Free Republic

Should they get the Purple Heart? The soldiers who were shot Thursday at Fort Hood, the ones who were killed and the ones who survived -- should they get the Purple Heart? It’s the medal, generally speaking, that we give GIs who are wounded by enemy action in combat. Often, when dignitaries come through military hospitals, they will award the Purple Heart to recuperating soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors. If you are hit by an IED, you get the Purple Heart. If you are shot in a firefight, you get the Purple Heart. If you get a shrapnel wound from...

What a con. The opt-out clause they’re putting on the public option in the Senate, what a bald-faced con. This is a fraud with a capital F. I’ll explain, but first let me define the terms. The “public option” is Democratspeak for the government getting into the insurance business. It taxes you, it collects a premium, and then it gives you crappy health care -- after a long wait. “Opt out” is something new they thought of over the weekend. It says that the public option would be, well, an option, and that individual states could opt out of it....

In 1939, Hitler sold out Poland. Yesterday was Obama’s turn. In one of the most stunning betrayals of modern diplomacy, Barack Obama announced yesterday that the United States is abandoning Poland and the Czech Republic. They are on their own against Russia. And in what could not have been a coincidence, he did it on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Poland. An invasion that led to two generations of Polish slavery and the widespread slaughter of Polish citizens. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. Barack Obama lost it. The first bricks of the new Berlin Wall have...

I don’t like soda pop. It’s bad for you, it’s a waste of money, it rots your teeth. I don’t like soda pop. So I don’t drink it. That’s how freedom works. If you like soda pop, you drink it. If you don’t like soda pop, you don’t drink it. It’s a great system. But Obama wants to screw with it. In an era in which the federal government seems intent on taking both your freedom and your money, the new target is soda pop. Get ready to get hosed. If you resist, you are a racist. This week, in...

Joe Wilson speaks for me. In the chamber dedicated to the voice of the people, the voice of the people was heard. In the face of deception, in a flash of discourtesy, truth was spoken. “You lie!” Joe Wilson blurted, taking the words out of the mouths of millions of Americans watching at home. It was an observation both jarring and true. In point of fact the president was lying, he was engaging in deception, and out of 435 representatives of the people, just one had the instinctive impulse to say so. Joe Wilson speaks for me. Society’s worship of...

You don't understand, Mr. President. It's not about pre-existing conditions or people without coverage or the price of health care. It's about the proper role of government, and that's about freedom. The answer is, "No." We don't want you to save us, we don't believe in your plan, we don't trust you to do it for us. We'd rather be free. That's what they don't discuss on the evening news. Amidst all the sob stories about expensive pills and death panels, completely overlooked is the principle involved -- and that is that government should not compete with or replace private...

It’s fairly simple, really. Tens of millions of American parents don’t trust him. The upset over this morning’s presidential address to schoolchildren isn’t about the partisan divide, it’s about the president’s arrogance. After seven months of crammed-down-your-throat Obama agenda, half the country has had a bellyful. After seven months of being told that they don’t matter, half the country is returning the sentiment. They don’t trust him with their children not because they’re paranoid, but because he’s not trustworthy. He has shown himself to be an enemy to their values and beliefs – to be hostile to their families and...

In recent days we've learned some new things about the CIA interrogation of terrorism suspects after September 11. We've learned that it was a lot more than just waterboarding. It was also threats. Like the time they put the drill upside the suspect's head and told him that if he didn't tell what he knew they were going to give him the Black and Decker treatment. Or when they told the man who blew up the sleeping sailors aboard the USS Cole that if he didn't cooperate they were going to make him watch while Israeli commandos raped his mother....

It’s not Cash for Clunkers – it’s Welfare for Car Buyers. And it’s not “popular,” people are “greedy.” The fact that people are lining up for free money shouldn’t take anyone by surprise and the fact that a government welfare program has run out of money isn’t anything new. Cash for Clunkers is a catastrophe. In spite of the gleeful TV anchors and high-fiving politicians. Cash for Clunkers is an effort by the Marxists to spread welfare addiction into the middle and upper classes, similar to a drug dealer handing out free samples to junior-high kids. And the only thing...

I told you so. Years ago I said the next target was food. In its tireless quest for power and money – done in the name of protecting you – the government has gobbled ever-larger chunks of the economy. Tobacco, health care, communication, energy, banking, the automotive industry. And now food. A national soda-pop tax has been proposed, the Urban Institute wants to go after food producers and family budgets the way it went after tobacco companies and smokers, and food is about to be called a hazard to your health. Ostensibly, because you’re fat. Actually, because the government wants...

The talking heads say we need a dialog on race. After the deal at Harvard, where the president assured us – before he “calibrated” his words – that “the police acted stupidly,” all the smart people on television assured us that this incident proves we need to talk about race. The assertion is both politically correct and preposterous. It is one more string of meaningless words that are nothing more than a call for yet another racial-sensitivity browbeating. Because there is no dialog about race in America, there is a lecture. The word “dialog” implies two-way conversation, but the vicious...

Used to be, the cops and the president were on the same side. That’s before we got change we could believe in. Now the cops are on their own. Now officers can do their duty, according to the law and their training, and – without even knowing all the facts – the president of the United States will call them “stupid.” More specifically, he will say they “acted stupidly.” Which is pretty stupid in itself. The nation’s chief law-enforcement official has taken on the nation’s law-enforcement officers. And all across the country, some folks are asking themselves: If the president...

The NAACP has an idea. A big idea. It was announced this week at the civil-rights organization's 100th-birthday celebration. It is going to help the NAACP serve its members and black America. Or so they say. It's called the "Rapid Report System." Essentially, it is an effort to use technology and the Internet to seek out and collect reports of police misconduct. Put simply, the NAACP is asking people to use their cell phones to video record their interactions with the police. If you see a cop, whip out the camera. And send the video to the NAACP. "Nationwide, more...

I don’t play poker, but I think I get the idea. I think the idea is to win. I think the idea is to have better cards than your opponents and to play your cards better than your opponents. It’s part luck and it’s part smarts. But the idea, again, is to win. For example, let’s say you’re playing a five-card game, nothing showing. You’re dealt the cards, you pick them up, you fan them out. You see an ace, another ace, a king, an ace and another ace. Four aces and a king.Like I said, I don’t play poker,...

In Troy, New York, where a quarter of the children live below the poverty level and the average household makes less than $30,000 a year, the 29th richest man in the world is being given more than 300,000 taxpayer dollars to open a restaurant. They call it economic development. What it is is a sin. What it is is welfare for the wealthy, proof positive that raping the taxpayer is what the government does best. Meet George Soros. He owns Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Specifically, his company – Soros Strategic Partners – owns 70 percent of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. He also owns a...

I pick doctors over lawyers any day. Not that I don’t value the law, or its role in our lives. And not that I’m prejudiced against its practitioners. But in a pinch it’s far more important to have a doctor than a lawyer. So I’m on the doctors’ side. In this whole “tort reform” thing, the doctors are right and the lawyers are wrong. Basically, you’ve got life-saving angels on one side and blood-sucking leeches on the other. It’s not that hard a call. There is discussion in Washington, and in many state capitals, about protecting doctors and the practice...

The tolerance channel has banned God. No, that’s not true. All they want him to do is “migrate.” They want God to “migrate” from TV to the Internet. I’m talking about PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whatever alphabet-soup taxpayer-supported agency it is that has made untold millions from “Sesame Street.” In its enlightened wisdom, it has outlawed God. More specifically, it has forbidden “sectarian” programming. If you are going to be a PBS station, you can’t have any religious broadcasting. I think they really mean Christian religious broadcasting, but they can’t say something like that out loud. At least...

Yesterday afternoon, the Democrats in the New York State Senate got poleaxed. For half a moment they stood like deer in the headlights, not quite realizing their fate. By the time they caught on, and literally ran out the door, trying to shut off the lights in the Senate chamber, it was over. Somebody called a vote, the hands went up and the heads rolled. The Democrats lost control of the Senate. More correctly, a little knot of Democrat bigwigs lost control of the Senate. Out in the hallway, the Democrat leader Malcolm Smith stood dumbfounded. After just five months...

Future historians might well look back on events of the last week and see a milestone of decline in the waning saga of American freedom. The bridge between the free market and a command economy was likely crossed when, at government demand, thousands of car dealerships all across the country were put out of business. They were profitable, they were legal, they were useful, and the White House ordered them closed. A presidential panel, comprised of everyone except car-industry experts, demanded that Chrysler and GM cut off a third of their dealers’ heads. Hundreds of thousands will lose their jobs....

Why didn’t Hillary or Obama stick up for him? Michael Savage, the radio talk-show host. When the British home secretary declared him persona non grata, and forbad him to ever enter England, why didn’t the American government stand up for him? Have you ever heard him? He’s a guy with a New York City accent and some combination of madness and brilliance that is very entertaining. He yells a lot and hangs up on callers and talks about boats and restaurants and cars. And his simple motto – borders, language, culture – is the best distillation of what America needs...

The Republican Party has moved too far to the right. That’s what Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said. That’s what Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said. That’s what the evening news said. The problem is, they are all wrong. Not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of demonstrable fact. The Republican Party is more liberal today than it has been at any time since Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller were president and vice president. The notion that the Republican Party has been taken over by conservative zealots and has estranged itself from the mainstream of America is a...

So, if you prosecute the guy who wrote the memo, what do you do to the guy who asked for the memo? And the guy who followed the memo? And the guy who you ask to write a memo tomorrow? Will government lawyers writing memos forever be concerned with protecting themselves, instead of offering honest legal advice? If you send the Congress and the Justice Department after somebody who wrote something you disagree with, if you criminalize opinion, where does it end? These are the questions Barack Obama is ignoring as he discovers that building a political mandate around the...

I suppose next they’ll have an inquisition for Truman. Probably the Obama Administration will want to indict him for war crimes having to do with the unpleasantness at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Repeat the new administration’s motto: America wrong, America wrong, America wrong. Especially when it defends itself. That’s what I think about these interrogation memos. By revealing their contents and vilifying their authors, the new Caesar can not only prosecute and destroy his political opponents, he can also further the emasculation of America’s will and capacity to defend itself. You’ve heard about the memos, right? They were written in the...

I almost cried. Yesterday at noon, as I stood and watched the tea-party protesters march by, I almost cried. It was the most beautiful and inspiring thing I had seen in a long time. I was at Four Corners in Rochester, New York. The tea party there, like scores of others across the country, was put together by local people and brought out folks who had mostly never participated in a demonstration before. In the middle of a workday, in the cold of early spring, waving flags and carrying signs, something like a thousand people marched past where I stood....

I am a rightwing extremist. At least that’s what the new administration would call me. In a sweeping nine-page document sent to state and local law-enforcement agencies last week, the federal government sounded the alarm against “rightwing extremists,” and called on law enforcement to join it in identifying and investigating people who fit a certain profile. Like veterans. And gun owners. And people who believe in the Tenth Amendment. In something from the Stalin side of Orwell, the new Democrat regime in Washington has identified those who disagree with it as potential threats to the state. Put another way: The...

The president was wrong. In Indonesia, in front of a Muslim audience, he stood up and said that the United States is not a Christian nation. He is wrong. No, Christianity is not the religion of the government, but it is the religion of the people. It is an innate and formative trait that permeates every ounce of American history, heritage, culture and character. It is the defining nature of the United States and without Christianity there would be no America and certainly no American freedom. Politicians and professors may claim otherwise, but they are wrong. Ironically, American society is...

Let them pay their own damn mortgage. They live in the house, I don’t. I’ll pay my bills, and they can pay their bills, and if they want my money to put in their pockets they better expect to meet a little resistance. I’m an American, and I don’t believe in bailouts. I don’t believe in the thievery that calls itself redistribution. And I don’t believe I should have to pay to keep somebody with a $700,000 house and a double mortgage afloat. Did you hear what caesar wants? He wants to force taxpayers and our mortgage companies to bail...

Dear Paul Harvey, It’s our turn to wish you a Good Day. We’ve missed you on the radio and have heard that you’re on sick call, and we wanted you to know that you’re in our thoughts and prayers. And you’re in our lives. You’ve been on the air longer than most of us have been alive, and many of us can specifically remember listening to you for most of our lives. When we were little kids, you were on mom and dad’s radio, and now our little kids hear you on mom and dad’s radio. You’re a tradition we...

I probably should have just listened to Paul Harvey. Though it wasn’t actually Paul Harvey. It was Ron Chapman. And that’s probably the problem. I understand Ron Chapman is a radio legend somewhere, but I don’t live there. So, to me, he’s just an insufferable bore. But I should have been listening anyway. Instead I got an idea. An idea that had been kind of simmering in my head for a week or so. I was trying to think of a way to show that I wasn’t happy. That I was tired of bailouts. That I didn’t want to pay...

I probably should have just listened to Paul Harvey. Though it wasn’t actually Paul Harvey. It was Ron Chapman. And that’s probably the problem. I understand Ron Chapman is a radio legend somewhere, but I don’t live there. So, to me, he’s just an insufferable bore. But I should have been listening anyway. Instead I got an idea. An idea that had been kind of simmering in my head for a week or so. I was trying to think of a way to show that I wasn’t happy. That I was tired of bailouts. That I didn’t want to pay...

There's this new congressman back east. You don't need to know his name, he's a nobody who's always going to be a nobody. There's no point in wasting the memory capacity. Anyway, there's this new congressman back east, still kind of full of himself -- lots of braggadocio, not that much brain -- and he came up with a good idea. A brilliant idea, actually. He doesn't know it. And he probably lacks the fundamental mental capacity to understand it fully, but he's onto something. He says people who voted against the giant bankrupt-america-this-generation-and-next stumulas package shouldn't get any of...

Barack Obama could learn a lot from Ronald Reagan. If nothing else, he could learn something from his movies. Namely "Knute Rockne: All American." That's the one in which Knute Rockne is coaching the men of Notre Dame against Army. After the first half, the cadets have whooped on the Irish pretty good and it's looking like a blowout. Trailing by a country mile, the coach has a talk with his players. And he encourages them. He inspires them. He leaves them fired up and ready to charge out the door and onto the field. Onto the field where both...

I'm against bailouts, but if you're going to do one, shouldn't it be for us, and not for them? And if they're going to do one, shouldn't it be designed to stimulate the economy, not bankroll their pet projects? Not to be negative, but have you noticed that most of what they want to do with some $800 billion in borrowed money is advance their agenda and their friends? Nancy Pelosi tells us that paying for condoms and abortions is economic development, another muckity-muck says that a large portion of the bailout must be set aside for women and minorities,...

Do you sing in the car? Or shout at the bonehead on your radio? If so, you could get pulled over. That's one of the potentical consequences of a stupid suggestion this week -- by the self-proclaimed National Safety Council -- that cell phones be banned in cars. They want them done away with. They say that the piecemeal banning of cell phones -- mostly in our most liberal states -- doesn't go far enough. They won't be happy until every cell phone in every car is turned off or broken. Specifically, they say that talking on a cell phone...

This is advice for you liberals. Hopefully, you won't follow it. Hopefully, you'll ignore it. But, in good conscience, we conservatives want to warn you about the road ahead. See, we've been where you are about to be, and we know the pitfalls, and we'd like to pass along what we've learned. Next week, when Barack Obama is sworn in, the Democrats will have an iron grip on all the levers of power in the United States government. Liberals – the soul and heart of the Democratic Party – have come through for their party and given it the success...

We’re pathetic. As a nation, taken together, we are the biggest collection of spoiled, helpless pansies the world has ever known. The converter boxes prove it. You know what I’m talking about. For a year they’ve been pounding it into our heads. Seriously, if you beamed down here from another planet, and based your assessment of what mattered most on what you heard the most about, it would be converter boxes. There have been countless mentions, countless little crawls across the bottom of the television screen, countless panels of “experts” waiting to answer your questions. The background is that the...

Today we get our first “obesity tax.” In New York, the governor is going to wheel out his new budget, a document that is hoped to somehow, through miraculous means, balance the state books. There is broad-based support for across-the-board cuts, but the teachers, government employees and welfare queens are screaming that their money is sacred, and it remains to be seen whether the governor will side with the taxpayers or the tax hogs. That’s the big story. But hidden away in the details is a small story that will come back to haunt New Yorkers and all Americans. It’s...

Sink or swim. That’s the American way. At least it used to be. Back before we were a welfare state. Back when you rose or fell on the basis of your own choices, when you were free to decide, and free to reap the consequences of your decisions. It was economic Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. If you were stupid or lazy, it sucked to be you. If you were smart and hard working, life could go pretty well. But we don’t do that anymore. We have gelded the stallion of American achievement. We have removed the possibility of failure,...

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the Republican Party. When a pair of shoes is worn out, I throw them away. If I can resole them, I do. If I can’t, they go in the trash. I don’t look back, I don’t mourn them, I just dump them. Same for my political party. If it helps me serve my country, fine. If it doesn’t, to hell with it. It’s as simple as that. And as the Republican Party lies in tatters on the ground, blown to smithereens by a philosophical suicide, it is no surprise that those who claim...

For two years, the two years he was in solitary confinement, a North Vietnamese guard came into John McCain’s cell each morning and punched him as hard as he could in the side of the head. Often John McCain’s hands or feet were bound and he fell sprawling to the ground. Usually he landed on his broken shoulder, or one of his broken arms, or his broken leg. The only mornings he was spared were the mornings he was being tortured, when his elbows were tied together behind his back and his hands and forearms were swollen and black from...

Riots on Election Day? Apparently that’s what big city police chiefs are worried about. According to the news, big cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day and the day or two which follow it. It seems these various law-enforcement professionals believe there is a possibility of rioting and neighborhoods being set on fire. They think it is possible that some people will respond with violence and mayhem to the outcome of the election. Oddly, the chances of social disruption are about the same, win or lose. The fear is that if Barack Obama loses, there...

What I wouldn't give for a Mitt Romney right about now. Or a Mike Huckabee. Or anybody who had a taste for fighting and a chance of winning. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect John McCain. I have all of my life. In recent days, I have re-read his war memoir, "Faith of my Fathers." I cannot begin to express what a giant of a man this is. He and those like him have borne incredible difficulty and endured indescribable suffering in our service, and I will never forget that. He is 100 times the man Barack Obama...

John McCain is insane. I’m still voting for him, but he’s out of his freaking mind. I’m talking about his new wrinkle on the bailout fiasco. As if it and its accumulated crud weren’t enough of an offense, he’s figured out a way to make it even worse. He brought it up at the debate. Proud as a peacock, in response to the first question, he popped out his new plan. On the night he needed to draw blood – or make vacation plans for January 20th – the best John McCain could do was try to out-socialist Barack Obama....

Do you know who Joe Biden is? He's the Democratic candidate for vice president. He's the one who's not Sarah Palin. That's right. The one with the hair grafts and the over-the-top bleach job on his teeth. Anyway, yesterday Joe Biden said that paying high taxes was a demonstration of patriotism. When explaining for a Democratic operative – by which I mean “network news reporter” -- why he and Barack Obama want to raise people's taxes, he said it was a chance for people to show how patriotic they are. Which must make Democrat politicians great fans of patriotism, and...

It's not quite a meltdown, but it's close. The Barack Obama campaign is breaking historic ground as it collapses at a rate, and to an extent, unknown in American political history. I hope you'll understand if we McCain supporters just lie here and twitch in shocked glee for a little while. I hope you'll understand if there is a roar of approval as regular Americans prove that their voices are louder than the celebrities and the evening news and the big-money supporters who have bankrolled and pampered Barack Obama and his campaign. Because this is unprecedented. The campaign that began...

Have you had enough of the evening news? Has the condescending lecture of the network anchor gotten old? Are you sick and tired of "reporters" who couldn't tell the story straight if their lives depended on it? I am. I am about fed up with a news industry that fundamentally fails to do its job, and which every day strays further and further from its purpose. I'm tired of partisan lectures and propaganda dressed up like the news. I have had about all I can take of the self-important blowhards who seem to think their role is to rudely mock...

ST. PAUL – I wonder if she'll wear white? That's probably the headline in today's “New York Times,” or the question shouted by Campbell Brown. It's the natural second-day story on the governor's daughter. Inquiring minds want to know. Voyeurs like to voyeur, and we can't wait to throw the first stone. And some days you don't know who pulls the strings on whom. Do the Democrats control the media or does the media control the Democrats? Is there any demarcation at all anymore in the march of the left? Some call themselves journalists and some call themselves politicians but...

DENVER – You're kidding. That was his best shot? An arrogant rehash of lines that had been done over and over again all week at the we-hate-Bush convention? On the night of his life, when so much hung in the balance, he punted? Was he so overconfident that he didn't take it seriously? In the closing act of the Democratic National Convention, it sounded like Barack Obama had used the seeming lone speech writer who made the entire week a monotony of the same phrases coming out of different mouthes. The mantra of Denver was John McCain equals George Bush....

DENVER – He better hit it big tonight. As it turns out, the Barack Obama campaign could come down to one speech in one football stadium in one Rocky Mountain town. For all the sunshine and smiles here in Denver, if we're being honest, it's do or die for the change you can believe in. John McCain has slapped one cheek, Hillary Clinton has slapped the other and if he's not careful, Barack Obama could be down for the count. That sounds nuts, doesn't it? Every talking head in America has this guy walking on water. But the reality is...

Hillary Clinton would have won this election. Joe Biden would have won this election. Bill Richardson would have won this election. Barack Obama just might lose this election. Has anybody noticed that, in this Year of the Democrat, Barack Obama is starting to choke? In a year when voters seem fed up with all things Republican, and poll after poll pitting a hypothetical Democrat against a hypothetical Republican shows the GOP candidate getting slaughtered, Barack Obama is in a dead heat with the oldest and least-inspiring man ever to run for the presidency. Is it time to start recognizing that...