Free Republic

Carol Platt Liebau and Eliana Johnson aren't exactly Woodward and Bernstein --yet. But if both reporters keep up their relentless focus on the details of the IRS scandal --"Targetcon," "Targetgate," "Senseless in Cincinnati" --their names will be far and widely known as the first two serious reporters to take the burgeoning scandal seriously. Liebau labors at Townhall.com, and most her work appears first there in its "Tipsheet" column and eventually ends up easy to find and comprehensively categorized at CarolLiebau.com. Johnson's work appears most frequently in "The Corner" at National Review Online, though her work on the IRS is getting...

David Remnick's piece in The New Yorker, attempting to "understand" Obama's debate defeat, begins thusly: When Barack Obama was a student at Harvard Law School, he was never known as a particularly good debater. In class, if he thought that a fellow student had said something foolish, he showed no forensic bloodlust. He did not go out of his way to defeat someone in argument; instead he tried, always with a certain decorous courtesy, to try to persuade, to reframe his interlocutor’s view, to signal his understanding while disagreeing. Obama became president of the law review—the first African-American to do...

Last week, when Gallup reported that fully half of Americans have "very little" or "no" confidence in Congress (the highest percentage for any institution since the pollster first asked this question in 1973), the news only underscored the scale of political opportunity for Republicans in the upcoming elections. But with this opportunity comes a profound responsibility. It's disturbing when the citizens of the world's greatest democratic republic feel so alienated from their government, and it's dangerous to America's long-term civic health. Even as Americans have been buffeted by the worst economic downturn since the Depression, they have been politically brutalized...

Once, California was known as the "Golden State." No more. It's struggling with a fiscal crisis of epic proportions. And voters are so disgusted with the ineptitude and waste of a state legislature dominated by liberal Democrats that they are poised to vote down a $16 billion tax increase and a slew of propositions allegedly intended to beat back fiscal Armageddon. snip Similarly, if one is an illegal alien or in need of public aid, California works well, offering a panoply of health and other welfare services with few questions asked. Just last week, in fact, Democrats in the state...

Of course, everyone knew that Arnold Schwarzenegger was no Ronald Reagan. But for a while, if one donned the political equivalent of “beer goggles” and squinted hard, Schwarzenegger’s pitch about lower taxes, smaller government, and reform seemed pretty darned attractive, especially in California. But everything changed when Arnold’s “reform agenda” was unceremoniously defeated in last November’s special election. Now, there is a “new” Arnold Schwarzenegger, brought to heel by his Democratic adversaries, and he was on full display last night during California’s State of the State Address. In the wake of the special election, Arnold pledged more “bipartisan cooperation.” Obviously,...