Free Republic

Will President Bush ever get the respect President Reagan once received? America knelt in sorrow on June 5, 2004, when Reagan passed away after a decade-long fight against Alzheimer’s disease. The 40th President—the man who revived America’s economy and exorcised the demonic spirit of Soviet communism—was praised throughout the country as a political genius who changed America for the better and a proud leader who rescued the country from cultural and psychological decline. America had a love affair with Reagan, and his passing brought that affair to a cruel end. It is difficult to envision Bush receiving similar praise when...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It's probably as revolutionary and groundbreaking as Mozart gets these days. A German-based quartet staged Saudi Arabia's first-ever performance of European classical music in a public venue before a mixed gender audience. The concert, held at a government-run cultural center, broke many taboos in a country where public music is banned and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast food outlets. The Friday night performance could be yet another indication that this strict Muslim kingdom is looking to open up to the rest of the world. A few weeks ago, King Abdullah made an...

President Bush often argues that history will vindicate him. So he can't be pleased with an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted by the History News Network. It found that 98 percent of them believe that Bush's presidency has been a failure, while only about 2 percent see it as a success. Not only that, more than 61 percent of the historians say the current presidency is the worst in American history. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the historians rated Bush's presidency in last place. Among the reasons given for his low ratings: invading Iraq, "tax breaks for...

There’s a remarkable article in the current Time magazine by Bob Geldof, musician and activist, regarding a recent trip he made to Africa with President George W. Bush. Geldof, a liberal, disagrees with Bush on many things, especially Iraq. Geldof is also fair. He has observed what Bush has done in Africa, particularly on AIDS, and is enormously grateful for the president’s truly unprecedented actions. To cite just one example: in 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs; today, thanks to American relief, 1.3 million receive free medicine. In an illuminating article, there are, however, two items Geldof...

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - President Bush won NATO's endorsement Thursday for his plan to build a missile defense system in Europe over Russian objections. The proposal also advanced with Czech officials announcing an agreement to install a missile tracking site for the system in their country. NATO leaders were adopting a communique stating that "ballistic missile proliferation poses an increasing threat to allied forces, territory and populations." It also will recognize "the substantial contribution to the protection of allies ... to be provided by the U.S.-led system," according to senior American officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush left on Monday for his farewell NATO summit and a final heads-of-state meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin as he tries to salvage a foreign policy legacy frayed by the Iraq war. Seeking to reassert himself on the world stage in the twilight of his term, Bush will press NATO for more troops in Afghanistan, try to keep up momentum in the alliance's eastward expansion and attempt to ease strains with Russia. But with Bush even more unpopular overseas than at home, he could have a hard time swaying world leaders at this...

Condoleezza Albright? The Twilight of the Bush Presidency Is Looking More and More like Clinton Guest Column | By Joel Himelfarb | March 31, 2008 As someone who voted to elect George W. Bush in both of his runs for president, I take no pleasure in saying that when it comes to foreign policy, his final year in the White House looks increasingly like Bill Clinton’s. Clinton spent his second term desperately trying to create a peacemaking “legacy” for himself: courting world leaders who had no real interest in making peace like Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and North Korean...

President Bush showed the world that it isn't words, but actions, that truly make a difference. Millions throughout Africa would agree. Mr. Bush recently completed a historic visit to the African continent; a trip he described as "the most exciting, exhilarating, uplifting trip" of his presidency. During his visit, we saw pictures of the president dancing, celebrating and attending ceremonies with heads of state. But the real story is not about just this one trip; it is about the commitment the president made to Africa and what the United States has been quietly accomplishing throughout the continent over the past...

I dont know if anyone ever posted this but I just thought we needed a reminder: The accomplishments of George W Bush Abortion & Traditional Values Banned Partial Birth Abortion - by far the most significant roll-back of abortion on demand since Roe v. Wade. Reversed Clinton's move to strike Reagan's anti-abortion Mexico Policy. By Executive Order (EO), reversed Clinton's policy of not requiring parental consent for abortions under the Medical Privacy Act. By EO, prohibited federal funds for international family planning groups that provide abortions and related services. Upheld the ban on abortions at military hospitals. Made $33 million...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney, starting a visit on Saturday to try to push forward Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, said Washington would never pressure Israel to take steps that threaten its security. Palestinians accuse Israel of undermining the U.S.-sponsored peace talks by expanding Jewish settlements, refusing to remove West Bank roadblocks and mounting offensives against militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip who fire cross-border rockets into the Jewish state. "America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel's right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction,"...

The largest church conference on HIV/AIDS in United Kingdom was held this past weekend, reaffirming the belief that churches worldwide are joining in the battle against the deadliest epidemic in the history of mankind.Tue, Mar. 18, 2008 Posted: 18:35:27 PM EST The largest church conference on HIV/AIDS in the United Kingdom was held this past weekend, reaffirming the belief that churches worldwide are joining in the battle against the deadliest epidemic in the history of mankind. More than 300 delegates gathered at Bracknell Family Church in southeast England to not only be informed on the HIV/AIDS issue and what churches...

WASHINGTON — In the days immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, members of President Bush’s war cabinet declared that it would be impossible to deter the most fervent extremists from carrying out even more deadly terrorist missions with biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. Since then, however, administration, military and intelligence officials assigned to counterterrorism have begun to change their view. After piecing together a more nuanced portrait of terrorist organizations, they say there is reason to believe that a combination of efforts could in fact establish something akin to the posture of deterrence, the strategy that helped protect...

Preparing to hear oral arguments Tuesday on the extent of gun rights guaranteed by the Constitution's Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a brief signed by Vice President Cheney opposing the Bush administration's stance. Even more remarkably, Cheney is faithfully reflecting the views of President George W. Bush. The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an appellate court affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with Cheney, why did...

Cannot Post due to copyright issues: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/03/17/080317taco_talk_hertzberg

The failure of the Bush presidency is the dominant fact of American politics today. It has driven every facet of Democratic political strategy since early 2006, when Democrats settled on the campaign themes that brought them their takeover of the House and Senate in November 2006. Nothing--not even the success of the American troop surge in Iraq--has altered or will alter the centrality of George W. Bush and his failed presidency to Democratic planning in the remainder of 2008. Until very recently, it was in the Republicans' interest to find ways of sidestepping or finessing this central political fact. Congressional...

TUCSON — Judge David Bury declared a mistrial Friday in Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett’s murder trial. The jury told the judge that it was deadlocked and would not be able to come to an agreement. The U.S. District Court judge then declared a mistrial. The mistrial was called after jurors spent more than two days discussing the case. On Thursday afternoon, Bury almost declared a mistrial after the jurors sent a note stating they were experiencing a tough time making a decision, but he decided instead to give them more time. Corbett is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and...

That, says the Washington Post's Fifth Column of One™ Dana Milbank, is the theme of the new and reinvigorated Hillary! campaign. On the call with Wolfson and Lewis, Jane Hamsher from the liberal blog Firedoglake pointed out that Clinton's phone-ringing ad was "reinforcing the be-afraid-all-the-time Republican campaign theme." And if that's the argument, she added, "isn't John McCain ultimately the winner?"Whether he is or not, Clinton looked as if she'd borrowed a page from the Bush White House at her Westin meeting. Against a backdrop of six U.S. flags and several of the flag officers who support her, she raised...

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4363641

The van driver who witnesses says hit a school bus, killing four children, appeared in court Friday. She gave her name as Alianiss Nunez Morales, but authorities say this is not her real name. There's a brisk trade in false documents in the state, spurring some legislators to call for crackdowns....

For the benefit of our country, I hope and pray respect for the office of the president returns with the new president in 2009. The abuse the presidency of George Bush was forced to tolerate has been nothing short of obscene. Just last week, someone referred to the president as "that bastard Bush." The former first lady, senator and presidential candidate gently nodded her head in approval and answered the foul mouth with, "Well, there is a lot of truth in that." For years now Mr. Bush has been called a liar, betrayer, dummy, bastard, fear monger, murderer … just...

WASHINGTON — Mayor Bloomberg singled out for praise three Republicans — Senator McCain, Michael Huckabee, and President Bush — for their positions on immigration, suggesting they have been more "pro-immigration" than the Democratic presidential candidates. "In terms of immigration policy, the ones who have stood out, interestingly enough, are the three Republicans. Huckabee and McCain and President Bush have all been much more pro-immigration than the other candidates," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters here yesterday in response to a question from The New York Sun about his opinion on the immigration stances of Mr. McCain and senators Clinton and Obama. "Now...

Kosovo and Islam`s Balkanization of the World Wednesday, February 20, 2008 - By: Greenfield, Daniel Even as the world rushes to embrace the newly manufactured Kosovo as a country, the rise of a splinter Muslim country in Europe can't help but give hope to Islamic terrorists fighting to create breakaway states in Thailand, the Philippines, Israel, India and Kenya among many others. Balkanization, or divide and conquer, has always been a key element in bringing down countries and with a global Islamic war, each country with a Muslim minority, natively converted or imported, is on the same track as Yugoslavia....

ST. JOSEPH COUNTY (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A teenage boy passed away Monday night after being run down by a hit and run driver in St. Joseph County. It happened around 6p.m. Sunday night on M-60 near Fischer Lake Road, just northeast of Three Rivers. The 20-year old driver is in jail, after his bond was set at $750,000. Sergio Onofre is charged with Failing to Stop at the Scene of the Crash, Operating While Intoxicated, Minor In Possession of Alcohol, Driving with a Suspended License, Burglary, and Obstruction of Justice. Deputies say Onofre was westbound on M-60 when he went...

Striding onto a Seattle-area work site with a white hard hat, Jimmy Matta converses in Spanish with Latino laborers who carry paintbrushes, power drills or spackling tools. How much are you getting paid? How many hours are you working? Matta gives them his business card, promises his help and drives off to the next site. A decade of organizing Latino construction workers is paying off for Matta, 32, who recently became the first Latino organizing director of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters. Born in Idaho to illegal migrant farmworkers, Matta spent much of his early childhood in the...

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Nearly 600 Mexican couples tied the knot in a mass Valentine's Day wedding by the U.S. border on Thursday, many of them undocumented migrants who met while working illegally in the United States. As a live band blasted out sugary Mexican love songs in the border city of Tijuana, a short walk from the busy San Ysidro crossing into California, a judge simultaneously married a crowd of couples whose ages ranged from 16 to 65. More than three-quarters were migrants returning from, or trying to get into, the United States. "Isn't she gorgeous? I love her!"...

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Kosovo's independence will strengthen a bid by the Armenian-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh to be recognized as a state, Armenia's prime minister Serzh Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview. Sarksyan drew a link between the Serbian province which will declare independence on Sunday and Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenian separatists broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s but have failed to win international recognition. "We are getting a rather favorable position," said Sarksyan, front-runner in the February 19 Armenian presidential election. "Recognition of Kosovo's independence can be welcomed by us. "If countries recognize the independence...

George W. Bush may go down in history as the most successful president the media has ever destroyed. Virtually everything that he has sought to accomplish, with perhaps the exception of immigration reform, has gone his way, whether its the No Child Left Behind Act, Prescription Benefits for the Elderly, Tax Cuts, or the conduct of the war in Iraq. What's remarkable is that his successes continue despite the Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate. The most recent passage of a measure by the Senate to give President Bush exactly what he has wanted in terms of domestic...

How George torpedoed Jeb's presidential hopes and sank the family's political dynasty. Will America close the books on the Bush dynasty when George W. leaves office in January? Or is it still possible that his younger brother, Jeb, will rise from the ashes of the second Bush presidency -- perhaps even as part of the Bush clan's ongoing duel with the House of Clinton? While one should never say never in politics, such a rematch in 2012 or 2016 is beginning to seem extremely unlikely. Even Jeb himself apparently regards prospects for a Bush resurrection as largely hopeless. To understand...

Now, What If…? Now, what if our ideals destroy our sense of reality and lead us down the wrong path? What if Bush is really a great president? By Mogens Rukow What if Bush…? What if Islam…? Think, what if the intelligentsia…? What if multicultural…? Think, what if Arafat…? What if my a.. was…? What if you could go on forever? Now, what if there existed the equivalent of contrafactual history writing? What if there were the equivalent of hypothesizing what the world would be like out if history hadn’t turned out the way it did? What if Hitler had...

FOR A FEW FLEETING moments Monday night--what should have been vivid and affecting moments--television coverage of President Bush's final State of the Union address fastened on the image of a mother and daughter from Moshi, Tanzania. They sat, their faces alive with hope, in the first lady's box seats. Viewers were not told, and no one seemed inclined to tell them, that Tatu Msangi and her daughter Faith quite literally owe their lives to the Bush administration. After Msangi became pregnant, she went to a clinic at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and learned she was HIV-positive. Five years ago...

WASHINGTON - On Monday evening, President Bush will stand before a joint session of Congress and give a speech about the state of the Union – and perhaps about the state of his place in history, as well. This doesn't mean that Mr. Bush's final State of the Union address will be a nostalgia-fest of retrospection. Bush, like his father before him, famously is averse to dwelling on the past. But he's unlikely to unveil bold new initiatives, say experts, given his low approval ratings and the lack of time left in his term. At best Bush might push items...

It seems like only yesterday. In 1990, I first entered politics in Oklahoma. I ran for a seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency tasked with regulating public utilities and our oil and gas industry. The nine-year incumbent against whom I was running gave me an issue that was like a gift from Santa Claus. One of our major utilities had overcharged ratepayers to the tune of almost $30 million, and he had voted to let the offending public utility keep the windfall to upgrade its infrastructure. I felt the ratepayers deserved their money back, whether it was $50...

Congressional Democrats, trying to have the first word on President Bush's State of the Union speech, challenged him Friday to renounce use of waterboarding in interrogations, close Guantanamo Bay to detainees and outline new policies toward Pakistan and Iran. Domestically, Democrats said they expect Bush to invest more in the development of renewable energy and to support any compromise Republicans and Democrats strike to renew a law governing the president's secretive surveillance program. At the National Press Club, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid launched into a tightly coordinated pair of speeches in which Pelosi...

The Associated Press reported last week that a left-wing group, Americans United for Change, plans to spend $8.5 million to ensure that President Bush's public approval rating doesn't improve in his final year in office. The group points out that President Reagan recovered politically in 1988. "All of a sudden he became a rallying cry for conservatives and their ideology," Brad Woodhouse, the group's president, lamented. "Progressives are still living with that." Woodhouse added that another reason his group wants to insure against a Bush recovery is that it could help the GOP presidential nominee this year. As Jules Crittenden...

Comments 1 Bureau of Economic Analysis 2 Department of Treasury 3 Congressional Budget Office 4 Bureau of Labor Statistics 5 United States Census Bureau 6 United States Census Bureau 7 Kaiser Study of Employer Health Care Benefits 8 United States Census Bureau 9 Energy Information Administration 10 Higher Education Coordinating Board of Washington State 11 Bureau of Economic Analysis 12 Insurance Information Institute 13 United States Census Bureau 14 OANDA.com: The Currency Website 15 Speaker of the House Fact Sheet, 11/29/07 16 Energy Information Administration 17 Testimony of Andrew Kohut; President, Pew Research Center; 3/17/07

Liberal Group Plans Yearlong Anti-Bush Campaign; Goal Is To Deny Positive Legacy. A liberal advocacy group plans to spend $8.5 million in a drive to make sure President Bush's public approval doesn't improve as his days in the White House come to an end. Americans United for Change plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising... In selling the plan to fundraisers, the group has argued that support for President Reagan was at a low of 42 percent in 1987 but climbed to 63 percent before he left office. "All of a sudden he...

I don't know if this will work. I uploaded it to my own site: http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s279/beetle_bucket/?action=view&current=aztlan.flv If that dont work, go to immigrationwatchdog.com look for movies (videos) and then look for a video called aztlan.

CONTEMPLATING the Clinton-Obama racial war, some Republicans were so excited you’d have thought Ronald Reagan had risen from the dead to slap around a welfare deadbeat. Never mind that the G.O.P. is running on empty, with no ideas beyond the incessant repetition of Reagan’s name. A battle over race-and-gender identity politics among the Democrats, with its acrid scent from the 1960s, might be just the spark for a Republican comeback. (As long as the G.O.P.’s own identity politics, over religion, don’t flare up.) Alas, these hopes faded on Tuesday night. First, the debating Democrats declared a truce, however fragile, in...

The president has left his party in a precarious state. But the GOP candidates running in the wake of his wreckage can learn much from his failures. We are all stars in the movies that play in our minds: not true-life stories, exactly, but life as we imagine it could or should be. Little imperfections are conveniently forgotten or smoothed over, messy relationships downplayed or deep-sixed. The future beckons brightly, even if the past was dark or dreary. This need to believe in an idealized self is especially strong in politicians. They must get up every day and sell a...

An aggressive, non-stop campaign by China to penetrate key government and industry databases in the United States already has succeeded and the United States urgently needs to monitor all internet traffic to critical government and private-sector networks “to find the enemy within,” SANS Institute Director of Research Alan Paller told SCMagazineUS.com. “They are already in and we have to find them,” Paller said. Paller said that empirical evidence analyzed by researchers leaves little doubt that the Chinese government has mounted a non-stop, well-financed attack to breach key national security and industry databases, adding that it is likely that this effort...

Gullyborg finally gives up on the wretched George W. Bush (for most of the reasons I did years ago) and decides he doesn’t want to see another Bush Kompassionate Klone - or worse - in the White House. So, he’s backing…well, who else? If this is the way a Republican administration responds to a constitutional challenge of the outright ban on handguns in our nation’s capital, then the time has come to remove the blinders and return to single issue voting. If the Second Amendment fails, all our other rights become meaningless. Our next President HAS to be one who...

Saul Bellow once observed that a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. President Bush’s ill-advised tripto Jerusalem and the West Bank this week to promote a “two-state solution” would seem to underscore the wisdom of Bellow’s insight. The presumed aim of Bush’s visit, the first of his presidency, was to revive the goals of November’s all-but-forgotten Annapolis summit. There the president imperiously decided that all that was needed for a final peace settlement to be reached between Israel and the Palestinians was for two leaders with no popular constituency on...

During his tenure as President George W. Bush's defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld often likened the administration's foreign policy decisions to those of the Truman administration during the first years of the Cold War. As President George W. Bush makes his way to Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states with a stated agenda of advancing the goal of Palestinian statehood, it is worth examining president Truman's achievements and comparing them with those of President Bush. President Harry S Truman was in some ways an accidental president. Elected vice president in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fourth term in...

Our Worst President Ever? By Victor Davis Hanson From the November/December 2007 Issue The American That’s what some on both left and right are saying about George W. Bush. Don’t count him out yet, VICTOR DAVIS HANSON advises. Bush Geopolitics By October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush’s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent. His administration will go down, say historians such as Columbia’s Eric Foner and Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, as a disaster. As Wilentz put it, “Many his­torians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all...

There is, in fact, a dime's worth of difference between the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Why, on immigration, the difference can get into real money. The Democratic candidates were sitting around a big table in a radio studio the other day participating in an altogether civil and restrained debate on National Public Radio. There were no rallying supporters in the room to rile partisan passions and agitate competitive energy. The long-form format by which only three topics were discussed, those being Iran, China and immigration, served thoughtfulness over rancor. The moderator asked the hopefuls if they believed they should...

In politics, the surest path to irrelevance and powerlessness is to be taken for granted by one party and written off by another. That's the road Latinos are on, thanks to major blunders by the Republicans campaigning for president. In June, all but California's Duncan Hunter blew off an invitation to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. In September, a debate on Spanish-language television had to be postponed after all but Arizona Sen. John McCain refused to commit. After taking criticism for the snub, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney have committed to taking part...

As part of her job at an influential national security think tank, Julianne Smith brings politicians and senior policy-makers from all over Europe to Washington for candid closed-door meetings with the policy advisers to the candidates vying to replace President George W. Bush. The Europeans usually arrive eager to discuss the coming era that some are dubbing "AB" — "After Bush." That is the highly anticipated period beginning on Jan. 20, 2009, in which a newly sworn-in American president, chastened by the troubles in Iraq and by the scorn of allies who say the Bush White House flouted international law,...

<p>The rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria fueled by ratings-hungry cable-television hotheads and leading Republican presidential hopefuls is a dangerous trend: It may lead to a Hispanic intifada that may rock this nation in the not-so-distant future.</p>

Hillary Clinton -- and the other Democrats running for president -- couldn't possibly have assumed that they would forever skate around the issue of illegal immigration. That notion came to an end in the most recent debate, when the New York senator badly slipped over a question about her state's controversial plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Did she think no one would ask? Democrats had better start dealing with this. Polls show a large majority of Americans, including Democrats, opposed to illegal immigration. They also find that most Americans favor some sort of amnesty for many illegals....

This article appears in the "Geopolitics" section of the recent issue of The American. By October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush’s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent. His administration will go down, say historians such as Columbia’s Eric Foner and Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, as a disaster. As Wilentz put it, “Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.” A new genre in American popular culture has arisen comparing Bush to Hitler — on the Internet, and in fiction, stand-up comedy, and...