Free Republic

<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>

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...

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.

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,”...

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 good night! You've been a terrific crowd!" I gather that Americans prefer something 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 —...

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...

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...

<p>Lest you doubt that we’re headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within ten minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the “crazy things” he’s said and done.</p>

Lest you doubt that we're headed for the most vicious election year in memory, consider the determined effort, within 10 minutes of his triumph in Iowa, to weirdify Rick Santorum. Discussing the surging senator on Fox News, Alan Colmes mused on some of the "crazy things" he's said and done. Santorum has certainly said and done many crazy things, as have most members of America's political class, but the "crazy thing" Colmes chose to focus on was Santorum's "taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after childbirth home," whereupon he "played with it." My National Review colleague Rich Lowry...

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.

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. At the end of 2011,...

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

Gingrich Gets Another Endorsement Former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts on his 2012 choice

NEWT HELPED FORMULATE CHRISTMAS December 21, 2011Every few years, heinous Democratic policies -- abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, Hillarycare, Obamacare, to name a few -- compel previously uninvolved Americans to leap into politics. This is great, except for two things: (1) We have to get heinous Democratic policies first; and (2) newcomers have short memories, sometimes no memories at all. The second point is the only possible explanation for why some conservatives seem to view Newt Gingrich as the anti-Establishment outsider who will shake up Washington. Newly active right-wingers would do well to spend a little more time quietly...

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...

<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>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>

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...

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...

<p>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 essence of American governmental philosophy in the early 21st century: excess even unto oblivion.</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...

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...

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. Just so. Every time Barack Obama stands at his teleprompter and is forced to pretend that he’s interested in deficit reduction, we have taken a step toward that Milton...

<p>"There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable."</p> <p>What does that mean? Because, if you’re going to destroy a man’s life over it, it ought to mean something. A “gesture” that is not “sexual” but that makes women “uncomfortable” enough to threaten sexual harrassment?</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong, I like Herman Cain. I like “Imagine There’s No Pizza”: It would be the greatest presidential campaign song since “Tippecanoe And Tyler, Too.” I like his sunny disposition: Mien can be determinative — it’s why Rick Santorum is right on almost everything, and going nowhere. I like Cain’s electrified fence gags, on the general principle that no sane person should climb into the straitjackets of the politically correct enforcers.</p>

... And yet, and yet. . . . The foreign policy, hostage-trading, abortion stuff is becoming more difficult to ignore. I don’t think Charles Krauthammer’s assertion that Cain’s “winging it” fully explains it, nor does the Pundette’s that he is “incoherent.” Cain’s boast that he can’t name the president of Beki-beki-beki-beki-beki-beki-stan gets closer to it. It’s a cute line, notwithstanding that parochial braggadocio is easier to carry off when you’re a soaring hyperpower rather than a multi-trillion-dollar sinkhole whose citizens’ future is increasingly mortgaged to foreigners of one degree of unsavoriness or another. But the ’stan shtick is a glimpse...

The Occupy Wall Street movement has had an incredible ascendency over the last few weeks. But despite its ambiguous aims — one has to wonder how this movement would measure up with other similar movements throughout history. On Rush Limbaugh’s Wednesday show, fill-in host Mark Steyn said he has low regard for Occupy Wall Street — not necessarily because it is a left-wing movement, but, he explained, because it is an imported movement. “I’m not sure how many people know this, but this whole thing — this is the most pathetic revolution in history,” Steyn said. “[French revolutionary] Robespierre would...

Cliff, there is a lot of truth in what you say. No one should weep for the pock-marked old drag queen’s vicious end. But, if ‘twere done, ‘twere better it had been done by the Americans after Lockerbie, or by the Brits after one of his diplomats shot and killed a London policewoman, Yvonne Fletcher, in St James’s Square, or by any other western nation after one or other of his many provocations twenty years ago. The post-Iraq Gaddafi of the last eight years was seen throughout the Arab world as a western ally. As recently as this spring, his...

A society can live on the accumulated capital of a glorious inheritance for only so long.When the think-tank chappies ponder “decline,” they tend to see it in geopolitical terms. Great powers gradually being shunted off the world stage have increasing difficulties getting their way: Itsy-bitsy colonial policing operations in dusty ramshackle outposts drag on for years and putter out to no obvious conclusion. If that sounds vaguely familiar, well, the State Department reported last month that the last Christian church in Afghanistan was razed to the ground in 2010. This intriguing factoid came deep within their “International Religious Freedom Report.”...

When the think-tank chappies ponder "decline," they tend to see it in geopolitical terms. Great powers gradually being shunted off the world stage have increasing difficulties getting their way: Itsy-bitsy colonial policing operations in dusty ramshackle outposts drag on for years and putter out to no obvious conclusion. If that sounds vaguely familiar, well, the State Department reported that the last Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in 2010. This intriguing factoid came deep within their "International Religious Freedom Report." It is not, in any meaningful sense of that word, "international." For the last decade, Afghanistan has been a U.S....

<p>The zombie youth “occupying” Wall Street are contemptuous of the world that sustains their comforts.</p> <p>Michael Oher, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, was online on Wednesday night when his Twitter feed started filling up with tributes to Steve Jobs. A bewildered Oher tweeted: “Can somebody help me out? Who was Steve Jobs!”</p>

There’s nothing soft about a dead-parrot economy, a flatline jobs market, and regulatory sclerosis.The way I think about it,” Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, “is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft.” He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 percent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in contempt those who allow...

Due Diligence is a Wall Street term. It means that you check out the goods before you buy. You check the books, you check the inventory, you check the people, you check the business plan, you check the customers and the suppliers; in other words you check out everything to make sure you are not being sold a pipe dream or being scammed. But some people want to be scammed. Don’t get me wrong, no one – including especially the guys on Wall Street – wants to be scammed. But everyone loves a good story and often the desire to...

Our ludicrously unqualified chief executive would have been regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. "The way I think about it," Barack Obama told a TV station in Orlando, "is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft." He has a point. This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53 percent of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation. One should not begrudge a man who seizes his opportunity. But one should certainly hold in...

It’s the end of the world as we know it. You shouldn’t feel fine. ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it,” sang the popular musical artistes R.E.M. many years ago. And it is. R.E.M. has announced that they’re splitting up after almost a third of a century. But these days who isn’t? The eurozone, the world’s first geriatric boy band, is on the verge of busting apart. Chimerica (Prof. Niall Ferguson’s amusing name for the Chinese-American economic partnership that started around the same time R.E.M. did) is going the way of Wham!, with Beijing figuring it’s the...

'It's the end of the world as we know it," sang the popular musical artistes REM many years ago. And it is. REM has announced that they're splitting up after almost a third of a century. But these days who isn't? The euro zone, the world's first geriatric boy band, is on the verge of busting apart. Chimerica (Professor Niall Ferguson's amusing name for the Chinese-American economic partnership that started around the same time REM did) is going the way of Wham!, with Beijing figuring it's the George Michael of the relationship and that it's tired of wossname, the other...

The president has taken to the campaign trail to promote his American Jobs Act. That’s a good name for it: an act. “Pass this bill now!” he declared 24 times at a stop in in Raleigh, North Carolina, and another 18 in Columbus, Ohio, and the act is sufficiently effective that, three years into the Vapidity of Hope, the president can still find crowds of true believers willing to chant along with him: “Pass this bill now!” Not all supporters are content merely to singalong with the prompter-in-chief. In North Carolina, a still-devoted hopeychanger cried out, “I love you!” Article...

<p>Waiting to be interviewed on the radio the other day, I found myself on hold listening to a public-service message exhorting listeners to go to 911day.org and tell their fellow citizens how they would be observing the tenth anniversary of the, ah, “tragic events.� There followed a sound bite of a lady explaining that she would be paying tribute by going and cleaning up an area of the beach.</p>

was on a very long flight the other day and, to get me through it, I had two books: the new bestseller Of Thee I Zing by Laura Ingraham, and a book I last read twenty years ago, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth. The former is the latest hit from one of America’s most popular talk radio hosts; the latter is an Austrian novel from 1932 by a fellow who drank himself to death just before the Second World War, which, if you’re planning on drinking yourself to death, is a better pretext than most. Don’t worry, I’ll save...

Unlike many of my comrades in the punditry game, I don't do a lot of TV. But I'm currently promoting my latest doom-mongering best-seller, so I'm spending more time than usual on the telly circuit. This week I was on the BBC's current affairs flagship "Newsnight." My moment in the spotlight followed a report on the recent riots in English cities, in the course of which an undercover reporter interviewed various rioters from Manchester who had a grand old time setting their city ablaze and expressed no remorse over it. There then followed a studio discussion, along the usual lines....

Mark Steyn argued that the United States is destined for financial collapse and a decline in its role as a world leader if current political and cultural norms continue. The author contended that American debt has placed the country in a precarious position and that regulation and lack of innovation have become hallmarks of the country's business climate. This was the first lecture in The NHIOP Bookmark Series at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. 1 hour, 3 minutes video at the link:

Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has only been in the presidential race for 20 minutes but he's already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign: "I'll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can." This will be grand news to Schylar Capo, 11 years old, of Virginia, who made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days, and for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers)...

Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has only been in the presidential race for 20 minutes but he's already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign: "I'll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can." This will be grand news to Schylar Capo, 11 years old, of Virginia, who made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days, and for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers)...

From London’s Daily Mail: “Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.” You don’t say. Now why would they do that? Don’t worry, it’s all perfectly legit, the fruits of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act. So some scientists have successfully fertilized animal eggs with human sperm, and others have created “cybrids,” using a human nucleus implanted into an animal cell, or “chimeras,” in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos. Writing my new book about the post-American world, I had to resist the temptation to go too far down this path. If you start...

The New Britannia Big Government corrodes the integrity of a people, catastrophically. The trick in this business is not to be right too early. A week ago I released my new book — the usual doom’n’gloom stuff — and, just as the sensible prudent moderate chaps were about to dismiss it as hysterical and alarmist, Standard & Poor’s went and downgraded the United States from its AAA rating for the first time in history. Obligingly enough they downgraded it to AA+, which happens to be the initials of my book: After America. Okay, there’s not a lot of “+� in...

The trick in this business is not to be right too early. A week ago I released my new book – the usual doom 'n' gloom stuff – and, just as the sensible prudent moderate chaps were about to dismiss it as hysterical and alarmist, Standard & Poor's went and downgraded the United States from its AAA rating for the first time in history. Obligingly enough they downgraded it to AA+, which happens to be the initials of my book: After America. Okay, there's not a lot of "+" in that, but you can't have everything. But the news cycle...