Free Republic

Four weeks before Gov. Rod Blagojevich stands for re-election, federal prosecutors Wednesday indicted his top campaign fundraiser in what they called a “pay-to-play scheme on steroids” aimed at extorting millions from firms that wanted business from the state’s teacher pension system. Blagojevich denied knowledge of the alleged scheme, saying he does not expect to be indicted in the next four years and feels “a tremendous sense of personal betrayal” if the allegations against 51-year-old Wilmette businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko prove true. “If these allegations are true, it’s a violation of my trust and it’s more important a violation of the...

Pelosi & Biden's Policies Would Kill Missile Defense Leaving U.S. Defenseless Against N. Korean Nuke AttackOctober 12, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - In 2003, House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said, "The United States does not need a multi-billion-dollar national missile defense against the possibility of a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile." Underlining the sharp contrast between GOP and the Democrat policies on national security matters, House Majority Leader Boehner states, "Democrats have a dangerous and detached approach to North Korea's nuclear ambitions. They prefer bargaining and conciliation with a rogue regime that has a history of...

Talk to rank-and-file conservatives anywhere in America on any issue on any day, and their number-one complaint is always this: “the Republicans don’t stand up for themselves the way Democrats do.” They’re right. The Mark Foley case proves it. When the maybe-a-pedophile-maybe-just-a-sicko Foley scandal broke, Speaker Hastert’s troops all went on defense. They explained (convincingly to some) that it’s not reasonable to assume from an email asking what a page wants for his birthday that a Congressman is a pervert who ought to be in jail. They also noted (correctly) that if they had gone after him on such scanty...

So do Republicans deserve to lose in the 2006 midterm elections? Some well-known conservatives say so. Yet, liberationist-left Democrats might still push Republicans to victory. The liberal Washington Monthly, eager to foment fratricide within the GOP team, gathered some irritated elephants for its October issue, featuring them under the discord-sowing headline "Time for Us to Go: Conservatives on why the GOP should lose in 2006." Led by Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, seven right-of-center thinkers mostly argued that Republicans had grown arrogant in power and were spending too much money. And it's true: Republicans have become big spenders....

As the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, there were some things I began to take note of which I believe merit serious study - but only by those Americans who actually care about the survival of free societies over the next thousand years or so. At the risk of waxing prophetic (and alienating more agnostic-leaning conservatives and swing voter types), even prominent non-religious pundits are beginning to declare without equivocation that we are at a critical juncture in world history. This is something for which one would have no problem obtaining agreement from the devout Christian, Jew, or even...

September 9, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Lefty media sources were quick to stoke the Democrat party’s squeals of delight as they floated the latest canard in the long running battle to convince the hopelessly dull that Saddam had nothing to do with terrorism and that - aside from that nasty incident gassing the Kurds, his attempted assassination of George Herbert Walker Bush, annexation of Kuwait, weapons of mass destruction programs including attempts to buy yellowcake in Africa [Yes Mr. Wilson you lying waste of human tissue, it's true...read the Butler Committee Report] a twenty year history...

Given the unhappy electorate, the Republican self-doubts and infighting, and the bullish reports from Democrats on the campaign trail, it's no wonder that many members of the long-suffering minority have been wistfully turning their thoughts to wielding control of at least one chamber of Congress next year. "I am very confident," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., a rising star in her party, said recently. "All of the momentum is going our way." What seemed like a pipe dream for many Democrats back in January, when National Journal did a cover story looking at a potential Democratic takeover of the House...

A little drama is also unfolding in Washington over the National Security Agency's wiretap program.  Careful attention to this drama clearly shows that Democrats are much more consumed by their hatred of George Bush, and their desire to return to power inside the Beltway, than they are over the threat of future Islamic terrorist attacks on our country. There is a proposal to take the 29 lawsuits that now exist against the wiretap program and have the FISA court (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) decide whether the wiretaps were legal or not.  Now this sounds like a reasonable approach, does it...

he Clintonistas are coming....in a panic borne of the necessity - to dispel the truth regarding how the Clinton administration failed on numerous occasions to apprehend or kill bin-Laden - the Clintonistas and Democrat party hacks like Richard Ben-Veniste alike are rising en-masse in a last ditch attempt to censor ABC's upcoming 6 hour docudrama "The Path To 9/11." Clinton representatives drafted a four page letter to Disney Chair Michael Iger - ABC's parent company - demanding the film be censored or barring that its suppression. "The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the...

Democrats are once again experiencing the adrenalin rush that accompanies the prospect of regaining power in one or both houses of Congress. Polling data tells them that the President has low approval numbers, and the Republican-controlled Congress is even lower in public esteem. Well-informed analysts like AT’s Richard Baehr believe a takeover of the House of Representatives is a realistic possibility. But, as has happened so often in recent years, the GOP is poised to rebound, and may well once again dash the hopes of power-lusting Democrats. Not only does the President control the agenda of government and therefore of...

(Note: Remarks as prepared for delivery by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld before the American Legion National Convention yesterday in Salt Lake City, Utah.) Tom [American Legion Commander Tom Bock], I understand that your son is flying a Chinook in Iraq -- following in his dad's proud tradition of military service. Our country is deeply grateful to him -- and to all of you who have children or relatives serving in our nation's military. They are in our thoughts and prayers. Please tell them we appreciate all they do for our country. I thank each of you for the...

President Abraham Lincoln April 30, 1863 "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too...

As US Democrats and the worldwide leftist power elite continue to push their patently insane message “It’s better to die than to be politically incorrect”, an intrepid group of airline passengers finally decided to take matters into their own hands. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, 150 passengers scheduled to fly Monarch Airlines flight ZB 613 from Malaga to Manchester either refused to board or walked off their plane. The reason for this unprecedented action? It appears that they didn’t think Wednesday was a particularly good day to die. As legal groups and airlines continue to balk at passenger...

Both Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Ned Lamont who defeated him in the Connecticut Democrat primary are anti-gun. Nevertheless, gun owners should pay attention to the outcome of this race. Indeed, anyone interested in survival should pay attention. From all that anyone can determine, the only issue that separated Lieberman and Lamont is the war against terrorists. Lieberman, although an enemy of personal self defense, was an unabashed supporter of defending America from Muslim crusaders intent on killing every man, woman and child on earth who does not proclaim themselves to be Muslim. Fourteen hundred years of jihad is not...

There is, believe it or not, one reason to be grateful for the war raging in the Middle East. But for it, we should have been treated to even more absurd acts of journalistic reverence towards the appalling Fidel Castro, tyrant of Cuba, who has this week had a stomach operation that his many enemies hope might precipitate the end of his life, and of the enslavement of his country. Because Castro runs an orthodox Stalinist regime - one rivalled in its repressiveness only by the psychotic North Korea - we simply don't know how ill he is. He might...

Why is it that the West seeks appeasement with Islam when it is so clear that Islam has never sought co-existence with the West?Islam seeks our destruction. No honest observer of this World State ideology could possibly marshal enough facts to deny this singular fact. To an untrained observer, it would then come as a bit of a surprise that most in the West are not prepared to name and fight this threat. Even after the relatively recent lessons learned in Europe in the first half of the last century, and the disastrous consequences of our capitulation to the Soviet...

The Western media’s more than cozy relationship with Hezbollah, which has been leading throngs of pack “journalists" around like pigs on an acorn hunt, has resulted in a myth created out of whole cloth. That myth is the Israeli “massacre" at Kana, Lebanon, and it has fallen completely apart. Let’s first start with the number of casualties. At first 57 to 60 deaths – attributed to Israeli air strikes - were claimed by Hezbollah and of course the U.N., the EU and every single United States network and cable news outlet dutifully followed the party line heaping charges of war...

When the mullahs of the Islamic dictatorship of Iran are not chanting "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," or not issuing money, weapons and orders to their global terrorist networks, or not monitoring the progress of their nuclear weapons program, one can be certain they are not watching comedy shows on television. Why? Because they have been getting enough laughs from the comical behavior of Western leaders and the United Nations. When Iran presumably ordered its child, Hezbollah, to kidnap and kill Israeli soldiers and launch Iranian-made, Iranian-supplied missiles on Israel, to presumably divert attention away from Iran's nuclear...

George Friedman, the well-informed if often too-clever-by-half mind behind Stratfor, the American intelligence consultants, was told by several of his Israeli contacts to "expect some surprises". So was I by mine. And Mr Friedman has spent this last week admitting that he is, indeed, surprised. For he can make no sense of Israel's battle plan against Hezbollah. Neither can I. It made perfect sense this time last week. It appeared the Israelis were closing all exit routes to Hezbollah, in preparation for a large invasion to wipe them out. The number of troops the Israelis had called up suggested a...

I recently wrote an article entitled Can Global Warming Cut Your Head Off?, in which I looked at Al Gore’s apocalyptic theatrical release of An Inconvenient Truth. The focus of my article was to highlight the immediate dangers faced by the country from terrorism in contrast to the highly controversial and ever changing opinions on whether global warming exists, and if so, is it a man made phenomena? First, I would like to thank all the readers from around the world that read the article. The input I received was overwhelming in the form of both those who agreed with...