Free Republic

President Joe Biden formally announced his re-election bid this week. The nation reacted with a collective yawn. Mr. Biden’s four years have been marked by a cynicism unusual even in the hard-scrabble world of politics. He campaigned as a moderate Democrat, but he has governed as an acolyte of socialist Bernie Sanders. He ran four years ago as a healer who would unify a divided nation. Yet he has delivered entire speeches dedicated to demonizing his political opponents. Not since Jimmy Carter in 1980 has an incumbent president had such a dismal record on which to campaign. Inflation reached a...

WASHINGTON - The 109th session of Congress, frustrated by partisanship and criticized for its meager record of accomplishment, ended with flurry of bill-passing and promises of change when Democrats take over the House and Senate in January. Before the predawn finish Saturday, departing House Speaker Dennis Hastert acknowledged that after eight years, the longest stretch for a Republican in the job, he will welcome a return to the rank and file. "On Jan. 4, I will be privileged to rejoin you on these benches where my heart is," he said, The Illinois Republican will be succeeded on that day by...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Governator is human after all. After stomping across California's political landscape with all the subtlety of one of his Hollywood action heroes, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has found himself looking short of invincible in the unruly statehouse he once vowed to bring to heel. Passage of his $103 billion budget is more than two weeks overdue, despite his vow to produce an on-time spending plan - which would have been only the third time in 10 years. Schwarzenegger's predictions of a new era of cooperation and bipartisanship have deteriorated into flinty talk of a Legislature with...