Free Republic

On a night when he was the clear winner, it was only natural that Mitt Romney got off the best line of Thursday’s GOP presidential debate. “Are you familiar with the Massachusetts constitution?” He posed that question to Chris Wallace, the Fox News panelist who had been grilling him on Romneycare, the health-insurance program imposed on Bay State residents by the former Massachusetts governor and the state’s legislature. Governor Romney’s rivals have been pounding away at the program, portraying it as the model for Obamacare — the deeply unpopular foundation for a nationally socialized health-care system, vigorous opposition to which...

Few commentators have expressed less confidence in the ability of the Obama administration to rebound than I have, but the five weeks since the shellacking have been the most successful this president has had. The clear message of the WikiLeaks fiasco is that American diplomats and foreign-policy planners recognize that China is engaged in an insidious and unsubtle process of asserting itself in as disagreeable a manner as possible, without being dangerously belligerent; that Russia is a Mafia state run by a thug; and that the engagement policy with America’s more vocal critics in the Muslim, African, and Latin American...

ON MAY 26, 2006, RIGHT-WING POLITICAL REPORTER JOHN J. MILLER published an article for the National Review titled "Rockin’ the Right: The 50 Greatest Conservative Rock Songs" wherein he identified some of the more "liberal" rock songs according to popular memory from the 1960s to present day as actually "convey[ing] a conservative idea or sentiment." [SNIP]I argue these lists attempt to reterritorialize rock as a means of shifting the terrain of political debate concerning the various cultural forms that can now be claimed for conservatism, and I position them in relation to a larger right-wing political trend: one which attempts...

Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Edward Kennedy’s old U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, has become a somewhat unlikely national candidate. In liberal Massachusetts, after a Camelot-worthy sendoff for Senator Kennedy, and in an age of “hope and change” that was ushered in in no small part by Kennedy-family endorsements, this seat has been considered a safe Democratic hold. But polls have begun to show the race tighter than anyone would have predicted — one showed Brown in fighting distance of pulling off a win. Brown still has a steep hill to climb, but the possibility that Attorney General Martha...

Rise of an Epithet‘Teabagger’and what to do To “teabag” or not to “teabag”: That is not the most pressing question of these times, but it is a question to consider. Routinely, conservative protesters in the “tea party” movement are called “teabaggers,” and those calling them that do not mean it in a nice way. Many conservatives are mulling what to do about this term: fight it, embrace it, what? First, a little history. After Barack Obama was sworn in as president, with his big majorities in Congress, the Democrats launched quite a bit of federal spending: particularly with the “stimulus”...

You may recognize these names from recent headlines: Sen. John Ensign, Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts. Stupak and Pitts have become familiar names through the media's health care overhaul coverage; their abortion funding amendment introduced an 11th-hour twist as the House of Representatives approached a vote on a landmark health care bill. Ensign was the focus of media attention over his affair with a campaign staffer. Just last night, a Nevada man disclosed that he found out about his wife's affair with the state's junior senator — his best friend — via a text message.The common factor among...

For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be...

The Obama Doctrine is finally coming into focus. It’s been hard to glean its form because for so long it seemed the president’s most obvious guiding principle was “not Bush,” particularly when it came to the Iraq War. Indeed, his anti-Bush stance has led him to stubbornly refuse to say the war has been won or to admit that he was wrong to oppose the surge. In the past, this unthinking reflex has caused Obama to take some truly repugnant positions. In July 2007, Obama said that he would order U.S. forces out of Iraq as quickly as possible, even...

Barack Obama was elected to do exactly what he did last week at Cairo University -- to open a dialogue with the Muslim world. Or at least that was why I, for one, voted for him, contributed to his campaign, and continue to support him. There is no more crucial issue for the future of the West, whose material prosperity masks an increasing uncertainty about its own principles and values. Religion, abandoned by the secular professional class, will continue to be a major marker of cultural identity for most people -- even more so during periods of economic or political...

Sam Mendes’s new film, , reprises themes from his celebrated American Beauty and reunites the stars of Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. (Winslet has already won both a Golden Globe and a SAG award for her performance in Road.) Based on a Richard Yates novel, the film depicts the suburban malaise experienced by a young couple (Frank and April Wheeler), a stay-at-home mom of two (Winslet as April) and a father (DiCaprio as Frank) who commutes into the city to work in the stifling corporate world at the same company for which his father labored anonymously throughout his adult life....

Astronauts returning to the moon could be threatened by cosmic rays as a result of the sun becoming less active, scientists have said. The sun's ability to shield the solar system from harmful radiation could falter in the early 2020s, research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology claimed.At about the same time, the American space agency Nasa plans to send astronauts back to the moon.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The campaigns of Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken wrangled Monday over hundreds of unopened absentee ballots that could still tip Minnesota's Senate race. Lawyers ended a testy public negotiation session convened by the secretary of state's office without agreement on which ballots to open or how many should be under consideration.

Karl Rove, who refused to answer questions for years on the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA official, criticized Barack Obama on Monday for not being more forthcoming in the Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) scandal. Rove, a former top White House adviser to President Bush, said on Fox News, "[Obama] should have, right from the beginning, been more forthcoming." Rove, a Fox News analyst, added, "He should have come right out at the beginning and acknowledged to the American people exactly what we already know, which is that somebody on his staff, somebody on his team, talked to somebody...

The animated Fox show "Family Guy" is known for pushing the political envelope, but what was up with last night's catch phrase, "Laura Bush killed a guy"? Loyal fans love the show for its politically incorrect humor -- it thrives on the "They did NOT just say that" variety of comedy. But Sunday night's episode left some viewers scratching their heads. Lead cartoon characters Peter and Lois Griffin repeated the phrase "Laura Bush killed a guy" several times throughout the show with Peter was dressed as Mrs. Bush and Lois as a bleeding man crisscrossed with tire tracks for a...

We almost had a really interesting conversation about taxes in the waning days of the election. Almost. To the surprise of few, it was discovered that Barack Obama favors something called “redistributionism.” John McCain, it was discovered, opposes it — which also surprised a lot of people. To a certain extent, the outrage from folks on the right, at times including yours truly, over Obama’s response to “Joe the Plumber” was overdone. It was, after all, Teddy Roosevelt — McCain’s hero — who introduced the progressive income tax for precisely the purpose of spreading the wealth around. The maverick’s campaign...

The politically clever way to get special privileges is to call them “rights” — especially “equal rights.” Some local election campaigns in various states are using that tactic this year, trying to get special privileges through affirmative-action quotas or through demands that the definition of marriage be changed to suit homosexuals. Equality of rights does not mean equality of results. I can have all the equal treatment in the world on a golf course and I will not finish within shouting distance of Tiger Woods. When arbitrary numerical “goals” or “quotas” under affirmative action are not met, the burden of...

Journalistic ethics? When it comes to insulting our collective intelligence, the Obamedia soundtrack of the ongoing campaign breaks new ground on a daily, indeed an hourly, basis. Still, the Los Angeles Times takes the cake. Change you can believe in is a short hop from fairy tales you can be sold. In that spirit, the Times tells us, we’d really, really love to release the videotape we’re holding of that 2003 Khalidi shindig — the one where Barack Obama joined a motley collection of Israel-bashers, including the former terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, to sing the praises of Rashid...

Today, California same-sex couples are rushing to the altar. But this November, California voters will have their chance to say “I do” or “I do not” to gay marriage. In the meantime, what have we learned about what gay marriage will mean for gays, for marriage, and for the wider society? In just the last few months, a newly confident same-sex-marriage movement is becoming more open and revealing about the answers. The New York Times, of all places, gave us a glimpse in its front-page story this past Sunday, “Gay Couples Find Marriage Is a Mixed Bag.” What can we...

VANCOUVER, British Columbia: A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States did not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.

The ghost of Jimmy Carter is haunting the 2008 campaign. Well, let me restate that: the ghost of his presidency haunts the 2008 campaign. As for Carter, he certainly has not passed on; he is an active freelance diplomat and campaign consultant. In recent days he has told Hillary Clinton to "give it up" in June and estimated the size of Israel's nuclear stockpile. (Other previous Presidents have kept tactfully silent about its very existence.) Earlier, both John McCain and Barack Obama had felt compelled to denounce Carter's meeting with representatives of Hamas. Carter's almost predictable intrusions into the news...