Free Republic

That's the question Byron York asks, based on Gallup poll results indicating that most Americans are back to wanting the government to promote "traditional values" rather than "not favoring any particular set of values." That preference has generally existed over the last 20 years, but the balance swung away from "traditional values"--which means whatever the poll respondent has in mind--beginning in 2005. Byron argues that this is more evidence that the Democrats have badly misread their mandate: [T]hat period of revulsion at Bush and Republicans from 2005 to 2008 left a legacy: a Democrat in the White House and large...

THERE are more conserva tives than Republicans and more Democrats than lib erals. That's one of the asymmetries between the parties that helps to explain the particular political spot we're in. The numbers are fairly clear. In the 2008 exit poll, 34 percent of voters described themselves as conservatives and 32 percent as Republicans; 39 percent described themselves as Democrats, only 22 percent as liberals. The result is that the two parties have offsetting political advantages. Democrats tend to win on party identification. Republicans tend to win on ideology. Democrats don't have to appeal to as many independents as Republicans...

What we’re seeing in Washington these days is beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II. Carter, like Barack Obama, started out with the idea of stimulating the economy. His plan was to give every taxpayer $50, then throw in a few billion for tax cuts and public works programs. Simple, right? Wrong: In Washington, this soon became very complicated. Within a month, the package grew from $20 billion to more than $31 billion — a significant amount in the 1970s. Special-interest groups piled on. Unions, minorities, the sugar lobby, bankers, shoe manufacturers — all clamored for a piece of the...

The same unfounded sense of entitlement that may have cost Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) the presidential nomination could cost her the No. 2 spot on the ticket as well, according to Democratic strategists. They note that Clinton’s defiant speech in the face of defeat Tuesday night, coupled with her continued presence in a campaign that has moved past her, could disqualify the one-time Democratic front-runner from a chance at the vice presidency. “It was as ungracious as it was delusional,” one Democratic strategist said. Her speech, in which she didn’t acknowledge Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) win but emphasized the...

It's been the talk of the day, and I can't imagine that it warms the average American's heart-- even if he does have reservations about the war-- to hear a top general who's clearly competent be trashed by the Democratic Party's anti-war movement surrogates. Reid's baaaaacking away, after several Republicans called for him to do so (CNN): Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed frustration Monday with a new print ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus that is being paid for by a liberal advocacy organization on the same day the general is providing testimony before Congress on the situation in Iraq....

Late last week Byron Dorgan, the North Dakota Democrat, offered what he assumed was an uncontroversial amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization bill under consideration in the Senate. The amendment would have increased to $50 million the reward "for the capture, or information leading to the capture," of Osama bin Laden. But Senate Republicans noticed something odd about the Dorgan amendment. It contained no mention of a reward for bin Laden's death. John Sununu, the New Hampshire Republican up for reelection next year, quickly introduced his own amendment striking Dorgan's language and replacing it with a $50 million reward for...

Islamic group bids to fill power vacuum But risks underestimating Israeli resolveJERUSALEM—There are multiple reasons why Hezbollah chose precisely this moment to throw an already turbulent Middle East into cartwheels of even greater turmoil. But for most observers, none stands larger than the militant Shiite Muslim movement's overarching quest to elevate itself as the pre-eminent defender of the pan-Arab realm. Whatever secondary reasons may come into play — and there is no question that for Hezbollah's sponsors in Syria and Iran the new crisis presents a convenient diversion from the critical issues confronting them — Arab-Muslim pride is paramount. Scan...

Since I saluted her last summer when she took a stand in Crawford, Texas, it seems only fair that I make another public gesture now that Cindy Sheehan has removed one of her "Camp Casey" hiking shoes and stuck her foot firmly in her mouth. That gesture is to raise a hand and cover up my wincing eyes. It's not the first time this celebrated and denigrated mother of a fallen soldier has spouted off a bit incautiously. But I cut her a break before. After all, her beloved son Casey died in Iraq while mine is alive and kicking....

As shown on tonight's edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Kieth Olbermann........

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY By Jonathan Alter Newsweek Updated: 6:17 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2005 Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham...

* Yesterday Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid demanded that the Senate go into closed session to demand a report to follow up on a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee investigation on what the CIA knew or didn't know in the run-up to the Iraq war. * Invoking Senate Rule 21 he forced a closed session of the US Senate to "demand, on behalf of the American people why these investigations aren't being conducted." * For the record Rule 21 reads: On a motion made and seconded to close the doors of the Senate, on the discussion of any business which may,...

Sometimes things are not as they appear peering through the legislative looking glass. Congress increasingly has an "Alice in Wonderland" feel to it, where statements by lawmakers and activists create a strange dissonance and legislative reality that is out of sync with political rhetoric. Yet because their press releases represent the authorized voice of the opposition, Democratic Party leaders' idiom has an aura of validity — however phony. There is a method to the madness. Democrats are laying political sod, preparing the ground for the 2006 congressional elections. Call it "project overreach"; like many aspects of the Democratic Party these...

Bush wins big as China overplays its hand By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - The apparent decision by European leaders to delay the lifting of their 16-year-old arms embargo on China beyond June marks a clear-cut foreign-policy victory for US President George W Bush, who made the issue a major priority in his visit to Europe last month. China itself may have inadvertently made Bush's victory possible. Its enactment last week of an Anti-Secession Law that lays the foundation for a possible military attack on Taiwan if, in Beijing's judgment, it were to move toward formal independence, gave the administration powerful...

IT'S not just Republicans who are livid at how Democrats have ripped into Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — so are plenty of black Democrats, who say their party now risks alienating its most loyal supporters. It doesn't help that Howard Dean — front-runner to be the new Democratic national chairman — cheered the anti-Rice crowd. Dean, after all, had to apologize last year for vowing to court guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. Nor does it help that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who voted for Rice, nevertheless used the battle to send out a fund-raising e-mail for...

OVER-PLAYING THE HAND [Andy McCarthy] Just read yeasterday's WSJ editorial and heard some talk-radio railing about the same thing earlier today -- the purported "outing" of the Veep's daughter. I hate to say this, but I think this is really dumb. What Kerry did was utterly obnoxious, transparently pre-meditated, and worthy of being talked about at length. It goes to his judgment and character. In a close election, it could even be a decisive gaffe. But what he decidedly did not do is "out" Mary Cheney, and some of our folks are going way overboard by saying otherwise. That term...

<p>Republicans believe that Democrats, who have used reports of Iraqi prisoner abuse as an avenue to attack President Bush on the war, might be overplaying their hand — especially in light of the videotaped slaughter of an American businessman by al Qaeda terrorists.</p>

CNSNews.com) - A U.S. Muslim group has joined various Democrats in demanding the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which describes itself as a national Islamic civil rights group, said Rumsfeld "bears ultimate responsibility for the brutal and humiliating actions of American troops and for the poor handling of the (Abu Ghraib prisoner) scandal by the military establishment. "He must also take responsibility for fostering an atmosphere in which the traditional rules of war and norms of international law are treated as excess baggage," CAIR said in a press release. If Rumsfeld...

<p>Democrats -- through overreach, overkill, and character assassination, are in the process of converting what should be a political ace into a joker.</p> <p>As a swift boat commander in Vietnam, Lt. j.g. John F. Kerry behaved admirably and heroically. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Silver Star, and received three Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in combat.</p>

<p>February 10, 2004 -- Democratic front-runner John Kerry yesterday escalated his attacks on President Bush's Vietnam-era military record and suggested Bush isn't fit to be a wartime commander in chief because he never served in battle overseas. "I remember what it was like to carry an M-16 in another country thousands of miles away and to not be able to tell the difference between who was trying to kill me and who wasn't, who was my friend and who was my foe," Kerry said.</p>

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Iraqi weapons inspector David Kay said he blames U.S. intelligence for telling President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to going to war last spring. Kay, who was appointed by the Bush administration to look for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, concluded on Friday that there were no stockpiles of weapons. Some of the Democrat presidential candidates used this news from Kay to lambaste Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the new front-runner for the Democrat nomination for president, said that Bush, Cheney and...

LACONIA, N.H. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards called on Saturday for an independent commission to investigate if the Bush administration misled the U.S. Congress in making its case for war with Iraq and demanded an end to "war profiteering." The senator from North Carolina was responding to remarks by former chief U.S. arms hunter David Kay, who told Reuters after stepping down on Friday that he had concluded there were no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons to be found. "It's a serious issue and it's why I have called for an independent commission to investigate the discrepancy...

Vice President Dick Cheney complained late Wednesday that the recent spate of ugly attacks from several Democratic presidential candidates have been "beyond the pale." "I really think some of the comments have been beyond the pale, over the line," Cheney told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity. "The level of debate and dialogue in the political arena this year has fallen to a pretty distinctive low." Cheney said the Democratic rhetoric "says a lot more about those who are launching those attacks than it says about the president or this administration," adding, "I think it's too bad that they...

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo charged Wednesday that President Bush made Saddam Hussein the U.S.'s number one target in the war on terror in part because his family had business dealings with relatives of Osama bin Laden. On hand to discuss the 2004 presidential election at a 21 Club breakfast with a panel of guests that included "60 Minutes" correspondent Leslie Stahl, radio host Monica Crowley, Democratic consultant Robert Zimmerman and commentator Bay Buchanan, Cuomo excoriated Bush for mishandling both the economy and the war on terror, complaining at one point: "Who's winning the war on terrorism? The...

There is civil discourse and there are always legitimate differences over policy in American politics, and then there is the jihad launched by Sen. Ted Kennedy against President Bush. Kennedy charged in a speech yesterday that the Iraq war was a ``political product'' dreamed up by the Bush administration with the express purpose of winning elections. It wasn't the first time he had advanced that notion. After all, he had told the Associated Press as early as last September that the war was a fraud ``made up in Texas.'' Apparently Kennedy is now really warming to the theme, and his...

Tuesday January 13, 2004; 8:28 p.m. EST Clark Questions Bush's Patriotism Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark has opened up a particularly noxious line of attack against President Bush, blatantly questioning the president's patriotism during several speeches in New Hampshire this week. Reports the National Review Online's Rich Lowry, at two recent town-hall meetings in Concord, Clark repeatedly charged that Bush was unpatriotic. "I don't think it's patriotic to put on a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for a photo op," he railed. "We have a president of the United States who...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of more than two dozen House of Representatives Democrats on Monday said they had introduced a resolution urging President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "This resolution would make official what so many members of Congress already believe -- that the soldiers in Iraq and America's foreign policy would be helped greatly if Donald Rumsfeld would leave," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York said in a statement. Rangel said he so far had 25 co-sponsors to the resolution who were "willing to stand up and say what so many policy makers know, that the...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Charles Rangel, a caustic critic of the military effort in Iraq, labeled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “an embarrassment” on Wednesday and called for his resignation. “It’s time that he does the American people a service by resigning,” Rangel said, arguing that Rumsfeld has shown he has no strategy for securing postwar Iraq. “He has no plan,” said Rangel, D-N.Y., a Korean War veteran. “When you have a problem as we do in Iraq,” Rangel said, “you want somebody that does better than acknowledging there’s a problem. Heck, anybody can do that. I can get a kid...

Memo to Sen. Ted Kennedy: To your credit, you were among the minority of Senate Democrats who had the backbone to actually vote against the Iraq war resolution one year ago. In doing so, you gave voice to millions of Americans with the best interests of the United States at heart. You distinguished yourself from many of your feckless colleagues, including fellow Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who voted for the resolution authorizing war and later said they didn't really mean it. Your criticism of U.S. policy has been consistent. Well done. But when you talk about the war to depose...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the pace of Iraq's reconstruction Thursday, saying it is going faster in some cases than rebuilding in Germany and Japan after World War II. "We are on track," he told about 500 people attending the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Conference, an annual gathering of national security, foreign affairs and military experts. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on television Thursday night that Rumsfeld should resign over Iraq. In answer to a question from CNN's Paula Zahn, the Massachusetts senator accused Rumsfeld of rushing to war without proper planning. "Our military is weaker today,"...

An open letter to France's Jacques Chirac: Dear Jacques: Don't overplay your hand. The opening of the U.N. session gives you leverage for concessions from President Bush in exchange for a resolution blessing international help in Iraq. Given the toll — in money and men — that the postwar period there is taking on the United States, he has asked for help from those who were unwilling to help topple Saddam Hussein. As the leader of the pre-war effort to deny U.N. certification for that war, you can be forgiven for smirking. You did predict a messier postwar cleanup than...

Republicans are for a change fighting back at obstructionist Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who didn't fret over Bill Clinton's wag-the-dog wars but claims "this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war." But it's Little Tommy who's the miserable failure, according to Republican National Chairman Marc Racicot, who denounced the South Dakota leftist's "divisive and brazen political posturing." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today noted the hypocrisy of Daschle, who said in September, after President Bush pointed out that Democrats were putting politics ahead of national security, that "we ought not politicize this war."...

US President George Bush is nothing but a “miserable failure”, according to Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt, who participated in a live televised debate. Though the seven Democrats present at the debate, all of whom are vying for the right to fight George Bush in next year’s presidential election, differed on trade and taxation issues they were united in their most vociferous condemnation yet of the current president. "We have young men and women in a shooting gallery right now, and the primary reason for that is because this president had no plan," said North Carolina Senator John Edwards in...

"This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy and on the economy and he's got to be replaced." - Dick Gephardt.... (check out the site: link above)

Democrats' quagmire: petty politics September 21, 2003 BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST A week or so back, on Sept. 11, almost to the hour of the second anniversary, the star guest on NBC's ''Today Show'' was Hillary Rodham Clinton. And what her hostess Katie Couric, America's favorite wake-up gal, wanted to know about the terrorist attacks on the senator's home state was this: Did the White House ''mislead'' the American people about the air quality at Ground Zero? Come again? We all know Bush ''misled'' (Katie was being coy) the American people on Niger and British intelligence and weapons of...

A Twin Cities Jewish advocacy group has criticized an animal-rights exhibit planned for today at the state Capitol, claiming it trivializes the Holocaust. The exhibit, self-described by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as the "controversial Holocaust on Your Plate'' project, compares the slaughter of animals used for food with the Nazi's killing of Jews and others. "To blatantly compare the mass murder of 6 million people to the issue of animal rights is distasteful at least and at best a vicious affront to the victims of the Holocaust,'' said Joni Sussman, vice president of the Jewish Community Relations...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Presidential candidate Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) has charged that President George W. Bush misled Americans in repeating intelligence he knew to be suspect as well as withholding other important information. Graham said on Fox News Sunday, "Clearly, if the standard is now what the House of Representatives did in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the actions of this president [are] much more serious in terms of dereliction of duty." When asked to explain how the "16 words" deceived a Congress that had previously voted to authorize the President to go to war, Graham said, "Well, there's...

Presidential candidate Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said Sunday that President Bush won't be impeached as long as Republicans control Congress, but added, "The good news is that in November of 2004 the American people will have a chance to both impeach and remove George W. Bush in one step." Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Graham reiterated his believe that the president had committed an impeachable offense by leading the U.S. into war under what he suggested were false pretenses, going so far as to accuse Bush of "dereliction of duty." "Clearly, if the standard is what the House of...

The Democratic party is about to commit political jujitsu against itself. In their manic efforts to discredit the war in Iraq, liberals are accusing the Bush administration of having deliberately and deceitfully exaggerated the threat Iraq posed to the United States. They point out that no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons have so far been located in Iraq, and have lately seized on the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger as a blatant deception. Their larger point seems to be that absent a clear military threat to America a war to oust Saddam...

<p>July 22, 2003 -- Republicans are crying foul over a new Democratic TV ad accusing President Bush of misleading the American public on the nuclear threat from Iraq.</p> <p>The original 16 words in the president's State of the Union Address have been shortened to 10 for the Democratic ad.</p>

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham said on Thursday there were grounds to impeach President Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretenses. While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq it would be "more serious" than former President Bill Clinton's lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. "If in fact we went to war under false pretenses that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior U.S. senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire....

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., who is vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he is "deeply troubled" by controversy concerning President Bush's statements leading up to the war in Iraq. Bush's comments in his State of the Union speech in January, specifically concerning allegations that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium for nuclear weapons, were "blatantly misleading," Rockefeller charged this week. "I am deeply troubled by recent revelations of the events surrounding the President's State of the Union speech," said Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the committee. Rockefeller and several other Democrat lawmakers have expressed dismay over...

<p>As the weather cooled here one afternoon late last week, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's rhetoric against President Bush heated up. During his first two stops on a campaign swing through New Hampshire, Dean was forceful in substance but restrained in tone, as he critiqued Bush's domestic and foreign agenda.</p> <p>At a medical center in Derry, where he began his day, Dean never raised his voice as he lamented the debt that Bush's tax cuts will impose on future generations. He sounded as temperate as a high school guidance counselor encouraging a disappointing student to do better.</p>

Chris Matthews is foaming at the mouth tonight over the Uranium story, and he and his overlords at MSNBC are propagating the lie that the Niger Uranium story was untrue. 1) Matthews starts by badgering GOP Senators about how the Vice President's office is guilty for not listening to "CIA agent" Joe Wilson, and acts like Joe Wilson is unbiased and did a "Legitimate investigation in Niger". 2) Then this lying Bitch, Norah O'Donnell, comes on and describes the Uranium Niger intelligence as "Questionable" when in fact the British believe their intel is rock solid. 3) Then No-Balls Matthews sucks...

Political gambles come in all sizes and shapes. When Walter Mondale questioned Ronald Reagan's age, Reagan promised not to use Mondale's youth and inexperience against him. America laughed. Mondale lost. When George H. W. Bush asked America to read his lips, then compromised on a tax increase, America revolted when the economy tanked. Bush went fishing in Kennebunkport. Today, we are in the middle of "the Uranium Thing." In his State of the Union Address, George W. Bush claimed, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of Uranium from Africa." The statement is irrefutable. One...

MSNBC is running it as breaking news.. Graham said that there is no way that Tom Delay and the House will have impeachment hearings over the supposed intelligence failures (I assume he is talking about VP Cheney) so 'the people' will have to vote the offending partes out in 2004.A desperate act of a Presidential candidacy and a political career expiring

Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. He was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear programme be included in George Bush's State of the Union address - overriding the concerns of the CIA director, George Tenet. Mr Cheney was also accused of knowingly misleading Congress when the administration sought its authorisation for the use of force...

If there is not an orchestrated effort among Democratic leaders and the mainstream press to discredit President Bush concerning Iraq, there might as well be. The irony is that the president's accusers are damaging U.S. credibility far more than he has. Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe charged, "This may be the first time in recent history that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union address." McAuliffe was referring to a 16-word statement contained in President Bush's address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." It...

<p>July 15, 2003 -- THE liberal/ Democratic/media assault on President Bush has "gained traction," as the politicos say. Some ostriches on the Right want to pretend otherwise. They ought to know better. The weeklong controversy over the supposed "lie" Bush told in the State of the Union Address completely overshadowed the president's historic trip to Africa, a trip intended to cast light on his revolutionary new AIDS policy. His poll numbers have fallen 10 points in the past few weeks.</p>

While turning channels, I come across Jeff Greenfield on CNN discussing the Niger/uranium story. He mentions that the Republicans pounced on Clinton's exact words diring the Monica/impeachment mess (clip shows Clinton's "is" is, and the "I did not have sex with that woman" phrases. But then he showed a clip of the DNC's new ad and (paraphrasing) said that the other side could go too far. The ad shows Bush at his SOTU speech uttering this sentence: "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.". Greenfield points out the the ad DOES NOT contain the first 4 words...

WASHINGTON, 13 July 2003 — “There’s nothing more serious than deception and prevarication on national security matters,” former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader told journalists this week. The invasion of Iraq was illegal, unconstitutional and an impeachable offense, he said. Indifferent to which party he offended, Nader said President George W. Bush is impeachable now and beatable in 2004, then criticized the Democrats for failing to exploit the “corporate crimes” perpetrated in the last three years by Bush the administration. The alleged weapons of mass destruction, connection of Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11 and the depiction of Saddam as...