Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- It isn't easy to put words in the mouth of the president of the United States, but the White House stable of speechwriters does that almost every day. The frustrations of such a prestigious post are painfully recalled by Matt Latimer, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, in his new book "Speech-Less." The subtitle of the book by the conservative speechwriter is "Tales of a White House Survivor." Latimer's book divulges rich insights into the Bush White House. The rivalries, the egos, the fears and the trepidations of having written a prime time speech only to...

Bill Clinton says a vast, right-wing conspiracy that once targeted him is now focusing on President Barack Obama.

RUSH: David Axelrod there saying that Obama doesn't listen to polls, doesn't read polls, doesn't care what NBC says, and the first obligation of the president is to keep the American people safe. No, the first obligation of this president is to make sure our enemies are not offended. Now, yesterday -- and I got a lot of grief on this, caught a lot of grief in the e-mail. Yesterday, I kind of lost it toward the end of the program, all the sound bites and Afghanistan was a big subject yesterday and, you know, the general says we need...

ABC News' David Chalian Reports: Hillary Clinton stepped directly into the middle of this week's political fray when she questioned former Vice President Dick Cheney's credibility on the torture memos recently released by the Obama administration. Congressman Dana Rohrbacher, R-Calif., took up Dick Cheney's cause today and pressed Secretary of State Clinton to urge the Obama administration to declassify and release documents he believes demonstrate the success of the enhanced interrogation techniques employed during the Bush administration. Rep. Rohrbacher referred to Mr. Cheney's recent comments where he claimed the memos released by the Obama administration last week tend to only...

Obama administration officials had indicated last week that the U.S. was preparing to pledge $900 million in assistance for Gaza

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest...

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

Hillary Clinton supporters will march through Denver during the Democratic National Convention to show appreciation for the New York senator's historic primary run and urge the party to place her name in nomination.

ABC News' Ed O'Keefe Reports: Perhaps there will be a Madame President Clinton after all. No, not Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. How about former first daughter and active campaigner Chelsea Clinton? "If you asked me (if Chelsea would run for office) before Iowa, I would have said, 'No way. She is too allergic to anything we do.' But she is really good at it," former President Bill Clinton tells PEOPLE magazine in their latest issue, hitting newsstands Friday. In the PEOPLE exclusive, Clinton called his daughter's "emergence" the "second best thing" of the campaign, after his wife's "ability to endure...

Considering this election has left us with less than desirable 'choices' for President and the GOP has gone more and more to the left, there is a strong possibility that come November we will be stuck with a Clintoon or Obama presidency. Now I ask what happens when they are in office and what conservatives should do in response to them and if it is really healthy to prevent them from being exposed as the danger they are to this country?

On Today’s Show... Hillary says Rush launched Operation Chaos because he's "always had a crush on me." This explains why Bill Clinton hit on Rush's date! (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen Here) » Watch the Video: Rush Explains Crush-Gate to Martha MacCallum on Fox News Operation Chaos stumps the Drive-By Media. They know it's a factor, but they don't want to give Rush any credit. If it wasn't a factor, would everyone from the NY Times to the cable news shows be talking about it? (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen Here) » Suit Up at the EIB Store: Operation Chaos T-shirts,...

Barack Obama made an impassioned appeal to voters last night to end Hillary Clinton's dreams of another comeback in the race for the White House. The Illinois senator told Democrat voters heading to the polls today in Indiana and North Carolina: "I need help." With less than a month to go before the state-by-state vote ends, the Obama camp is desperate to finish off Mrs Clinton's campaign to become the Democrat's presidential nominee. Barack Obama is desperate to beat Hillary Clinton, so much so that he is counting on support from celebrities including Tom Hanks. Mr Obama, 46, also broke...

RUSH: A TV station in Indianapolis thinks they caused the operational pause in Operation Chaos. WISH-TV, the anchor Eric Halvorson and his report last night on Operation Chaos. HALVORSON: Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called for a pause in what he calls Operation Chaos. It's a call to conservatives to vote in Democratic primaries to extend the nomination battle. Yesterday, 24 Hour News 8 Jim Shella reported on official reactions to Operation Chaos here, a story Limbaugh referenced on the air today. RUSH: So they're implying, ladies and gentlemen, that Operation Chaos, the operational pause was due to their...

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom. [SNIP] Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted. Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds. A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of...

...As evidence of Mr. Clinton's impact, the campaign cites the Pennsylvania primary, which Sen. Clinton won by a margin of nearly 10 percentage points over Sen. Obama. Campaign data show that Sen. Clinton won by huge margins in several rural counties that her husband visited: 44 percentage points in Armstrong County, 44 points in Cambria County, 48 points in Carbon County and 50 points in Greene County. This compares with an edge of 26 points for Hillary among rural voters statewide. In Bucks County, a Philadelphia suburb that Mr. Clinton visited, Sen. Clinton won by 26 points, compared with only...

If history repeats, the loser of this year’s presidential election will blame the news media. Richard Nixon, in the wake of his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial race, bitterly taunted reporters, telling them, “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” (Turned out he was wrong on that point.) Barbara Bush also had some choice words about the press when her husband, President George H.W. Bush, lost his reelection bid in 1992. The media could be even a larger target this year because of the influence of blogs and talking heads...

RUSH: Let's go to this ad, ladies and gentlemen, the North Carolina Republican Party TV ad. An unidentified female TV announcer you'll hear and then the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the North Carolina Republican Party chairman Linda Daves. FEMALE ANNOUNCER: For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew listening to his pastor. WRIGHT: And then wants us to sing God Bless America? No, no, no! Not God Bless America. God (bleep) America. FEMALE ANNOUNCER: Now, Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama. They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina. DAVES: The North Carolina Republican...

LOS ANGELES — I hate pundits who remind you when they were right, and conveniently forget all the times we’re wrong. Half the fun of being a pundit is that it really doesn’t matter; that unlike the situation when you’re running a campaign, our mistakes don’t count for anything but amusement. Even so, when I turned my computer on at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday and saw, on my favorite such source, the Primary Day Drudge report, the report that the exits were closer than expected, I couldn’t help but start laughing. My students thought, probably not for the first...

In last week's Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton said she would commit the United States to a retaliatory attack against Iran, presumably with nuclear weapons, if it dropped the bomb on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Kuwait. Asked if "it should be U.S. policy now to treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack against the United States," Clinton astonishingly responded that she'd use American nukes not just to defend Israel, our traditional strategic ally, but also other neighboring states such as the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait from an Iranian nuclear attack. Barack Obama's...