Free Republic

The world's most exclusive country club, the U.S. Senate, is in for a shock come January. Five Republicans handed their membership cards Tuesday have promised to shake up the chamber famous for its accommodation - otherwise known as caving to liberal ideas. Because individual senators have a greater ability to shape national policy than individual members of the House of Representatives, sending a handful of fiscal conservatives to the upper chamber will make it difficult for President Obama and congressional Democrats to get away with spending as usual. Pennsylvania voters, for example, gave the nod to former Rep. Pat Toomey,...

It looks as if the media will have to find another pretentious intellectual to refer to as “the conscience of the American theater” (according to The Boston Globe), “the moralist of the American theater” (The New York Times), and, most gratuitously, “the moralist of the past American century” (The Denver Post). In fact, given their track record, elitist intellectuals should probably refrain from using the word “moralist” altogether. Those words were written about Arthur Miller, the playwright who became famous by penning dreary plays about America’s alleged failures. Miller’s pompous liberalism has been forced upon high school and college students...

The DA lied. Their school denounced them. And the media had a field day. The untold story behind a shocking rush to judgment. Accused At about 9 p.m. on March 16, 2006, Dave Evans was napping in his room at his rental house on 610 North Buchanan in Durham, North Carolina, when “I woke up to thundering knocks on my door like it was going to be broken down.” The Duke University senior, one of four co-captains of the school’s highly ranked lacrosse team, had just finished a grueling practice. Dave and co-captain Matt Zash, who also lived in the...

CARLISLE BARRACKS, Pa. -- Officers studying at the Army War College walk the ground at nearby Gettysburg where Pickett's men walked across an open field under fire. They wonder: How did Confederate officers get men to do that? The lesson: Men can be led to places they cannot be sent. Today's officers lead an Army that was sent into Iraq in 2003, and by 2004 the operation became, as an officer here says, "a deployment in search of a mission." Since then, missions have multiplied. Today's is to make possible an exit strategy. Gen. David Petraeus's Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field...

He's handsome, young and a devout Muslim. He is also his country's leading pop star. But would it surprise you to learn that one of his songs, a tune that topped the charts, is called "Warriors of Love"? Ahmad Dhani, Indonesia's counterpart to Justin Timberlake, has called his song a "musical fatwa against religious extremism and violence." The lyrics are derived from the Koran and Hadith. (Sample: "If hatred has already poisoned you/Against those . . . who worship differently/ Then evil has already gripped your soul/ Then evil's got you in its damning embrace.") Dhani is a soldier in...

The news of the incident in the men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport needs to be absorbed layer by layer. It can already be referred to as the "infamous" meeting between Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho and the police officer. Freeze the story at this point, and you have simply a pickup story, another one of those "dirty old man stories," as one might have it. U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) holds an impromptu news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington in this March 2, 2004 file photo. Craig confirmed on August 27, 2007 that he pleaded guilty earlier...

Any roll call of the world's despots is depressingly long. But only a handful of leaders threaten the security of countries well beyond their borders. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, is the latest ruler to emerge from this pack. Rabidly anti-American, Chávez is intent on stirring up trouble -- and he's getting the help of some menacing thugs he counts as friends. Last September, Americans got a surreal introduction to Hugo Chávez. In an address before the UN General Assembly in New York, Venezuela's president launched into a tirade against the previous day's speaker, George W. Bush. "Yesterday," he intoned, "the...

The National Intelligence Estimate released July 17 put the problem plainly enough: Al-Qaeda has "regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" using a new haven in the lawless frontier area of northwest Pakistan known as Waziristan. The question is: What is the United States going to do about it? For those who might have forgotten in the six years since Sept. 11, 2001, what a reconstituted al-Qaeda could do, the intelligence analysts explained that the terrorist group has "the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks and/or fear among the U.S. population." The analysts noted...

Hi guys, I was just wondering if anybody had seen Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I saw it this weekend and I liked it a lot. The movie vastly improved on the original and included some terrific adventure. The film is very humorous by showing the squabbling relationships among the four heroes without diverting from the mythic atmosphere and storyline. The Silver Surfer is a wonderful character, though I wish that they showed more of him. The final battle with Doctor Doom is awesome. The film took many elements from some of the classic storylines in the comic...

George W. Bush, Hero of Albania! At least there's one place in the world where they show the Decider some love. That was a wonderful reverse-Borat moment Sunday, with the joyous townspeople of Fushe Kruje yelling "Bushie! Bushie!" and Albania's prime minister gushing over the "greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times." The crowd pressed in for autographs, photographs, a presidential peck on the cheek. Years from now, in his dotage, Bushie will feel warm all over when he recalls those magical hours in Albania. How they adored him! Outside of greater Tirana, however, the...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted today the United States' "troop surge" strategy is working in Iraq, but he warned against "happy talk" to describe the often-gruesome sectarian violence that continues to mark the four-year-old war. Gates said large-scale bombings have increased in Iraq, just as American military officials predicted they would, in the two months since the United States sent thousands of new troops to Baghdad and Anbar province. "The early signs are positive," Gates said, before quickly adding at a Pentagon news conference: "There is a great reluctance to engage in happy talk about this. It's a tough...

The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition. A respectable columnist (Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) opened his essay last week by writing, "Sometimes you read something about this administration that's just so shameful it takes your breath away." What asphyxiated this critic was the discovery that a White House official had edited "government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming." The correspondent advises that the culprit had been an oil-industry lobbyist before joining the administration, and on leaving it he took...

House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year. So far, the projects -- which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia -- have had little impact on the tally. For a funding bill that establishes tough new readiness standards for deploying combat forces and sets an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline to bring the troops home, votes do not come cheap. But at least a...

If you’ve seen the movie Crash, there is a scene where Anthony, a car thief played by the rapper Ludacris, discovers a van with the keys dangling in the driver’s door. Since no one is around, he hops in and drives to a chop shop to sell off the parts. When they open up the back of the van, Anthony and the white shop owner are startled to find a dozen Asian men, women, and children. In stunning immediacy, the shop owner offers Anthony $500 for each one without a tinge of reluctance—haggling for humans like used auto parts. As...

As a conservative author, I'm used to a little controversy. Even so, the reaction to my new book, "The Enemy at Home," has felt, well, a little hysterical. "Ratfink writes new book," James Wolcott, cultural critic for Vanity Fair, declares in his blog. He goes on to call my book a "sleazy, shameless, ignorant, ahistorical, tendentious, meretricious lie." In the pages of Esquire, Mark Warren charges that I "hate America" and have "taken to heart" Osama bin Laden's view of the United States. (Warren also challenged me to a fight and threatened to put me in the hospital.) In his...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's decision to send 21,500 more combat troops to Iraq drew heavy fire from both Democrats and some Republicans on Thursday despite a plea by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for a "national imperative not to fail." A day after Bush's prime time speech from the White House, the Senate's top Republican threatened a filibuster to block any legislation expressing disapproval of the plan. "Obviously, it will ... require 60 votes," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record), R-Ky., as senior administration officials made the case for Bush's new policy in Congress, at news briefings and...

A day of charitable remembrances of the late President Gerald Ford as an “ordinary man” buried the breaking story of someone who would like to follow in his footsteps. Today the campaign of John Edwards, former U.S. Senator (D-NC) and the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 2004, confirmed that he is again running for President. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aJp9dvmRVOxY&refer=us A preview of tomorrow’s announcement, which will occur in one of the hardest-hit areas of Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, occurred today when Edwards showed up in full regular guy regalia (blue jeans, khaki shirt and shovel) to help a woman still living in a FEMA...

With each New Year come the same cookie-cutter resolutions: lose weight, get a dream job, be nice to people, make more money, learn a language, get organized, etc. I have decided that, noble though they may be, these resolutions are also officially boring; so this year I’m getting a bit more creative. After all, I’ve already taken up running, keep dreaming about the job, am fairly nice to everyone save dictators and tyrants, have a pathetic income ceiling as a journalist, did the language thing this past year, and have come to realize that over 150 pairs of shoes can...

Believe it or not, winning the war in Iraq was never the Bush administration's highest priority. Saving its tax cuts was more important. That was once spoken of as a moral problem. Now it's a practical barrier to a successful outcome. Until recently President Bush's refusal to scale back any of his tax cuts was discussed as the question of shared sacrifice: How could we ask so much from a courageous group of Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan but not ask even the wealthiest of their fellow citizens to part with a few extra dollars to support an endeavor...

Wafa Sultan and her husband, David, were jolted awake by the sound of a ringing telephone. It was just before dawn on a summer morning in 2005, and Wafa couldn't help feeling nervous as she hurried to take the call. Two of their three children had moved to a nearby suburb of Los Angeles to attend college. Were they okay? A voice on the line identified himself as working for Al Jazeera television, the Arabic-language network based in Qatar which, in ten years, had become the most influential news channel in the Middle East. -snip- Sultan woke up to the...