Free Republic

There's little doubt that at hand is an ongoing effort by the Obama White House to marginalize the Fox News Channel - especially after the administration attempted to leave Fox out of the White House pool last week. That is something conservative columnist Cal Thomas said is eerily comparable to Cold War tactics of the old Soviet Union. On the Fox News Channel's Oct. 24 "Fox News Watch," Thomas alluded to an Oct. 21 column he wrote, which he compared what the Soviets did with radio signals that penetrated the Iron Curtain to deliver a message of freedom from Western...

I am sympathetic to the story told by Joseph Rocha, who claims in a Washington Post opinion column that he was discharged from the Navy because he is gay, though he says he never told anyone. Rocha says his male colleagues concluded he was gay when he wouldn't laugh at their dirty jokes about women or visit prostitutes with them. Gay service members have a point when they claim a double standard exists for heterosexuals and homosexuals regarding sexual behavior. Rocha also alleges cover-ups by higher-ups about male sexual assaults on lesbians and the pressure he says lesbians feel to...

If you are an enemy of America seeking her destruction, you would add to your pursuit of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons the undermining of this nation from within. You would do this largely through deception, putting on a peaceful face while subtly plotting ways to bring America down. That tactic was on display last Friday in Washington as a crowd estimated at 3,000 Muslims gathered to pray. The organizer of the rally, Imam Abdul Malik of Brooklyn, N.Y., told Americans what we like to hear: "What we've done today, you couldn't do in any Muslim country. If you prayed...

Who wrote the following: "We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless." A "right-wing extremist" didn't write these words, nor did a cable TV or radio talk show host. Sen. J. William Fulbright, the late Arkansas liberal Democratic senator and Bill Clinton mentor, wrote them in his 1966 book, "Arrogance of Power." The arrogance of power and disdain for average Americans is what fueled much of the dissent expressed in town hall meetings. Growing numbers of...

HBO showed the film "Schindler's List" last week. The 1993 Steven Spielberg movie never ceases to arouse my deepest emotions. The perennial question put forth in the film remains: How could people wantonly kill so many others as a matter of state policy? This is more than history, however. There are those who would gladly "finish the job" the Nazis started. The Obama administration -- like previous administrations -- is pressuring Israel in ways that, if the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succumbs, will effectively give Israel's modern enemies the opportunity to destroy its people. Next time it is...

Despite their control of all three branches of government, this has not been a good summer for liberal Democrats. Their healthcare “reform” bill, which has yet to be fully written, much less fully funded, has been exposed at town hall meetings as a power grab over life and death with the strong possibility that “do no harm” will be replaced by a utilitarian approach to treatment. The cap-and-trade measure (dubbed “cap and tax” by The Wall Street Journal) appears in trouble. Closer scrutiny has revealed it as one more reach into our pockets by politicians who never have enough of...

OPINION: A columnist from the right side of the political spectrum will miss his longtime friend and ideological rival from the left | Cal Thomas http://www.worldmag.com/webextra/15808

After pledging during last year's presidential campaign, and as recently as the spring, not to re-visit the past, the Obama administration, in the person of Attorney General Eric Holder, has named a special prosecutor to go after CIA interrogators who pried information from terrorist suspects, preventing more deadly assaults on the country. Before the hard Left assumed power, anyone engaged in protecting America by interrupting terrorist plans might have expected to receive a commendation. Now they could face jail time. And somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden rejoices. By any objective standard, releasing terrorists from prison and...

Seven months after taking office amidst a religious-like faith that he was the one (or even The One) we had been waiting for, President Barack Obama is beginning to resemble a shooting star. A new USA Today-Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of adults believe the president's $787 billion economic stimulus package is having "no impact on the economy or making it worse." The poll asked six questions and the answers reveal that Obama's short-term fixes are producing long-term anxiety. Fifty-four percent told pollsters they think the economy will still be in a recession one year from now. Forty-six percent...

Seven months after taking office amidst a religious-like faith that he was the one (or even The One) we had been waiting for, President Barack Obama is beginning to resemble a shooting star. A new USA Today-Gallup Poll finds that 57 percent of adults believe the president's $787 billion economic stimulus package is having "no impact on the economy or making it worse." The poll asked six questions and the answers reveal that Obama's short-term fixes are producing long-term anxiety. Fifty-four percent told pollsters they think the economy will still be in a recession one year from now. Forty-six percent...

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND—For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American healthcare uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British National Health Service (NHS) system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats’ mantra of how 47 million Americans are “uninsured” and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they...

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND -- For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American health care uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British NHS system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats' mantra of how 47 million Americans are "uninsured" and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- While America debates whether the federal government should dictate which insurance policies and medical treatments it will allow us to have, here in the UK, the conversation has "advanced" to the approval of assisted suicide. Debbie Purdy, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, has won a landmark ruling in the House of Lords that many believe will move Britain one step closer to self-destruction. Purdy must be told under what circumstances her husband could be prosecuted should he accompany her to the Dignitas euthanasia clinic in Switzerland. The Director of Public Prosecutions will now be required to...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote an op-ed column for The Washington Post on Tuesday in defense of the Obama administration's efforts to "reform" health care. She wrote: "President Obama and I are working closely with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and health care experts to make sure we get the details of health reform right. But we can't let the details distract us from the huge benefits that reform will bring." So, the objective is all that matters, not the process by which we get there? The most important words on a contract may...

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND -- On my last visit to the UK three months ago, Members of Parliament were embroiled in a scandal involving outrageous expense claims for such things as moat cleaning, a baby crib and second homes that were sometimes occupied by friends and relatives, or not at all. For the first time since 1695, a speaker of the House of Commons was forced to resign and Prime Minister Gordon Brown (who also had questionable expenses) saw several of his ministers quit. Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, whose Conservatives were also caught up in the scandal, though to...

In the early '70s, comedian Flip Wilson created a character for his NBC television program called ``Reverend Leroy'' of ``The Church of What's Happenin' Now.'' Like some contemporary ``reverends,'' Rev. Leroy was a con artist who, among other things, once took up an offering to go to Las Vegas, explaining he had to study sin in order to effectively preach against it. Rev. Leroy would feel right at home in the modern Episcopal Church, which recently voted at its denominational meeting in Anaheim, Calif., to end the ban on the ordination of gay bishops and permit marriage ``blessings'' for same-sex...

In the early '70s, comedian Flip Wilson created a character for his NBC television program called "Reverend Leroy" of "The Church of What's Happenin' Now." Like some contemporary "reverends," Reverend Leroy was a con artist who, among other things, once took up an offering to go to Las Vegas, explaining he had to study sin in order to effectively preach against it. Reverend Leroy would feel right at home in the modern Episcopal Church, which recently voted at its denominational meeting in Anaheim, Calif., to end the ban on the ordination of gay bishops and permit marriage "blessings" for same-sex...

President Obama's nomination of Dr. Francis S. Collins to head the National Institutes of Health is an excellent choice, but it troubles some secularists who believe science should proceed unrestrained by any higher principles than what can be achieved in a laboratory. The recent New York Times story announcing the president's selection of Dr. Collins ("who led the government's successful effort to sequence the human genome") reflects what would be considered bigotry or sexism if applied to someone because of his or her race or gender. Reporter Gardiner Harris writes that one of the objections to Dr. Collins (he names...

Help me out here. President Obama immediately "meddles" in the affairs of Honduras, denouncing a military coup, the intent of which is to preserve the country's constitution, but when it comes to Iran's fraudulent election and the violent repression of demonstrators who wanted their votes counted, the president initially vacillates and equivocates. Are we expected to accept this as a consistent foreign policy? Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was reluctant to call the removal of President Manuel Zelaya a coup, if for no other reason than it would stop U.S. aid flowing to the impoverished Central American nation. The...

"How fevered is the man who cannot look Upon his mortal days with temperate blood, Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, And robs his fair name of its maidenhood..."; So wrote English poet John Keats in "On Fame." It's worth re-reading as we overindulge in the recent deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. Ed McMahon's death the same week received somewhat less coverage because he was neither beautiful, nor weird, though he qualified as a celebrity. At least McMahon served in two wars as a Marine, which was a real accomplishment. What is it about celebrity...

The first thing that should be acknowledged about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's admission to an extramarital affair is that it could happen to any of us. That is not an excuse (and no, it has not happened to me, or to my wife). Every married person has heard the voice; the one that says you deserve something "better." Gov. Sanford should have been familiar with the voice because of the Bible studies he attended. The voice began seducing humanity a long time ago. It told our first parents that they needed more than the perfection of Eden. The voice...

There was a noticeable change in the climate during President Obama's Tuesday news conference that had nothing to do with the heat and humidity, the excuse given for moving the event indoors from the Rose Garden. Those Chicago boys (and girls) know all about cold winters, but if they think 80 degrees and partly cloudy is hot, wait until August when the three H's -- hot (95 degrees), humid (95 percent) and hazy -- take over. For the first time in a long time, the president was challenged about his positions on Iran, health care and his "occasional" smoking. This...

A criticism heard during the early years of the Bush administration was that the media were ''in the tank'' for Bush, fearing to question his foreign and domestic policies in the aftermath of 9/11 because of his then-high approval numbers and concern that they would be labeled unpatriotic. Such fears have evaporated with the advent of the Obama administration. The intensity of media worship and slavish devotion by more journalists to President Obama and his policies has risen to what one might expect from members of a cult. On MSNBC, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said of the president: ''. ....

The Republican Party of late has been on a listening tour, asking people for recommendations about what the party should do to revive itself after the last two disastrous election cycles. Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has offered his opinions and in the process may have done more to further divide the party he claims to support. Appearing Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation," Mr. Powell said if Republicans "don't reach out more, the party is going to be sitting on a very, very narrow base." Mr. Powell said his "model" for this outreach effort is the late...

The return of Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party (he flipped in 1965 from “Kennedy Democrat” to Republican) is something that should be celebrated by Republicans, at least those who are proud to call themselves conservatives. Specter is a career politician whose first priority is himself. Specter, whose predictable lament that the GOP is not the “big tent” he had been led to believe it was, now embraces a Democratic Party that is an even smaller tent. How many pro-life Democrats exercise any influence in that party? How many opponents to same-sex marriage are in the Democratic leadership? Smaller...

Rush Limbaugh and others talk about old friend Cal Thomas, holding the conservative line for a quarter century.

Another obituary was written about the "Religious Right," and as we Christians just passed Palm Sunday on the way to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, it is an excellent time to do some soul searching. Washington Post reporter Kathleen Parker queries in her article "Political Pullback for the Christian Right" whether the movement is dead, ineffective or has lost its way. "Is the Christian right finished as a political entity? Or, more to the point, are principled Christians finished with politics?" she asks. She then goes on to include criticisms of leaders like Dr. James Dobson as either having compromised...

When Meredith Willson wrote the wildly popular musical "The Music Man" half a century ago, Harold Hill proclaimed trouble had come to River City, Iowa in the form of a pool hall, which he claimed would corrupt young people unless the local citizens bought the musical instruments he was selling and got their kids into a marching band. He promised that playing music would keep kids from "fritterin' away their mealtime, suppertime, chore time, too" and going to the track to watch "some stuck-up jockey boy sittin' on Dan Patch." Neither Willson, nor his mythical character Hill, could have foreseen...

One of the more familiar sayings in politics is, "Don't get angry, get even." The anger caused by using millions in taxpayer bailout money to pay "retention" bonuses to current and former American International Group Inc. employees and to fund banks that mostly won't tell what they did with the money is an object lesson for all of us. It offers taxpayers an opportunity to "get even" with those who have violated the U.S. Constitution, helped put our nation in peril and spent us into economic servitude to the Chinese. President Obama has said he is angry, too, but he...

In the 1987 film “Moonstruck,” Rose Castorini, played by Olympia Dukakis, walks home accompanied by a man she met in a restaurant. When he asks her if he can come in, she declines. When he asks why, she responds, “Because I’m married and because I know who I am.” On a political level, that seems to be the problem these days with the Republican Party. Many Republicans have forgotten who they are and what they are supposed to stand for. This is why there was such a strong reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in...

You might think that Cal Thomas, as a cultural conservative, would be among the least likely of pundits to call on Sarah Palin to get out of the spotlight for the time being. But Thomas did just that on Fox News Watch this evening. The topic at hand was Greta Van Susteren’s interview of Bristol Palin, and the way the MSM focused on Bristol’s comment that abstinence “is not realistic at all.” Cal was displeased that our culture treats having a child before or after marriage as morally equivalent choices. But his call for “the Palins”—which would clearly include Sarah...

Will the economic stimulus plan lead to the end of prosperity, individual initiative, personal dreams, and a complete transformation of America, as we have known it? | Cal Thomas In Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield, Wilkins Micawber delivers an economics lesson to young David that has been lost on most congressional Democrats, the president, and many of us. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.� The so-called “stimulus plan� cooked up mostly by House Democrats is, in reality, a plan to stimulate government...

Governor's Mansion, Baton Rouge, La., Jan. 7, 2009 Q. What lessons do you think Republicans should learn from the last two disastrous -- for them -- election cycles? A. There are at least three lessons that immediately jump out at me. The first is that the party must consistently do what it says. You can't be the party of fiscal discipline and tolerate the kind of spending that our party has accepted in the last several years, especially in Washington. Our actions have to match our rhetoric. If the Democrats had proposed many of the spending initiatives and projects that...

These days everything is political, or can be made so; even an inaugural prayer. That isn't exactly correct. The inaugural prayer in question is not the Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction, but Rick Warren's invocation. Lowery favors same-sex "marriage" and Warren does not. Homosexual activist groups and individuals such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) are angry, upset and hurt (and probably many other things, too) that Barack Obama would invite Warren to pray at the inaugural. Warren openly supported California's Proposition 8, which voters approved. The measure changed the state constitution to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples. Obama, so far, has...

Most children have probably finished their Christmas lists to Santa Claus. Some elected officials, however, are still compiling theirs. Close behind Detroit's wish list comes a long one from America's mayors. Last Monday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors sent its list of wishes to the political equivalent of Santa Claus: Congress. The mayors apparently figure with all the talk from President-elect Obama about infrastructure repair and job creation, they might as well try to pile onto Santa's lap, too. The mayors claim the economy will be stimulated if their wishes are granted. What do they want? The National Taxpayers Union...

I'm watching Foxnews Watch and everyone on the panel keeps saying about how Sarah Palin needs to "change" Cal says Sarah needs to "go home to Alaska and read some books" He also said she should change her hairstyle and her clothes. Gee.. how are Foxnews weekends working out for ya Cal? Won't be long before Cal will be looking for a job......... Newsflasg Fox! The GOP did not lose because of Sarah. Without Sarah I can't imagine what the outcome would have been.. but it would have resulted in many more Dem pickups. Cal Thomas makes me sick

President-elect Obama and his wife Michelle came to town and did what people with young children usually do before moving. They looked at their new house and then Mrs. Obama checked out the school choices for their two young daughters. The schools Mrs. Obama visited were private, not public. While no decision has yet been made, it seems obvious the girls enjoy their private school in Chicago and have flourished in it.

In the wake of conservative losses at the polls last week, veteran columnist Cal Thomas wrote a column (Religious Right R.I.P.) in which he urges evangelicals to unconditionally surrender in the battle for the political soul of our culture. Any attempts by evangelicals to change public policy, he says, will only "lead ... to more futility and ineffective attempts to reform culture." This column is bizarrely self-contradictory. After all, Thomas is an evangelical who writes several times a week with each column designed to influence some aspect of public policy. Just today, for instance, he urges President-elect Obama to pursue...

Remember when Democrats lamented the growing budget deficit and spoke of the burden our children and grandchildren would face if we didn't put our fiscal house in order? That was when Republicans ran the federal government and Democrats opposed tax cuts. Now that Democrats are about to be in charge, concern about the deficit has disappeared and spending plans proliferate, even though the national debt passed $10 trillion in September and we added another $500 billion last month. The latest, but by no means the last supplicant at the public trough, is the auto industry, which wants a bailout to...

The October surprise may turn out to be a 7-year-old interview with Barack Obama in which he strongly suggests that the U.S. Constitution is an impediment to his desire to redistribute the nation's wealth. How does Obama credibly take the oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" when he thinks it impedes his socialist agenda? Is socialism too strong a word? Consider one of its definitions from dictionary.com and tell me it is something other than Obama's economic philosophy: "A theory or system of social reform which contemplates a complete reconstruction of society,...

Obama is better at biblical language and imagery than any Democrat in modern times. He certainly beats Howard Dean, now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who once offered Job as his favorite New Testament book. Obama has declared himself a committed Christian. He can call himself anything he likes, but there are certain markers among the evangelicals he is courting that one must meet in order to qualify for that label. Some insight into Obama’s “Christianity” comes from an interview he gave in 2004 to Chicago Sun-Times religion editor Cathleen Falsani for her book, “The God Factor: Inside...

Just like that, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden has given voters the single reason why they should not elect Barack Obama president of the United States. In rambling remarks (does he ever make any other kind?) in Seattle, Biden guaranteed, like Babe Ruth calling his home run shot, that if Obama is elected president there will be an international incident to "test him" less than six months after his inauguration. Biden made no such assertion about a testing of John McCain should he be elected. Perhaps that is because McCain has already been tested ... and he passed. Behind the...

People who put faith in government to solve national or even individual problems are headed for deep disappointment, if it hasn't already arrived. Still, that doesn't stop politicians from attempting to sell political snake oil to the gullible. No one ever lost money betting on the ignorance of the uninformed masses. What should be required viewing before the election is "John Stossel's Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics," a "20/20" report critical of the U.S. government's ability to get things done (abcnews.com). The report looked at facts, not opinions, or "feelings" concerning government's inability to live up to the high expectations...

Just as the Obama campaign seemed to be making progress in tamping down rumors about his alleged Muslim background and that he might be a "Manchurian candidate" for the Arab-Islamic world, up steps the Rev. Jesse Jackson to upset the falafel cart. Jackson, who doesn't speak for the Obama campaign and has no role in it, was in Evian, France, the home of the preferred water of Volvo-driving liberals, where he spoke with columnist and author Amir Taheri about what he thinks the foreign policy in an Obama administration would look like. Jackson said things would start to improve in...

When Senators Barack Obama and John McCain meet Friday in Oxford, Miss., for the first of their three scheduled debates, the TV and radio audience is likely to set a record for such an event. Nearly 40 million Americans watched some, or all, of each political convention and there is no reason for diminished interest in these debates. In fact, the Oct. 2 exchange between vice presidential nominees Sarah Palin and Joe Biden might outdraw McCain and Obama. The Obama camp is treating Friday like a boxing match. Obama and his advisers have set up a "debate camp" in the...

ST. PAUL, MINN. - We are such hypocrites. When it was announced that Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant, the media pounced. Did this damage Palin's preference for abstinence-only policies? Shouldn't she be staying home at this difficult time in her daughter's life? What about Palin's new baby, who has Down syndrome? Shouldn't he be getting much more of her time and attention? How can she be vice president and a good mother? Haven't critics forgotten that Palin has a husband to help? Speaker Nancy Pelosi has five children. No...

I have never met a weak woman or a male victim in Alaska. You've got to be tough to survive in a state that is further away from Washington than any other, except Hawaii. In terms of the contrasts between how most Alaskans think and what passes for reasoning by career politicians in Washington, Alaska might as well be a colony on the moon. Initial criticism from the Obama campaign (and his media acolytes) is that Gov. Sarah Palin lacks experience to be vice president and, if necessary, president. That Obama lacks experience to be president has led some pundits...

DENVER - Democrats have made it a priority to lure more evangelical and Catholic voters from the Republican camp into their own, but the likelihood of success is becoming more problematic given pronouncements by two Catholic archbishops and a decision by the editor of an evangelical Christian magazine. Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, the archbishop of Denver, said Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden should avoid taking Communion because of his support for abortion rights. In 2004, the Archbishop of Boston, Sean O'Malley stood by a statement he had made the previous year that pro-choice Catholics are in a state...

The "civil forum" featuring presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain may not have been as exciting as Michael Phelps winning his eighth Olympic gold medal, but it was civil and it was a forum from which emerged useful information. McCain had the most to gain. Judging by the applause, he won the night among evangelical voters. He told them what they wanted to hear: He would be a pro-life president with "pro-life policies." He believes the unborn have human rights "from the moment of conception," that marriage is between a man and a woman and that the California Supreme...

Russia's invasion of Georgia on the pretext of "protecting" Russian peacekeepers stationed in the separatist enclave of South Ossetia and ending the "ethnic cleansing" of native Russians living there, is a sobering reminder that the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 was not a sign that old-line communists were ready to walk the sawdust trail of repentance and convert to capitalism, democracy, human rights and religious freedom. Quite the contrary. Vladimir Putin, who continues to effectively run Russia through his hand-picked "successor," President Dmitry Medvedev, still resembles what he once was: the head of the notorious KGB security agency....