Free Republic

I was attending a local Greek Festival in Orange, Connecticut when Local Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and Senate candidate Ned Lamont show up to press the flesh. I saw him, approached with my camera and said "Hey Ned, smile for a photo". He gets closer as I get ready to snap another and ask "How does it feel to be 'Mr. September 10th?'" You can see how his expression sours ever so slightly, even though the expression on his supporters' faces were much more obvious. He responds "What do you Mean Sptember 10th?" I said "I think you know what I'm...

NEW HAVEN — Talk about a cultural divide. Five years ago, Afghan Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi appeared in a debate at Luce Hall at Yale University as the foreign spokesman for the extremist Taliban. Now, the 27-year-old is a special student at the university, living off campus in New Haven with a roommate and taking a full course load at the Ivy League institution. ... He was immortalized in Michael Moore’s documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" as the spokesman for the hated regime. But that was a lifetime ago, before his friend, Mike Hoover, a CBS producer, who has traveled in and out...

...Harold Koh, dean of the Yale Law School, said it is ironic that at a time when the number of democracies is growing around the world, democracy in America "is thinning out," with fewer and less-informed voters; the imposition of ideology over thoughtful discourse; and an alliance of patriotism with security. He said the "bitter fruit" of all this was the lack of any competent governmental response in New Orleans after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. The Jamestown Project is headed by Stephanie Robinson, former chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. She is now a research scholar...

MILFORD — The daughter of a black civil rights activist was held in lieu of $45,000 bond Wednesday after she allegedly attacked two white police officers on a transit bus while denouncing them with racial slurs. The commotion began Tuesday night when Holly Tucker, daughter of Barbara Fair, an organizer for People Against Injustice, apparently failed to pay her bus fare and then threatened the driver when told to get off the bus. Two officers called in to defuse the situation found an angry Tucker on the bus in the parking lot of the Westfield Shoppingtown Connecticut Post mall, police...

Free to Adjust by Olaf Gersemann Olaf Gersemann is the Washington correspondent for the German business weekly, Wirtschaftswoche, and author of the forthcoming Cato Institute book, Cowboy Capitalism: European Myths, American Reality. America is not the only land of the free. Look at the just-released 2004 edition of the Economic Freedom of the World report. The index in this report shows the degree to which a country's policies and institutions are supportive of economic freedom. Taking the index as a yard-stick, Hong Kong gets the most favorable rating, closely followed by Singapore. The United States comes in third, along with...

Ex-envoy says the GOP has targeted him and his wife. By Joseph C. Wilson IV July 21, 2004 For the last two weeks, I have been subjected — along with my wife, Valerie Plame — to a partisan Republican smear campaign. In right-wing blogs and on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, I've been accused of being a liar and, worse, a traitor. This is the latest chapter in a saga that began in 2002 when I was asked by the CIA to investigate a report that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase several...

<p>After the media tore into President Bush’s 30-year-old National Guard record like a rabid pit bull into a bacon-scented postman, Democrats have been licking their chops in anticipation of highlighting John Kerry’s service during the same period.</p> <p>A new Web site, however, should give Democrats more than a moment’s pause — and it’s likely just the opening salvo concerning the outlandish actions of Kerry and his comrades in the antiwar Vietnam Veterans Against the War.</p>

<p>Like most Americans, I am delighted with the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of his ability to harm his people and his neighbors. Our armed forces deserve great credit for the dogged pursuit of this ruthless dictator. However, it’s well over 25 years too late.</p>

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Bush is an incessant liar bent on destroying America's social safety net, central bank guru Alan Greenspan should shut his mouth on issues unrelated to monetary policy and the U.S. media have done a terrible job of keeping the public informed. If those opinions seem stark, they are meant to be. The New York Times pays op-ed columnist Paul Krugman to ruffle feathers. The Princeton University economist has been writing for the Times since 1999 -- work now compiled in his latest book "The Great Unraveling." In it, Krugman says Bush lied during his 2000...

<p>Sometimes "diversity" seems to be just a politically correct way of saying that different types of people are managing to co-exist. And, while sometimes that may be a good start, a look at diversity from three angles should make it clear there is much more to it than that.</p>

<p>A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that it is time for the Clintons to pay the piper, in large measure because, as lawyers, they should have known better.</p> <p>The Clintons' shenanigans in Arkansas land dealings, Rose law firm misconduct and playing fast and loose with Jim and Susan McDougal (Whitewater, Madison Guaranty), not to mention Travelgate and related matters prompted an extensive, time-consuming investigation.</p>

<p>Democrats placing early bets on postwar Iraq providing a reliable stream of bad news didn't anticipate the administration's great luck in finding Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III to oversee the occupation and transition.</p> <p>The former aide to six secretaries of state, who served as chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism in 1999, was serving as CEO of the Marsh Crisis Consulting Co. when President Bush tapped him as his personal envoy to Iraq. During the past week, Bremer has been in Washington, where he's presenting a status report generally at odds with typically bleak news accounts.</p>

I'm with the kid in Fallujah, the Army private in the Third Infantry Division, who said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign. Rummy and his crowd led and misled those soldiers out there to occupy a country we can defeat but not control. Rumsfeld, who should never have been given an army to play with, is either nuts or incompetent. I tend toward the former. He and President Bush overreached in sending 16 of the Army's 33 combat-ready divisions to win an easy war and now have to leave them out there to occupy the desert - something...

Are the British better informed as citizens than Americans? A poll conducted in June by the Program on International Policy Attitudes reveals some eye-opening information about the American public's lack of political information. Although 52 percent of those polled correctly knew that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq, 34 percent of Americans believe that WMD have been found; 7 percent were unsure. Even more amazing, the poll found that 22 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein used chemical or biological weapons during the March war. Moreover, despite no evidence of WMD in Iraq - the initial...

MILFORD — The city used bureaucracy to stop the sale of sex toys Thursday, but the owner of a mammoth new adults-only establishment says he has something in store for Milford residents: Up to a half-million dollars in free porn. Daniel Quinn, the owner of the new Penthouse Boutique on Banner Drive, made the vow to give away merchandise Thursday not long after learning red tape would stop sales at his 10,000-square-foot store for up to 30 days. City officials put an 11th hour stop to opening day sales after discovering that Quinn had not obtained a permit from police...

<p>Joe Lieberman is having fund-raising troubles. He is at the bottom of the pack of the five front-runners for the Democratic nomination for president. The fund-raising leader, U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, had raised almost $13 million by the end of June; Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, $10.2 million; U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt, $9.75 million; Lieberman $8.15 million.</p>

Recently a wealthy Chicago couple named Drobney announced their plan to bankroll a left-wing talk radio station. They needn’t bother: the Left already has a multimedia star—and even without a radio station, he’s bigger than Rush, has more fans than O’Reilly, and sells books faster than Coulter...

<p>The critics of the Iraq war joined by Democrats who want to be president are in full cry again. Iraq is a quagmire. President Bush lied in his State of the Union speech. Since no weapons of mass destruction have been found, there must not have been any.</p>

Last winter I was a pregnant teenager, but I am not a single mother. My boyfriend and I decided to be unselfish and give our child the chance at the best life he could have: He was given a family by adoption. Our home pregnancy test came back positive. Panic-stricken, we rushed to Planned Parenthood, hoping against hope that this test would come back negative. We were not so lucky. Speaking through tears, we asked the nurse what to do. Instead of being given options, we were given one option - abortion. This, according to the Planned Parenthood nurse, would...

Poor Joe Lieberman. Ever since he burst on the national scene three years ago as Al Gore's vice presidential running mate, he's been repeatedly called on the carpet by blacks. Thursday, he apologized to the NAACP for missing the group's candidate forum earlier this week in Miami. He has nothing to feel sorry for. The NAACP and black Democrats have long slammed him for his support of state-funded school vouchers allowing parents to move children from public to private schools and for his 1998 support for California's Proposition 209, which banned state-funded affirmative action programs. These are the two litmus-test...