Free Republic

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...