Free Republic

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech justifying Obama Administration Middle East policy changes everything. True, it isn’t surprising. I’ve been writing for almost three years about how the current U.S. government thinks these things. Do not underestimate this speech’s importance. It isn’t a reluctant acceptance that Islamists might win elections and take over countries. It is an enthusiastic endorsement of that idea. But now there can be no doubt that Obama’s Middle East policy is engaged in what might be the biggest blunder in the history of U.S. foreign policy. Millions of people will bemoan it as delivering their countries...

The beginnings? Historian Rick Perlstein says union protests in Wisconsin show the birth of a movement It was a long, hot spring and summer on the streets of Greece, England and Madrid, as protesters and rioters vented their fury at high unemployment, painful austerity measures and following a fatal police shooting in London. The US, meanwhile, has been virtually free of rioting and even of widespread peaceful political protest. This is despite some of the highest unemployment in decades, growing income inequality, dissatisfaction with the nation's direction, frustration with its dysfunctional government and the threat of drastic cuts to social...

An interesting conversation was on Fox News this morning. Stuart Varney (sp) mentioned that for the two months after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida the National GDP actually dropped. Then, when recovery efforts really kicked in, the national economy benefited. Many feel this drop was one of the reasons Bush I lost the election. The monetary costs of Charley will probably get close to, or exceed, the 27 billion dollar price tag of Andrew. This may cause the national economy to stall before the rebuilding efforts start in earnest and trickle into the economy. Might not be soon enough.

As horrifying as it is to contemplate, the next gunfight may not be at the O-K Corral; it might be in our own community. Shock and dismay are the emotions most often expressed at recent events either seen or read about in Reston of people walking our streets and dining in our restaurants with pistols on their hips. And it is perfectly legal. In many of my columns I have talked about a rightward tilt of the Virginia General Assembly. In no area is that tilt to ultra-conservatism more evident than with gun control. The minimal laws that existed in...