Free Republic

After all it was a massive security gap that got exposed. A Nigerian claiming links to Al-Queda tried to set off an incendiary device on a plane that was landing in Detroit on Christmas Day in “an attempted act of terrorism”, according to a White House official. But America needs to find the answer to a very basic question after right wing racist rule of eight years by the neo cons. What made Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab become a terrorist? Unless this questions is answered the attempt to act as terrorists may never go away. Think about a simple scenario. Abdul...

THIS was the year of Barack Obama, and by extension, of America. But if we thought we knew who he was last January, by year’s end we weren’t so certain. We expected him to wrestle the helm of the great ship of state, inflect its course, end the wars, rebuild the economy and confound the lobbies and special interest groups who determine how business is done in Washington. With a strong Democratic majority in Congress, we expected him to see through groundbreaking legislation on healthcare and climate change. An Irish diplomat recalls the tribute to Senator Ted Kennedy at the...

Since I began radio broadcasting 27 years ago, I have tried to come up with ideas for New Year's resolutions for myself and my listeners. Virtually each time, I have advocated one resolution in particular: For every couple of letters of complaint or oral complaints we communicate about someone or about some company, we should write a letter or make a call to commend someone or some company. Did you complain about an airline or about a flight attendant in the past year? No problem. But if you have never cited an airline or a flight attendant for stellar performance,...

This attack demonstrates al Qaeda's sophistication and adaptation. The tactic Mr. Abdulmutallab used to bring the explosive onto Flight 253 will be particularly difficult to thwart. Shoe-bomber Richard Reid's failed attack forced air travelers to grow accustomed to removing footwear in airports; the impact of the "crotch bomb" on airline passengers can only be imagined. Once that's in place, killers could just move on to concealing bombs in more difficult-to-search places. In fact, they already have. In August, high-profile terror suspect Abdullah Asieri wounded Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief, after smuggling a pound of high explosives and...

<p>With a few Republicans already criticizing the Obama administration over the failed alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight -- Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R) has taken issue with President Obama's silence so far -- it's worth noting that some Republicans have acted in ways that the previous administration would have attacked for being soft on terrorism.</p>

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tells National Review Online that he’s “disappointed” with President Obama following the president’s remarks this afternoon on the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253. “We almost lost 270 American lives on Christmas Day and the president has decided to review a watch list. This is about more than a watch list,” says Hoekstra. “It’s about leadership.” Criticism of Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, for her handling of the incident, “should be directed to President Obama, since she’s taking her lead from him on this,” says...

After almost a year of waiting for a signal of President Obama's intentions on trade policy, Dec. 14 saw a letter from his trade representative, Ron Kirk, stating the administration's intent to enter negotiations on a trade agreement — called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP — with seven Asian nations in March 2010. While this is the first positive move on trade since Obama's inauguration, those hopeful that it represents a broader shift away from his protectionist missteps earlier this year will likely be disappointed. First, the TPP deal might not be worth the effort. Four of the seven current...

In the run-up to the Senate's passage of the health care bill, opponents of ObamaCare denounced it as an unprecedented expansion of government control over medicine. They warned of the proven consequences of government medicine, pointing to the rationing that occurs in Canada and Europe. They pointed to the low cancer survival rates in places like Britain. They cited statistic after statistic showing that ObamaCare will raise costs and lower health care quality in America. They were right — yet it looks like Obama will get his bill. And even if the Republicans are able to pull off an upset,...

Health Care: The push to reform the system is going in exactly the wrong direction. Instead of minimizing patient involvement in payment for treatment, Washington should be seeking to increase patients' role. The cost of American medical care is so high that it's thought by some to be a tragedy. About one-sixth of the economy is made up of health care expenditures. On average, each American runs up $7,290 a year in medical bills. Bringing down the costs — without sacrificing quality of care — is a reasonable objective. But supporters of the health care legislation recently passed in Congress...

Mideast: As the death of a dissident cleric spawns renewed protests, Sen. John Kerry seeks to make nice with the oppressors of those who truly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. How about regime change, Senator? The death toll from the brutal suppression of the latest round of Iranian protests against their government has reached double digits. We wonder if the senator still wants to be the highest U.S. official to visit Tehran since U.S. hostages were held for 444 days by the very same regime. To Kerry and this administration, the problem is one of mistrust and misunderstanding. Come, let...

The only thing healthy about Congress' health insurance legislation is the healthy skepticism about it by most of the public, as revealed by polls. What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it was conceived and passed. Supporters of government health insurance call its passage "historic." Past attempts to pass such legislation — going back for decades — failed repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government health care legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and presenting President Obama with a political "victory." In short, this...

Homeland Security: Al-Qaida's botched Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Flight 253 raises a series of concerns about U.S. vulnerability. Chief among them: a Homeland Security chief in denial that we are at war. The nearly 300 trans-Atlantic passengers targeted for death by alleged would-be suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab were saved not by any policy of the Homeland Security Department, but by the good luck of a detonator malfunctioning. So how could Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have kept a straight face when she claimed in the immediate aftermath that "the traveling public is safe" and "the system worked"? Soon...

The Obama administration's knee-jerk reaction to al Qaeda's attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was to minimize the threat. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared that the attempted bombing was not connected to a larger terrorist plot. Business as usual, nothing to see here, move along, happy holidays. Not quite. The Christmas Day attack demonstrated the adaptive and organized nature of the terrorist threat. Al Qaeda chose a flight originating overseas to avoid U.S. domestic security measures. Nigerian bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab reportedly boarded the aircraft by impersonating a Sudanese refugee who did not have a passport,...

*snip* Conservative reviews of Avatar (e.g. by Movieguide's Dr. Ted Baehr and WND's Drew Zahn) definitely worked to prejudice my mind against James Cameron's reportedly groundbreaking blockbuster. They led me to expect an idol worshipping, anti-American screed calculated to draw impressionable minds into the moat of self-hatred that separates the zombies of the Obama faction from those still loyal to the American creed. Sometimes such reviews would be enough to convince me not to waste time on the glamorous evil of America hating propagandists, or add my resources to the treasury that finances their power. But since childhood I've been...

During a time of economic decline, persistent cultural strife, deepening American involvement in far-off military conflicts, and rapid environmental deterioration, is there any wonder that some have turned to apocalyptic “salvation narratives” promising both a transcendent, everlasting future and violent retribution against perceived evildoers? A CNN poll in 2002 found that 59% of Americans believe that the prophecies in the Book of Revelations will come true. The startling number reflected the still-fresh trauma of the 9/11 attacks, but I suspect that it has held steady, if not risen. Indeed, mainstream American culture is permeated by apocalypticism; the blockbuster-movie hit 2012...

Climate Change: A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the interplay of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The CFCs are now gone, and so is warming — perhaps for the next 50 years. Much of the nation got a white Christmas this year, some in unprecedented quantities. A record-breaking storm deposited 12 to 30 inches of snow in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

Why are we so bad at detecting the guilty and so good at collective punishment of the innocent? It's getting to the point where the twin news stories more or less write themselves. No sooner is the fanatical and homicidal Muslim arrested than it turns out that he (it won't be long until it is also she) has been known to the authorities for a long time. But somehow the watch list, the tipoff, the many worried reports from colleagues and relatives, the placing of the name on a "central repository of information" don't prevent the suspect from boarding a...

Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I., Conn.) Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is the third Congressional body to announce that it will hold hearings on the Flight 253 attack: The hearing will focus on the security measures the alleged bomber, 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, evaded in bringing explosives onboard the plane. "We were very lucky this time, but we may not be so lucky next time, which is why our defenses must be strengthened," said committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in a statement. "I view Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a terrorist who evaded our homeland security defenses and who...

Why the hard Left can’t accept the Islamic roots of Nidal Hasan’s shooting spree As the United States prepares to try Nidal Malik Hasan for 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder at Fort Hood last month, few question the suspect’s guilt, but many disagree about his motives. Yet the evidence is now conclusive: the Fort Hood massacre was an act of Islamic terror. Before his shooting spree, Hasan told colleagues that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell and that they should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats. Hasan traded 18 e-mails with...

A recent papal decree moved Pope Pius XII, among others, closer to sainthood -- returning to the forefront the controversy over his role in World War II and the Holocaust. Growing up Jewish in Queens, I never dreamt I would be defending the man I once believed to be a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. But my work since 2002 with my wife, Meredith, and the Pave the Way Foundation has led me to this point. We founded Pave the Way to identify and eliminate nontheological obstacles between religions. Thus, despite our early prejudices, we decided to investigate the papacy...

The bitterness toward the tea party movement continues to go on and on. Case in point - Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, who on the Dec. 27 broadcast of "The McLaughlin Group," deemed it "The Most Defining Political Moment" of 2009, but refused to call it the "tea party." Instead, he granted the movement the preferred name by the left-leaning cable network MSNBC, the "teabaggers" and somehow devised the notion that the movement "asked for" the derogatory name. "The backlash movement known as the ‘teabaggers,' who kind of asked for that name and now they regret it," Page said. ...more...

I believe the terrorists must know this. They pick the flights from Amsterdam for a reason. It’s no coincidence that two different Nigerians chose to cause a ruckus on the exact same flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on two different days. Hmmm . . . did the system work? Sure doesn’t sound like it if she can’t even insist on U.S. Air Marshals on flights from Amsterdam. If they had any cojones–and even though she looks like she’s of that gender, she doesn’t–the Obama administration would have told the Dutch, “No air marshals, no flights from Amsterdam to anywhere near...

In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Obama blamed "fat cat bankers" for causing the crisis, putting America through its "worst economic year...in decades." He went on to chide Wall Street banks for "fighting tooth and nail" the new regulations he believes would be vital in preventing future crises. A deeper examination, however, reveals that this is neither a housing crisis nor a Wall Street banking crisis. This is a monetary crisis, rooted in the lending of money created out of thin air. This is what leads to economic booms and busts.

There is class warfare going on in this country -- but it's not against the established rich. It's against those who are trying to become wealthy. President Obama has declared that those who make over $200,000 will pay higher income taxes. Caps on payroll taxes are supposed to come off as well for the upper class. Envisioned estate taxes will take 45 percent of individual inheritances valued over $3.5 million. Many states have also hiked their income taxes on the upper brackets. Again, most of those targeted are not the already rich - a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates -...

The most recent Rasmussen Reports poll found corrupt Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd trailing former Congressman Rob Simmons 48 to 35 and former WWE CEO Linda McMahon 44 to 38, while "long-shot candidate Peter Schiff ... holds a one-point edge, 40 to 39." Rasmussen produces the most accurate polls because it employs "a single, digitally-recorded, voice to conduct the interview while traditional firms rely on phone banks, boiler rooms, and operator-assisted technology." That eliminates the possibility of interviewers influencing the results and encourages poll-takers to answer honestly since they respond anonymously to nonjudgmental computers. That said, a Quinnipiac University poll in...

We may be at the cusp of an event that could reshape the season to be jolly for eons. With all the talk about global warming, no one has yet asked the most important question: What will happen to the white Christmas in a warm world? What about Santa, the sleigh, tiny reindeer, and chimneys? The dire consequences from the impact of a balmy life on earth will surely put a damper on good will toward men. Laying off the winter legend because there’s no more winter would be just awful. Don’t get me wrong. I hate winter, and Christmas...

The world is heartily sick of listening to talk of the – always dashed – hopes for peace in the Middle East: the tantalising prospect that Israelis and Palestinians might find a way to share the Holy Land, that sliver of land over which emotionally overwrought conflict seems for ever to have been with us. Are there not so many more, and more urgent tasks for statesmen to resolve, such as how to avoid another great recession, prevent climate change and advance nuclear disarmament? Even inside the broader Middle East region – the arc of crisis – are there not...

On November 7, 2009, the House passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The bill would expand Medicaid, grant subsidies to moderate-income households buying health insurance on newly established exchanges, and provide health insurance tax credits to some small businesses. These expenditures would be financed, in part, by a new 5.4 percent surtax on households with very high incomes, including married couples with incomes above $1 million. The proposed millionaire surtax is politically attractive because its direct burden would fall on a very small group, roughly 0.3 percent of the population. Moreover, this group is extremely wealthy...

Frustration with a dysfunctional California government has spurred a movement to have the people, by initiative, call a state constitutional convention to rewrite the state's basic laws. But not all the laws. Advocates of the constitutional convention initiative hope to reduce opposition to the measure by declaring Proposition 13 off-limits from convention delegates' deliberations. Prop. 13 should not be taken off the table if and when a constitutional convention is called. How can it be, when the groundbreaking property tax reform measure is the central piece of the whole state and local governmental budget discussion? How many times has Prop....

The 2009 political year began on a high note of "change" and "hope" and ended in a thud of stalemate, despair and public fury over the economy, health care reform and the war in Afghanistan. No wonder it may go down as the year of the angry voter. Americans will remember 2009 as much for the grassroots protests - at "Tea Party" rallies and town hall meetings crashed by conservatives to demonstrations by public-option-favoring anti-war progressives - as the Beltway grudge matches that characterized President Obama's first year in office. In California, residents endured months of bitter, partisan battles in...

Let the Kim Regime Collapse It's a better alternative than propping up a nuclear-armed dictatorship on the Korean peninsula. By DANIEL BLUMENTHAL AND LESLIE FORGACH Soon after President Barack Obama's inauguration in January, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il welcomed him in typical fashion by testing another nuclear weapon. Mr. Obama reacted firmly by suspending the six-party disarmament talks and imposing tough sanctions. But a year later the Obama administration is poised to begin the talks anew. That would be a mistake. As American diplomats coax North Korea to return to the negotiating table, a far more significant drama is...

Many Americans – conservatives, liberals and centrists – are dismayed by Barack Obama’s first year. Republicans call Mr Obama a tax and spend liberal. Progressives say he surrendered to corporate interests, and his foreign policy is a continuation of George W. Bush by other means. Independents feel let down because Mr Obama said he would bridge the partisan divide and unite the country. Except for uniting left and right in disappointment, he failed. Partly, Mr Obama is paying the price of his fabulous campaign. Coming from nowhere, he overthrew his party’s plans (Hillary Clinton), enthused the Democratic base and amazed...

Jewish songwriters have created some of the most enduringly popular songs of the season — Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," of course, but also "The Christmas Song," "Silver Bells," and "I'll Be Home For Christmas," among others. Some people might view that as a heartening, only-in-America expression of interfaith goodwill and warmth. But not Garrison Keillor: "All those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck," he fumed in a recent column for the Baltimore Sun. "Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you're not in...

In 2008 and 2009, Washington strove to save the economy. In 2010, Americans will get a clearer picture of how Washington has changed the economy. Only as the recession recedes will it become fully evident how permanently the state's role has expanded and whether, as a consequence, a new, hybrid strain of American capitalism is emerging. One thing is clear: The government is a much bigger force in today's U.S. economy than it was before the financial crisis. "The frontier between the state and market has shifted," says Daniel Yergin, whose 1998 book "Commanding Heights" chronicled the ascent of free-market...

Coming on the heels of the killing spree by Maj. Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, the latest terrorist "incident," involving Abdul Mutallab on Northwest Flight 253, is yet another isolated but tell-tale sign that we must learn from: 1) If solidly middle-class Westernized Muslims mouth the al-Qaeda line of radical Islamic, anti-American boilerplate, please take them seriously — i.e., worry less about their feelings and more about the lives of innocents they may in the future seek to annihilate. The more upscale and the more the Western exposure, the more there is to worry about. 2) For the last eight...

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate an explosive aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, liberals were quick to warn against the clear and present danger. It wasn't the threat of al Qaeda-trained bombers blowing up Detroit-bound planes that concerned them. Rather, liberals feared that Americans might blame the Obama administration for failing to protect them from terrorists or -- perhaps even worse -- demand action against the violent extremists who want to kill us all. Liberals believe most of their fellow citizens are benighted troglodytes, so there was also the frightening possibility of a xenophobic hate-crime backlash....

Rampant discussion swirls through our society as to whether or not there has been a degradation of cultural values. The question of whether civility has been sacrificed to the altars of personal convenience and “non-judgmentalism” concerns many Americans who are entrusted to pass this value to future generations. If you want to see the struggle in its full majesty, enter one of our modern theatres of community interaction – the family restaurant. Since the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the family restaurant has become a center of shared communality. There may be other places, but nothing allows...

Every year roundabout Christmastime, the Census Bureau releases its population estimates for each state for the 12 months ending on July 1. The numbers look dry on a sheet of paper (or on an Excel spreadsheet on your computer), but they tell some vivid stories. The more so when they reflect, as the numbers for 2008-09 do, the effects of a sharp downward shift in the nation's economy. Given the recession, it's not a surprise that percentage growth, at 0.86 percent, was the lowest in this decade, just a tad below the rate in 2002-03, and well below the peak...

Certainly, 2009 is not ending on the note that Obama supporters – or the President himself – expected. Iran develops a nuclear arsenal unchecked, spitting in the eyes of the United States and the rest of the world. As evidenced on Christmas Day, Al Qaeda adherents still plot to murder innocent Americans. Notwithstanding his campaign pledge to slow the rise of the oceans, President Obama will find it difficult to execute at home the climate-change promises he made abroad. And that’s just foreign policy. At home, the “stimulus” rushed through Congress with the promise of a quick economic recovery and...

With trillions of dollars at stake in the battle over global warming, now would be the time for the press to closely scrutinize the claims of those who would reorganize the world's economy from farm to factory and laboratory to living room. And the Climategate scandal - where leaked e-mails and dodgy computer programs from the University of East Anglia raise powerful new questions about the role of politics in climate science - would be the perfect opportunity to explore what is going on behind the scenes. That's not happening.... [snip]

Ron Paul is a white-haired, soft-voiced, 74-year-old doctor who has twice failed in presidential campaigns and is frequently derided by his Republican colleagues as an ideologue from the party's libertarian fringe. No one would have been surprised if the Lake Jackson congressman had slipped off the political radar after his 2008 quixotic bid for the presidency, his ambitions for higher office thwarted. But Paul has refused to go out to the political pasture to live in comfortable irrelevance. As odd as it may seem, he has become one of the most influential Republicans in a capital city dominated by liberal...

It was in 1774 that John Adams reminded how the "most sensible and jealous people are so little attentive to government that there are no instances of resistance until repeated, multiple oppressions have placed it beyond a doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties." And that's not merely to "oppress the individual or a few," he added, "but to break down the fences of a free constitution, and deprive the people at large of all share in the government, and all the checks by which it is limited." Mr. Adams, of course, would...

Freedom fighters in Iran and China pay a high price this Christmas. In Iran and China, Christmas weekend brought two inspiring examples of the high price that men and women are still willing to pay in the eternal struggle for political freedom. In Beijing, the Chinese Communists ignored the protests of more than a dozen countries and sentenced 53-year-old literary critic Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for the crime of peacefully agitating for democracy. His verdict came after a two-hour, closed-door trial Wednesday from which diplomats, his wife and his chosen lawyer were barred. "When he decides to...

(No. 397 – December 27, 2009 – 4:35 p.m. EST) The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, today issued the following statement regarding Iran’s crackdown on protesters in Tehran: “Canada is deeply concerned by the Iranian regime’s violent crackdown today, December 27, against Iranian citizens who were exercising their rights to freedom of expression and assembly on the occasion of Ashura. “Iranian security forces once again used intimidation and violence against citizens of Iran. The Iranian regime’s continued effort to restrict freedom of expression and assembly, thereby depriving its citizens of their rights, is deplorable, especially on the holy...

The latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory. Look for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to try to circumvent the traditional conference committee process by which the different versions of health care reform passed by each house will be reconciled. If so, it will be the latest example of violating principles of transparency and accountability in the single-minded pursuit of legislative victory. Conferences involving members from both houses are messy things. They are usually conducted in public and often televised, and can produce a compromise version...

How about if we sue you for breathing? Fresh from the fiasco in Copenhagen and with a failure in the U.S. Senate looming this coming year, the climate-change lobby is already shifting to Plan B, or is it already Plan D? Meet the carbon tort. Across the country, trial lawyers and green pressure groups—if that's not redundant—are teaming up to sue electric utilities for carbon emissions under "nuisance" laws

Janet Napolitano says the system worked. No, we were brave and lucky. A U.S. government that has barred the phrase "war on terror" has nonetheless acknowledged that a failed Christmas day bomb attack on an airliner was a terrorist attempt. Can we all now drop the pretense that we stopped fighting a war once Dick Cheney and George W. Bush left the White House? The attempt by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab follows the alleged murders in Ft. Hood, Texas by Islamist-inspired Major Nidal Hasan in November. Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more...

Congressman Henry Brown's "Stand Up for Christmas" resolution is just another example of Republican politicians' long history of exploiting social and cultural issues to distract voters from their big government records.

FUNTUA, Nigeria (Reuters) - For residents in his home town, it was Umar Abdulmutallab's foreign education, not his roots in Muslim northern Nigeria, that radicalized him and led him to try to blow up a U.S. passenger plane. "My only advice to the elite is to allow their children to mingle with the children of the masses so that he will have some of the traditional morals and values that (the elder) Mutallab himself enjoyed," Bello told Reuters. Abdulmutallab was educated at the British School in Lome, Togo -- a boarding school mostly serving expatriates and students from around...

December 27, 2009 America's lowest moment By Henry Lamb A reporter asked Majority Leader Harry Reid how he could justify exempting Nebraska from Medicaid payments forever, in exchange for Senator Ben Nelson's vote. His reply: "There's a hundred Senators here. And I don't know if there's a Senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them. And if they don't have something in it important to them, then it doesn't speak well of them. That's what this legislation is all about." (Harry Reid, 12/21/09, Democratic press conference after cloture vote on health care bill.) Apparently, Senator...