Free Republic

Because the mainstream press refuses to see anything wrong in the Obama administration, even the most outrageous actions are given astonishingly gentle treatment – if they get any treatment at all. So of course we hear almost nothing about the coup d'etat that is under way in the White House. People have been talking about a "historic realignment," but of course that is nonsense. Most Americans report mostly conservative viewpoints on most issues. That hasn't changed. What will change, apparently, is how many voters the Obama administration can produce out of thin air to swing the next election. And as...

Because the mainstream press refuses to see anything wrong in the Obama administration, even the most outrageous actions are given astonishingly gentle treatment – if they get any treatment at all. So of course we hear almost nothing about the coup d'etat that is under way in the White House. People have been talking about a "historic realignment," but of course that is nonsense. Most Americans report mostly conservative viewpoints on most issues. That hasn't changed. What will change, apparently, is how many voters the Obama administration can produce out of thin air to swing the next election. And as...

I don't know about you, but I thought it was a delicious moment when President Obama made his condescending handshaking visit to the press room and got testy when the reporters insisted on asking him questions. "If you keep asking questions I won't be able to do this any more," he says, sternly, like a father saying, "Do I have to turn this car around?" He was so arrogant that I laughed out loud.  And also unbelievably dumb about the press. This guy, who got the gentlest treatment by the press in any political campaign ever (while they made grossly...

So it's 2009, and I'm not all that impressed so far. Just another day. It has weather. There's some news. But there's always weather and there's always news. When I was a kid, the minutes crawled by. So much time that I had no idea how to fill it. "There's nothing to do." That didn't happen to me very often, because there was always a book. Or plastic American bricks (this was before Legos got to the U.S.), or my HO scale train set, or brothers and sisters who thought Careers or Monopoly or Risk were a good idea. The...

<...excerpted, the first half of the article is at the link>... Which brings me, at long last, to Eagle Eye. We went because we like Shia LaBeouf. Period. No other reason. And he came through for us – the same earnest everyman quality that made Nicolas Cage and Tom Hanks such beloved stars. The same combination of kindness and goofiness that makes us care when they are in danger – LaBeouf is the best thing to emerge from the Disney stable since Sean Connery. (Are you forgetting Darby O'Gill?) Director D.J. Caruso, whose work I had seen none of, is...

You know that rule about how teenagers aren't supposed to date until they're 16? Does anyone remember how old that rule is? I'm 57. That rule was already in place when I got to dating age in 1967. It never affected me much. It's not like girls were clinging to their phones, hoping I'd call. Plus, I didn't get a driver's license till I was 23. That really crimps a guy's style. In our ward in Greensboro, N.C., that rule seems to be universally respected. Including the often-ignored stipulations that even at 16, they should be group dates, so that...

<p>Sometimes it seems like this election is one big pillow fight. The air is now so full of floating feathers that it's hard to see the furniture, and the media isn't helping, as they blow the fluff around.</p> <p>But there are solid issues in this election, and how we vote will have lasting effect on our future.</p>

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights? By Orson Scott Card Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism. An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of...

An open letter to the local daily paper – almost every local daily paper in America: I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know. This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration. It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor...

We don't need a president who hasn't the courage to admit that his previous policy failed and openly change his mind -- the way President Bush did when he determined to change strategy and execute the surge. We saw your true colors when you sneered at white middle-class voters who cling to guns and religion because they're bitter, as if an entire class of "those people" can be analyzed and dismissed in a sentence. McCain was not my choice for President at the beginning of the campaign a couple of years ago, Mr. Obama. You were. I rooted for you....

They were right. Starting at the moment of his famous address at Harvard in 1978 (see http://snipurl.com/harvardspeech), Solzhenitsyn became, in effect, mute. Why? Because the cultural elite of the West is just as unhappy to hear itself criticized as the political elite of the Soviet Nomenklatura. How dare Solzehenitsyn fail to recognize that the American intellectual establishment was not in possession of Truth! How dare he point out that in our arrogance, we of the West were as blind to our own doom as the Communists? Let me quote just one passage from Solzhenitsyn's speech: "A decline in courage may...

The first and greatest threat from court decisions in California and Massachusetts, giving legal recognition to "gay marriage," is that it marks the end of democracy in America. These judges are making new law without any democratic process; in fact, their decisions are striking down laws enacted by majority vote. The pretext is that state constitutions require it -- but it is absurd to claim that these constitutions require marriage to be defined in ways that were unthinkable through all of human history until the past 15 years. And it is offensive to expect us to believe this obvious...

In all the flap about Obama's reckless comments about Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela not posing a threat to the U.S. because they're small and spend less on their military than we do, one statement he made has gone virtually unnoticed. Yes, it's important to realize that we have a presidential candidate who actually believes that the Soviet Union once told the U.S. "We're going to wipe you off the planet" (they never did). Is it as important as Gerald Ford's gaffe when he declared that Poland was a free country -- back when it was under Russian domination? Let's not...

It would have been so simple for Obama to handle this like a statesman instead of a whiner. President Bush went to Israel to affirm America's ironclad support of Israel's survival as a nation. While there are Americans who don't agree with it, this has been the policy of the United States from the foundation of Israel on. President Bush didn't invent the policy, but he affirms it more vigorously and intelligently than most presidents have done. President Bush said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade...

In a world where a snob like Michael Moore and a smug manipulator like Al Gore can win Oscars for "documentaries" that play fast and loose with the truth, it's ironic that Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which makes a serious effort to tell the truth about a problem that's seriously damaging our civilization, not only won't get nominated for an Oscar but will certainly be attacked as anti-scientific. This is the opposite of the truth, or very nearly so. Ben Stein's film project was to expose the way rigid insistence on Darwinist dogma is expelling not only brilliant...

Excerpt - WASHINGTON -- Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff. More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office. ~ snip ~

WorldWatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card February 3, 2008 The Insanity of Parties I'm writing this as the Super Tuesday results are starting to come in, and you know what? I'm going to be miserable no matter who wins. And do you know why? Because there's not one candidate who comes close to representing my positions on all the issues I care about. Love McCain's position on the war. Happy with his position on illegal aliens, at least as it used to be. Loathe his position on almost everything else. Hate the...

IT WAS THE last Sunday of 2007, and I was preparing to substitute for our gospel doctrine teacher, who had just had her second child. The text of the lesson was the book of Revelation, chapters 5, 6 and 19 through 22. I read of the "golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints" (5:8), and I thought: Wouldn't it be much more convenient if all the images in this book could come with a nice little explanation like that? And then it dawned on me: Maybe the explanation was given only where the meaning would not...

In the News & Record last Sunday, Lewis Beale of Newsday wrote about how "War films can be hard for Hollywood to peddle." It seems that "of the four flms released in the past six months dealing with the current world situation -- all with big-name stars and the full Hollywood studio push -- none earned a profit in its initial theatrical release." Stephen Bochco explains the failure of these war films (as of his own TV series on the war, Over There) by saying, "It's a hugely unpopular war, and there's a staggering amount of depressing coverage.... I don't...

      |     WorldWatchFirst appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC By Orson Scott Card December 1, 2007 A Stand-up President I keep hearing how Ronald Reagan was such a great president because he always stood up for what he believed and did the right thing no matter what. Funny -- that's not the Ronald Reagan I saw. I watched Ronald Reagan start us down the long ugly road of capitulating to Muslim terrorists. Maybe there was no choice but to withdraw the Marines after the barracks was bombed in Lebanon in 1983. Certainly...