Free Republic

On the eve of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to Washington last week, a British pollster suggested Brown's meetings with presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain would be more important than his talks with President Bush. The president is "irrelevant," the pollster said, echoing what has become a view widely held in Washington. With only nine months left in his presidency and low approval ratings, Bush lacks political power. He's a lame duck. In fact, he's not that lame. This is a common misperception about Bush (and a pet peeve of mine). In Washington, the political community...

John McCain is one lucky fellow. Of course you can make your own luck, as the saying goes. That's what McCain did with great courage to survive five-and-a-half years at the Hanoi Hilton. And he made his own luck again by advocating a surge of troops in Iraq that later proved to be successful. In winning the Republican presidential nomination, however, McCain has mostly been just plain lucky, no thanks to his own fortitude or foresight. Conservatives inadvertently aided him by failing to line up behind a single rival. Mike Huckabee ruined Mitt Romney's strategy by beating him in Iowa....

Mitt Romney's messages on taxes, foreign policy, and social issues are perfectly attuned to mainstream Republicans. His campaign events attract upscale Republican crowds filled with professionals (both men and women), businessmen, and middle-class strivers. They're precisely the people pollsters refer to as "likely voters." The Romney crowds resemble those of George Bush senior in 1988, and Bush went on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency. To update the Bush analogy, Romney as a presidential candidate makes one think of what George W. Bush, the son, might have been like if he'd studied harder at Harvard Business School and...

I don't know if the folks who put the debate together were purposely trying to make the Republican candidates look bad, but they certainly succeeded. But it was chiefly the questions and who asked them that made the debate so appalling. By my recollection, there were no questions on health care, the economy, trade, the S-chip children's health care issue, the "surge" in Iraq, the spending showdown between President Bush and Congress, terrorist surveillance, or the performance of the Democratic Congress. The most excruciating episode occurred when Cooper allowed a retired general in the audience to drone on with special...

In Friday's Washington Post, Howard Kurtz reports that the new John Edwards campaign against any Democrat accepting Rupert Murdoch contributions has a slight flaw: "John Edwards will never ask Rupert Murdoch for money -- he won't accept his money," said a statement e-mailed to supporters. Not so fast, Murdoch's people say. His publishing unit, HarperCollins, paid Edwards a $500,000 advance -- and $300,000 in expenses -- for his 2006 book "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives." "We assume the senator is going to give back the money from his advance," News Corp. spokesman Brian Lewis said.

A man who set firebombs in seven large SUVs last March pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison Wednesday. Grant Barnes... using the methods of the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front... When Barnes was arrested, police found a box of seven of the devices in the back of his car. Police said they are replicas of bombs shown on ELF's Web site.

Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP) -- Bill Barnes says he was scratching off a losing $2 lottery ticket inside a gas station when he felt a hand slip into his front-left pants pocket, where he had $300 in cash. He immediately grabbed the person's wrist with his left hand and started throwing punches with his right, landing six or seven blows before a store manager intervened. "I guess he thought I was an easy mark," Barnes, 72, told The Grand Rapids Press for a story Tuesday. He's anything but an easy mark: Barnes served in the Marines, was an accomplished Golden...

A Denver judge halved the bond today for a suspected eco-terrorist accused of setting firebombs in large SUVs after his father, a Colorado Springs lawyer, agreed to post the bond. Bond for Grant Barnes, 24, was reduced from $200,000 to $100,000 after defense attorney Phil Cherner told the judge that Barne’s father, Thomas Barnes, a former deputy district attorney in El Paso County, would ensure that his son appears in court. Prosecutor Ryan Younggren said he and the victims objected to a bond reduction because Grant Barnes might plant more firebombs if he gets out. Grant Barnes, suspected of using...

Magazines from ‘domestic terrorism threat’ found ... Ronald Swerlein kept magazines in his home from the Animal Liberation Front, a group the FBI calls a “leading domestic terrorism threat,” ... Police first searched the 50-year-old’s home over the weekend and arrested him Sunday on suspicion of possessing and making explosives. According to a search warrant inventory, police seized four magazines from the Animal Liberation Front from Swerlein’s home. The warrant requesting the search said the magazines describe arsons and use of explosives claimed by members of the group, who typically remain anonymous. The group’s Web site states that individuals work...

Denver police have arrested a 24-year-old man in connection with at least two fires involving Hummer sport utility vehicles in recent days. An officer arrested Grant Barnes during a routine traffic stop about 11:30 p.m., after finding suspicious materials in his vehicle. He was in the same neighborhood, police said. A couple in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood said their Hummer was engulfed in flames earlier this week, and the flames spread to another car parked nearby. It's similar to an incident last Saturday when neighbors said they awoke to find Hummer in flames. According to police, the man is being...

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- The founding pastor of a second Colorado church has resigned over gay sex allegations, just weeks after the evangelical community was shaken by the scandal surrounding megachurch leader Ted Haggard. Haggard, a gay-marriage opponent, admitted to unspecified "sexual immorality" when he resigned last month as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs. A male prostitute had said he had had sex with Haggard for three years. On Sunday, Paul Barnes, founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel in this Denver suburb, told his evangelical congregation in...

Congratulations to The Weak-ly Standard. The "conservative" magazine did a wonderful job promoting Democrat senatorial candidates Jim Webb, Harold Ford Jr., and Jon Tester in it's last two issues immediately preceding Tuesday's election. The Standard wrote a long tribute to Webb, calling him a "blood and soil conservative". Despite Harold Ford Jr.'s very low ACU lifetime congressional voting record of 19, the Standard tried to portray him as being similar to his conservative opponent Bob Corker on the issues. Apparently, the magazine was enamored of the notion of having little Harold in the U.S. Senate. But, most outrageously, the last...

REPUBLICANS and conservatives, brace yourselves! Strategists and consultants of both parties now believe the House is lost and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi will become speaker. At best, Republicans will cling to control of the Senate by a single seat, two at most. For many election cycles, Republicans have been the boys of October, using paid media and superior campaign skills to make up lost ground and win in November. This year, they were the boys of September, rallying strongly until that fateful day, September 29, when the Mark Foley scandal erupted. October has been a disaster so far. A...

Congressman Gerlach will be joined by members of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2:00 pm., at 275 North Latch Lane, [across the street from the Barnes] in Merion, to discuss what he plans to do to help block the efforts by the Barnes Foundation trustees to move the museum to Philadelphia. Specifically, he plans to introduce a bill (when Congress reconvenes in November) that "would impose a penalty on any tax-exempt organization, and in this case the Barnes Foundation, for accepting a donation that would be used to move the organization contrary to the intent...

In every administration, there is always one journalist that the White House trusts above the others to represent its point of view. In this administration, it is Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard magazine.Whenever you read one of Barnes' columns, you know that you are getting an inside perspective. You are, in effect, reading what the White House itself is thinking on any given day on any given subject.This is an arrangement that suits everyone. Barnes is regularly able to scoop other reporters viewed as hostile to this administration, while the White House has a conduit through which it can...

Are the neocons losing it? William Kristol of the Weekly Standard now demands the firing of Donald Rumsfeld. William F. Buckley, whose National Review branded the anti-war right "unpatriotic conservatives" who "hate" America, now calls upon Bush for an "acknowledgement of defeat." But it is a March 20 essay in the Wall Street Journal that suggests the neocons may be coming unhinged. Written by Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes.. calls on Bush to fire press secretary Scott McClellan, chief of staff Andy Card, political adviser Karl Rove, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary John...

Like few presidents before him, President Bush was poised for a consequential and potentially quite successful second term. It hasn't worked out that way (so far). Bush made one strategic error in 2005, guessing wrongly that the country was adult and serious enough to reform Social Security. Now he faces at least two immediate challenges: immigration and the Dubai ports flap. Let's start with immigration, which the Senate is slated to take up in late March. On immigration, Bush is not a conventional conservative or any other kind of conservative. His instinct is to sympathize with immigrants. Bush believes that...

On January 27, Fred Barnes, on the Diane Rehm radio show, told Diane that he would get back to her by January 30 with his source(s) for the story about Bush volunteering for Vietnam. Did anyone listen to the January 27 show? Did Fred get back to Diane? What was the outcome?

Diane Rehm vigorously disputed on her radio program on Friday that George Bush had ever volunteered to serve in Viet Nam.Rehm's guest, conservative journalist Fred Barnes, mentioned the familiar assertion that at one point during his Air Guard service, the President did volunteer to go to Viet Nam, an offer that was not accepted.Rehm responded with incredulity saying that she had never heard such a claim. Some of her callers -- typically left wing -- joined in her scornful dismissal of any such notion. The matter was left with the agreement that Barnes would research the matter and call back...

AUSTIN – Nearly 10,000 supporters of Gov. Rick Perry received a video e-mail on Tuesday telling them his GOP primary opponent, Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, is in cahoots with a lying, Bush-hating liberal. The Democrat in question, former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes, is on the host committee for a Strayhorn fundraiser scheduled for today in Austin.

CONSERVATIVES are justifiably proud of the alternative they've created to the mainstream media--the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, big regional papers, TV networks, and the national news magazine. Last year, conservative talk radio, websites, and bloggers forced the Swift Boats vets story onto the national media agenda and instantly destroyed 60 Minutes's case against President Bush and his Texas Air National Guard service. But conservatives shouldn't get triumphal. The mainstream media still rules.We see this every day. Consider the case of Democratic Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania, who recently called for an immediate withdrawal of...

Thomas Sowell: In the Right Direction Tuesday, November 22, 2005 ARCHIVE November 22, 2005•Thomas Sowell: In the Right Direction Part 1: Sat., November 26 at 5:30 p.m. ET Part 2: Sun., November 27 at 5:30 p.m. ET Hosted by Fred Barnes Author and columnist Thomas Sowell's work has been called "myth-busting" and a "bath of cold logic." His fearless takes on everything from race relations to the economy have served as guideposts for conservative thinkers for the last 30 years. Sowell, now 75 years old, was born into poverty in the rural South and raised in Harlem. He was a...

Fred Barnes will be interviewing Thomas Sowell on Fox at 5:30 EST Today. This is a must see interview for any conservative.

HH: Joined as I am most Fridays by the Beltway Boys from the Fox News Channel. Fred Barnes from the Weekly Standard, Morton Kondracke from Roll Call. Together, tomorrow night, Six O'Clock, you can seem them in the East, Three in the West on the Fox News Channel's Beltway Boys. I suspect that they'll be talking about Harriet Miers. Let's start with you, Fred Barnes. Well, I want to start with Morton. Morton, this must amuse you to see conservatives knocking each other down with bricks and kicking each other. MK: Yeah it does, actually. I mean, the conservative movement's...

WITH TOM DELAY ON THE sidelines, things will be different on Capitol Hill, especially for President Bush. The White House will no longer command an automatic majority in the House of Representatives--that is, the votes of nearly all 231 Republicans--on any bill the president endorses. In the shuffle that saw DeLay replaced as majority leader by Roy Blunt, Bush came out a loser.This is counterintuitive because the Missouri Republican has a warmer relationship with the White House, particularly with deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, than DeLay ever did. Blunt's close ties with the president go back to 1999, when...

On Sunday, October 2 at 10:45 pm A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War Victor Davis Hanson Description: Author and military historian Victor Davis Hanson speaks about his new book, "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." It chronicles the 27-year battle fought around 400 B.C. between Athens and Sparta. Mr. Hanson draws some parallels between the Greek war and the wars of today, including the present war in Iraq. The book classifies the Peloponnesian War as one consisting of enormous battles (on land and at...

SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES HAVE REVOLTED against President Bush and the Republican leadership of the Senate and the House. Their goal, with hurricane recovery costs soaring, is what it's always been: to hold down spending and restrain the growth of government. It is an impossible dream or close to impossible. The small government brigade is a distinct minority in Congress. Their strength is outside Congress. They reflect the anxiety of the Republican party's base, conservatives and moderates both, over the uncontrolled spending and massive expansion of government following hurricane Katrina. "The base is killing us," a Republican senator says.There's another source...

PRESIDENT BUSH, LIKE NO president in modern times, has guarded himself against a second-term slump. His most competent aides--the first team--stayed on at the White House. He has a sweeping agenda to keep staff busy and out of trouble. He has a majority in both houses of Congress. The economy, thanks to fresh tax cuts, is booming. Besides all that, Bush has always been lucky in politics.But with Katrina, his luck betrayed him. There's little defense against a natural disaster that ranks among the worst in American history. Nor is the timing of such an event predictable (Bush and most...

Raleigh, N.C. JESSE HELMS doesn't miss Washington. After 30 years in the Senate, he retired in 2002. "I was just so glad to get home," he says. Helms and his wife Dot live in the brick house that used to belong to her father. It's minutes from the state capitol and close to his small office. It's been their Raleigh home for more than a half-century. Their daughter Jane and her family live next door. Helms drops by his office most days, watches C-SPAN occasionally, but keeps his political activity to a minimum. Looking back at his years in Washington,...

PRESIDENT BUSH WENT TO BED at the normal time, roughly 10p.m., on the night the House of Representatives voted on the Central American Free Trade Agreement. But he was awakened by White House staffers to talk to wavering Republicans on the House floor. A cell phone with the president on the line was passed by Bush's chief congressional lobbyist, Candida Wolff, from congressman to congressman. Then Bush watched the vote count on C-SPAN before giving up. The total for CAFTA looked to be stuck at 214, not enough for passage. He went back to bed, only to be called a...

IN THE DAYS BEFORE PRESIDENT Bush picked a Supreme Court nominee, the White House was gripped by Souter-phobia. Bush and his aides desperately wanted to avert the disaster that befell his father's White House in 1990. The elder Bush, on the advice of his chief of staff John Sununu and Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, picked an unknown judge, David Souter, for the Supreme Court, thinking he was a conservative. Souter turned out to be a flaming liberal, so much so that Senator Ted Kennedy now regrets having voted against confirming him. In naming Souter, Bush had passed over...

 Conservatives hoped for a demonstrably conservative nominee with a streak of daring. They didn't get one.PRESIDENT BUSH kept his promise in nominating John Roberts, a federal appeals court judge, to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the Supreme Court. Since Bush first announced for the presidency in 1999, he has vowed to name judicial conservatives who will interpret the law rather than legislate from the bench and fabricate new rights. Roberts, the president's first Supreme Court pick, qualifies as a judicial conservative, or as Republican Sen. John Cornyn called him, "a mainstream traditionalist." His confirmation will nudge the court to the...

PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS TO KEEP two facts in mind as he looks to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor (and, should he step down, Chief Justice William Rehnquist). The first is that he can win confirmation of almost any conceivable nominee for the High Court, screams of protest by Democrats and hostile media coverage notwithstanding. The second is that he has a promise to keep. Since he began running for the White House six years ago, he has declared endlessly his intention to select judges who interpret the law rather than create it--in a word, conservatives. On this,...

THROUGH A CAMPAIGN AIDE, Bush answered a question about the kind of Supreme Court justice he admired. The answer was Antonin Scalia, a conservative. That was in 1999, as Bush was beginning his race for the presidency. He was asked a similar question later that year by Tim Russert on Meet the Press. The answer was the same--Scalia. Now jump to the summer of 2003 as Bush is preparing for his reelection campaign. Meeting with advisers at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush said one of his top priorities is to create a diverse Republican party with many more Hispanics.Bush's...

When Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, the Reagan White House was not prepared to fight effectively for his confirmation. Indeed, Bork was such a respected judge and admired legal scholar that President Reagan and his aides assumed Bork would have a relatively easy time winning Senate approval. He lost 58-42. In preparing now for a vacancy on the high court, the Bush White House has studied the Bork confirmation fight. And it has learned lessons it hopes will help when President Bush picks a nominee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first justice to...

To understand whyPresident Bush is relatively unpopular, one has only to look to the case of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. After his election in November 2003, Schwarzenegger experienced a political honeymoon. He governed mostly by compromise and without pushing for sweeping change. And his popularity, measured by how people feel about his performance as governor soared. That lasted for more than a year. Now Schwarzenegger has gotten serious. He's called for a special election to limit government spending permanently, curb teacher tenure, and take redistricting out of the hands of the legislature, which is controlled by the Democrats. His...

MY MOTHER, ROSA MILLER Barnes, was the Billy Graham of our family. With my dad's help, she converted all of us to orthodox Christianity. Her approach was not to deliver a sermon or drag everyone off to church or insist we read a religious book or tract. It wasn't that she was shy about discussing her faith. She could explain with great clarity what being a follower of Jesus Christ meant in her life. But she never pushed her faith on anyone. If she found someone wasn't receptive, she changed the subject to one of mutual interest. She was never...

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 14 -- One of the nation's richest troves of impressionist and post-impressionist art is moving to downtown Philadelphia now that its trustees have won court permission to leave their hard-to-visit suburban gallery, a legacy of the collection's eccentric founder. Trustees of the Barnes Foundation had argued for two years that they should be allowed to move the collection of Renoirs, Cezannes, Matisses and Picassos because decades of limited attendance and high costs in Lower Merion Township have nearly bankrupted the foundation

DAVID BRODER, THE POLITICAL columnist for the Washington Post, wrote last week that President Bush "has become the victim of overreach." Former vice president Al Gore has said Bush and congressional Republicans have a different problem, their "lust for power." Both are wrong. Bush's biggest problem--indeed the striking feature of his second term--is the Democrats' lust for obstruction.They have answered Bush's plans for Social Security reform, his judicial nominations, and even his choice of John Bolton to become United Nations ambassador with lockstep opposition. "There is still potential for the ice to break," a White House official says. And President...

PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS AN EXIT strategy on Social Security. With luck, he may never have to use it. There's still a chance a sweeping reform bill will pass this year. But despite Bush's valiant efforts to sell Congress and the nation on the idea of modernizing Social Security, the prospects are dim. History will surely vindicate Bush for trying to solve a serious national problem before it becomes a staggering mess. What's required now, however, is that he be ready to accept defeat in a manner that saves Republicans from losses in the 2006 election and allows him to pursue...

THE WORDS OF HUBERT HUMPHREY became the motto of American liberalism almost from the moment he uttered them on the Senate floor in 1977. "The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life--the children; the twilight of life--the elderly; and the shadows of life--the sick, the needy, and the handicapped." Liberal Democrats embraced the Humphrey dictum as a measure of what they'd done and what they planned to do. This was the high moral ground they thought of as the Democratic party's exclusive heritage.It no longer is. The indifference of...

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER BILL FRIST never saw it. Neither did the Senate Republican whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The number three Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, didn't get a copy. Nor did the senator with the closest relationship with President Bush, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. And the senator with the familiar Republican last name, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, didn't see it or read it. The same is true of Senator Mel Martinez, the rookie Republican from Florida.Yet the infamous memo that argued Republicans stood to gain politically by saving the life of Terri Schiavo was...

PRESIDENT BUSH DID NOT INITIATE the political realignment that made Republicans a majority party. But he has helped create the current moment of opportunity for Republicans to enact a far-reaching conservative agenda. Absent Bush, Republicans might not have 55 senators--which they also had in 1997, but otherwise their greatest number since 1930--which was enough to approve oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last week and to enact bankruptcy reform the week before. Both measures had failed repeatedly in recent years.Five factors have come together to give Republicans their best chance for major legislative and foreign policy achievements in nearly...

You probably heard about the case of Brian Nichols, the violent rapist, who murdered one cop, a judge and a court stenographer and shot in the face another deputy in a dramatic break from custody in Atlanta. It was a big story. It was a big shock to everyone that a prisoner of his reputation could pull off a stunt like this resulting in the deaths of three – and probably a fourth person, a Customs agent, found dead in his wake the next day. It shouldn't be a shock. It was all quite predictable because of what sounds like...

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY IS adamant about not running for president in 2008. Asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he might change his mind, Cheney answered with a firm no. "I've got my plans laid out," he said. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm out of here. . . . In 2009, I'll be 68 years old. And I've still got a lot of rivers I'd like to fish and time I'd like to spend with my grandkids, and so this is my last tour. I don't plan...

The obvious man for Bush to tap as his successor in 2008 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY IS adamant about not running for president in 2008. Asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he might change his mind, Cheney answered with a firm no. "I've got my plans laid out," he said. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm out of here. . . . In 2009, I'll be 68 years old. And I've still got a lot of rivers I'd like to fish and time I'd like to spend with...

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER will report tomorrow: 'Former 60 Minutes Wednesday executive editor Josh Howard has told colleagues that before he resigns, the 23-year CBS News veteran will demand that the network retract remarks by CBS president Leslie Moonves, correct its official story line and ultimately clear his name'... In the event of a lawsuit, Mr. Howard has told associates that he would like to see Moonves put under oath to talk about his own roles in the network's stubborn, hapless defense of the flawed segment on President Bush's National Guard service. Howard has also indicated to colleagues that he...

IS A BIPARTISAN COALITION REQUIRED to pass legislation that would allow individuals to invest their Social Security payroll taxes in stocks and bonds? Not really. Surely, the White House will endorse a Social Security reform plan that slows the growth of benefits by roughly 40 percent, right? Don't count on it. And won't Democrats be able to attack almost any reform proposal by President Bush with political impunity? Actually, obstructing Bush carries real risks. But as for all the talk about a new paradigm, doesn't Social Security still represent the third rail of politics--touch it and you get badly hurt?...

Is the White House doing the best job to bring the president's daring domestic agenda to fruition?MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T WORRY. President Bush is bravely pushing ahead to introduce personal investment accounts in Social Security and to save the system from insolvency. This is political turf where others, including President Reagan, have feared to tread. And Bush is poised to press later this year for an overhaul of the tax system, making it simpler and producing--we hope anyway--lower rates and a broader tax base. So he is living up to his reputation for dismissing lesser issues as "smallball" and saving his...

AT HIS PRESS CONFERENCE JUST before Christmas, President Bush was George the Salesman, pitching Social Security reform. He failed to make the sale. He stumbled in his explanation of why the system is in trouble. He awkwardly ducked questions on the grounds that he shouldn't "negotiate with myself." Reporters hadn't asked him to negotiate, only to elaborate. Still, the president has improved at spelling out why Social Security is headed for insolvency and how investing payroll taxes in personal accounts will buttress retirement security. But he's hardly as effective as he could be.Do the president's precise words really matter? In...