Free Republic

Death tugs at my ear and says, 'Live, I am coming.'" Were Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. alive today, he might ascribe that line not to death but to nuclear terrorism. Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have had to live with the knowledge that the next time the terrorists strike, it could be not with airplanes capable of killing thousands but atomic bombs capable of killing hundreds of thousands. The prospect has created a sense of profound vulnerability. It has shaped our view of government policies aimed at combating terrorism (filtered through Jack Bauer). It helped mobilize...

Does anyone else have a hard time accepting that the 2008 Presidential race is really going to be between Hillary Clinton and John McCain? Where's the camera crew and Ashton Kutcher? We must be getting Punk'd. How can anyone with intelligence and a conscience vote for Hillary Clinton? Are Democrats as a whole really that stupid and evil? And seriously, the best the Republican party can do is George Bush and then John McCain? Is true conservatism dead?

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics. There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing...

(The Politico) News flash: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) just praised Rush Limbaugh on the Senate floor. Yup, the same Reid who lashed out at the radio show host earlier this month and rounded up 40 Democratic senators to sign a letter to Clear Channel boss Mark May, urging him to repudiate Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment, which was interpreted by some as an attack on soldiers who oppose the Iraq war. But oh, how the storyline has changed. Limbaugh put the letter up for auction on Ebay, and it is now fetching more than $2 million. The proceeds will benefit...

Getting Desperate, Bush Plays The Terror Card In a way, you can’t blame him. He can’t defend his record on the economy, health care, immigration or Social Security. He certainly can’t defend the war in Iraq. There’s only one way George Bush and Republicans can possibly win in November — and that’s to scare the hell out of the American people. So it’s no surprise that President Bush gave four speeches in one week, all trying to tie an unpopular war in Iraq to a still-popular (barely) war on terror. If you believe George Bush — and fewer and fewer...

Sen. Ted Kennedy blasted the Bush administration Sunday morning for "subsuming" the nation in "scandal after scandal," saying: "Clearly there has to be a cleaning of the White House." Asked about reports Saturday that Bush ordered his staff to attend ethics training classes, Kennedy told NBC's "Meet the Press": "I think ethics has to be more than a class, doesn't it . . . Ethics has to be a much more basic and fundamental issue." "Clearly there has to be a cleaning of the White House," Kennedy railed. "We have a damaged presidency and a tarnished White House . ....

What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right? While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.Stars with bars:Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.Some things are better left...

Saturday after Thanksgiving is the traditional day to purchase stamps for my annual Christmas card mailing... [snip] So, shortly before noon on that most recent post-turkey day, I sauntered into a neighborhood "U.S. Postal Store," [snip] and headed for the stamps-only section. I quickly found a packed wall of display racks offering a panoply of first-class postage devoted to the various elements of the year-end holiday season, specifically: 1) Christmas, featuring colorful, contemporary designs of Santa Claus with an array of inanimate, secular Yule symbols; 2) Kwanzaa, with not just one but two stamps promoting a totally fabricated "harvest holiday"...