Free Republic

...Barack Obama struck a chord in Iowa by making the C-word his mantra. Instantly, his fellow wannabes - even Republicans - became me-too agents of reform. Mitt Romney, for example, suggested that he best "represents change." John McCain granted as how that fit for Romney's flip-flops - then vowed that he'd bring "genuine change" to Washington. Voters, analysts say, are lapping it up. (Of course, analysts couldn't hit the side of a barn in New Hampshire's Democratic primary....) But what, exactly, do Americans want to change? It's worth thinking through. After all, voters should be careful about what they vote...

I wonder whether we now know. The meaning of tears changes with the times. When I was a kid, boys didn't cry. By the time I became an adult, men were praised for being able to cry. But with Second Wave Feminism, crying was prohibited for women. We wanted to be tough. We wanted our men to cry. Now Hillary Clinton "cries" and everyone cries foul. Just using her feminine wiles, they say. Playing unfair, they say. Bill Kristol and Maureen Dowd call her manipulative, scheming and false. She didn't even cry - just misted up - and what a...

Remember when the Associated Press told you what the top 10 stories of the year were–and that was the end of discussion? No more. One of the wonderful benefits of the Internet is that it ended the monopoly of the MSM Deciders. Permanently. Here’s the wire service’s list of what news directors and editors voted the biggest stories of 2007. They picked the Virginia Tech massacre as the number one story. Sure, it was a tragedy. But the top story of the last 12 months–the one with the largest historical ramifications, the one that should define the entire year? Come...

YOU WILL FIND THE SECRET SERVICE VIEWS ON THE PERSONALITIES OF PAST PRESIDENTS TO BE QUITE INTERESTING. For those who don't know... Capt. Denny Keast flies for UAL and flew many SAM's (Special Air Mission's) for the White House. Some of us flew these Presidential Support Mission. The only thing they left out was the pain in the ass communication people..........Shem I flew 4 Presidential support missions in the C-141 out of Dover AFB, DE.. Two for President Johnson and two for President Nixon. Johnson was a first class jerk and on the two occasions I flew for him, if...

Mrs Hillary Clinton, Senator from New York State, is one of the leading contenders for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the USA in 2008. But a question arises, as she is the wife of a former two-term President, whether her candidacy is legally allowed under the US Constitution and American law. America’s first President, George Washington, held office for two consecutive four-year terms and declined to run for a third term in 1796. From that time onwards to Franklin D. Roosevelt, it became a constitutional custom in the USA that no President would serve for more than two...

Republicans and Democrats slammed John McCain yesterday for not slamming a South Carolina supporter who called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a "bitch" to his face. "I think it's a huge mistake for us to show that kind of disrespect to any candidate," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). "We can't encourage this kind of behavior. We certainly don't need to get personal." The Clinton camp declined to comment. McCain, a practitioner of "straight talk" on the campaign trail, was caught off guard when a woman asked him at a campaign event, "How do we beat the bitch?" After laughing and covering...

...SCHIP is senseless. Like its much larger sibling, Medicaid, the program forces taxpayers to send their money to Washington so that Congress can send it back to state governments with strings attached. Both programs force taxpayers to subsidize people who don't need help, discourage low-income families from climbing the economic ladder- and make private insurance more expensive for everyone else. SCHIP casts a much wider net than suggested by its stated purpose- namely, providing coverage to children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.... According to a study in the journal Inquiry, 60 percent of children eligible...

Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications For American business owners, our culture and our way of life. 1. The War in Iraq There are three major monotheistic religions in the world: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the 16th century, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern world. The rabbis, priests and scholars found a way to settle up and pave the way forward. Religion remained at the center of life, church and state became separate. Rule of law, idea of economic liberty, individual rights, human rights-all these...

They spent their childhoods in the rich, layered Jewish life of prewar Poland, then survived Hitler's mission to wipe out European Jewry in the ghettos and gas chambers of occupied Europe. Now, men such as Tad Taube, Sigmund Rolat and Severyn Ashkenazy have returned to Poland as philanthropists — after making fortunes in the United States — to nurture a grass-roots revival of Jewish life in their homeland. And while some Jews in America and elsewhere cannot comprehend why the philanthropists choose to return to a land where their ancestors suffered such pain and loss, members of Poland's Jewish community...

The Census Bureau announced Tuesday that 36.5 million Americans are "poor." Presidential candidate John Edwards claims these 36.5 million Americans "do not have enough money for the food, shelter and clothing they need." According to Edwards, poverty is an appalling national "plague" forcing "one in eight of us" to live in "terrible" circumstances. But, if poverty means (as Edwards claims) a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing and clothing, then very few of the 36.5 million people identified as "poor" by Census are, in fact, poor.... According to the government's own data, the typical person defined as "poor" by...

The testimony by Poland's Former Minister of Interior about Polish Government use of special services organizations to spy on political opponents has stopped proceedings of the Polish Parliament. And the stoppage may end up being long term. Parliamentary Speaker Ludwig Dorn said if the opposition continues to demand breaks the current session could "go on for months". Yesterday, during the reading of the secret testimony of Former Minister of Interior Janusz Kaczmarek, Former Minister of Education Roman Giertych exploded when he learned that conversations between him and Former Deputy Prime Minister Andrzej Lepper were recorded and transcripts of their conversations...

...The Gathering of Eagles turnout was unprecedented. The Cindy Sheehanistas and socialist rabble-rousers had never been met and matched with such force. Now, the Eagles are organizing a return to Washington at a historic moment in the global war against jihad. Gen. David Petraeus, top commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are expected to testify before the Senate on 9/11. Yes, that 9/11. Four days later, Sept. 15, is the deadline for the president to submit reports to Congress on how Iraq is meeting benchmarks for progress since the troop surge was announced. ANSWER will lead...

...Al Qaeda, the report notes, "has provided the inspiration for homegrown radicalization and terrorism."... All of which makes the task of identifying terrorists- before they act- enormously difficult.... Such an understanding-based on the case histories of terrorists in about a dozen plots around the world since 9/11- will give law-enforcement officials a better chance to intervene early. The report cites four key phases: * It begins with individuals who may be inclined to latch onto "radical thought" who "usually live, work, play and pray" within ethnic Muslim enclaves. * Then, exposure to Salafi Islam (the most severe strain of Sunni...

If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek's Evan Thomas about his magazine's dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case— "The narrative was right but the facts were wrong" —is destined to become a popular exhibit, right up there with "we had to destroy the village to save it." What Mr. Thomas seems to mean is that the newsroom view of the lacrosse players as privileged, sexist, and arrogant white male jocks was the correct angle on the story. It wasn't. According to Duke's female lacrosse team and other women on campus, the male players...

The pro-Israel outlook of the Wall Street Journal and many News Corp. outlets could waver if one of Rupert Murdoch's sons, James Murdoch, takes the helm of the publishing and broadcasting company, a new book suggests. The just-published diaries of a communications director for Prime Minister Blair, Alastair Campbell, indicate that James Murdoch launched into a foul-mouthed tirade that suggested that the behavior of Palestinian Arabs was justified by their poor treatment by Israelis. The outburst occurred at a private dinner with his father, his brother, Lachlan, Mr. Blair, and others at no. 10 Downing St. in January 2002. The...

The CIA last week released a heavily redacted version of a 1973 report what it considers its fathers' sins.... Because this faction succeeded, important changes took place in the CIA. Beginning in 1975, counterintelligence - which was principally quality control of operations - became the responsibility of those conducting the operations. Freed from independent scrutiny, CIA officers gullibly accepted more information than ever from "walk-in" sources and from foreign governments' intelligence services. Since then, whenever we have had a intelligence windfall (e.g., access to the East German Stasi files after 1989) we have learned that all or nearly all CIA...

...It's not only on such issues as the global war on terrorism and preventing the Islamic Republic in Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal that Sarkozy is close to Bush. He has also promised a major tax cut, the first of its kind in modern French politics, the abolition of inheritance tax and more flexible labor laws. During the campaign, "Sarko" used a vocabulary that had all but disappeared from the French political lexicon. He spoke of work, merit, authority, respect, patriotism and national identity. He said he would fight against self-loathing, multiculturalism, political correctness and moral equivalence between the...

...Consider...: * "The best social model is one that creates jobs for everyone, and this is obviously not ours since our unemployment level is twice as high as that of our main partners." * "I admire the social mobility of American society. You can start with nothing and become a spectacular success. You can fail and get a second chance. Merit is rewarded." * "France is no longer the country that comes up with new ideas." ...[T]o those Americans who mindlessly praise the imaginary social justice and "better" quality of life in a France they know only from privileged vacations...

It's February 28, 2007, in the poorly lit, dank, crowded basement, aka the "Great Hall," of Cooper Union college in Manhattan, and Newt Gingrich is talking to a sophisticated, well-attired, seen-it-all New York audience. As he speaks, the tempo of his words increases, until he begins to sound as though he is rapping: "We spent hours last week on a left-wing billionaire"--David Geffen--"getting unhappy because his former friends"--the Clintons--"didn't do what he thought they would do when he bribed them," he says, "because he's really unhappy about being lied to because he thought surely they would actually do what he...

...When a prosecutor speaks about "a cloud over the Vice-President's office" and "a cloud over the White House," he is speaking politically. There is no law about the amount of cumulus permitted over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The prosecutor is speculating on political capital — reputation, credibility, the currency of politics. Once damaged, they're hard to recover. So, even if it's not within the purview of the jury, his question is relevant to the wider world: How did this cloud get there and stay there even though it had no meaningful rainfall? Answer: Patrick Fitzgerald.... As for Scooter Libby, he faces...