Free Republic

In New York Friday to appear on Sean Hannity’s program, I stayed an extra day to catch an early performance of David Mamet's new play The Anarchist, now in its second week of previews. Sitting next to Marcello, a Brazilian venture capitalist, we chatted about the election just past. "I do not understand you Americans. Dogs on car roofs? Really?" I can't argue that our process isn't absurd or that our media isn't mired in the trivial. The day before I had interviewed Israel's Ambassador to the United States, historian Michael Oren, and had passed a pro-Israel demonstration in Times...

HH: Broadcasting from the CPAC convention in Denver on the day after the most devastating loss in the history of presidential debates suffered by Barack Obama, the Agincourt of presidential debates. Call it Midway, call it Dien Bien Phu, call it whatever you want, it was a rout. And who will call it best? Mark Steyn, of course, Columnist To the World. Mark, welcome, what did you think of last night? MS: Well, I’m not sure I’d go as far as, what did you say, Midway, Agincourt… HH: Agincourt, Midway and Dien Bien Phu, because John Kerry was involved. We...

The Brief Against Obama: The Rise, Fall and Epic Fail of the Hope and Change Presidency is my new book, and new books mean book tours, both real and virtual. Thus I began the week in Las Vegas, moved to New York City and am headed to Phoenix Thursday, promoting the book and the website as I go, dashing between television studios and dialing radio stations spread across the country. You learn things from the question sets posed on such a tour. "The Brief Against Obama" is intended as a comprehensive guide to the promises, predictions, platitudes and polemics President...

Columnist-to-the-World Mark Steyn and I chat on air almost every week. The transcript of those interviews are always posted, both at HughHewitt.com and SteynOnline.com. Here’s a lengthy excerpt from yesterday’s conversation about Ron Paul, which begins as I play a tape of a question asked of the would-be Iowa upset winner about 9/11: Q: Okay, and one more question. Why don’t you come out and tell the truth about 9/11? RP: Well, I can’t handle the controversy. I have the IMF, the Federal Reserve to deal with, the IRS to deal with, because no, I just have more, too many...

"I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," Mitt Romney told a crowd supporters at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire. "It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors." Immediately the "See! He's a RINO emails" began to flow in, but Romney is just saying what every serious GOP contender will have to say, and what the best voice conservatives have on the subject, AEI's Steven Hayward says. (Here's a recent Weekly Standard piece from Hayward that updates the surveys...

HH: ...I was struck by that today. Why does he want to go back to ’67? What ideological tick is making him travel back in time to prior to many wars ago? MS: Yeah, because I think this is the war. If you have the Western faculty lounge attitude, which is the sewer that Obama has been marinated in, in his entire adult life, then 1967 matters far more than 1973 or 1948, or 1922, because 1967 is, as the faculty lounge left see it, the moment when the Israeli occupation began. Why, by the way, did it begin? It...

The GOP is crazy to allow its presidential nomination process to be mediated by a left-of-center to hard left MSM. I interviewed John Harris of Politico today, one of the designated "moderators" of the proposed Reagan Library debate, now moved to September, and traditional conservatives and Tea Party activists alike will get no comfort from our conversation. (The transcript is here.) Harris is an experienced and respected journalist, and a genuinely smart and nice guy who always agrees to interviews, but his responses to my questions confirm the blind spot the MSM has with regard to its own deep biases...

HH: I begin this hour with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s work at www.steynonline.com. I find him tonight in Canada. Hello, Mark, and good evening to you. MS: No, no. I’m actually in Michigan, which actually isn’t in Canada, although in fact judging from what I got into trouble for saying about Detroit, it wouldn’t even rise to the standard of Canada. I’m in the state of Michigan. HH: Well, I’m glad to hear you’re in the Wolverine state. Watch out for rappers driving big, black cars around. This is how we roll....

What we have been covering all week on the radio show has finally burst into the view of the MSM. Even CNN has now figured out that the debate over spending within the House GOP caucus is hugely important. The vast class of House freshmen know that if they budget cuts delivered in the final CR are not more than $100 billion they will be either primaried in less than 20 months or flogged with "broken promise" charges in their campaign for re-election in districts newly redrawn because of the census. My new Townhall.com column deals with the specifics, but...

On my radio show on Wednesday, January 19, Dick Morris flatly declared that Mitt Romney could not win the Republican nomination for president because of the health care plan Romney guided into law in Massachusetts in 2005. On the same day my friend and superb political analyst John Hinderaker of Powerline fame declared that it was over for Sarah Palin. “The time has come to put any thoughts of Sarah Palin running for President to rest,” John wrote.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's approval ratings have sunk to the lowest level of his presidency, so low that he'd lose the White House to Republican Mitt Romney if the election were held today, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

With all due respect to Nancy Reagan, her proposal that the first Republican debate of the 2012 season be held at the Reagan Library in the spring of 2011 is worse than a nonstarter. The country needs to focus on the hugely important congressional debates this spring, not on made-for-MSM, liberal-dominated GOP wrestling matches. The idea is itself an insult to conservative activists and new media. A quick rejection by GOP candidates of the presumptuous declaration of inevitability by Politico.com and NBC that they would be in charge would go a long way toward recognizing that these outlets, like most...

I know, I know, Hugh's not my favorite guy in the world for his bashing of my guy Tancredo, but he has excellent election night coverage. You can listen live at the Colorado Springs station at

HH: It’s Thursday. We’re so happy to have back not quite in America, Columnist to the World, Mark Steyn. Mark Steyn, welcome back, it’s great to talk to you. MS: (laughing) You’re breaking out the West Side Story. You must be in a party mood. HH: Well, there’s so much important to talk about, but I have to begin, I’ve been thinking about you since last Saturday night, because I took the Fetching Mrs. Hewitt to see West Side Story in New York when I was back there. And imagine my surprise when I sat down and I heard this...

Gloria Allred may be doing Meg Whitman a favor with her ridiculous stunt accusing Meg Whitman of knowingly employing an illegal alien housekeeper. The story is so full of holes that it is transparently bogus, and will serve to discredit not just Allred and the housekeeper, but possibly Jerry Brown, California's Attorney General. Hugh Hewitt, law professor, writer, and talk show host, had Gloria Allred on his radio program yesterday, and probed some of the major weaknesses in the case, and wrote about it on Townhall. First, he sums up the charges: Turns out that Whitman had hired a housekeeper...

Meg Whitman easily bested Jerry Brown in a debate over the future of California on Tuesday night. So California Democrats had to hope that one of their reliable warhorses would saddle up and do some damage to Whitman with some kind of smear that diverted attention from the knock-down that brown suffered. Lawyer Gloria Allred turned up, right on schedule, with a headline grabbing, allegation-hurling press conference about the misdeeds of Whitman. Turns out that Whitman had hired a housekeeper a few years back, after being provided all the necessary documents. Whitman was very serious about complying with the law...

Minimum estimate of Saturday's crowd on the Mall: 300,000 Maximum estimate: One million people. Meaning of the crowd: An enormous upheaval in the emotions of average Americans is coursing through the country, with a certain significance for November's elections. It will have a lasting, profound impact on America's political direction. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin provided an occasion to glimpse this undeniable phenomenon. Of course, the interpretations of what the phenomenon is and what its consequences will be will keep the chattering class busy for weeks, if not years. Some on the left are trying, with increasing desperation, to use...

Here is video of conservative Hugh Hewitt on CNN where he destroyed a liberal panel of guests by reeling off a laundry list of Democrat failures, and said that is why Democrats are going to get “wiped off the map” in the 2010 Midterm Elections this Fall. When a female liberal talk host (I don’t know who she is) told Hewitt she was going to play back his prediction after the election to show how wrong he was, Hewitt responded with, “Good. No one will hear it.”

How is that GQ could "discover" more about Rand Paul's college days at Baylor, and the Washington Post show more interest in that story here and here, than either publication ever reported on the president's college days at Columbia/Occidental? This is the JournoLista mentality at work, though without the handy diagrams that JournoList passed out via the list serve: Find a "fact," produce a meme, all the lefties join in. It won't work with Kentucky, and increasingly the campaign to destroy Susan Angle shows signs of backfiring as well. Voters are so tied of the manipulation of the news by...

Dennis Prager explains what is the greatest threat that America faces today: “We have not passed on what it means to be an American to this generation.” (see video and partial transcript) [...] I would just add that I -- I have never said this, so I have good credentials to say this now -- it's common for commentators to say every election this is the most important election in American history or in our time.

Dennis Prager Q&A at the University of Denver. Watch the video.

A highlight reel of Dennis Prager’s remarks from a panel (with Sarah Palin and Hugh Hewitt) put together May 24 at the University of Denver. He talks about the most fundamental threat to America in existence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNUc8nuo7HI&feature=player_embedded

HH: We are pleased to begin, this week, with the return of Mark Steyn, who we can find in London tonight. Hello, Mark, welcome back. MS: Hey, great to be with you, Hugh. HH: And I hope your travels have gone well? MS: Yes, yes they have. I only travel to countries where they don’t carry live relays of Obama speeches. And fortunately, there are a few lightly inhabited dustbowls around the world you can still find for that. HH: Well, let’s start with that speech. I was today at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas,...

This is worth our time. It is Sarah Palin’s address, then her joining with Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt for questions and answers, last Saturday 5/22, at the Saturday 5/22, at the University of Denver: (VIDEO AT LINK) The event covered the bases of what constitutes inspiring conservatism, to the conventional 2010 mind and Governor Palin was luminous of mind and heart. Some even call her edgy and by conventionality’s standards, she is. But two critical aspects of the doings of 2010 were missing on this evening, again. They are what is never communicated in polite Republican speeches, whether in...

They leave for different reasons. Some saw hypocrisy. Others were hurt by those in authority. Still more disagree with a Church teaching. Sometimes, all they're waiting for is an invitation back. And often, it's not the Catholic Church itself that the "fallen away" have a beef with but their particular experience of it."Evangelize at all times; when necessary, use words," St. Francis of Assisi is known to have said. Many people who no longer consider themselves Catholic experienced the reverse of this rule in their encounters with Catholics early in life.There are no numbers on how many people have...

Radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, who was at the center of this week's dumping of Donny Deutsch storyline, is having his say. When the segment was over, so was Donny's career on MSNBC though the ax didn't drop until the next day. Rule #1 in MSNBC-land: Never say anything bad about Keith or Ed or allow a guest to voice an unflattering opinion about them no matter how widely shared across the country. And there we have the reason for MSNBC's dismal ratings. For most viewers interested in real, vigorous, entertaining debate about serious political issues built on sustained...

Here is video of Arianna Huffington and Hugh Hewitt, on "Reliable Sources," debating whether Glenn Beck has "gone too far." (Video)Arianna said that Glenn Beck takes "apocalyptic statements that basically fuel peoples fear and anxiety and has made them his talking trade, practically no show is done without some kind of form of inciting fear in the American people and I think that's dangerous especially in a time like this." Huffington was asked why she did not apply the same standard she has for Beck when she was asked on MSNBC about Rahm Emanuel's recent use of the word "retarded,"...

...First, Brooks gets a lot right. Talk radio, like every other form of media, has lots of influence and very little actual power. We can and do make the phones ring, and we can and do sometimes help stop legislation like the ill-fated and poorly drafted immigration bill of 2007, but moments like that are very rare. We certainly cannot nominate GOP presidential candidates, as almost none of us supported Seantor McCain, but that may reflect only that we lack decisive influence in the course of a fractured long campaign, or that we were ourselves fractured or uncommitted in our...

I think they will be talking about her book, among other things. Coming up at the top of the hour. Click on the link to listen.

I'm listening to Hugh Hewitt right now. I like his show, or I wouldn't listen. But can't the guy do a segment without a guest? SHEESH!!!

President Obama wants everyone to believe that American health care is in a crisis, and he wants everyone to be willing to sacrifice in order to solve that crisis... President Obama wants everyone to sacrifice. Well, not quite everyone. There is one group that President Obama doesn't mention, one group he doesn't demand sacrifice for the greater good. President Obama is protecting the plaintiffs' lawyers who sue doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies and reap billions in fees from the tort lottery...

A glimpse into the future if the DNC controls talk radio, too.

Hugh Hewitt said he would be discussing the birth certificate issue and taking calls, but only from skeptics. Click on the link, then click the LISTEN LIVE button.

Hugh Hewitt talks with Charles Krauthammer regarding the Gates matter.

...We're not talking about wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage. This week is fiction week as Hugh interviews many of America's most popular thriller writers practicing the craft. Today's program featured interviews with Brad Thor, the immensely talented writer of the Scot Harvath novels, and with Alex Berenson, author of the John Wells series... And on today's show Hugh continues fiction thriller week with Steven Pressfield today, author of Gates of Fire, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and Killing Rommel, which will be discussed at length in the last two hours of the show today. But in the first hour, Hugh and...

Hugh spends the hour talking with legendary writer and pundit P.J. O'Rourke, author of the brand new book, Driving Like Crazy.

What do you do when your TV show is flopping in the ratings department? If you're Ed Schultz, you desperately attempt to draw attention to yourself by engaging in "Psycho Talk" which, ironically is a segment of MSNBC's The Ed Show that Schultz uses to supposedly demonstrate "Psycho Talk" from conservatives. However, take a look at the crazed Schultz in this video slamming Hugh Hewitt for stating that he would refuse to buy cars from companies taken over by the government. It far exceeds in looniness any "Psycho Talk" that Schultz features in his segment. Here is how TV Squad,...

Wednesday evening in the Chicagoland area Conservatives attended and event they thought would be an entertaining and informative. Three popular Conservative nationally recognized Talk show hosts were taking questions about Obama’s “First Hundred Days” in office. The Salem Broadcasting Corporation has been hosting a 12-city national tour. What they got was a shameless promotion of an Illinois RINO candidate courtesy of Hugh Hewitt. We’ll give Mr. Hewitt a break, maybe he was auditioning to be Mitt Romney’s spokes person for “National Council for a New America.” Hugh officially anointed Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) as the best candidate for the Illinois...

California voters head to the polls next week with predictions of doom echoing in their ears if they decline to endorse the massive tax hikes prescribed for them by big Democratic majorities in the statehouse, Arnold and a handful of now ruined-politically Republican legislators. "Shrill" doesn't begin to describe the campaign designed to stampede the Golden State electorate. The latest ad has a weary, soot-covered fire-fighter urging a yes vote on the tax hike. The message is clear: Vote no and your homes will burn down. Not even this sort of fear-mongering is moving the needle towards "yes" on the...

This is a new book that I have co-authored with Hank Adler, a professor at Chapman University's business school, a post he took up after retirement from a long and successful career as a partner with Deloitte. Hank and I undertook this project because we had --independent of each other and for different reasons-- arrived at the same conclusion: That the "Fair Tax" proposal put forward by my radio tal show host Neal Boortz and Congressman John Linder is a disastrous mirage that far too many Republicans have been drawn too, and for all the wrong reasons. "The Fair Tax"...

Direct Link to the Audio of Mark Steyn on Hewitt's radio program April 16, 2009

HH: On the day after the tea parties, we begin as we do on those Thursdays when we are lucky with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of Mark’s analysis at www.steynonline.com. Mark, I’m tempted to begin with Olga the Russian hairdresser, though. You’re the only one who spotted that story thus far. MS: (laughing) Yes, yes I am. It’s a cautionary tale not to hold up a hair salon in Russia. This guy went in with a gun, he told all the stylists and the clients to drop to the floor and give them all...

Obama: The first 100 days From the very beginning, President Barack Obama's journey to the Oval Office has been a series of both historical and controversial events. The first 100 days of his Presidency will give the world stage a glimpse of what's to come from this new generation of leadership. AM 870 KRLA and our show hosts have been watching closely, and now, they're ready to give you their critique. Join KRLA's Mike Gallagher, Hugh Hewitt, and Dennis Prager as they critique the first 100 days of President Barack Obama's term as President of the United States...

The always brilliant Hugh Hewitt has finally outdone himself in his pre-emptive war against the California gubernatorial candidacy of Tom McClintock. Let us forget, for just a moment, the ridiculous comparison made in his latest column, between Tom McClintock and Pat Buchanan. But he also seems to want to equate the re-election campaign of President George Herbert Walker Bush, circa 1992, with the (R)nold Inc. Gubernatorial campaign taking place today.

Mark Steyn analyzes the postmodern mess that is Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father HUGH HEWITT: When we’re lucky on Thursday, we start with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn. You can read all of his writing at www.steynonline.com. Mark, good Thursday to you. MARK STEYN: Happy Thursday to you, too, Hugh. HH: Thank you. Now I know you’ve read Dreams From My Father. I don’t know if you’ve listened to it yet. Do you think looking back, it was a wise idea for Barack Obama to record this book? MS: Well, let me say first of all, about...

Author Vince Flynn joins me for the entire show today as we discuss his phenomenal success, his approach to writing thrillers, the long war against Islamist jihadists and a dozen other subjects.

HH: If you’ve listened to this program, you know that I worked for Richard Nixon from 1978-1980, and then again from ’89-’91. I knew him pretty well, I knew him very well in those years. So when Frost/Nixon came out, I sort of was going to be skeptical. What would they do with Jack Brennan? What would they do with the old man? And I loved it. Joining me now to discuss it, Ron Howard, the director/producer of it. Ron, welcome back, good to talk to you. RH: Thank you, good to talk to you, Hugh. HH: Congratulations on the...

Panetta's a patriot, an experienced Washington hand, and close to the president-elect. As with many of the other early appointments on the incoming national security team, conservatives should be asking themselves if they ought not to be thanking their stars that the new team appears very realistic about the world they are being called on to lead and the enemies they will be facing.

HH: We begin with Columnist To the World, Mark Steyn of www.steynonline.com. Merry Christmas, Mark, I hope your Christmas Eve is well launched already. MS: Yes, it is. Merry Christmas to you, too, Hugh. HH: Let’s begin with the issue of the report. I hate to bring politics into a holiday, but it seems to me that the Obama camp’s release of the report yesterday was designed to assure that no one talked about it, so we’re going to. What do you make about its timing and what it says? MS: Well basically, this is an attempt at self-exoneration. I...

Yesterday's Gallup shocker (a 2 point gap in the "likely voter" model) is going to have a follow up today if Drudge is right: A Rasmussen poll narrowing the gap to 3 points. Now we know why John McCain and Sarah Palin were both in PA yesterday. The election is tightening across the map as those of us who remember 1976 have been predicting all along. Barack Obama represents a much more radical alternative than Jimmy Carter did in '76, and Carter's unusual profile sent voters by the millions towards Gerald Ford in the closing days. The same thing is...