Free Republic

It's a cliché that nations and men repeat the same errors, stumbling into various crisises. The locations may change, but the patterns of history remain. The world is teetering on a new Great Depression. Democracies are at risk. In the 1930s there were an estimated two billion people worldwide. Today there are seven billion people in the world; the pressures to feed them and meet their other needs have increased exponentially. It strains relations between nations and within them. In the U.S. the Great Depression began in 1929 and lasted until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that...

At times, the parades could have been confused for Obama campaign rallies. In Chicago on Sunday, 300 of his campaign staff members and volunteers marched down Halsted Street through the heart of the gay district to chants of “Four more years! Four more years!” Along Fifth Avenue in New York, a group of about 200 Obama supporters who walked the parade route were cheered by crowds waving powder-blue “L.G.B.T. for Obama” placards, referring to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “Obama! Obama!” the onlookers cried.

President Barack Obama has had a terrible few weeks, and it could get worse. Especially if the Supreme Court accepts the ancient premise in that old, forgotten document called the Constitution that the federal leviathan cannot force Americans to purchase a thing, let alone health care. But I still believe that the guy from Chicago will win re-election in November, despite all the anguish around him, because the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, isn't exactly inspiring either. Romney is no conservative alternative, he's merely the un-Obama corporatist, eerily similar to the big-government Illinois Republicans who partnered with Democrats to spend the...

There was something about the way Hillary Clinton said it that touched a nerve. “People are dying,” the Secretary of State said forcefully and finally – with an emphasis on the word “dying” that can only be born of outrage. She was talking about Syria and the brutal repression by embattled President Bashar al-Assad against a popular uprising – an uprising that Clinton and President Obama hope leads to the toppling of the Assad regime. The comment came during a June 13 press conference at the State Department as Clinton stood at a podium next to the Indian foreign minister,...

The big question from last week's assertion of executive privilege by Barack Obama was what, exactly, was so troublesome that the White House couldn't have Attorney General Eric Holder release it. It certainly wasn't to protect the precedent of confidentiality of presidential advice; Obama and Holder have insisted that the President had no knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious until it made the headlines. Even the assertion of privilege attempted to skirt that issue by relying on deliberative process rather than direct presidential privilege, although it seems almost certain that deliberative process won't shield Holder and others at executive agencies....

As we await the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare, some insurance companies are already telling consumers which of its many protections they will agree to “honor” if this historic law is thrown out [“Insurers ready for Supreme Court ruling on health care, June 20]. Allowing for-profit insurance companies to decide for themselves is no answer at all. One insurer is willing to keep dependents up to age 26 on their parents’ policy but won’t agree to eliminate pre-existing condition exclusions. Another may be willing to provide free preventive services but won’t stop charging women higher premiums. This week, we...

There's really no doubt any longer. As Curt noted, this administration is lying through its teeth about Fast and Furious. Liberals have all sorts of pathetic commentary for Fast and Furious- it runs from the frenetically dissembling Jay Carney saying it's not worthy of Congress [VIDEO AT SITE] or HEREto the feckless Sheila Jackson Lee blaming George Bush while conflating Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious. [VIDEO AT SITE] or HEREIt's been suggested that Fast and Furious intended to create violence in Mexico as a means of introducing stricter gun laws. TAPPER: You really think that there’s a possibility that...

A Boy Scouts of America national board member, James Turley, who is also global chairman and CEO of the accounting firm Ernst & Young, recently said he “will work from within to seek a change” to overturn the BSA policy that bans gay scouts and leaders. But is Turley working on his own initiative, or has the White House prodded him with perks and favors? Is it a coincidence that Turley came out swinging against the BSA’s century-old policy to ban gays from leadership and that he has such close affiliations with the pro-gay Obama administration? Is it a coincidence...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is doing her part to help the Muslim Brotherhood implement the Turkey Strategy in Egypt. As I’ve pointed out before, if you want to see what’s going to happen in Egypt, look at Turkey, where the military was Atatürk’s bulwark against what would otherwise be the certainty that Islamists would overwhelm the pro-Western civil society the Kemalists labored against Islamic norms to build. (Caroline Glick makes a similar argument in a characteristically sharp post.) It has taken Turkey’s Islamic supremacist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a decade of meticulous, determined gradualism to return Turkey to...

Germany's finance minister is rejecting U.S. President Barack Obama's calls on Europe to move faster in fighting its debt crisis, telling him to get the American deficit under control instead. Wolfgang Schaeuble told public broadcaster ZDF in an interview late Sunday that "people are always very quick at giving others advice." He says: "Mr. Obama should first of all take care of reducing the American deficit, which is higher than in the eurozone."

It's time, once again, to clarify a major misrepresentation by General Motors and the media. That is the implication that the recently announced move to modify a portion of non-union pensions will result in an improvement of $26 billion to GM's pension shortfall. GM shares are down about 5% since the announcement, bringing into question the accuracy of the rosy projections. A Bloomberg Businessweek report notes Moody's Senior Vice President Bruce Clark's opinion that "When all is said and done, the company's total underfunded pension liability will be reduced by only $1 billion." Also noted is that GM will pump...

Barack Obama’s political base always has been more “creative class” than working class—and his policies have favored that base, seeming to cater to energized issue and identity constituencies including African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, and greens, often at the expense of blue-collar workers. Yet improving conditions for those workers—particularly in the industrial heartland—could save his flagging presidency. The industrial zone’s four key states—Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—constitute the most critically contested territory in this year’s contest. Fifty-four electoral votes are at play here, with Pennsylvania’s 20 votes alone equaling all those at stake in the much-ballyhooed battleground of the Intermountain West (Colorado,...

A new USA Today-Gallup poll shows that President Obama holds a big lead among Hispanic voters in his general election matchup against presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney — and that unemployment and economic growth, not immigration, remain the top issues for these voters. The survey of a random sample of 1,753 adults between April 16 and May 31 showed Mr. Obama leading Mr. Romney by a 66 percent to 25 percent margin. "Given the current dampened support for Obama among non-Hispanic whites, Obama's ability to build support or, more specifically, registration and turnout, among Hispanics in 2012 is widely seen...

Hill Poll: Voters: Obama over-reached blocking Fast and Furious docsBy Niall Stanage - 06/25/12 05:00 AM ET A clear majority of likely voters believes President Obama has exercised his executive power inappropriately — particularly in blocking the release of documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious, according to a new poll for The Hill. But in a sign that the electorate’s frustration extends to Capitol Hill, voters by a significant margin also feel Congress has behaved in an obstructionist manner toward the president. Amid the discontent over the behavior of both Obama and members of Congress, the poll found a...

The contributing editor of Townhall Magazine explores the controversial gun supply operation, initially run by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobaccoand Firearms,that's currently under congressional investigation. She discusses her findings with National Journal's White House correspondent Major Garrett.

So, I see “Obama’s Big Week” is starting off with a rehash of last week’s mis-misinformation on our Fast and Furious operation that had nothing to do with swaying people’s opinions on guns and the Second Amendment: VIDEO h/t Ulsterman If my history pack is accurate, the original intent of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the people not so much from each other butt from a government run amok. I don’t think either Big Guy or Ricky have done much to disabuse anyone of the utility of this concept... In other news... ...As first reported by Anonymouse, IHOP’s deal...

Made comments to promote competition to win a dinner with Barack Obama Michelle Obama: 'He showed all the sides - he was hip, cutting edge, cultural, sensitive' At the end of the clip, Mr Obama grins, looks at the camera and says 'Take tips gentleman' before winking Dating can be a nerve-wracking occasion for any new couple, but it seems the President of the United States managed to impress the First Lady from the first date. Barack Obama took Michelle for lunch at the Art Institute of Chicago in Michigan, before a leisurely stroll to the movies to watch...

In a not-so-subtle rebuke of President Obama’s tendency to offer unsolicited recommendations on how Europeans should handle their debt crises on Sunday evening, Germany’s finance minister suggested that perhaps His Munificence should focus on his own problems before trying to fix everybody else’s. Wolfgang Schaeuble told public broadcaster ZDF in an interview late Sunday that “people are always very quick at giving others advice.”He says: “Mr. Obama should first of all take care of reducing the American deficit, which is higher than in the eurozone.” An unfortunate and embarrassing truth — the EU’s debt-to-GDP ratio is well over eighty percent,...

President Obama proclaims himself a Christian. But two-third of Americans either don’t know it or don’t believe it, according to a new Gallup poll. I count myself among those who don’t believe it. And not just because the president has managed to attend Sunday church services not even a tenth as many times as he has stolen away from the White House to play golf. The Scripture warns us to beware of those “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits?” I believe, as do many evangelical Christians,...

Left-wing activists gave a painting of Reagan the finger, but the hand that props them up comes from George Soros. One of the two activists involved is national director of public engagement at Solutions for Progress –funded in part by Soros’s Open Society Institute....Matthew Hart, the national director of public engagement at Solutions for Progress, posted his photo giving Reagan the finger on Facebook with the caption saying, “F*** Reagan,” (without the editing)