Free Republic

...But it is avoidance. And the fact is, he should be having news conferences. And by news conferences, I don't mean questions he can ignore as he's led off the stage by first lady Jill Biden, holding his elbow to direct him if he turns the wrong way. And I don't mean Biden reading from a teleprompter. He even has difficulty with that lately. ...Or answering questions about his environment czar, John Kerry, who arrogantly told thousands of workers who lost their jobs due to the Keystone pipeline cancellation that they could find jobs making solar panels. Mr. President, how...

What does it take to get fired from a job in the Barack Obama administration? Only in this White House could a Cabinet Secretary get not just one but two public presidential statements of confidence as internal documents emerge showing that an agency knew about fraud, and left the problem to such an extent that people died while waiting for medical care. This administration has long had trouble holding itself accountable for its failures, perhaps especially for the more spectacular disasters. .. Despite her failure to oversee the Obama administration’s central domestic policy achievement and to know that it would...

there's no reason to believe the Honolulu's rail project will do anything to improve traffic congestion. In fact, it's likely to divert resources from more-affordable solutions. "The one thing about these projects [is that] they are very inviting politically," says former Hawaii Gov. Ben Cayetano. Along with Cliff Slater of Honolulutraffic.com and University of Hawaii's Roth, Cayetano has filed a federal lawsuit against the rail project that's held up construction. They claim the city misled the public about the total cost of the project and didn't deliver fully on a required review of alternative solutions to a rail line. Panos...

President Obama has set his sights on yet another endeavor that will continue to perpetuate government overreach: an overhaul of President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education policy. According to the President, “The goals of No Child Left Behind were the right goals. Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher-that’s the right thing to do, that’s the right goal.” President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which receiving overwhelming bipartisan support, is reform that purports to do the following: •Set higher standards by establishing measurable goals to improve individual outcomes •Require states to develop...

* WONDER LAND * JANUARY 27, 2011 A Presidency to Nowhere High-speed rail and solar shingles are not the answer to America's "Sputnik moment." No president before Barack Obama has been so right and so wrong. When in his State of the Union speech Mr. Obama said, "This is our generation's Sputnik moment," citing the emergence of global competition from the likes of China and India, he was right. Minutes later he proposed to cover the country with high-speed rail and companies making solar shingles. High-speed rail and solar shingles? If that's the president's idea of meeting our Sputnik moment,...

Nine years into the war in Afghanistan, a handful of U.S. soldiers have a new weapon in hand, a lethal combination of technology and explosives that the Army has called a "game changer." Looking like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie, the XM-25 fires highly specialized rounds that can be programmed to explode at the precise location where the enemy is hiding behind cover. (Snip) Though the XM-25 has tested well in the United States, military brass will be watching the weapon's performance in real-life combat to assess not only how well it performs, but also what weapons

11/23/2009 US Foreign Policy Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage By Gabor Steingart AP US President Barack Obama is back in the US after an Asian trip that produced few results. When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming. There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to depart for the flight home. US President Barack Obama...

There've been lots of thing written the past couple days about Palin's alleged flip-flop on the Gravina Island and Knik Arm Bridges (aka, Bridges to Nowhere). The Wikipedia articles, like most, need to be read with a grain of salt, but there are a number of sources listed and a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knik_Arm_Bridge Let's summarize the salient points about the Bs2N and how it affects Palin's candidacy: 1) Palin did support the bridge projects when running for governor. No controversy there; it's well known and was a point, albeit a minor one, in the gubernatorial campaign. The...

McCain on the Issues: Wrongheaded 1. Favors the old as well as the new illegal alien amnesty plans. 2. Favors troop surge to Iraq to defend their borders and government, but opposes doing the same for the U.S. Border with Mexico to defend us from invasion. Can you imagine what effect this position has on the morale of our troops? They are sent to die defending freedom for Iraq while here in the U.S., McCain is giving away our country without a fight. 3. With leftist George Soros' funding help, McCain got Campaign Finance Reform passed. Not only was this...

Today the House of Representatives passed the mammoth $284 billion transportation bill, or the Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy For Users. The transportation bill has long been one of the favorite bills of lobbyists and congressmen. As I noted in an earlier post entitled “Pork & Beans: A Look at the Transportation Bill,” profligate spending is just one problem with the bill. Despite the record size of the bill and a 42% increase from the previous bill, Chairman Don Young (R-AK), still claims it’s not enough. Amazingly, he says that $284 billion is inadequate to make inroads at the congestion...

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade. A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan. Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which...