Free Republic

"A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war...A war is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play." - Saul Alinsky; Reveille for Radicals; p. 133 Rules? What rules? Laws? What laws? Clearly, Alinsky's acolytes take him at his word. When one is fighting a war "against social evils," one is above the law. Rules and laws are for the other people. I'm stunned by the irony here. For the past eight years, Americans have been bombarded nearly nonstop by cries of "Bush stole the White House," without a...

In May, the Commonwealth Fund issued its latest comparison of the U.S. medical system with five other wealthy nations' systems: Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Great Britain. Predictably, the study begins: "Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms." I was immediately suspicious, considering the loaded study by the World Health Organization seven years ago. (I wrote about it last week.) My suspicion was justified. It turns out the new study is almost as biased as the WHO's. The authors write, "The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal...

America's defeat in Vietnam was seemingly a triumph for the anti-war left. Yet the years following that defeat--the era of American retreat and "national malaise"--proved so traumatic that the American people have never wanted to repeat them. Thus, what the anti-war radicals regarded as a vindication ended up discrediting the left on foreign policy for a generation. You could say that they won the political battle over the war--but they lost the peace. This thesis is still somewhat new and controversial--but there is enough truth to it that it is beginning to stick. There is no doubt that the anti-war...

...Galloway's front organization, a "charity" known as the Mariam Appeal that campaigned against the sanctions on Iraq, had in fact received direct Iraqi subventions from the proceeds of the U.N.-sponsored "Oil for Food" program. Bank records established that Galloway's former wife had been paid at least $150,000 in this way. A completely separate U.N. inquiry chaired by former Treasury Secretary Paul Volcker identified another "Oil for Food" payment to the same lady, this time in the sum of $120,000.Snip...This raises two quite serious questions. The first is the extent to which the Iraqi Baath Party was able to purchase direct...

The deluge of commentary on Rudolph Giuliani’s presidential prospects has forced me finally to break my long silence about the man. Somebody’s gotta say it: He shouldn’t be president, not because he’s too “liberal” or “conservative,” or because his positions on social issues have been heterodox, or because he seems tone-deaf on race, or because his family life has been messy, or because he’s sometimes been as crass an opportunist as almost every other politician of note. Rudy Giuliani shouldn’t be president for reasons more profoundly troubling. Maybe you had to be with him at the start of his electoral...

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. It is liberals who advocate "forgiveness" of loans to Third World countries, a "living wage" for the poor and a "safety net" for all. But these are all government policies -- not individual acts of compassion -- and the actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to those who advocate them. ...snip... A new book, titled "Who Really Cares" by Arthur C. Brooks examines the actual behavior of liberals and conservatives when it comes...

There has never been a White House press secretary quite like Snow. He is a combative presence on television and radio, relishes the repartee at daily briefings and, in a first for his position, has hit the fundraising circuit for Republican candidates. Snow brings a flashy, Fox News sensibility to the high-profile podium, which means he is increasingly popping up on newscasts and in the papers. "Sometimes it does feel like the Tony Snow Show," says Richard Wolffe, Newsweek's White House correspondent. "There are tactics he uses that are straight out of talk radio. The extent to which he personalizes...

The Bush administration is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit.The largely secret project, parts of which have been made public through Air Force budget documents submitted to Congress in February, is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space weapons, both defensive and offensive. No treaty or law forbids such work.But some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on...

The AMT is viewed by many as a bad thing. Yet, consider this: There is wide agreement among economists on the benefits of a federal "flat tax" on income that would apply a uniform rate to every taxpayer and eliminate most current deductions and tax credits. A flat tax would get rid of a large number of economic distortions resulting from the many tax "subsidies" that often benefit narrow interest groups. This is tax "pork," and Congress is as addicted to it as to the ordinary spending kind.snip . . . If we wait long enough, and with some continuing...

This year is the 10th anniversary of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Kay Hymowitz marks the occasion in the current issue of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal by asking a penetrating question: "How is it that so many intelligent, well-intentioned people, including many experts who made up the late 20th century's Best and Brightest, were so mistaken?" In 2004, The New York Times called welfare reform "one of the acclaimed successes of the past decade." But at the time, the same Gray Lady denounced it as "draconian." New Jersey's Sen. Frank Lautenberg predicated "children begging for food, 8- and 9-year...

<p>WASHINGTON -- So Democratic Party leaders met over the weekend in New Orleans, gleefully criticized President Bush's stewardship and issued a ``vision'' statement that most pundits and reporters saw as less than visionary and not terribly specific.</p> <p>Perfectly true, which underscores a central fact of American politics: ``New ideas,'' ``bold visions,'' ``detailed solutions'' and ``courageous policies'' almost never originate with politicians, especially politicians in the middle of election campaigns. Political consultants, with a few honorable exceptions, don't do ``vision'' either.</p>

During Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt, a Muslim writer described his fascination and admiration for the French method of jurisprudence even during hostilities. According to historian Bernard Lewis, the writer compared French due process to the extremist Muslims who pretended to be warriors in a holy war but killed people and destroyed human beings for no other reason than to gratify their animal passions. This terrorist tactic is not new to this current war; yet, it is having an adverse effect on how some people define success. Too many have fallen under the influential barrage of the information campaign waged by...

Almost all modern liberals would declare themselves foes of slavery. They would insist that they are enemies, as well, of discrimination against any group whereby the rights of members of that group are systematically violated. In this respect modern liberals line up with classical liberals and most American conservatives in their support of individual liberty and rights. Where modern liberals falter is in their refusal to recognize that individual liberties and rights are virtually meaningless if one does not have the right to property, to freely obtain, hold, and trade goods and services. So what if another person may not...

Snip . . . As far as the future is concerned, the new government will work with all its strength for a close, honest, open and trusting relationship in the trans-Atlantic partnership." snip... The views of Messrs. Guessgen and Naumann are depressingly typical, in two senses. As a 2005 Pew Research Center survey of global attitudes showed, only 41% of Germans take a favorable view of the U.S., and a whopping margin of Germans--58% to 28%--feel the world is less safe without Saddam Hussein. But they are also typical in that they indicate the degree and extent of ignorance and...

In December, New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau commandeered the news cycle with the revelation that President Bush had approved a program of warrantless wiretaps of domestic-to-international communications by the super-secretive National Security Agency. Days later, they disclosed that the NSA's electronic eavesdropping may have been far more extensive than initial reports suggested, involving the harvesting of enormous volumes of telcommunications data for analysis. One of their sources was former NSA insider Russell Tice, who earlier this week told ABC News that the communications of millions of Americans might have been vacuumed up in one of a...

The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth. ... snip The tragedy is that Biden, who is running for president, is a much better man and senator than these accounts would suggest. But his tendency, his compulsion, his manic-obsessive running of the mouth has become the functional equivalent of womanizing or some other character weakness that disqualifies a man for the presidency. It is his version of corruption, of alcoholism, of a fierce temper or vile views -- all the sorts of things that have crippled candidates in the past. It is, though, an innocent...

The right-wing takeover of this sensible country has been stopped. With this pleasant thought, we enter 2006. In one golden week, three things happened that bore a common thread. In each case, mainstream positions won out over the bluster of blowhards. People of principle stared down charges that they were unpatriotic, loved Osama or hated religion. The results were gratifying -- not only to liberals, but to moderates and a good number of self-described conservatives, who have distanced themselves from their leaders' excesses. For starters, the Senate said "no" to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It...

''There was a police recruiting station. Forty young men lined up to sign up to become Iraqi policemen. A vehicle-borne IED explodes -- kills or badly injures 12 of them. The next day, the 28 remaining return to the same spot to sign up to be policeman. He is recalling a day in 1982 at a prison in Baghdad. ''We all knew what they meant by 'celebration.' All the prisoners were chained to a pipe that ran the length of the courtyard wall. One prisoner, Amer al-Tikriti, was called out. They said if he didn't tell them everything they wanted...

<p>If, as Thomas P. ``Tip" O'Neill once said, all politics is local, I direct your attention from President Bush's speech on Iraq Wednesday to the District of Columbia and its police department. Back in 1989 and 1990, the city of Washington was under orders from Congress to quickly hire 1,800 police officers or lose a substantial amount of federal aid. The city did what it was told -- and crime on the police force went way up.</p>