Free Republic

ANALYSIS Obama's budget is the end of an era The president's ambitious proposal breaks with the conservative principles that have ruled national politics since Reagan. By Janet Hook February 27, 2009 Reporting from Washington -- Not since Lyndon B. Johnson and Franklin D. Roosevelt has a president moved to expand the role of government so much on so many fronts -- and with such a demanding sense of urgency. The scope of President Obama's ambition was laid bare in the budget blueprint issued Thursday. The budget would account for 24.1% of next year's estimated gross domestic product, one of the...

DENVER – Questions about the future of the Rocky Mountain News had become so common, the newspaper's staff put up a handwritten paper sign on the news desk that said, "We don't know." On Thursday, someone wrote over it in heavy black marker: "Now we know." Colorado's oldest newspaper, which launched in Denver in 1859, printed its last edition Friday, leaving The Denver Post as the only daily newspaper in town. Since 2001, the News has shared business operations with The Denver Post in a joint operating agreement between Scripps and The Post's owner, MediaNews Group Inc.

READING, Pa.A flag is flying at half-staff outside The Hershey Co. plant in Reading where production of York Peppermint Patties is ending. After 23 years in Reading, the chocolate maker is closing the plant Friday and moving production to a new factory it has built in Monterey, Mexico. It will mean the loss of 300 jobs in the southeastern Pennsylvania city. The plant also makes 5th Avenue and Zagnut candy bars and Jolly Rancher hard candies. The nation's largest candy manufacturer said two years ago the plant would close as part of a wider move by Hershey to eliminate 1,500...

At the signing. NS.

The Election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of “whiteness” as the touchstone of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like—and how will white Americans fit into it? What will it mean to be white when whiteness is no longer the norm? And will a post-white America be less racially divided—or more so?

Eight weekly newspapers owned by Journal Register Co. closed their doors Friday, days before several imperiled daily and weekly newspapers owned by the Yardley, Pa., company are expected to have new owners. The Kent Goods Times Dispatch, the weekly newspaper for the tiny 3,000-person town in Litchfield County, unexpectedly announced that Friday's edition will be its last. Seven other weeklies, part of Journal Register's Imprint Newspapers division, printed their final issues this week: the Avon Post, Bloomfield Journal, Farmington Post, Simsbury Post, Tri-Town Post, Windsor Journal and Windsor Locks Journal. Those newspapers were among 11 weeklies Journal Register put up...

NEW YORK-When George W. Bush lifts off in his helicopter on Inauguration Day, leaving Washington to make way for Barack Obama, he may not be the only thing disappearing on the horizon. To a number of social analysts, historians, bloggers and ordinary Americans, Jan.20 will symbolize the passing of an entire generation: the baby boomer years.

Ed Morissey at Hot Air tells us how serious the bishops are about not allowing Catholic Hospitals to be forced into performing abortions under FOCA: [The bishops will] shut them down and take the losses in order to prevent their use as abortion clinics. To do otherwise, the bishops stated, would be to cooperate in the evil of abortions. What kind of impact would that have? The Catholic Church is one of the nation’s biggest health-care providers. In 2007, they ran 557 hospitals that serviced over 83 million patients. The church also had 417 clinics that saw over seven...

Thi is great email I got today. It is so good I just had to post it here. I have no idea who Tom Adkins is but he is right on. Read: By Tom Adkins Look at my fellow conservatives! There they go, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I'm virtually euphoric. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled with America 's flirtation with neo socialism. But there's a massive silver lining in those magical clouds that lofted Barack Obama to the Presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly...

WHITE GUILT IS DEAD Free at last, free at last! By Tom Adkins Look at my fellow conservatives! There they go, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I'm virtually euphoric. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled with America's flirtation with neo-socialism. But there's a massive silver lining in those magical clouds that lofted Barack Obama to the Presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America: The Era of White Guilt is over. This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn't give a...

Liberals shouldn't be overconfident. I was never a fan of Barack Obama's bipartisanship routine. His famous plea at the 2004 Democratic convention for an end to the red state/blue state divide, I thought, sounded noble but overlooked the obvious: that a unilateral display of brotherly love from the Democratic Party had no chance of actually ending the culture wars. The reason those wars have raged ever since 1968 was because they help Republicans win elections. For Democrats to wish that they would please stop was about as useful as asking Genghis Khan to a tea party. What would beat the...

Conservatives are facing a watershed moment. An Obama victory on Nov. 4 will sound the death knell of the modern conservative movement. A President Barack Obama combined with a Democratic supermajority in Congress will permanently overturn the Reagan revolution. For the past decades, conservatism has been built on three pillars: small government, moral traditionalism and a muscular foreign policy. These will be smashed in an Obama presidency. The Democrats will control every branch of the federal government - including possibly a filibuster-proof Senate.

After 100 years of publication, The Christian Science Monitor will stop the presses next year. For good. Editor John Yemma said Tuesday that his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Boston-based newspaper will stop publishing a daily print edition in favor of its Web site and a to-be-launched weekly news magazine in April, saving $1.5 million to $2 million a year. The paper has been considering the move for two years and made its final decision in the last few weeks. The paper was founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy in an attempt to silence the press from excoriating her church by offering a...

October 12, 2008 Is this the end of the American era? Paul Kennedy A few nights ago, having read far too much about the alarming drop of share prices on Wall Street, I fell asleep trying to remember those lines from Shelley’s Ozymandias that were drummed into my skull at school long ago: . . . Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that...

Barack Obama speaking to a very partisan crowd in Philadelphia right now. Said he appreciated Senator McCain trying to calm down the heated rhetoric yesterday and being respectful and that McCain has served this nation with honor (the sound of crickets...no applause), he then followed it up with "Senator McCain is OUT OF TIME" Obama just said it...in his words...it's over.

MIT physicist gets death threats over collider September 9, 2008 01:19 PM By Carolyn Y. Johnson Frank Wilczek, an MIT physicist and Nobel laureate, has received death threats from what he called "one disturbed individual," as the world's largest physics experiment is poised to come online tomorrow in Europe.

SIOUX FALLS, SD (LifeSiteNews) - On Monday, July 21, eight women arrived at the Planned Parenthood office in Sioux Falls in South Dakota for abortions, but were instead met with locked doors and a hand-written note indicating the only abortion clinic in South Dakota was closed. Planned Parenthood closed its doors after their abortionists, who are flown in from other states, refused to work under the new law that went into effect last Friday. The law orders abortionists to inform patients of the humanity of their babies and that the procedure could affect their mental health two hours before the...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. troop "surge" in Iraq that President George W. Bush ordered last year has ended after the last of five additional combat brigades left the country, a U.S. military spokesman said on Tuesday. The remaining troops from that brigade departed over the weekend, leaving just under 147,000 American soldiers in Iraq, the spokesman said. "The final elements of the surge brigade have now left, getting out a few days ahead of schedule," he said. The U.S. military had 20 combat brigades in Iraq at its peak in 2007, with troop levels around 160,000-170,000.

Excerpt - Redmond, WA (AHN) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is pulling the XP operating system from its product line come Monday. The move comes 18 months after the company launched the Vista operating system. Although Microsoft will not sell the XP program any longer, they will still generate revenue from providing support for the software as it will no longer be free. Microsoft will offer extended support packages for XP until at least 2014. ~ snip ~

Even as Sen. Hillary Clinton campaigned in South Dakota, giving no signs of conceding, speculation built that an election-night rally Tuesday in New York could mark the end of her long fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. Facing a steady stream of superdelegates flocking to Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Clinton called on her top donors and supporters to attend her speech in Manhattan, seen by many as a sign that she will withdraw from the race. Campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee denied that Sen. Clinton will withdraw Tuesday. "We do not expect that a nominee will be clear tomorrow night," he...