Free Republic

Adam Clymer, who covered congressional intrigue, eight presidential campaigns and the downfall of both Nikita S. Khrushchev and Richard M. Nixon as a reporter and editor for The New York Times and other newspapers, died early Monday at his home in Washington.

Researchers have built the first functional anal sphincters in the laboratory, suggesting a potential future treatment for both fecal and urinary incontinence. Made from muscle and nerve cells, the sphincters developed a blood supply and maintained function when implanted in mice. The results are reported in the medical journal Gastroenterology. "In essence, we have built a replacement sphincter that we hope can one day benefit human patients. This is the first bioengineered sphincter made with both muscle and nerve cells, making it 'pre-wired' for placement in the body," said senior author Khalil N. Bitar, Ph.D., a professor of regenerative medicine...

Leadership: Waking up to a thinner majority, the Senate majority leader suddenly finds the filibuster a threat to democracy. So he decides that the first legislative day will be the day the Senate stood still. Only in the Bible and Harry Reid's Senate can a day last more than 24 hours. As we predicted a week ago, the slightly less powerful majority leader, on the first legislative day in the 112th Congress, executed plans to make that "day" last until Jan. 25 so he can stage a legislative coup and neuter the filibuster rule that protects the right of the...

There are consequences when we forgive the depraved. America has duly performed its solemn rituals to mark the passing of Ted Kennedy -- the pompous displays, the airy speeches, the pseudo-dignified deference to the dead. What we ought to reflect upon, with equal solemnity, is what America's legitimization and ultimate acceptance of such a man portends for ourselves. The tale of Chappaquiddick has, of course, been told and retold. But what Ted Kennedy did to Mary Jo Kopechne that summer night in 1969 is so depraved that the story bears repetition. Put aside the debauchery of the party Kennedy attended...

Adam Clymer, NYT when Strom Thurmond died: Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100 By ADAM CLYMER Published: June 27, 2003 And again, remembering Byrd: Robert Byrd, Respected Voice of the Senate, Dies at 92 By ADAM CLYMER Published: June 28, 2010

As Senate Democrats proclaimed the 60 votes needed to pass health-care reform, Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer says the late senator would have backed this bill. Ted Kennedy thought this moment would come, though by this spring he did not expect to see it. In May, he wrote to President Obama that he was “confident… that while I will not be there when it happens, you will be the president who at long last signs into law the health-care reform that is the great unfinished business of our society. For me, this cause stretched across decades; it has been disappointed, but...

The exposure of ClimateGate and the impending failure of the Copenhagen climate summit have the global warming community on the ropes. And to add insult to their injury, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., has taken his one-man truth squad to Copenhagen, to continue to underscore just how absurd the idea of anthropogenic global warming is. That has drawn the ire of the left, which knows it's losing momentum here and abroad as the Copenhagen summit is nearing the end. And that has enticed two prominent left-wing heroes, MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart...

Obama adviser: Republicans are "a**holes" By Tony Romm - 09/02/09 09:59 AM ET A video in which White House green jobs adviser Van Jones calls Congressional Republicans (and himself) "a**holes" is quickly making the rounds on the Internet this morning. Jones made the off-the-cuff remark in February, during his lecture at a Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative (BERC) event on the green economy. At the time, the Obama administration had not yet tapped Jones to serve as a special adviser on the White House's Council on Environmental Quality. The slip happened in response to a question about the Democratic Party's...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Representative James Clyburn held a roundtable meeting to discuss how the newly-signed stimulus package will affect South Carolina. He said not only would it create jobs, but also repair roads and bridges around the state. Clyburn also had some strong comments for Gov. Mark Sanford on why he thinks he opposed the stimulus. "The governor of Louisiana expressed opposition. Has the highest African-American population in the country. Governor of Mississippi expressed opposition. The governor of Texas, and the governor of South Carolina. These four governor's represent states that are in the black belt. I was insulted...

You’re not going to believe this one. Newsweek reporter Michael Hastings, while covering the presidential campaign, entertained fantasies about “taking out” Rudy Giuliani. And now he’s talking openly about it, and about his underhanded dealings with the John McCain campaign, as he pretended to be friendly and sympathetic while looking for every negative angle possible. He doesn’t even seem to be self-conscious about revealing what a dishonest, biased scumbag he is. HACK: CONFESSIONS OF A PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN REPORTER. The reality is: I quickly realized Rudy was a maniac. I had a recurring fantasy in which I took him out during...

Just in case you thought there was a limit to the vulgarity of Paul Begala . . . Bill Clinton's former adviser was a guest on the Situation Room this aftern0on on CNN. Talk turned to the strategy Republicans should adopt in upcoming special elections. WOLF BLITZER: How much of a lightning rod -- you're an expert on this subject -- will Hillary Clinton be for Republicans out there, cause they're already, in some of these special elections that are coming up, they're already pointed to her to try to help Republican candidates? View video here.

Vice President Cheney may go down in history as one of the worst, if not the worst, ever to hold the job in the nation's proud history. President Bush should reflect on his decision to pick Cheney as a running mate as a dreadful move when he sits down to write his memoirs. In many respects, Cheney is running a rogue government with or without Bush's approval. Evidence is clear now that while Cheney refused to divulge the names of visitors to his residence, he wanted to wiretap private citizens in the name of national security. Even worse, he shut...

Kucinich to run on antiwar platform By Christina Bellantoni THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published December 13, 2006 Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich raised the stakes for Democratic White House hopefuls yesterday, jumping into the 2008 race with a challenge to his own party -- end the war in Iraq. The Ohio Democrat making his second bid for the presidency called himself the only true antiwar candidate, saying the U.S. should defund the war immediately and bring the troops home. "My conscience calls me to action," Mr. Kucinich, 60, said at Cleveland City Hall. "I am not going to stand by and watch...

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

WASHINGTON — Nobody expects to get a letter from a member of Congress that ends with an expletive. But that’s what happened when Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, a Missouri Republican, recently corresponded with a resident of her southeast Missouri district. The letter ended with a profane, seven-letter insult beginning with the letter “a”: “I think you’re an ...” Emerson said she can’t explain how the offensive language made it into the last line of the letter, which otherwise reads like a typical response to a citizen’s question about last year’s testimony of oil executives before the Senate Commerce Committee. “There...

(AgapePress) - Solomon intimately understood how powerful sexual temptation can be for a young man. It was with him in mind that he wrote the fifth chapter of Proverbs. "My son, give attention to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding .... For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech" (Proverbs 5:1-3).Those two sentences perfectly describe both the power of sexual temptation and its antidote. The wise king understood that, if a young man is to successfully withstand the charms of the temptress, he must be prepared ahead of time. Time...

A caricature of a four-armed President Bush in the well-known tandava pose of Lord Shiva has roiled many Hindus and triggered an online signature campaign to protest its publication in a daily newspaper. "It's a deeply insulting cartoon," Rajesh Gooty, the U.S.-based founder of Indiacause.com, a Web-based portal whose stated purpose it is to safeguard the interests of India, told India-West by telephone. "It is totally offensive to draw a parallel between Bush and Shiva." The cartoon, which ran in the March 3 edition of The International Herald Tribune, a daily owned by the New York Times, depicts the U.S....

-snip- America, once again, has validated the al Qaeda chief's decade-long and ongoing lesson for Muslims: America supports democracy only if its agents are elected; America will destroy any regime that threatens Israel; America will not allow a country to be ruled by Islamic law unless it has vast oil resources; and, for America, Muslim blood is cheap, it has no qualms about cutting funds used to feed Muslim children. -snip-

AS THE WAR between the United States and Al Qaeda enters its fifth year, the nature of the armed, transnational Islamist group's campaign remains misunderstood. With the conflict viewed largely as an open-and-shut matter of good versus evil, nonmilitary engagement with Al Qaeda is depicted as improper and unnecessary. Yet developing a strategy for the next phase of the global response to Al Qaeda requires understanding the enemy -- something Western analysts have systematically failed to do. Sept. 11 was not an unprovoked, gratuitous act. It was a military operation researched and planned since at least 1996 and conducted by...