Free Republic

Howard Dean has decried Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a right winger. John Kerry is demanding that the White House release Supreme Court nominee John Roberts’ records in total. And Teddy Kennedy, well, Teddy continues to talk out of both sides of his mouth. If it were possible to hear “eyes roll” the sound would have thundered across the country with each one of these statements. Whether it is their manipulation of our nation’s sitcom attention span or the elite media’s bent agenda is irrelevant. The Democratic “sideshow barkers” are getting away with it. Recently, at one of his many anger-fests...

Did Al Franken's liberal radio network Air America divert city money for the elderly and inner-city children to itself? That's the question people should be asking this week after the revelation that the New York Department of Investigation is looking into whether hundreds of thousands of dollars were illegally transferred from a Bronx community center to Air America. Only a community paper and a few Internet bloggers seem interested in what could be an egregious case of illegal funneling of tax dollars to a private, partisan organization. In late June, city officials designated the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club,...

The easiest way to get a "green light" for a movie in Hollywood these days is to steal someone else's old idea. That old idea, however, must be updated. With Hollywood there's just one formula: cinematic remakes of vintage TV shows or old movies are almost always made sleazier -- more sexual, more violent, more obscene and more cynical -- than the original. According to Hollywood's calculations, today's young audiences will be disappointed if there isn't an over-the-top raunchy moment every two minutes or so. This is the mandate to be "modern," to avoid the stench of appearing -- watch...

FRANCE -- "Hanoi Jane" Fonda seems to have tired of her moniker. The wilted flower child who firmly established her place in American history when she mounted a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun has decided it's time to teach a whole new generation to blame America first. If she actually goes through with her plans for a new protest movement, she may well become known as "Jihadist Jane." It has a better ring. More alliteration. Fonda says she wants to criss-cross the nation in a bus powered by vegetable oil, advocating the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq. She's inviting...

It's with mixed feelings that I hear Jane Fonda is going on the road again, as she did over 30 years ago to oppose the U.S. defense of South Vietnam's freedom, this time to stir up opposition to the U.S. mission to ensure democracy in Iraq. As she has, also, done nothing to protest the slaughters in Cambodia, Rwanda or Darfur, I am left wondering what she has against people of color in underdeveloped countries. Is it too much to hope that Jane Fonda will travel to Baghdad, as she did to Hanoi, to offer to do propaganda radio broadcasts...

In June, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid promised an up-or-down vote, but only if the White House opened sensitive files to Senate rummaging. The White House refused — and quite appropriately so. And so the game drags on. Well, again, it's time to bring it to a halt. Rumors abound in Washington that Bush will take the opportunity of a congressional recess to put Bolton in the U.N. in time for September's General Assembly convocation. The so-called recess appointment would keep Bolton on the job until February 2007 — and who knows what would happen then? Sure, such a course...

Who says President Bush isn't brilliant? His maneuver in appointing Judge John Roberts has completely throttled the Democrats in the highest-stakes game of his second term. The key is that Bush has used the Democrats' opposition to his district and circuit-court judicial appointments against them and made it a ratification of the Roberts candidacy. Simply put, by choosing a judge whom the Democrats confirmed unanimously when he was nominated for the D.C. Circuit Court — and whom they did not filibuster — Bush has made the Democrats impotent. The Democrats thought they were preparing for the Supreme Court battle when...

Refusing to relinquish her extended fifteen minutes of fame, Anita Hill is back in the news. After doing all she could to prevent a black man, Clarence Thomas, from becoming a Supreme Court Justice, Hill is now attacking President Bush's nomination of John Roberts, saying she fears his selection could lead to "an all-white-male Supreme Court." God forbid. Sadly, hardly anyone noticed her racist and sexist comments. The liberal press simply yawned, since white males remain the primary targets of abuse by journalists, academics and feminists. They have been victims of affirmative action, quotas and reverse discrimination. Hill knows this,...

"Turning Hillary Clinton into a victim by publishing outrageous claims could backfire and strengthen her candidacy in 2008. This would be ironic given all the horrible things that Bill and Hillary have done over the years to the women who got in the way, including threats, smears, and intimidation. Hillary has shown that she'll stop at nothing to protect her political power—her real deeds are far more disturbing than the tawdry speculation Klein is spreading." One of the "outrageous claims" is said to be that "Chelsea Clinton was conceived when Bill raped Hillary." Other alleged "outrageous claims" are said to...

Muhammad Al-Sheikh put things in proper perspective when he wrote a column in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah entitled ‘Thank you America’ in which he reminded the Saudis of a history with the United States that spans six decades. It was the late King Abdul Aziz (founder of modern Saudi Arabia) who chose to allow Americans to come to the Saudi Kingdom in search of oil. Aziz was also responsible for choosing capitalism over communism after WWII, allowing a country with nothing to grow enormously wealthy and powerful. Muhammad Al-Sheikh writes, “We must admit that our relations with America were the...

WASHINGTON - Thousands of pages of newly released documents from John Roberts' first government job show a highly intelligent, politically savvy young man, wrestling with charged legal and political issues on behalf of the deeply conservative Reagan administration. As a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in 1981 and 1982, Roberts advocated positions and drafted memos on issues from judicial restraint to voting rights to affirmative action, which were as controversial then as they are now that Roberts is no longer a twenty-something aide but a nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court. Roberts generally took strongly...

In a July 17 story, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of the Washington Post had to admit, in recapping White House statements about the Valerie Plame case, that White House spokesman Scott McClellan was usually careful to disavow involvement "in any illegal leak, though his public statements clearly left an impression of a White House aloof to the affair." This is the key to understanding White House statements about the case and the reported White House role. If you read the transcripts of McClellan's briefings, it is clear that McClellan had denied a White House role in a criminal disclosure...

The current game in Washington is to pretend that nobody knew who Joe Wilson's wife was. I have to admit that I haven’t been very attentive to the news lately, mainly because I just got a job in Joe Wilson’s office. He takes care of the missus -- shhhh! -- while I plan his “investigations.” Next week he’s off to Disney World to “find Mickey.” Look for his upcoming op-ed in the New York Times, tentatively entitled, “What I Found in Orlando.” My current favorite hobby is pretending that -- unlike everyone in Washington -- I actually didn’t know who...

I happened upon a piece in last Sunday’s Washington Post, which was written by Muslim journalist Mona Eltahawy. Having moved to London with her parents when she was 7 years of age, Ms. Eltahawy wrote that “the London bombings did it for me” and that she has reached the end of her patience with the terrorists’ excuses that US President Bush and/or British PM Tony Blair ‘made them do it’. Also, Eltahawy correctly advises that Islam does not mean peace. Rather, it means submission. And if we people of the world still have any capability of believing what we see...

Hillary Clinton has drawn a sharp rebuke from the left after giving a speech urging Democratic Party solidarity - a move seen by many as a sell-out of the party's liberal wing. The senator from New York unexpectedly found herself under attack for her speech at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council's annual convention in Columbus, Ohio, in which she called for a truce among the party's quarreling factions, and for accepting the leadership of a DLC-sponsored effort to develop a new policy agenda for the party. "The reaction highlighted the dilemma Democratic politicians face trying to satisfy energized activists on...

So, the next time someone quotes philosopher George Santayana for the umpteenth time that "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," just assume that what follows will probably be wrong. Having a Rolodex of cocktail party quotes to beef-up an argument is not the same as the hard work of learning about the past. Thus, we are now warned that the war against terror is failing because it has lasted as long as World War II — as if the length of war, not the cost, determines success. Yet the nearly 2,000 U.S. combat fatalities in...

EXETER - There was something odd in the sky last week, something that caused a Navy veteran with 10,000 hours of flight experience to have his own close encounter. The former flight engineer, who wished to be identified only as "David," said of the experience, "this was like nothing I’ve ever seen before." What the retired Navy chief petty officer said he saw last Wednesday could only be classified as a UFO, an unidentified flying object. It was a bright and sunny afternoon, about 3:15 p.m., and David was outside preparing his lawnmower. He had filled the mower with gas,...

Once again, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo is speaking for the majority of sane Americans. And once again, liberals, terrorist sympathizers (is there an echo in here?), and cowards across the country want him rebuked and repudiated. Democrats, some Muslim groups, and the partisan media are boo-hooing over comments Tancredo made regarding the war on terror. Specifically, they’re upset over his response to a question by radio interviewer Pat Campbell—who asked Tancredo what the appropriate response would be to a nuclear terror threat against America. Tancredo said the following: “What if you said something like, ‘If this happens in the United...

In a move that amused some and worried others, the Cook County Republican Party announced yesterday a $10,000 reward to anyone who provides information leading to the indictment and conviction of Chicago’s Mayor Daley for political corruption. Writing in the Chicago Tribune, Jim Walsh reports that Gary Sokien, the Cook County GOP chairman said in a statement, “The arrogance of Richard Daley is appalling...The corruption (in Chicago) is so pervasive, so extensive and has been going on so long that most of these insiders don’t even have a clue that their actions are illegal. We hope that this reward will...

In a July 18 article, columnist John Leo describes how David Koepp, screenplay writer for Stephen Spielberg’s recently released “War of the Worlds,” revealed his intent to draw a parallel between the U.S. military in Iraq, and the movie’s villains, an army of hideous space aliens. Based on a late nineteenth-century science fiction novel by British author H.G. Wells, the original story involved an attack from inhabitants of the planet Mars, whose aim it was to conquer and inhabit the Earth. Transposing the storyline from 1898 London to modern day New York, while still retaining a faithful portrayal of the...