Free Republic

A universal birth-control mandate is a curious priority for a dying republic.Have you seen the official White House version of what the New York Times headline writers call “A Responsible Budget”? My favorite bit is Chart 5-1 on page 58 of their 500-page appendix on “Analytical Perspectives.” This is entitled “Publicly Held Debt Under 2013 Budget Policy Projections.” It’s a straight line going straight up before disappearing off the top right-hand corner of the graph in the year 2084 ...

<p>Announcing his support for Commissar Sebelius’s edicts on contraception, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion, that noted theologian the Most Reverend Al Sharpton explained: “If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we’re going to have a separation of church and state.”</p>

Author and columnist Mark Steyn talked about topics such as American culture, free speech, terrorism, the economy, and the worldwide demographic shift to Muslims. He responded to telephone calls and electronic commmunications. Mark Steyn is a regular guest host of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, a visiting fellow in journalism at Hillsdale College, and the author of nine books: Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (1997); The Face of the Tiger: And Other Tales from the New War (2002); From Head to Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004); America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006);...

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Mark Steyn, author of "America Alone" and other conservative writings, is appearing right now on this month's In-Depth from C-Span2 - program will run to 3:00PM Eastern (with taped repeats tonight) and is live with Steyn discussing his works and answering questions from viewers via email and phone callins.......

[ . . . . ] Liberals take the same view as the proprietors of the Dar al-Islam: Once they hold this land, they hold it forever. Notwithstanding that those who give to the Foundation are specifically giving to support breast cancer research, Komen could not be permitted to get away with disrespecting Big Abortion. We don't want to return to the bad old days of the back alley, when a poor vulnerable person who made the mistake of stepping out of line had to be forced into the shadows and have the realities explained to them with a tire...

In the midst of espousing Biblical principles at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday, Barack Obama made a point to say, “We are our brother’s keeper.” Interesting that he used the collective “we” — and made no mention of his actual brother or of his responsibilities to him. Yesterday evening, author Mark Steyn filled in the gaps in the president’s speech: “Oh give me a break,” Steyn said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Thursday night. “For a start, when he says, ‘I am my brother’s keeper,’ his brother is back in Kenya living on $12 a year. That’s what he...

Jonah, I agree with you on the general tin-ear of Romney. He’s extremely un-nimble on the stump, which means that Republicans will be gambling that he can be sufficiently insulated and managed across the finish line without offering up any campaign-detonating hostage to fortune.

EM: And I get a chance to talk to Mark Steyn, Columnist To the World at www.steynonline.com. Mark, great to speak with you tonight. MS: Hey, great to be with you, Ed. EM: Now I want to get to the race, and I want to get to the Moon as well. I really want to get to the Moon, but before we go there, Mark, I have to tell you, you have a great column this week on Sick Nation. And the reason why I say this, over at www.steynonline.com, also at National Review, is because I can relate to...

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: "The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You've been a terrific crowd!" I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union's state...

Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: “The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!” An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth — that we can’t have any new programs because we’ve spent all the money. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare. What’s Obama’s plan to restock it? “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,”...

Mark Steyn has written an apocalyptic best-seller that every Conservative wishes didn't need to be written. Because scales covered the eyes of the American electorate in 2006 and 2008, it chose a government on the basis of hot air and hope rather than reality and reason. Consequently, America is racing full throttle over the edge of a cliff. Steyn makes a number of observations in the prologue that are worth sharing. The first is about America's moral crisis, and its connection to the Armageddon awaiting us. [quote] When government spends on the scale Washington's got used to, that's not a...

A couple of months back, I was with a friend of mine when she suddenly collapsed and I found myself having to run her to the emergency room. After a fairly harrowing 14 hours, the hospital released her, the doctor writing her a prescription for the still-very-intense pain she was in. So we stopped at her local Kinney Drugs in Vermont. Despite having been called in by the doc, the prescription wasn't ready. Come back in an hour. Heigh-ho. So we left it an hour and a half, and then, not wishing to make another pointless trip, called the pharmacy...

Mark Sten is in for Rush today....

The nature of this peculiar primary season – the reason it seems at odds with both the 2009-2010 political narrative and the seriousness of the times – was determined by Mitt Romney. Even if you don’t mind RomneyCare, or the abortion flip-flop, or any of the rest, there’s a more basic problem: He’s not a natural campaigner, and on the stump he instinctively recoils from any personal connection with the voters. So, in compensation, he’s bought himself a bunch of A-list advisors and a lavish campaign. He is, as he likes to say, the only candidate with experience in the...

Abe Greenwald of Commentary magazine tweets: Is there any chance that Mark Steyn won’t use the Italian captain fleeing the sinking ship as the lead metaphor in a column on EU collapse? Oh, dear. You’ve got to get up early in the morning to beat me to civilizational-collapse metaphors. Been there, done that. See page 185 of my most recent book, where I contrast the orderly, dignified, and moving behavior of those on the Titanic (the ship, not the mendacious Hollywood blockbuster) with that manifested in more recent disasters. There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos...

Abe Greenwald of Commentary magazine tweets: "Is there any chance that Mark Steyn won't use the Italian captain fleeing the sinking ship as the lead metaphor in a column on EU collapse?" Oh, dear. You've got to get up early in the morning to beat me to civilizational-collapse metaphors. Been there, done that. See page 185 of my most recent book, where I contrast the orderly, dignified and moving behavior of those on the Titanic (the ship, not the mendacious Hollywood blockbuster) with that manifested in more recent disasters. There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos...

As I think about it, the inability of the boobs who run the Iowa caucuses to declare reliably a winner until over two weeks after voting is not a small thing. Obviously, a couple of dozen votes one way or another is statistically insignificant, but then so, in Iowa, are the total votes: 121,000-and-something Iowans participated in the Republican caucuses and they have more say over the presidential nominating process than all 37 million Californians. So they could at least get it right, and in a timely manner. The horse-race headlines matter. Just nine days ago, the bigfoot media line...

I'm sure tonight.. I'm going to be thrown off this forum....so what if I do... I'll go down swinging... Buy before I go... I'm speaking my mind.... Gutless wonder Rush Limbaughs....Hey..Charles Krauthammer... Ann Coulter.. Chris Christie...are you listening... Mark Steyn... the editors of NRO... You are all the coward of cowards... You are all covers for Mitt Romney...You are all his Lackeys.... But let me ask you all something... esp you, Ann.... What was Mitt Romney doing in France as a Mormon missionary...? Hmmmmmmm? He speaks Fench.... Tell us Ann Coulter... what was he doing there? Ask him how many...

In the 2010 election the New Hampshire Republican Party took 298 out of 400 House seats, 19 out of 24 state Senate seats, and all five seats on the Executive Council. A little over a year later, in the state's presidential primary, the same (more or less) electorate gave over 56 percent of its votes to a couple of moneyed "moderates," one of whom served in the Obama administration and the other of whom left no trace in office other than the pilot program for Obamacare. Another 23 percent voted for Ron Paul. Supporters of the three other "major" candidates...

Ring out the new, ring in the old. No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn't it? Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion – a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months' time.

After Iowa, the picture on who will be this year’s Republican presidential nominee is becoming a bit clearer, for better or for worse. And in the eyes of National Review columnist Mark Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” it is for worse. Steyn has often categorized this election as “truly consequential” and warned that without a change of course, the United States is destined for the same fate as some European countries or worse. On “The Dennis Miller Show” on Wednesday, Steyn said the prospects of that change by defeating President Barack Obama were in doubt. “If...

Mark fills in for Rush today behind the Golden EIB microphone. Rush will appear in an hour long interview with Gretta Van Sustern tonight.

I'm feeling frustrated today and trying not to delve into "giving in syndrome". I was listening to Rush just now, err, Mark Steyn". A caller was venting about our side failing to "get the word out"...the guy nearly ver batim took what was in my head and spoke it. However, Mark actually blew it...rare for him. Let me explain. The caller vented that our side should be using YouTube videos and such to explain our points and get the word out. I have to agree. My point isn't to blame Mark, who said folks can go to Rush's website for...

The reaction to Ron Paul’s ascent in the polls — especially now that he has a shot at winning the Iowa caucuses — has been severe, with critics raising questions regarding his apparent September 11th “truther-ism” and ill-advised statements found in newsletters Paul distributed in the 1990s. National Review columnist Mark Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” says all of this is evidence that Paul is a flawed candidate. In his regular appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show on Thursday, Steyn explained why the “truther-ism” aspects of Paul’s and his supporters’ beliefs wouldn’t hold up. “This by...

National Review editors have rolled out their big gun, Mark Steyn, to take whacks at the much-whacked Newt Gingrich. Steyn's article was featured at Monday's National Review Online under the banner: "Big-Government Newt." Steyn spends four pages slicing and dicing the eminently sliceable and diceable former U.S. House speaker. But aside from Steyn's always enjoyable trenchant humor, there's really not a lot of there there in the article. By that is meant nothing groundbreaking on Gingrich. The article is a laundry-list recapitulation of the "Many Foibles of Newt." Newt is contradictory, we learn yet again -- here are the examples,...

Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions — the sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular “holiday” tree; the ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman; the familiar strains of every hack columnist’s “war on Christmas” column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing “Winter Wonderland” . . . (snip) One sympathizes, up to a point. As America degenerates from a land of laws to a land of legalisms, much of life is...

Christmas in America is a season of time-honored traditions: The sacred performance of the annual ACLU lawsuit over the presence of an insufficiently secular "holiday" tree. The ritual provocations of the atheist displays licensed by pitifully appeasing municipalities to sit between the menorah and the giant Frosty the Snowman. The familiar strains of every hack columnist's "war on Christmas" column rolling off the keyboard as easily as Richard Clayderman playing "Winter Wonderland" ... This year has been a choice year. A crucified skeleton Santa Claus was erected as part of the "holiday" display outside the Loudoun County courthouse in Virginia...

By 2020, just the interest payments on the federal debt will be larger than the US military budget. That’s not paying down the debt, but merely staying current on the servicing. Like when you get your MasterCard statement and you can’t afford to pay off what you borrowed, but you can just about cover the monthly interest charge. Except in this case, the interest charge for US taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey and Israel combined. Just in interest payments...

The December 31 issue of National Review — the last one before the Iowa caucuses — will feature a cover of Newt Gingrich appearing as “Marvin the Martian,” which some of have suggested could be one of the most memorable covers of the bi-weekly magazine. The cover story is the latest in a series of eyebrow-raising moves by the magazine, often considered to be the gold standard for periodicals in conservative politics. On Wednesday afternoon, its editorial page came out vehemently against Gingrich, warning his nomination would place the White House out of reach for the GOP. Mark Steyn, one...

Re that NR editorial, I would like, politely, to dissent from my colleagues’ dismissal of Perry and Bachmann. In the former case, a handful of poor debate performances should not disqualify a man from executive responsibility: Our age’s veneration for men with “nothing to do but think and talk” (in Churchill’s words, on the sort of chaps he didn’t want in his war cabinet) is one reason why the Western world is sliding off a cliff. In the latter case, Congresswoman Bachmann has fought a principled, conservative campaign with only one significant misstep — her overreach on the Gardasil business....

<p>The president of the United States came to Osawatomie, Kan., last week to deliver a speech of such fascinating awfulness archeologists of the future sifting through the rubble of our civilization will surely doubt whether it could really have been delivered by the chief executive of the global superpower in the year 2011.</p>

<p>Since Ramesh, Mona, Yuval & Co have got out the tire irons, I figured I might as well pile on. But then a reader from the Cayman Islands reminded me that I’d said pretty much everything I have to say about Newt in November 1998 — in the London Spectator, upon his resignation as speaker. For those Newtroids who huff that I must be in the tank for Mitt (that’s some tank), November 1998 is 13 years ago, when I’m not sure I’d even heard of Mitt Romney.</p>

Steyn: Newt ‘like Teddy Roosevelt mixed someone sort of novelty-crazed futurologist’ By Jeff Poor - The Daily Caller 9:19 AM 12/07/2011 In an appearance on “The Michael Berry Show” on KTRH in Houston on Tuesday, a disappointed Mark Steyn, the author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” declared the 2012 Republican nominating process a failure and chalked up the proliferation of cable debates as a substitute for campaigning in the early primary states as the reason. “I think the nomination process failed last time around when John McCain wound up as the nominee and I think it is heading...

In an appearance on “The Michael Berry Show” on KTRH in Houston on Tuesday, a disappointed Mark Steyn, the author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” declared the 2012 Republican nominating process a failure and chalked up the proliferation of cable debates as a substitute for campaigning in the early primary states as the reason. “I think the nomination process failed last time around when John McCain wound up as the nominee and I think it is heading for failure this time around,” Steyn said. “I’m speaking to you from my home in New Hampshire … but in my...

<p>I’ve been alarmed by the latest polls. No, not from Iowa and New Hampshire, although they’re unnerving enough. It’s the polls from Egypt. Foreign policy has not played a part in the U.S. presidential campaign, mainly because we’re so broke that the electorate seems minded to take the view that if government is going to throw trillions of dollars down the toilet they’d rather it was an Al Gore–compliant Kohler model in Des Moines or Poughkeepsie than an outhouse in Waziristan. Alas, reality does not arrange its affairs quite so neatly, and the world that is arising in the second decade of the 21st century is increasingly inimical to American interests, and likely to prove even more expensive to boot.</p>

Which is a long way of saying that the best thing that can happen to Newt right now is that the conservative media vet him and do so with great vigor, anticipating every charge and debating every past apostasy and failing. Newt's personal story, marriage to Callista and his conversion are powerful walls against his past poor judgments in his life, but they serve not as all to answer Steyn's charge that Newt "hops and skips like a giddy frog across lily pads across the pond, from one, little, itsy-bitsy novelty idea to another, not awfully well thought out." "And...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

Whenever I write in these pages about the corrosive effect of Big Government upon the citizenry in Britain, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere and note that this republic is fairly well advanced upon the same grim trajectory, I get a fair few letters on the lines of: "You still don't get it, Steyn. Americans aren't Europeans. Or Canadians. We're not gonna take it." I would like to believe it. It's certainly the case that Americans have more attitude than anybody else — or, at any rate, attitudinal slogans. I saw a fellow in a "Don't Tread on Me" T-shirt the other...

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama delayed until after the 2012 election the decision on whether to proceed with construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, designed to transport crude oil extracted from oil sands formations in Alberta to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast. Environmental activists have long criticized the project, but National Review columnist Mark Steyn argued that by putting off the decision, the White House is demonstrating poor judgment and twisted priorities. During an appearance last week on “The Source” with Ezra Levant on the Sun News Network in Canada, Steyn criticized the Obama administration for putting...

Half-a-decade ago, in the wake of America Alone, I was pondering the big demographic and existential questions that loom beyond relatively minor and disconnected news item. This quartet is still relevant: Have you seen a movie called "Four Jills In A Jeep"? Don't worry, it's not at the multiplex. It came out in 1944. A wartime movie, about the contribution of the gals to the big existential struggle. Great title, and downhill after that. This column is, metaphorically speaking, four Jills in a jeep: It's about a quartet of ladies who provide useful glimpses of where we're heading. The first...

I see Andrea True died earlier this month. The late disco diva enjoyed a brief moment of global celebrity in 1976 with her ubiquitous glitterball favorite: "More, More, More How do you like it? How do you like it? More, More, More How do you like it? How do you like it?" In honor of Andrea's passing, I have asked my congressman to propose the adoption of this song as the U.S. national anthem. True, Miss True wrote the number as an autobiographical reflection on her days as a porn movie actress but, consciously or not, it accurately distills the...

<p>There is a famous if apocryphal tale of a Fleet Street theater critic covering the first night of a new play in the West End of London. At the end of the evening, he went to a public telephone and dictated his review. The following morning, a furious editor called him and demanded to know why he had neglected to mention that, midway through the third act, the theater had caught fire and burned to the ground. The critic sniffily replied that it was not his business to report fires, but that, if the editor had read more carefully, he would have observed that the review included a passage noting discreetly that the critic had been unable to remain for the final scenes.</p>

There is a famous if apocryphal tale of a Fleet Street theatre critic covering the first night of a new play in the West End of London. At the end of the evening, he went to a public telephone and dictated his review. The following morning, a furious editor called him and demanded to know why he had neglected to mention that, midway through the Third Act, the theater had caught fire and burned to the ground. The critic sniffily replied that it was not his business to report fires, but that, if the editor had read more carefully, he...

OTTAWA, Ontario, November 18, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canada’s federal government has officially backed a private members bill seeking to repeal a controversial ‘hate speech’ provision that has been used to prosecute Christians and other conservatives for years. In response to a question on Wednesday by Conservative MP Brian Storseth (Westlock-St. Paul, AB), who introduced the bill to repeal section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act on September 30, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson signaled what is likely the clause’s death knell. The ruling Conservatives have a sizeable majority in both houses and the bill is also expected to draw some...

When it's not explicitly hostile, Western liberals' attitude to Ayaan Hirsi Ali is deeply condescending. One thinks of Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, pondering the author's estrangement from her Somali relatives: I couldn't help thinking that perhaps Hirsi Ali's family is dysfunctional simply because its members never learned to bite their tongues and just say to one another: "I love you." In Somalia, they don't bite their tongues but they do puncture your clitoris. Miss Hirsi Ali was the victim of what Western hospitals already abbreviate to "FGM" ("female genital mutilation") or, ever more fashionably, "FGC" (the less...

Have you been following this so-called supercommittee? They're the new superhero group of superfriends from the super-Congress who are going to save America from plummeting over the cliff and into the multitrillion-dollar abyss. There's Spender Woman (Patty Murray), Incumbent Boy (Max Baucus), Kept Man (John Kerry) and many other warriors for truth, justice and the American way of debt. The supercommittee is supposed to report back by the day before Thanksgiving on how to carve out $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction and thereby save the republic. I had cynically assumed that the superfriends would address America's imminent debt catastrophe...

Way back in 1968, after the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Mayor Daley declared that his forces were there to “preserve disorder.” I believe that was one of Hizzoner’s famous malapropisms. Forty-three years later Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, and the Oakland city council have made “preserving disorder” the official municipal policy. On Wednesday, the “Occupy Oakland” occupiers rampaged through the city, shutting down the nation’s fifth-busiest port, forcing stores to close, terrorizing those residents foolish enough to commit the reactionary crime of “shopping,” destroying ATMs, spraying the Christ the Light Cathedral with the insightful observation “F**k,” etc....

<p>A man who witnessed the Whole Foods attack, but asked not to be identified, said he was in the store buying an organic orange when the crowd arrived.</p> <p>There’s an epitaph for the republic if ever I heard one.</p> <p>No, it wasn’t. It was municipal policy. In fairness to the miserable David Lannon, Whole Foods was in damage-control mode. Men’s Wearhouse in Oakland had no such excuse. In solidarity with the masses, they printed up a huge poster declaring “We stand with the 99%� and announcing they’d be closed that day. In return, they got their windows smashed.</p>

In September 2009, Barack Obama and Muammar Qaddafi both addressed the United Nations. It is a pitiful reflection upon the Republic in twilight that, when it comes to the transnational mush drooled by the leader of the free world or the conspiracist ramblings of a pseudo-Bedouin terrorist drag queen presiding over a one-man psycho-cult basket case, it’s more or less a toss-up as to which of them was the more unreal. Qaddafi spoke for 90 minutes, and in the midst of his torrent of words, his translator actually broke down and cried out, “I can’t take it anymore.” The colonel...