Free Republic

Republican candidates for president have been busy for weeks now, laboring strenuously to give the 2012 nomination to Mitt Romney. And he keeps trying to give it back. The former Massachusetts governor could walk to next year's GOP convention without touching the ground, treading exclusively on the bodies of rivals who have fallen on their faces. He's the equivalent of the Alabama Crimson Tide, playing a schedule heavy on Southeastern Louisiana and Middle Tennessee State. He should be running up the score every week. Instead, he keeps finding ways to keep his opponents in the game. Look at the opposition....

In March, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was urging President Barack Obama to better define the U.S. military’s role in Libya and seek Congress’s approval to use force in the north African nation. But after a day touring the streets of Tripoli and meeting rebel leaders who overthrew the regime of Col. Moammar Qadhafi, Kirk praised Obama’s handling of the Libyan conflict as a undeniable “success.” “This is a victory for the United States military, for our British and French allies, for NATO, for the president of the United States, but most importantly for the Libyan people. …” Kirk said in...

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) stole a march on the Obama Administration this morning by filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court appealing the 11th Circuit’s Obamacare decision. The Department of Justice (DOJ) had announced on Monday that it was not going to ask all 11 judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to review en banc the August 12 decision of a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit that found the individual mandate unconstitutional. This opened up a path to an appeal by DOJ to the Supremes. However, with this petition, the NFIB jumped ahead...

Gary Shilling: The Economy Is Slowing, Yields Will Plunge, Deflation Is Coming And Stocks Are Headed Lower Joe Weisenthal Sep. 28, 2011, 3:21 PM Stiff drink alert. Here are highlights of Gary Shilling appearing on Bloomberg TV. (Click here to watch the full video.) -------------- Schilling on how much further the 30-year Treasury bond yield could fall: "I think [the 3-year Treasury bond yield] might go back to 2.5%. That's where it was at the end of 2008 in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers meltdown. That's my target for now. I think we are looking at deflation. As I...

An Islamic cultural centre close to the site where New York's World Trade Center once stood has opened quietly in spite of scenes last year of vehement protests from those who said the area should not house a mosque. The opening ceremony for the Park51 centre on Wednesday featured a photo exhibit called "NYChildren", displaying over 160 portraits of immigrant children living in New York. Sharif El-Gamal, the center's developer, said the biggest error on the project was not involving the families of 9/11 victims from the start. "We made incredible mistakes," El-Gamal told The Associated Press in an earlier...

It's Raining McCain. Hallelujia!

Four of the Senate’s top voices on foreign policy voiced their support Friday for the Obama administration’s move to formally recognize rebel leaders as the legitimate governing authority of Libya. “We welcome the Administration’s decision to recognize the Transitional National Council (TNC) as the legitimate governing authority of Libya,” said Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) in a statement.

The Tea Party came under fire from all sides Friday after House conservatives nearly brought down Speaker John Boehner’s debt-limit bill. John McCain went to the Senate floor to mock Tea Partyers as “hobbits,” and Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen said Tea Party Republicans “are unfit for governing.” What a difference a weekend makes. The reported debt-limit deal appears to be a victory for the Tea Party. It includes around $1 trillion in spending cuts and creates a special committee of Congress to recommend cuts of $1.2 trillion more. If Congress does not approve those additional cuts by year’s end,...

John McCain & the Wall Street Journal attacked the tea party and Christine O'Donnell as HOBBITS, who think they are going to vanquish "Mordor" (the evil kingdom) and return to the Shire. McCain (quoting from the Wall Street Journal) went out of his way to target Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle as the examples of the tea party movement that veteran Senator John McCain was criticizing. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/28/angle-odonnell-slam-mccain-over-tea-party-hobbits-speech/?test=latestnewsBut apparently this national political uproar of insiders viewing tea party political activists as "the little people" who are like "Hobbits" was no accident. Christine O'Donnell's academic interest in Tolkien's use of imagery from...

The fiery, independent version of the Republican senator from Arizona took to the floor of the Senate Wednesday morning. Demanding “straight talk,” Mr. McCain accused conservatives of abandoning reason by opposing the House Republican leader’s plan to resolve the debt crisis. Mr. McCain mocked Tea Party-allied Republicans in the House for believing — wrongly, he said — that President Obama and Democrats will get the blame for a default if Republicans refuse to increase the nation’s debt ceiling. By that flawed logic, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the...

For McCain, the only viable Plan B, at this point, is the McConnell plan, a legislative maneuver that would enable President Obama to raise the debt ceiling via a presidential veto. Noting that the GOP leader’s proposal is “too complicated,” McCain emphasizes that it should be supported, however reluctantly........

Well, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are at it again. Every neoconservatives favorite pair of Senators have subjected opponents of action in Libya and the future of Afghanistan as "isolationist". I'll address the ignorance of the neo conservatives regarding over extension of force in a future post, but right now they need to be called out for their pathetic defense of our current interventions. Let me say that like most or all conservatives I supported invading Afghanistan because as we all know they were harboring Bin Laden. No brainer. I supported the invasion of Iraq on the basis he had...

It seems as if that is the case, given that John McCain has chastised those GOP presidential candidates who wonder how Libya posed a threat to the U.S., how Obama has grounds for claiming that the U.S. isn't even at war with Libya or how he can claim - through Harold Koh and Jay Carney - that "the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of hostilities envisioned by the War Powers Resolution." Obama is claiming that since U.S. troops are supposedly at little risk in this particular mission and that we have no boots on the...

Poor John McCain: he must really be feeling irrelevant in his advanced age, what with real conservatives and Tea Party folks commanding more respect from more Americans than the senior Senator from Arizona. Not to disrespect Mr. McCain's service to the United States as a Naval officer, nor to diminish his time as a prisoner of war, but isn't it a bit ironic that a man who suffered physical harm at a time when traitors such as Hanoi Jane were openly and actively criticizing his service to America now seems to be slinging the same kind of propaganda just two...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Top Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed Monday on a resolution backing limited U.S. involvement in the NATO-led military campaign against Libya, days after the expiration of the legal deadline for President Barack Obama to seek full-blown congressional authorization. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, introduced the non-binding resolution along with five other Republicans and Democrats. (SNIP) Also backing the resolution were Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

McCain urges U.S. to think about F-35 alternatives May 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John McCain suggested Thursday that the Defense Department mull possible alternatives to Lockheed Martin Corp's (LMT.N) F-35 fighter program if its rising costs could not be contained. McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, referred to the program as "incredibly troubled" and a "train wreck." He said Lockheed has done an "abysmal job" at containing cost overruns and urged that the

Shortly after Osama bin Laden met his demise at the hands of U.S. special forces, Michael Mukasey opined in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that harsh interrogation tactics had been key to identifying a courier, which, in turn, led to locating bin Laden’s compound. Such an assessment, from a highly respected former attorney general, was bound to be influential. Indeed, the CIA’s enhanced-interrogation program, used on a select few high-level al-Qaeda detainees following the 9/11 attacks, had figured prominently in Mukasey’s confirmation hearings. He had, at the behest of Congress, thoroughly reviewed the program upon taking the reins...

The decision by Mike Huckabee to forgo another presidential bid means that the former governor of Arkansas won’t be seeking back-to-back victories in the the Iowa caucuses... But even as the wide-open nature of Iowa would seem to heighten the importance of the state in the nomination battle, some in the party have openly questioned whether the state’s Republican voters are so conservative that the outcome of its caucuses is irrelevant. “Iowa Republicans have marginalized themselves to the point where competing in Iowa has become optional,” Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, wrote over the...