Free Republic

Were the average Republican asked for a succinct statement of his views on taxation, he or she might respond thus: “U.S. tax rates are too high for the world we must compete in. The tax burden — federal, state, local, together — is too heavy. We need to cut tax rates to free up our private and productive sector and pull this economy out of the ditch.”This core conviction holds the party together.Yet today the leadership is about to abandon this conviction to sign on to higher tax rates or revenues, while the economy is nearing stall speed. Yet, two...

"Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence." So wrote John Jay in Federalist No. 2, wherein he describes Americans as a "band of brethren united to each other by the strongest ties." That "band of brethren united"...

Whittaker Chambers said that "the great failing of American conservatives is they do not retrieve their wounded." He had it right, as Todd Akin can testify. In an interview that aired last Sunday, Akin, the Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, was asked whether he opposed abortions for women who had been raped. Akin's reply: "From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. ... If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down ... . "But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be...

In this episode of the Conscience of Kansas radio program Dr. Ibbetson analizes an article in the Hays Daily News written by Bruce Buchanan, Hutchinson-based Harris Enterprises, the parent company the The Hays Daily News. Bruce is a self described RINO and does not like the conservative turn the state of Kansas is currently taking. Dr. Paul A. Ibbetson shares his thoughts.

Since 1928, only Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush have won the presidency while capturing both houses of Congress for the GOP. In his 49-state landslide, Richard Nixon failed to take either House. In his two landslides, Ronald Reagan won back only the Senate. Yet Mitt Romney is even money to pull off the hat trick. With this hopeful prospect, why the near despair among so many Republicans about the long term? In his New York Times report, “In California, GOP Fights Steep Decline,” Adam Nagourney delves into the reasons. In the Golden Land, a state Nixon carried all five...

From Jamestown in 1607 to Yorktown in 1781, there was no federal government. There was no United States. Yet generations of colonists had built forts, cleared lands, created farms, established workshops. Americans fed, clothed and housed themselves, creating one of the highest standards of living on earth for 3 million people. How could the U.S. government have built the roads and bridges if the U.S. government did not exist before 1789? There were no public schools until the 19th century. Colleges were the creations of religious denominations. The Pell grant had not yet been invented.

San Bernardino, Calif., has now followed Stockton into bankruptcy. Harrisburg and Scranton, Pa., and Jefferson County, Ala., home to Birmingham, are already there to welcome them. Detroit has been taken into receivership by Michigan. A plan under discussion is to level a fourth of the city and reconvert it into the pasture and farmland it used to be a century ago. On the Web, one may find a pictorial tale of two cities: Hiroshima, a smoking flattened ruin in 1945, now a beautiful gleaming metropolis. And Detroit, forge and furnace of democracy in 1945, today resembling Dresden after Bomber Command...

It was, they said, the crime of the century. An attempted coup d'etat by Richard Nixon, stopped by two intrepid young reporters from The Washington Post and their dashing and heroic editor. The 1976 movie, "All the President's Men," retold the story with Robert Redford as Bob Woodward, Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Jason Robards in his Oscar-winning role as Ben Bradlee. What did Bradlee really think of Watergate? In a taped interview in 1990, revealed now in "Yours in Truth: A Personal Portrait of Ben Bradlee," Bradlee himself dynamites the myth: "Watergate ... (has) achieved a place in...

Is Marco Rubio tomorrow's man. Or is he just an echo of yesterday?

God save me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. That thought must be coursing through the mind of President Obama right now as his White House rigs for silent running in the murder trial of George Zimmerman. Obama foolishly inserted himself into this volatile case weeks ago, and injected the issue of race. Expressing empathy with the family of Trayvon Martin, Obama flashed a signal of racial solidarity: "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." Obama also implied that he shares the liberal perspective that America is a country where black kids must...

God save me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies. That thought must be coursing through the mind of President Obama right now as his White House rigs for silent running in the murder trial of George Zimmerman. Obama foolishly inserted himself into this volatile case weeks ago, and injected the issue of race. Expressing empathy with the family of Trayvon Martin, Obama flashed a signal of racial solidarity: "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon." Obama also implied that he shares the liberal perspective that America is a country where black kids must...

As the 40th anniversary of Watergate impends, we are to be bathed again in the great myth and morality play about the finest hour in all of American journalism. The myth? That two heroic young reporters at The Washington Post, guided by a secret source, a man of conscience they dubbed "Deep Throat," cracked the case and broke the scandal wide open, where the FBI, U.S. prosecutors and more experienced journalists floundered and failed. Through their tireless investigative reporting, they compelled the agencies of government to treat Watergate as the unprecedented constitutional crisis it was. No Pulitzer Prize was ever...

As an act of pure evil it was difficult to match. After dragging the 8-year-old by her hair across a schoolyard, the killer put a 9 mm pistol to the girl’s head and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. So he took out a Colt .45 and finished her. She was one of four victims. The others — a 30-year-old rabbi and his two boys. As the gunman had targeted a Jewish school and the bullets were identical to those used in the murders of two North African soldiers and one black soldier, suspicion fell on some neo-Nazi racist. And...

In an interview on Russia Today with Gayane Chichakyan on Tuesday, former MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan warned that some people in positions of power in Israel and the United States that would like to see the U.S. engaged in a war with Iran over its potential to build a nuclear weapon.“There are people that want a war,” he said. “I mean, do not think no one wants a war. You don’t have wars unless someone wants it. And quite clearly the Israeli government would like to see the United States smash Iran’s nuclear program, which they think is creating the...

U.S. special operations forces have rescued a kidnapped American aid worker and her Danish colleague in Somalia, U.S. officials said Wednesday. During the raid, all nine of their captors were killed. Jessica Buchanan, 32, and Poul Hagen Thisted, 60, were abducted Oct. 25 by a group of armed men in the Somali town of Galkayo. Pentagon officials said there is no indication the men had any connection to international terrorism or al-Shabab, Somalia’s al-Qaeda affiliate. Instead, the men are believed to have been pirates, hoping to trade their captives for ransom.

An activist group whose leaders object to the beliefs of Pat Buchanan, a senior adviser to three American presidents, a candidate for the Republican nomination in 1992 and 1996, and the Reform Party’s presidential candidate in 2000, is announcing victory in its campaign to have the author of multiple best-selling books removed from MSNBC. “ColorOfChange.org welcomes MSNBC’s decision to indefinitely supend (sic) Pat Buchanan,” ColorOfChange.org Executive Director Rashad Robinson posted in an online statement.

Rick Santorum, working to channel the populist success of Patrick Buchanan in New Hampshire, may be unable to recreate the coalition he needs to finish strong in the state’s Jan. 10 Republican presidential primary. Buchanan scored an upset win in New Hampshire’s 1996 primary by consolidating a group of working-class voters stressed over threats to manufacturing jobs and a smaller bloc of anti-abortion Catholics. That’s the alliance Santorum is seeking to put together after his razor-close second-place finish in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses to cut into former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s lead in New Hampshire. The environment is unlikely...

The Republican presidential primary has become a bit feisty, but it will get downright ugly if Ron Paul wins the Iowa caucuses. The principled, antiwar, Constitution-obeying, Fed-hating, libertarian Republican congressman from Texas stands firmly outside the bounds of permissible dissent as drawn by either the Republican establishment or the mainstream media. (Disclosure: Paul wrote the foreword to my 2009 book.) But in a crowded GOP field currently led by a collapsing Newt Gingrich and an uninspiring Mitt Romney, Paul could carry the Iowa caucuses, where supporter enthusiasm has so much value. If Paul wins, how will the media and the...

On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan. A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor. Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, “We have only one job to do now, and that is to defeat Japan.” But to friends, “the Chief” sent another message: “You and I know that this continuous putting pins in rattlesnakes finally got this country bit.” Today, 70 years after Pearl Harbor, a remarkable...

Is a vote for the Republican Party in 2012 a vote for war? Is a vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich a vote for yet another unfunded war of choice, this time with a nation, Iran, three times as large and populous as Iraq? Mitt says that if elected he will move carriers into the Persian Gulf and "prepare for war." Newt is even more hawkish. America should continue "taking out" Iran's nuclear scientists -- i.e., assassinating them -- but military action will probably be needed. Newt is talking up uber-hawk John Bolton for secretary of state. But if...