Free Republic

The "Obamacans" that Sen. Barack Obama used to joke about - Republican apostates who whispered their support for his candidacy - have morphed into a new phenomenon, or syndrome, as detractors like to call it: the Obamacons. These are conservatives who have publicly endorsed the presumptive Democratic nominee, dissidents from the brain trust of think tanks, ex-officials and policy magazines that have fueled the Republican Party since the 1960s. Scratch the surface of this elite, and one finds a profound dismay that is far more damaging to the GOP than the usual 10 percent of registered Republicans expected to switch...

President Bush may follow in the footsteps of his brother Jeb and convert to Catholicism, several European papers are reporting. In the wake of the president’s visit to see Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Italian newspapers, citing Vatican sources, said Bush was open to the idea of converting to Catholicism. The Italian newspaper Il Foglio referred to such talk about Bush’s possible conversion and stated that “anything is possible, especially for someone reborn like Bush.� Noting that Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office as Britain’s prime minister last year, the paper also stated that “if anything happens,...

I am a small-government conservative/libertarian and have hated the concept of socialized medicine almost all my life. But now, I could live with universal health coverage in the U.S.. Here's why. We now have the worst of both worlds: we are paying for universal health coverage, but not getting it. In fact, we pay more for health care in taxes than countries that provide universal coverage. Then we pay more than that amount again in private coverage. Additionally, what we have now in the U.S. is nowhere near a free market in health care. Defending the status quo is not...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ron Paul (news, bio, voting record), a nine-term congressman from Texas and a former Libertarian Party candidate for the White House, said on Monday he would seek the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

Yes, Rudy Giuliani Is a Conservative Steven Malanga And an electable one, at that. Not since Teddy Roosevelt took on Tammany Hall a century ago has a New York politician closely linked to urban reform looked like presidential timber. But today ex–New York mayor Rudy Giuliani sits at or near the top of virtually every poll of potential 2008 presidential candidates. Already, Giuliani’s popularity has set off a “stop Rudy” movement among cultural conservatives, who object to his three marriages and his support for abortion rights, gay unions, and curbs on gun ownership. Some social conservatives even dismiss his achievement...

The cornerstone of Gov. Mitt Romney's new universal health care law for Massachusetts is a program titled "Commonwealth Care", a plan for thousands of low-income people who could not afford regular health insurance, funded by the taxpayers. One of the stated benefits covered in Commonwealth Care is "abortions." And Planned Parenthood is written into the law, as part of the "payment policy advisory board." April 12, 2006. Gov. Mitt Romney signs Massachusetts Universal Health Care law, as Sen. Ted Kennedy, standing behind him, gives his approval and support.

Rabbis Reconsider Gay Sex A panel of 25 Conservative rabbis is meeting next week in New York to discuss whether homosexual sex is permitted under Jewish law. The discussion will center around five proposed teshuvot, or answers, to questions regarding homosexuality. Two answers reportedly uphold the traditional position from the Bible: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination” – which prohibits homosexuality between men and, by extension, between women. But the other three answers argue for a reinterpretation of that prohibition, and "on a practical level, they could open the way...

In the 1980s, the historian and social critic Christopher Lasch pronounced dead the conventional political categories of right and left and argued for a revitalization of politics through a redefinition of terms. "The idea of a 'left' has outlived its historical time and needs to be decently buried, along with the false conservatism that merely clothes an older liberal tradition in conservative rhetoric."

Our so called Conservative majority in Congress passed by unanimous vote the National Heritage Area's Bill (See Senate Bill 243) along with (Senate Bill 54)on July 26, 2005.

Well, that time has come for me. I’m leaving FR. However, I do not consider this an “opus”, as I am NOT going to use it to rehash old slights or arguments, or to give my personal opinion of what “should be done around here”. As has been so often pointed out, this is Jim Robinson’s site, and he runs it as he sees fit. Rather, all I’m going to do here is give a general reason for my departure, and say a hearty-but-sad “GOODBYE!” to all the folks here who have enriched my life in the past four years....

U.S. Fails to Make List of World's Freest Economies The United States is missing for the first time from an annual ranking of the world's 10 freest economies. Story Continues Below The Index of Economic Freedom, published by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal since 1995, finds that the United States is letting Big Brother grow obese as other countries get lean and fit. Chile, Australia and Iceland improved enough to leave the U.S. in a tie with Switzerland for 12th place. "The United States is resting on its laurels while innovative countries around the world are changing...