Free Republic

How did Americans develop their love affair with driving? Visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington and the transportation exhibit “America on the Move” will sell you on the commonly held theory that when Henry Ford made cars affordable, Americans loved them and demanded more and more highways. Of course, that exhibit is sponsored by General Motors, which donated millions to put its name on the collection. But University of Virginia history professor Peter Norton, author of “Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in American cities” contends that’s a myth. Just as outgoing President Dwight...

Hamas is rejecting the Arab Peace Initiative and calling on Arab countries to stop promoting it. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a member of Hamas' political bureau, on Thursday said the initiative is a threat to vital Palestinian interests. In an interview with the Al-Arabi Al Jadid newspaper, Zahar called on Arab countries not to promote the Arab Peace Initiative, explaining that it is merely a mechanism that will eliminate the idea of ​​establishing a Palestinian state, due to the fact that negotiations with Israel have proven to be a failure. The Arab peoples, Zahar continued, should first and foremost be concerned about...

"On the northern border, in Syria, there has been unrest for four years now,” said Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon Tuesday. “Despite this, we have been able to keep this threat away from the residents of the Golan Heights and the North. "We have been following a very clear policy,” he added. “In this matter, we are intolerant toward any breach of our sovereignty. There are other developments in Syria, as well, like the Russian presence and the Iranian presence. That is in northern Syria. But we made clear to the Russians that we have no intention of abandoning our ability...

For weeks I have been wondering why no media reporter, GOP candidate, debate moderator, network political analyst or individual citizen has asked Mr. Trump a very simple and basic question. “Mr. Trump, if you are elected president, who will manage your businesses?” I do not think this is a trivial question. The job of president demands 100% mental dedication and cannot tolerate conflicts with personal business interests. Owning an on-going business is not the same as putting a stock portfolio in a blind trust. To be sure Mr. Trump does have many managers to run day-to-day operations. But, I see...

Over the past few weeks, political news outlets have been filled with articles beaming about the masterful strategy of the GOP establishment in crushing grassroots challenges. They smugly celebrate the wily tactics of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Chamber of Commerce, and Crossroads in counterattacking the Tea Party. But when you think past the initial headline, you will find that there is nothing special, clever, or innovative about their strategy. It is quite simple. Members of the political class, which is comprised of the leaders in both parties, support unconstitutional policies, corporate welfare, amnesty for illegals, consistent debt ceiling increases, federal...

The White House continued its embrace of the Occupy Wall Street protests on Sunday, using the strongest terms yet to identify President Barack Obama with the growing movement. In a call previewing Obama's upcoming bus tour through North Carolina and Virginia, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama "will continue to acknowledge the frustration that he himself shares," about Washington's laggard response to the financial crisis. Earnest added that while on the trip, Obama will make it clear that he is fighting to make certain that the "interests of 99 percent of Americans are well represented" — the first time...

If all goes accordingly, a government shutdown will be averted yet again this week. A new stopgap measure that would cut $6 billion in spending and fund the government through April 8 is gaining bipartisan support and likely to pass by Friday when the current funding measure expires. Although a shutdown is unlikely, President Obama is growing impatient with Congress. "We can’t keep on running the government based on two-week extension," he said Friday Politico reports. "That's irresponsible.” Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics at Columbia University, agrees, but says President Obama is part of the problem, too, because of his...

Call us cynical but we wonder whether Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s passionate backing of the building of a controversial mosque near Ground Zero stems as much from Bloomberg’s belief in America’s “freedom of faith” as it might from the Mayor’s belief in the “virtues of Islamic finance?” Does the Mayor’s unshakable support have anything to do with The Bloomberg (company) becoming a ‘single provider of information that caters to the Islamic business market’? A Bloomberg five-year business plan for an Islamic finance portal via a Bloomberg hub at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) is already a reality.

Why do people vote against their own interests? Americans voicing their anger at the healthcare proposals at a "town hall meeting" The Republicans' shock victory in the election for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts meant the Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate. This makes it even harder for the Obama administration to get healthcare reform passed in the US. Political scientist Dr David Runciman looks at why there is often such deep opposition to reforms that appear to be of obvious benefit to voters. Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the...

More than 1,000 people filled the Victor High School auditorium and 250 people — initially left in the halls — listened on a speaker in the school gym to Rep. Eric Massa's town hall session on health care Wednesday. The meeting quickly turned boisterous. People booed, applauded and shouted out comments periodically as Massa, D-Corning, took questions and comments from the audience. Staff members handed out 100 numbers in random order to organize those asking questions. Massa took 48 questions by the time he ended the meeting after four hours, by which time the crowd had shrunk to fewer than...

SACRAMENTO – When Hiram Johnson championed an initiative system for California nearly a century ago, he sold it as a grass-roots way to “arm the people to protect themselves.” California's 23rd governor foresaw citizen campaigns that would spring to life and put propositions on the ballot when the Legislature failed to address a pressing need. --snip-- But 97 years after Californians voted to allow themselves to put measures on the ballot, overturn laws adopted by the Legislature and oust elected officials in midterm, Johnson's experiment in direct democracy has changed dramatically. He couldn't have envisioned the multimillion-dollar campaigns for Proposition...

(IsraelNN.com) American-Israeli relations expert Yoram Ettinger, a former Congressional liaison in Israel's Washington embassy, says the Palestinian Authority has always taken a pro-terror slant - in opposition to U.S. policy and interests. In the latest edition of his "From the Jerusalem Cloakroom" newsletter, Ettinger continues what sometimes appears to be a one-man crusade against the creation of a Palestinian state. His latest theme is that the PA openly supports Moslem terrorism and incitement, in opposition to US policy and interests. The newsletter has dealt with the issue of a Palestinian state of late, in anticipation of the Middle East conference...

Ayatollah Khamenei says Iran has a right to nuclear power Iran will strike against US interests worldwide if it is attacked, the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned. "The enemies know well that any aggression will lead to a reaction from all sides," he said. Washington accuses Tehran of secretly trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and has not ruled out using military force. The Iranians insist their nuclear programme is purely civilian and aimed at meeting their energy needs. The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says Ayatollah Khamenei was defiant about the prospect of a possible...

WASHINGTON - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blames the U.S. for growing violence in the Mideast, saying fighting has continued in Lebanon because the United Nations only serves U.S. interests. In an interview airing Sunday on "60 Minutes," Ahmadinejad said it was Hezbollah that had a right to defend itself in its war with Israel. Even so, he said Iran joined others in calling for an immediate cease-fire only to have it thwarted by U.S. support for Israel. "We are not at all happy with war," he said. "People, innocent people are being killed." Saying the U.N. has failed to provide...

Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation has pulled out as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which begins in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, because a "mini-debate" she was scheduled to appear in had been stacked against her. As it now stands, the event will feature two advocates of drug legalization, both of them funded by leftist billionaire and anti-Bush activist George Soros. Having put most of the left-wing political movement and many liberal Democrats on his payroll, it is apparent that Soros is now working to manipulate the conservative movement. It is surprising that CPAC...

A State in Disarray A tour of colonial New York soon after the Revolutionary War is said to have inspired George Washington to describe the nascent state as the “Seat of Empire.”[1] For much of the next two centuries, the Empire State would more than live up to his assessment and would have few serious rivals in global commerce, finance, and manufacturing. Nurturing new enterprise and creating millions of new jobs, New York was truly an economic empire unto itself. More recently, however, the New York State economy has been far from imperial. Between 1979 and 2004—a period that saw...

For several elections, Democrats have been hurt by the widespread perception that the party consists of a confederation of interest groups to which Democratic leadership is slavishly beholden. You know the knock: Democrats are forever meeting with special interests like the Irish-Jewish Home for the Short or Transvestite Taxidermists Against the Metric System and then caving to the groups' non-negotiable demands.

LIMA, Peru, Aug. 18, 2005 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is slated to meet here today with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo and his new defense minister to show support for Toledo's democratic initiatives and further bolster on what a senior defense official traveling with the secretary called the warmest defense relationship between the two countries in 40 years. Rumsfeld and Toledo are expected to discuss ways to build on Toledo's progress in cracking down on narcotics trafficking, cooperating with its neighbors in countering threats to the region, and modernizing Peru's armed forces and their obsolete 1970s-era Soviet equipment. The leaders...

Dulles, VA – " Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell today released a congressionally requested report on the issue of United Nations reform. Freedom Alliance President Tom Kilgannon commented on some of the major findings in the Gingrich-Mitchell Report. "While this report states the obvious – that that the United Nations is run by a poor management team with no oversight or accountability," explained Kilgannon, "the obvious was reinforced yet again as new allegations emerged against UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his role in the Oil-for-Food scandal. "Far from being exonerated in this matter,"...

The old media is on the ropes. Newspaper circulations are at an all time low and still slipping. Network news is having trouble competing with PBS for ratings, having lost many of their viewers to cable news, notably - the much hated and loved Fox. Once respected news journals like Time and Newsweek now share rack space with other sensationalized headline merchants like The Globe and The Enquirer, which sell better because their headlines are more reliable. Even the household term old media itself describes the fading glory of a once mainstream news establishment turned tabloid rag, now permanently engaged...