Free Republic

"Feb. 22, 2005 — Malcolm Gladwell, author of "The Tipping Point," and Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and author, join us tonight to discuss the direction of Iraq." Recap: Ted Koppel moderated a discussion in which Tom Friedman (NYTimes) and Malcolm Gladwell assert: 1. We have reached an historic "tipping point" in the Middle East with the Iraqi elections. The insurgency is now seen as a small, disruptive Baathist minority in a nation that is quickly moving toward a functional national structure. 2. The positive atmosphere coming from Iraq has led the nearby Lebanese to assert a democratic national...

Election 2004 Presidential Ballot Bush 49% Kerry 43% Other 3% Not Sure 5% Rasmussen Reports Home February 20, 2004--President George W. Bush now leads Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry by six points in the latest Rasmussen Reports Presidential Tracking Poll. As of this morning, Bush attracts support from 49% of the nation's likely voters while Kerry is the choice for 43%. The electorate that Bush and Kerry are trying to reach has a generally positive view of American society. Sixty percent (60%) say that our nation is generally fair and decent. Another survey found that 64% prefer smaller government with...

AFTER SECRETARY OF STATE Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. (1st sentence)... France and those who support it are setting the stage for another momentous development they claim to oppose: the transfer of responsibility for countering the most serious threats to international security from multilateral institutions to the world's sole superpower. (last sentence of full page editorial).

[Just a few sentences excerpted from N.Y. Times Op-Ed: ] "So pardon me if I don't take seriously all the Euro-whining about the Bush policies toward Iraq — for one very simple reason: It strikes me as deeply unserious. It's not that there are no serious arguments to be made against war in Iraq. There are plenty. It's just that so much of what one hears coming from German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac are not serious arguments. They are station identification."

Post opinion column by Samantha Power Dutch government resigned last week in atonement for its responsibility for the 1995 massacre in Bosnia. The Clinton government stood by while mass murder occurred. Excerpts (full article not permitted). After meeting little resistance from Dutch soldiers on the ground or NATO bombers overhead, Mladic presided over a 10-day killing spree, systematically executing every Muslim man and boy he could lay his hands on -- more than 7,000 in all. ... ...Senior Clinton administration officials knew the safe areas were likely to come under attack. Indeed, several expressed private hope that the Muslim territory...

Democrats are getting fed up with watching President Bush on television. "In an unusual letter to the heads of the three cable news networks, ...[ Daschle and Gephardt ] complained about 'the lack of television coverage of press events featuring elected leaders of the Democratic Party." .(snip)..saying that "the Bush White House 'has received an extraordinary level of attention and coverage of their events,'" ... in a letter to CNN, Fox and MSNBC. [ clips only per Washington Post injunction ]

A poll conducted for NPR shows that a large majority of Americans are worried about whether they will have enough money saved to retire. That's no surprise. What is surprising is that the same poll shows that despite the recent recession, declines in financial markets, and the collapse of Enron, Americans remain open to the idea of investing part of their Social Security taxes in the stock market. The poll was conducted by Republican Bill McInturff and Democrat Stan Greenberg. Throughout 2002, the bipartisan pair will measure how opinions on issues may affect this year's elections. The first poll is...

Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies NOVA reveals startling new evidence that Soviet spies penetrated America's deepest secrets, including the Manhattan Project, in the 1940's. By cracking the code of Soviet diplomatic cables, the FBI was able to hunt down "atom spies" such as Klaus Fuchs and Julius Rosenberg. But the true "master spy," a physicist named Ted Hall, got away -- and his gripping story is presented for the first time by NOVA. Original broadcast date: 2/5/2002 Topics: biography, mathematics, technology/crime, technology/weapons and warfare *************** (from NOVA website:) Welcome to the companion Web site to "Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies," ...