Free Republic

(Sung to the tune of Jimmy Dean’s “Big John”)Ev’ry day on the set you could see him arrive He stood six foot tall and weighed 285 Kinda broad in his jowls and as wide at the brow Everybody knew he favored the chow, Big Newt Literati said he charged too much to his card But life with third-wife Calista was steely and hard So one pudgy wave from his be-diamonded hand Dimmed all the glitter of an enraged gay man, Big Newt Big Newt, Big Newt Big Bad Newt Big Newt A firefight started when they sensed he was weak...

It would be tempting to call 82-year-old Noam Chomsky a senile old dolt, but the word “senile” connotes an age-related deterioration of one’s faculties. To deteriorate, however, a mind must have at one time shown superior cognitive abilities. Although in fairness Chomsky’s work in linguistics indicates a specialized if arcane brilliance, his political thinking has never evidenced anything but his having the most warped of mental instruments. Hence, senile may be inaccurate and better replaced with “unsurprising” old dolt. Nothing about his latest opinion, “My Reaction to Osama Bin Laden’s Death,” surprises–that much is certain. Anyone familiar with Chomsky would...

Former Pakistan strong man Perez Musharraf is astounded that a fortress compound could be constructed in his country 800 yards from Pakistan’s major military academy to provide protection for Osama Bin Laden without the government’s knowledge. He is likewise aghast that the United States did not trust Pakistan’s intelligence to cooperate in the raid on this compound, as “we are fighting the same enemy.” Lastly, he is bamboozled, saddened, and chagrined that the US violated Pakistan’s sovereignty, which he would not have allowed, were he in any position to stop it. In other news, enhanced CGI will allow casting the...

"This is another fine mess you've gotten us into," Barack Obama may be telling Nicolas Sarkozy as he reads the latest reports from Libya: "Hundreds of rebels fled Ras Lanuf Wednesday morning as pro-Kadhafi soldiers used tanks and heavy artillery to seize the port city. Some of them called on France to bomb their opponents and called on foreign powers to send them arms...." In response to the faltering fortunes of their rebel allies, the West has to consider supplying arms to them, as this ragtag group still wields clubs and rocks against the much better supplied government forces of...

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Thus spake presidential candidate Barack Obama. So according to his own words and stated beliefs, the current military action in Libya is unconstitutional. Dennis Kucinich, Democratic Congressman from Ohio, introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush for invading Iraq absent a declaration of war. At least President Bush had the fig leaf of Congressional authorization. What does President Obama have versus his own words as a candidate?

Make no mistake that the events of the past few weeks in Madison, Wisconsin will go down in the history books alongside such precursors to great upheavals as the Boston Massacre and Harpers Ferry. Only five weeks after Jared Loughner’s shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others elicited calls for a new civility in American politics, Wisconsin’s Democratic state senators fled Madison, lighting a fuse that now threatens old greasy rags accumulated for decades in the garages, basements, and tool sheds of American civics and government. Rather than work within the procedural rules of Wisconsin’s elected body, these senators...

Like Charlie Sheen, California’s mouth keeps writing checks its body and talent can no longer cash. A state that once represented all the greatness of America–but a youthful and hip greatness, not a blue-collar, industrial greatness, like Detroit–a place where the knowing relatives of newly rich hillbillies advised them they ought to be, this state now instead loses its population. Or at least it would if not for the ongoing flood of illegal immigrants from drug-war-wracked Mexico. Mexico: also known as California South, California Mañana. To legal Americans, California has become more an absurdist hell to escape than the promised...

If you are uncertain of what is at stake in Madison as both the rhetoric and power plays ratchet up, cast your eyes eastward across Lake Michigan to the state of the same name. Consider…Detroit.

Republican governors in several states–Chris Christie in New Jersey, Florida’s Rick Scott, perhaps Bill Haslam in Tennessee, John Kasich in Ohio, and, in the crucible itself, Scott Walker of Wisconsin–have chosen to oppose these troubles in hopes of ending them. Or at least holding them at bay. Meanwhile, President 0 would sleep–perchance to dream of accounting standards in which debt interest matters not to proper bookkeeping because his new high-speed choo-choo trains must need be paid for. He would doze, preferring to spend waking hours concentrating on his golf stroke and securing another four years as lecturer-in-chief, but like Charlemagne...

As with the Chicago Olympic bid, Gates-Cambridge Police fiasco, and even the BP oil spill. Obama believed the proper role of executive was to get other people together to do things and perhaps apply some personal pressure–and by that I mean not the weight of the presidency, but the force of his own personality. In Obama’s eyes, it’s arguable which he sees as greater. Also note that in those four events, the level of Obama’s own apparent involvement was of a similar magnitude, despite the varying magnitude of importance to the United States and the world. A typical posture by...

According to Haidt, the nature of the discrimination is, at least in the case of his field of sociology, a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” hindering research and damaging credibility—and blinding sociologists to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals. From the global warming debate it is also obvious that even the natural sciences evidence this same hostility to contradiction of the group narrative. That is, whereas any research can be expected to face contradiction of its conclusions, the scientist who produces research unsupportive of the party line can expect ridicule, the scientist who offers even shoddy and unprofessional...

Instead of society being made of individuals coming together for what was common to the human in them all with the individual left to the individual, an attempt was made to make society pluralistic, accommodating many views, without ever elevating one set of values or beliefs as a basis for the social fabric. If this papering over of mutually exclusive differences ever worked, it doesn’t seem to be working anymore. Europe, its experiment with multiculturalism farther along than ours, is unanimously discovering its folly....

Estimates are that Barack Obama will initiate his 2012 re-election drive with a $1 billion war chest. The need to raise such massive funding to mount a credible campaign means candidates must likewise ramp up earlier and earlier in the election cycle, which in turn feeds on itself, especially in an era where professional consultants have supplanted unpaid volunteers. ([Meg] Whitman spent $1 million to lure heavy hitter Mike Murphy before he did one thing for her campaign.) The example of [Jerry] Brown, however, shows that a candidate can take advantage of the right circumstances to minimize wasteful excess and...

In contrast to the paltry ridiculousness of President Obama’s proposed $775 million budget cut, the Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, has unveiled a new budget containing $5 billion in spending reductions. To put that in perspective, Florida’s deficit is $3.6 billion, so Scott is actually cutting more than is necessary to erase the state’s fiscal shortfall: it’s almost 140 percent....Obama’s cut–which a spokesman described as “not easy”–is about 0.05 percent of the budget deficit. In other words, proportionally in terms of deficit reduction, Scott’s is 2,800 times as great as Obama’s. That’s right: 2,800 times.

The founder of a Muslim-oriented New York television station has been convicted of beheading his wife in 2009 in the studio the couple had opened to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims after the September 11 terror attacks.