism has also offered the benefit of spurring competition amongst the states, whose differing policies offer a variety of attributes to attract (or repel) potential residents. Among these competitions is if and how taxes are collected. Florida and Texas, for instance,...

Sometimes public opinion doesn't flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. $3 a gallon gas didn't change anybody's mind about energy issues. $4 a gallon gas did. Evidently, the experience of paying more than $50 for a tankful gets people thinking we should stop worrying so much about global warming and the environmental dangers of oil wells on the outer continental shelf and in Alaska. Drill now! Nuke the caribou! Our system of divided government and litigation-friendly regulation makes it hard for our society to do things and easy for adroit...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The principal reason why former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has climbed to the top of Sen. John McCain's practical wish list for vice president is the possibility that he could bring Michigan's 17 electoral votes to the Republicans for the first time since 1988. Private polls show Romney could make all the difference in Michigan. A McCain-Romney ticket carries the state by a moderately comfortable margin. With any other running mate, McCain loses Michigan. George Romney, Mitt's father, was a Detroit auto executive and the popular three-term governor of Michigan. The younger Romney won the 2008 primary...

If Sen. Obama becomes President Obama, my taxes will go up, way up. But I know neither Argentina nor anyone else will cry for me, because I am the rich guy Al Gore warned you about, the one who got all those tax cuts from the evil Bush administration. Yes, I am part of the 1 percent of Americans that paid an astounding 40 percent of all federal income tax in 2006. According to recently released IRS figures, about 50 percent of my fellow Americans paid no federal income tax at all that year. My fellow 1-percenters and I covered...

July 25, 2008, 0:00 p.m. In the HeightsA recent musical set in Washington Heights is a rare voice for conservative views. By Monica Mullin Barack Obama is not the only one singing a hopeful tune these days. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights — an exuberant paean to life in a New York City barrio — is overflowing with hope. A hope refreshingly based on essentially conservative values. What a far cry from Paul Simon’s ill-fated 1997 musical The Capeman, the play Ben Brantley of the New York Times once compared to “watching a mortally wounded animal.� Also set...

The success of the surge offensive resulted in an intelligence windfall. Documents and prisoner interrogations (as well as identifying the dead) provided a lot more information on hostile Sunni and Shia groups, as well as interesting observations about the factions currently controlling the government. All this clarified and confirmed the very factious nature of Iraqi society. Seems anybody with a quick mouth and a lot of guns can form their own little army. This factionalism is accompanied by a self-righteousness that seems to justify a wide range of bad behavior. This includes corruption, but also murder, torture, rape, theft and...

As the U.S. armed forces have done so many times before, they entered the uncertainty of a new war in 2001, and are now trying to figure out what they gained from it. Most of what went on during this war was unreported or misreported. This is nothing new. The important details, and lessons, of all past American wars were poorly reported, and what the military is trying to avoid is taking away the wrong lessons. Throughout the current conflict, the military made no secret of what they were doing, and just kept focused on winning. They knew they would...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here is Brian in Battle Creek, Michigan. Brian, thank you for waiting and welcome to the EIB Network. CALLER: Yeah, thank you. RUSH: Go right ahead, sir. CALLER: Megadittos. RUSH: Thank you very much. CALLER: I've got two here. First, I had to go to your website to find a phone number and now I finally understand when you say the Messi-uh, what you actually are getting at with the uhs that he says. RUSH: Right. The Messi-uh. CALLER: Very clever. The other thing is I was wondering if you had a chance to see the new...

If you read, watch and hear the media describe the campaign of 2008, it appears to be the most one-sided contest since Reagan trounced Mondale in 1984. McCain always comes across as borderline senile, lethargic, and pitiful while Obama is awash in media heroics and theatrical flourishes. But the race is still basically tied according to the polls. While Obama has gotten a four point bounce, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, from his European trip and the adulatory response of the left-leaning German crowds, the two candidates have been within one or two points of each other for the...

Something’s better than nothing but the disappointment is palpable: “Everyone was excited about Obama’s visit. It’s a shame.� After googling around for details about what happened, precisely, I think John McCormack at the Standard has it right. It wasn’t the absence of media that led Obama to cancel the trip, it was the fact that two of his top military advisors, most notably Ret. Gen. Gration, couldn’t go with him because they’re technically campaign personnel and DoD regs prohibit political campaigning at military bases. Why Obama simply didn’t leave the two of them behind and make the trip anyway, your...

When folks in Washington want to find out what's on the mind of the American people, they tune in to CNN or Fox News and listen to the best of the Washington talking heads. Not me. I have breakfast at my favorite diner in Eufaula, my hometown in Oklahoma. Last week, the folks at J.M.s Restaurant weren't talking about senators Obama and McCain, or the fact the Iraqi government has al Qaeda on the run. They were talking about energy prices. They were talking about the fact it costs $80 to fill up their cars and $120 to fill up...

America is at the Mall by Bridget Geegan Blanton Several months ago I came across a photo while online that appeared to have been taken inside a military installation quite possibly in a theater of war. The photo was simple yet poignant. In the background was the indistinct image of a Marine dressed in camouflage entering the room from the outside and in the foreground the photographer zeroed in on the side of a refrigerator. Three sentences written on the side of the refrigerator constituted the single most riveting feature of the photo. The statement was brief, to the point...

The headline on the website of German magazine Der Spiegel about Barack Obama's speech in Berlin: "Huge Crowds Left with Mixed Feelings." Two hundred thousand turned out for the speech, but CNN's Candy Crowley reported an "absence of euphoria" at the event. As Senator Obama went global with "Yes, we can" and "Change we can believe in" he left at least some of the horde in Berlin scratching their heads. Perhaps these Germans, out to hear what all the excitement was about, were looking for leadership and substance rather than kumbaya. What they got was the global version of "There...