Free Republic

I’m reminded of the movie The Bridge over the River Kwai. In the movie a British Colonel being held prisoner in Thailand by the Japanese leads his fellow POWs in the construction of a bridge for the enemy. Even though he knows that this is helping the Japanese war effort, his fondness for his accomplishment almost causes him to sabotage a commando raid to destroy the bridge. RINOs and CINOs (conservatives in name only) like Krauthammer will let you kick the bridge, paint the bridge, and even spray graffiti on the bridge, but don’t ever come calling with the intention...

With a lot of media attention, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin visited the nation’s capital over the weekend to kick off a bus tour, in which she will visit various national landmarks. But some see the trip as a campaign stunt for a possible 2012 presidential campaign. On Monday’s “Special Report,” syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer offered his thoughts on the bus tour, but admitted he wasn’t clear on what was motivating it. “I don’t know – it’s more eccentric than usual, this event,” Krauthammer said. “She says she is going around to highlight ‘the foundation of the country.’ I don’t...

Via the Right Scoop, I’m not nearly as sure as Kraut is that this is true. If Palin surprises everyone by staying out, Iowa will be wide open for a “true conservative” to emerge. And if Cain finishes well there, he’ll be well positioned to surprise people in his backyard of South Carolina. Doesn’t mean he’ll be the nominee, but it’s very easy to imagine him being a factor in the nomination given his grassroots support. If Palin does jump in, I don’t know how the base goes about trying to decide between them. Palin has held public office and...

On Thursday, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the State Department in Washington, D.C. which was supposed to offer an indication of what American policy would be in the Middle East as the region was going through great transition. However, coming out of the speech many are questioning the president’s suggestion that Israel should withdrawal to pre-1967 boundaries. On Thursday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer gave a very disparaging review of the president’s proposed policy. His major point of contention: Obama is willing to give away a bargaining chip without getting much in...

Two months and a day before 9/11, terrorism expert Larry C. Johnson published “The Declining Terrorist Threat,” a New York Times op-ed decrying the fact that “Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism,” when, in reality, “the decade beginning in 2000 will continue the downward trend” in lethal terrorism. Not quite. A decade later, Osama bin Laden is dead and the old chorus of pre-9/11 complacency has returned. The war on terror is over — yet again, it seems. Bin Laden was but “a distraction,” writes Peter Beinart, and the war on terror “a mistake from the start.” 9/11 was...

THANK-YOU Charles Krauthammer for telling it JUST LIKE IT IS. To Mr. Krauthammer’s credit, he goes down a list of all showing of Americans whose deaths was either video during the gruesome process of being murdered or after their horrific deaths, often with either still pictures or videos. This includes the videos of the people who had jumped to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2 on September 11th, 2001 to shock and horror of many Americans. Yet President Barak Obama CANNOT produce one REAL PICTURE of a dead Osama Bin Laden. To the CREDIT...

President Barack Obama was met with nearly universal praise immediately after the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, but as the dust settles, some on the right are now coming out swinging. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, whose initial reaction was clouded with ambiguity, slammed Obama yesterday, saying the president and the Democrats owe the country an "apology" for taking credit for Bush administration policies that led to bin Laden's killing. "Virtually every tool, every apparatus, every technique, every policy used to effect a successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden was [campaigned against] by this current administration … and...

Krauthammer: It's Funny to Hear Liberals Talk About How Awful it is to Delegitimize a President After What They Did to Bush Charles Krauthammer on Friday perfectly elucidated the media's hypocrisy concerning their avid defense of Barack Obama against attacks from Donald Trump and the birthers. "I think it's somewhat amusing to hear people on the left talking about how awful it is to delegitimize a president when they spent half a decade saying that George Bush stole the election"

"O'Reilly Factor" producer Jesse Watters caught up with Donald Trump in New Hampshire on Wednesday and asked him what he thought of Charles Krauthammer's personal attacks, the latest one comparing "The Donald" to a "crackpot" "drunk." Mr. Trump shot back at Krauthammer, calling him a "sad fool" who was trying to ride his coattails for publicity. http://nation.foxnews.com/donald-trump/2011/04/28/trump-and-krauthammer-take-personal-attacks-new-level

Charles Krauthammer is the columnist I respect the most for his values, insights, and political sense. So let’s use his column “Handicapping the 2012 Presidential Odds” as a starting point for my own assessment of the current field. Charles begins by dissing Donald Trump and dismissing Michele Bachmann. Sorry Charles but wrong and wronger. Trump will run as a Republican with a damn good chance of winning the nomination. He appeals more to moderates and Independents than to stalwart Republicans but he captures the hearts and minds of the outside-of-the-beltway crowd with his blunt outspokenness and a raft of experience...

Krauthammer: "There is Trump, Trump is the Al Sharpton of the Republican Party – provocateur and clown, unserious. I think he’s going to harm the party if he runs for the same reason Sharpton harmed the Democrats"

A masterpiece.

In 1983, the British Labor Party under the hard-left Michael Foot issued a 700-page manifesto so radical that one colleague called it "the longest suicide note in history." House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has just released a recklessly bold, 73-page, 10-year budget plan. At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history.

Agree with Hengler here, Obama is the first President in our history who has refused the title leader of the free world: [VIDEO AT SITE] More evidence? President Barack Obama is resisting pressure to deliver an Oval Office speech explaining his policy on Libya — in part, because he doesn’t want to equate what he regards as a smaller, time-limited mission with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Administration officials haven’t ruled out a big speech, but Obama is reluctant to make a major address on Libya until the United States hands over most command and combat duties to its...

We’re five months removed from Comedy Central host Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity,” but with an upcoming appearance for “Special Report” host Bret Baier on “The Daily Show,” Fox News Channel’s Charles Krauthammer had a suggestion for his colleague. On the FoxNews.com airing of “Special Report Online” from Wednesday night, Krauthammer wanted Baier to point out that Stewart’s October 2010 rally in Washington, D.C. had unseated conservative rallies of that nature in terms a lack of racial diversity. “You know whenever there’s a gathering of Republicans or conservatives, the press always makes a point of saying how white the...

It was likely not a surprise to "Inside Washington" viewers that most of the usual suspects on the panel Friday saw the crisis in Japan as not being good for the future of nuclear powered electrical plants in this country. What certainly must have raised a couple of eyebrows though was the strongest opposition to any further construction of such facilities coming from lone conservative Charles Krauthammer (video follows with transcript and commentary): CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO... CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Look, I think nuclear is dead as a result of this. Look, if Three Mile Island which was a...

I’m no conservative. And I'm certainly no intellectual. But I totally understand the freakout among conservative intellectuals over Sarah Palin. For a movement based on ideas, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee who sits astride the party as a powerhouse fundraiser and potential king- or queenmaker has been uninterested in setting forth a vision crafted after years of thorough study to match her outsized influence. The Atlantic’s Joshua Green wags his finger at those worry-wart Republicans: “It's not hard to understand what these conservative intellectuals are trying to accomplish,” he writes, “They genuinely believe that...

Over the last few weeks, Washington conventional wisdom has begun to coalesce around the idea that Sarah Palin won't run for president. A number of news outlets and commentators have pointed out that she isn't doing the sorts of things that serious candidates usually do at this point in the calendar, hiring veteran staffers in the key early primary states, visiting those states regularly, and delivering speeches that begin to lay one's "vision" for the country. Roger Ailes of Fox News pointedly did not suspend her contract, as he did those of two other candidates, because, he said, she has...

VIDEO After the public shaming of NPR this week, Nina Totenberg was given the option of taking a day off from PBS's "Inside Washington" so that she wouldn't have to face the music concerning the so-called "news organization" she works for. Demonstrating admirable spunk, Totenberg showed up to "defend the product" her radio station produces only to have Charles Krauthammer say in the midst of a lengthy discussion about the issue, "If the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the state?" (video of entire segment follows with transcript and commentary): Transcript Excerpt:...

Several factors catalyzed the Arab spring. But the Bush Doctrine set the premise. Voices around the world, from Europe to America to Libya, are calling for U.S. intervention to help bring down Moammar Qaddafi. Yet for bringing down Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has been denounced variously for aggression, deception, arrogance, and imperialism. A strange moral inversion, considering that Saddam’s evil was an order of magnitude beyond Qaddafi’s. Qaddafi is a capricious killer; Saddam was systematic. Qaddafi was too unstable and crazy to begin to match the Baathist apparatus: a comprehensive national system of terror, torture, and mass murder, gassing entire...