Free Republic

See? This rampage by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who shot dead 13 people at Texas's Fort Hood Army base Thursday, confirms everything I've been saying all along -- psychiatrists are dangerous, unbalanced individuals; they go into the profession seeking the mental help that they themselves need . . . Scratch that. Bad joke. But of course, Hasan does represent another suspect group in our society -- Virginians. Edgar Allan Poe was from Virginia. Shirley MacLaine, too. They're not stable people . . . No one is suggesting that, maybe because the bias against psychiatrists is more of a mild suspicion,...

Mike Genest, who announced recently that he's resigning as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget director, deserves a respite after four years of dealing with the state's chronic fiscal crisis. Genest is a genuinely nice guy,... His imminent departure, however, is a reminder that as Schwarzenegger settles on what he'll propose on state spending two months hence, California is still speeding toward a train wreck. The Legislature's budget analyst, Mac Taylor, will issue his appraisal soon. He'll probably tell his bosses what they don't want to hear – that things are getting worse, not better. State revenues are running billions of dollars...

The most effective man fighting to deny the right of gay marriage in America is Frank Schubert of Sacramento. Schubert ran the successful Yes on Proposition 8 campaign last year, the initiative banning gay marriage in California. This week, when Maine voted to repeal a new law allowing gay marriage, Schubert was again the pivotal organizer. If conventional wisdom on gay marriage inevitability were a balloon, Schubert would be the needle. His win in California galvanized Yes on Prop. 8 believers from the right and left - from black to white to Latino and Asian. His win in Maine halted...

What a week it's been in California politics, with insiders and oddsmakers having a field day. But beware. Things may not be as they seem. First up, you'd better keep Dianne Feinstein's name on the list of possible candidates for governor. I've known Dianne for years, and the role of chief executive is a much better fit for her than being one of 100 senators. I can also tell you from the meetings I have had with her that she is very serious about California's budget troubles, water troubles and other troubles. She is also serious when she says that...

During the Clinton reign, posters and bumper showed up stating 'America...the only place where a veteran sleeps in a box and a draft dodger is in the White House.' This was meant as a statement against the way that returning heroes are treated. We notice them in every large city and encounter them in every town. But, in this fast paced society, we don't see them. We cross the street.....

The London Telegraph has the bombshell report on Ft. Hood jihadist Nidal Hassan’s ties to the September 11 terrorists. Question: Why is it that we have to read British papers to get the unvarnished truths about the Ft. Hood Muslim mass murderer?

Much will be said in coming weeks about Sarah Palin and the Republican Party -- especially after the Democrat "upset" in New York's 23rd Congressional District and the "over-the-top" Republican gubernatorial wins in Virginia and New Jersey. First of all, Palin will not leave the Republican Party. "As independent-minded and anti-establishment as she is," says Villanova University political science professor Lara Brown, "she seems to understand well one of my favorite quotes from political scientist John Aldrich from Duke University: 'The standard line that anyone can grow up to be president may be true, but it is true only if...

In the hours following the shooting at Ft. Hood, President Obama demonstrated resolute apathy to the greatest issue of our time. His callous and apathetic beliefs caused some rather unbecoming behavior for a United States President. And worse yet the American people are the one's who will suffer... And they noticed. Roughly two and a half hours after the shooting that took the lives of American service personnel, on American soil, President Obama was scheduled to deliver a speech to a Tribal Nations Conference being sponsored by the U.S. Government. Once the President was told of the Ft. Hood shooting,...

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee health care bill includes a provision that would allow parents to keep their children as dependents on their health care policies until age 26. Not to be outdone, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last month that, as Congressional Quarterly reported, the House bill "will allow young people to stay on their parents' policies until age 27." Do I hear age 28? Why not 30? As long as Washington is giving away private health care coverage, why not eliminate the age cap entirely? The House plan enjoys the support of a new group,...

There are times when even Obama's critics seem to have difficulty putting into words their reaction to his strange behavior. I think that's because they refuse to consider the simple premise that makes sense of it all: He feels no love for the USA. He seems in fact to feel himself to be no part of this country. The occupant of the office he lays claim to is supposed to represent the body politic. People expect that his reactions will reflect its joys and pains i.e., the joys and pains of the American people as a whole. They expected him...

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WASHINGTON -- Intelligent people agree that, absent immediate radical action regarding global warming, the human race is sunk. That is a tautology because those who do not agree are, definitionally, unintelligent. Britain's intelligent Prime Minister Gordon Brown gives scary precision to the word "immediate." By his reckoning, humanity now has about 30 days to save itself. He says that unless a decisive agreement is reached at the 192-nation summit on climate change that opens Dec. 7 in Copenhagen, all is lost. So, all is lost. The chances of a comprehensive and binding treaty are approximately nil. The fourth of five...

Communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and one of the greatest in human history. Twenty years ago, suddenly and improbably, it fell into its death throes. The end began the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall was opened, allowing East Germans to leave the prison that constituted their country. Throughout Eastern Europe, one Communist regime after another disintegrated. Within two years, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not only out of power but banned by law. A system soaked in the blood of millions was gone. It was the most dramatic, life-affirming...

“... America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles -- principles of justice and progress; tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings...”Those remarks were uttered by President Barack Obama on June 4th of this year. And I wish I could believe that they were accurate. Obama was, of course, speaking at Cairo University, and making good on his campaign promise of “delivering a speech from the capitol of a Muslim nation.” Yet, despite the immense power of Obama’s oratory skills (and his incredible confidence in his skills), he...

When asked about the Quran, surprisingly, most Americans were like the young store clerk who replied, "North or South Korea?" After years of involvement in the Middle East, and more recently initiating and fighting two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq-predominantly two Muslim countries, I assumed Americans would have a lot to say about the Quran, or Islam's holy book. I was wrong! On main streets and at convenient and department stores, and even in churches, when asked what they knew and thought of the Quran, the majority of Americans claimed they had never heard of it. Neither did they...

The American Muslim community is in shock and in a state of disbelief combined with apprehension as it watches the details of the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas unfold. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a doctor and a practising Muslim, born in Virginia of Jordanian parents, turned against his fellow citizens and military colleagues and gunned down 13 and wounded 30. Fort Hood is America’s biggest military installation. It is like a sanctuary where Americans should feel safe. It is difficult to describe the fear and anxiety this ghastly event must be invoking among the families who live in Fort...

The Jihadis will return. We know this, in the same way that we know about death and taxes. Thanks in large part to the weakening of our defensive efforts under the new administration, there will be further attacks against this country's population, perhaps even worse than those of 9/11.  (This week's attack by Nidal Malik Hasan serves to underline the threat.) When this attack occurs, we will see an end to all the nonsense. Our present drift regarding terror policy is occurring only because Americans have been encouraged to put unpleasant realities at a distance, to live in a dream...

Don't bring your pitchforks. This is to be our "last stand" to stop health care reform, it's Alamo time. Don't let your congressmen call it a "rally" or "protest"--make sure they say "press event" or "press conference." The point is to see "the whites of their eyes," because there's nothing a congressman fears more than a "freedom-loving American." Oh, and don't dress "too nicely." We don't want the press to start calling this another "Brooks Brothers riot" like they did when Bush aides stormed Miami hallways to stop the 2000 recount. You can feel the tension between the urge to...

Listening to the debate on the floor today, it was clear that Democrats considered it a moral and ideological obligation to pass this bill—consequences be damned. The leadership is congratulating itself now—Pelosi is already the greatest speaker of all time apparently—but there's a tough rough ahead in the Senate. Pelosi could lose 39 votes. Reid can't lose any. Passage in the House definitely creates more pressure on Reid to get it done, but the slender margin—despite the size of the Democratic majority in the House and all the arm-twisting and deal-making (what did Cao get?)—has to make Senate moderates even...

A year on from its meltdown in the Obama landslide, the Republican Party has cause to celebrate. As predicted, it won two state governorships this week – and that was predicted because of the disillusionment with the image machine that is President Obama and his chums. Those victories, in states Mr Obama won last year, Virginia and New Jersey, have caused not just many Republicans, but also their acolytes in the press, to proclaim they are on the road back, and that the spectre of George W Bush no longer hangs over them. Perhaps they are right: but things don’t...

I found it interesting that a letter that states that North Dakota can lead when referring to the cap and tax bill otherwise named as the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act was written by two environmental lobbyists. The question is: Lead in what? While the two lobbyists use President Barack Obama’s words, “Make no mistake – this is a jobs bill,” the reality is that this bill is a job-killer. Why else would the legislation passed by the House include language that provides, should it become law, that people who lose their jobs because of it could get...

The Berlin Wall came down 20 years ago, but few of the news stories marking the anniversary have explained the event's full significance. The Cold War had been raging for 14 years before the wall went up on Aug. 13, 1961. How could its collapse, on Nov. 9, 1989, have heralded the Cold War's demise? Berlin was always the centerpiece of the Cold War and, more often than many remember, very nearly the front line of real combat. At the end of World War II, the city was divided into four sectors, each occupied by one of the four allied...

Note: This is satire designed to show the ludicrous nature of the media coverage on the Ft. Hood issue. It is not designed to trivialize a terrible event but to make people understand better what happened and how the event is being dangerously distorted.] By Barry Rubin When John Wilkes Booth opened fire on President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre in April 1865, the media was puzzled. “True, the actor was outspoken in his Confederate sympathies and viewed himself as a Southerner,” said someone who knew him, “but that was no reason he might want Lincoln to be dead.” The...

President Barack Obama has RSVPed "nein" to Chancellor Merkel's invitation to Germany to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. National Review Online asked Michael Rubin and a few other experts what this snub reveals about Obama. Rubin: "Symbolism is incredibly important. When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire," the reverberations within the East Bloc went far beyond what Reagan's own supporters realized. Likewise, the moral clarity evident in Reagan standing before the Berlin Wall and declaring, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" did as much as tens of millions of dollars poured...

"The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." -Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood"[Our goal is] to be ready as educators and parents to help young people obtain sex satisfaction before marriage." -Dr. Lena Levine, colleague of Margaret Sanger and medical secretary of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in the 1930s"We are not going to be an organization promoting celibacy or chastity." -Faye Wattleton, President of Planned Parenthood from 1978-1992This summer, one of America's largest community organization networks was "busted" thanks to the efforts of two college kids...

Energy-efficiency investments Tangible gains still ahead for $25 billion initiative In Baltimore, the 300 block of East 23 1/2 Street is getting patched up in time for winter. One economic stimulus program is paying to insulate 11 rental rowhouses, another is paying for furnaces and a third is covering the cost for reflective roofs to be installed by prison inmates in a job-training program. The block is part of one of the biggest initiatives ever undertaken by the federal government, a nationwide push to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. But as the national unemployment rate crosses into the double...

Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama. President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.Photo CBS News via Drudgereport. After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak...

Barack Obama's reaction to bad news is to play it so cool that Americans yearn for a bit more drama - and some even for his predecessor, writes Toby Harnden in Washington. During the election campaign, Barack Obama's cool detachment was a winning quality, the "No Drama Obama" a welcome contrast with the "Mr Angry" John McCain, never mind the hot-headed "I'm the decider" President George W Bush. A year into his presidency, however, Mr Obama seems a curiously bloodless president. If he experiences passion, he seldom shows it. It is often anyone's guess as to whether an event or...

Let's face it, Pelosi is going to stip this language out in committee. She offered it to push the bill along the process. If the Republicans kill the Amendment they might stop the bill today. It also puts the blue dogs in even more of a quandry to vote yes or no without the abortion provisions.

When the US Constitution was first adopted there was no Federal Income Tax. The Federal government was fortunately limited in the amount of taxes it could take in. One form of taxation was a tax on goods called an excise tax which is still in existence. Another was the Poll tax which is a direct tax on individuals. The Federal Income Tax was added to the US Constitution in 1913. Everyone reading this who has ever had a job knows how it works so I won’t elaborate. For you younger readers, it basically works this way. The Federal government lets...

In an ironic twist, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also treats its employees like so much meat. And it doesn’t even pay them for the privilege. A recent story in the Style section of The Washington Post described life for a PETA intern in the nation’s capital. Sometimes it merely involves dressing up in a chicken suit -- perhaps one left over from a presidential campaign (“I’ll debate my opponent anywhere, unless he’s chicken…”). But life also involves crass displays of exhibitionism, such as the day a pair of “PETA beauties” shared an outdoor shower on Pennsylvania Ave....

The plan to attack the Fort Dix Army Base in New Jersey this year, they wanted to "kill as many soldiers as possible!" Five Muslim immigrants accused of scheming to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were convicted of conspiracy Monday in a case that tested the FBI's post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist plots in their earliest stages. The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April. The five, who lived in and around Philadelphia for years, were found guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel. But they were acquitted of...

Neither Barack Obama nor Nancy Pelosi can be as clueless as they want us to think they are. The White House said the president was so uninterested in the results on election night that he watched a documentary on the '08 presidential campaign, no doubt eager to see who won. Mzz Pelosi, as oblivious of the scoreboard as a ditzy cheerleader unaware of which team has the ball, insists her side won the night. Mr. Obama continues to campaign for the job the rest of us thought we gave him a year ago. The day after the Republicans sent wake-up...

Any judgment of Barack Obama’s presidency based on a handful of off-year races is overstating the case. Trying to decipher the real meaning is something like reading tea leaves, and just as reliable. Still, they are clues and warnings, at least, for the national parties. My reading of the leaves: independents flexed their muscle and gave Obama a warning, passing health care reform is going to be a little harder but still in the cards, and New York voters deepened the Republican identity crisis. You could say this was in a part the opening blow of Obama vs. Sarah Palin...

How does one take a president seriously who preaches about a new era of transparency while sealing his complete birth certificate, college records, and passports? Why talk about transparency while hiding bare minimum information that past politicians have readily turned over? That’s not a new era of transparency; it’s a new era of secrecy. Why talk about transparency while rushing through thousand of pages of unread and un-analyzed law that will allow government control of health decisions? A 72-hour Internet posting is ridiculously insufficient in context of the mammoth power grab the federal government wishes to pull off. A person’s...

President Obama says "we cannot fully know" what led Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan to kill 13 people and wound 38 others at Fort Hood, Texas Thursday. Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before the killings, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces the enemy, and opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam. His rampage at Ft. Hood has the markings of an act of Islamic terrorism. But in his weekly address, Obama says, "We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing."

To this day I remain baffled and somewhat dumbstruck by the complacency of the public, the mainstream media, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court for their willingness to dismiss challenges to President Barack Obama's (aka Barry Soetoro) natural born U.S. citizen status. Yes, the election is over, and yes, I acknowledge that nothing likely will ever come of this, but it astounds me that we are in month nine of Obama, yet his eligibility to serve as president remains unresolved. The majority of challenges to Obama's natural-born status revolve around the fact he has refused to release his original, long-form,...

Every Veterans Day presents an opportunity to commemorate those who served in some faraway place long ago, many of whom paid that ultimate sacrifice. World War II offers its share of remembrances: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941; Normandy, June 6, 1944; the Battle of the Bulge, December 16, 1944; to name a few. Sadly, however, one series of battles continues to be ignored. On June 3, 1942, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor, located at the Aleutian Islands, west of the Alaskan peninsula. Three days later, they landed on the islands of Kiska and Attu, culminating in the only battles of...

In recent months, at least three major newspapers have carried columns attempting to push Chief Justice John Roberts into voting to uphold a grossly unconstitutional federal law. But their cheap distortions and Chicken Little yammering will fail. The chief justice will do his job, and the country will be better off for it. On Sept. 9, the U.S. Supreme Court reheard arguments in the landmark campaign finance and free speech case, Citizens United v. FEC. At issue in this case is whether the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) could ban documentaries about candidates when Election Day is approaching. This...

The health care reform bill unveiled by House Democrats last week looks increasingly like one of the most expensive pieces of legislation in history. When Democrats announced the bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed the bill cost only-only!-$894 billion over the next ten years. But outside analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office, suggest that the real cost will be far, far higher. The CBO, for example, points out that the bill would actually increase government spending by slightly more than $1 trillion. Democrats reported a lower "net" number by subtracting revenues from penalties paid by individuals and businesses that fail...

I just can't keep it in. I know I shouldn't boast but, well, as a Roman Catholic I simply have to. We've won. I mean, we actually have won. The church founded by Christ has become the one and only institution hated by assorted Marxists, maniacs and misanthropes. In the space of a single week, we had the following: The Washington Post ran achingly predictable self-promoter and professional atheist, Richard Dawkins, writing that the Catholic Church was "surely up there among the leaders" as "the greatest force for evil in the world." He described the eucharist as a "cannibal feast"...

As I listen to the Reagan Presidential Library program, “Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Wall: Reflections from Yesterday, Lessons for Today,” my mind wanders to the killing rampage at Fort Hood, the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military base in history. As we approach Veterans Day, you wonder what possesses an Army psychiatrist to take the lives of so many? As a soldier, you know you could loose your life in combat, but you never expect to die at the hands of a fellow soldier supposedly committed to supporting your mental health. Major Nidal Malik Hasan put...

It makes no sense to see Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as represented in at least one family account, as the victim of "harassment" by fellow soldiers (and therefore a candidate for "understanding"?) He's an officer. Soldiers don't harass officers. It makes no sense to suggest he'd been traumatized by narratives he had heard concerning the awfulness of combat in Iraq and therefore resisted the idea of deployment there. He's an Army psychiatrist, not a rifleman. Since when, anyway -- read "The Iliad" for confirmation -- has combat been other than awful? It makes sense to ponder deeply -- I...

I know you’re not going to believe this, but remember that recently released partial list of White House visitors? SEIU’s Andy Stern at 22 visits must have moved into the Lincoln Bedroom. Movie stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt (if this were still the Clinton White House, it would have been Jennifer Anniston and Angie Jolie); Oprah; GE and NBC’s Jeff Imelt; phony anti-capitalist capitalist, Michael Moore; patriot short-seller and Israel-hater and what many think is to Obama what Cheney was to Bush, George Soros. My phone rang at 3 a.m. Wednesday. Groggily answering, I heard Hillary’s scratchy voice. She...

A familiar definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. So in the wake of yesterday's report that the national jobless rate climbed to 10.2% in October, we suppose we can expect the political class to demand another "stimulus." Maybe if Congress spends another $787 billion in the name of job creation, it can get the jobless rate up to 12% or 13%. It's hard to imagine a more complete repudiation of Keynesian stimulus than the evidence of the last year's job market. We've now had two examples of such stimulus—President Bush's $160 billion...

Where is the loyalty of the RINOs?  Arlen Specter joins the Democrats.  Colin Powell endorses the Democrat.  Dierdre Scozzafava endorses the Democrat.  I'm not opposed to the Democratic Party out of some sense of style or family history.  I'm opposed to the Democrats because I think they are wrong.  I think the Democrats are wrong in their basic view on the role of government and my place in society as a citizen.  The government isn't there to solve all my problems. I changed my political affiliation to independent ten years ago.  Not because the Republican Party was too far to...

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was declared "not a terrorist" before the facts were out - even before officials were sure whether the attacker was alive or dead. Failing to honestly name a terrorist attack despite the evidence is as destructive and dishonest as leaping to call an attack terrorism without the facts to support that. Apparently, the claim was based largely on the fact that Maj. Hasan appears to have been a lone gunman. However, terrorism is defined not by the number of people involved, but by the motivations and intentions of the attacker. If reports about him are true,...

Hours after the Fort Hood massacre, a grieving nation looked to the president for consolation and leadership. Instead, it got light banter and a "shout-out" before President Obama read a perfunctory statement. The president has always had a reputation for coolness, but in this case, he was utterly detached. He can't blame the scriptwriter for his astonishing lack of empathy.

Tuesday night the plans of Barack Obama and the democrat/communist party took some severe blows in New Jersey and Virginia. A strong message was sent by the American people that we are not pleased with Obama’s perverted vision for America. That he and his democrat/communist party are on the wrong track. So who is the focus of White House greaseball David Axelrod? Sarah Palin! That’s right, Palin; the so-called supposed insignificant, washed up “quitter.” I mean that’s what the democrat/communists and their lap dogs in the media shout all day every day. For such an insignificant woman, Sarah sure does...

Democrats have some thinking to do after Tuesday's elections, but Republicans don't have time to think. They're too busy trying to survive the party's internal purge and avoid being shipped off to political Siberia. Will loyal members inform on others for harboring suspiciously moderate views? Will anyone judged guilty have to wear a sign saying "Republican In Name Only" as penance? Will there be re-education camps? Will deviationists face the Enhanced Interrogation Technique of being forced to listen to the wit and wisdom of Glenn Beck, at ear-splitting volume, for days on end? Or worse: When Sarah Palin's memoir, "Going...