Free Republic

OF THE 2.3 million people in prisons and jails in the United States, roughly 140,000, or 6 percent, are serving life sentences. Of that number, about 41,000 - 1.8 percent of all inmates - were sentenced to life without parole. Both numbers are at an all-time high. Should Americans be troubled by this? The Sentencing Project thinks so. In a new report, the liberal advocacy group complains that the growth in life sentences has been costly and unjust. It “challenges the supposition that all life sentences are necessary to keep the public safe,’’ and particularly disapproves of life without parole....

FOR NEARLY FIVE MONTHS, two American journalists have been held hostage by the government of North Korea. Most Americans, it seems, couldn’t care less. The abduction of the two women - both married, one the mother of a young daughter - hasn’t evoked one-tenth of the passion that followed the death of Michael Jackson or the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. Why aren’t we up in arms over this abuse of our fellow citizens? Why is there no deafening hue and cry for their release? Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were seized...

IMAGINE the sort of car you’d drive if government regulations made it illegal to sell any automobile that didn’t feature 380-horsepower direct-injection V6 engines, computer-controlled electric power steering, eight-speed automatic transmission, four-wheel-drive, automatic climate control, “smart key’’ technology, touch-screen navigation, backup cameras, LED headlights, acoustic glass, surround-sound stereo, and leather seat stitching. If those were the minimum requirements every car had to meet before it could be sold, would you commute to and from work every day in a Lexus LS 460 or some other luxury vehicle? Well, you might, if the steep price wasn’t an obstacle. But it’s more...

WHAT DO Richard Nixon and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have in common? Not much linked the former president, who died in 1994, and the associate justice now in her 17th year on the Supreme Court. But each was in the news recently with a cringe-inducing comment about abortion. Those comments are a reminder of the ease with which educated elites can decide that some people’s lives have no value. Nixon was meeting with an aide in the White House on Jan. 23, 1973, when the conversation - recorded on tapes newly released by the Nixon Presidential Library - turned to the...

LATE LAST WEEK, the Obama administration demanded that the Israeli government pull the plug on a planned housing development near the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. The project, a 20-unit apartment complex, is indisputably legal. The property to be developed - a defunct hotel - was purchased in 1985, and the developer has obtained all the necessary municipal permits. Why, then, does the administration want the development killed? Because Sheikh Jarrah is in a largely Arab section of Jerusalem, and the developers of the planned apartments are Jews. Think about that for a moment. Six months after Barack Obama became...

THE NOMINATION of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has generated controversy, but its outcome is not in doubt. “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you will be confirmed,’’ South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told the nominee when the Judiciary Committee hearings opened on Monday. It would be hard to find anyone who disagrees. This week’s hearings are all that stand between Sotomayor and one of the most consequential jobs in American life. As a Supreme Court justice, she will be shaping national policy for years, perhaps decades, to come. Long after the president who nominated her has left...

SAY, DID you hear the one about the congressman who was asked to do his job? Talk about funny - this will crack you up! Well, maybe it won’t. But Steny Hoyer thought it was hilarious. Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, is the majority leader in the House of Representatives. At a news conference last week, he was talking about the healthcare overhaul being drafted on Capitol Hill, and a reporter asked whether he would support a pledge committing members of Congress to read the bill before voting on it, and to make the full text of the legislation available to...

AS IF the recession hasn’t been rough enough on those near the bottom of the economic food chain, fresh bad news is on the way. Beginning July 24, the federal government will be making it more difficult for employers to hire low-skilled and unskilled American workers. Thanks to an ill-advised law enacted with bipartisan support in 2007, the cost of providing an entry-level job to individuals with few skills or minimal experience will be going up by more than 10 percent. Those who cannot find a job paying at least $7.25 an hour will not be permitted to work. Welcome...

IN HIS WEEKLY address on Saturday, President Obama saluted the House of Representatives for passing Waxman-Markey, the gargantuan energy-rationing bill that would amount to the largest tax increase in the nation’s history. It would do so by making virtually everything that depends on energy - which is virtually everything - more expensive. The president doesn’t describe the legislation in those terms now, but he made no bones about it last year. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, he calmly explained how cap-and-trade - the carbon-dioxide rationing scheme that is at the heart of Waxman-Markey -...

THE CHOICE presented by the democracy protests in Iran could hardly have been clearer. On one side: a brutal theocratic regime that jails and tortures its critics at home and is a deadly sponsor of terrorism abroad; that loudly proclaims its enmity for the United States and has murdered many Americans to prove it; that barely conceals its drive to amass a nuclear arsenal; that lusts for the annihilation of Israel; and that for 30 years has pursued a far-flung Islamist jihad. On the other side: throngs of Iranians calling for an end to their government’s abuses. With whom should...

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR’’ opens with one of the most famous first lines in modern English literature - the vaguely unnerving “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’’ The line it ends with is even more famous, and considerably more sinister: “He loved Big Brother.’’ George Orwell’s brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill. Its hero is the decidedly unheroic Winston Smith, a weak and wistful man who lives in the totalitarian police state of Oceania, which is ruled by the Party...

TWENTY YEARS ago this month, the first President Bush refused to condemn China's communist rulers when they unleashed a violent assault on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing. For weeks Bush had refrained from encouraging the student-led reform movement that had blossomed around the country. "Clearly we support democracy,'' he said, adding that it wouldn't be appropriate for an American president to endorse the protesters' pleas for more freedom. "Exactly what their course of action should be,'' he demurred, "is for them to determine.'' Even after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, Bush - unwavering in his commitment to engagement with Beijing -...

ONE DAY after President Obama nominated federal judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, former House speaker Newt Gingrich labeled her a racist. "Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman' new racism is no better than old racism," he wrote on Twitter, referring to Sotomayor's now infamous statement that a Latina woman is likely to make a better judge than a white man. "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw." It was a wretched thing to say, and Gingrich wasn't the...

PRESIDENT OBAMA went to the Middle East, he said, to speak frankly and forthrightly about the issues that bedevil America's relations with the Muslim world. "Part of being a good friend is being honest," he had said in an interview just before his trip. He warned his Cairo audience that he intended to be blunt. "We must say openly the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors," he declared, so he was going to "speak as clearly and plainly as I can." About some things, the president was indeed direct. He...

It’s time for Jay Severin and Scot Lehigh to settle things once and for all. The libertarian Boston talk-radio star and the center-left Boston Globe columnist have been feuding for the last half-decade, with no end in sight. Lehigh, who has strongly criticized Severin for his statements about America’s efforts to stop terrorism and has raised questions about the WTKK-FM broadcaster’s biographical claims, is now involved in a new endeavor known as “Jay Watch.” Lehigh says this is “…an effort to assist WTKK’s putatively penitent p.m. host as he tries to clean up his act” (Severin recently returned to the...

IT IS 20 YEARS since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and China's communist regime hasn't budged an inch. The government has no reason to regret its murderous crackdown during "the political storm at the end of the 1980s," a foreign-ministry spokesman in Beijing told reporters last month. "China has scored remarkable success in its social and economic development. Facts have proven that the socialist road with Chinese characteristics that we pursue is in the fundamental interests of our people." As a euphemism for dictatorial savagery, "the socialist road with Chinese characteristics" may not rise to the level of, say, "Great Leap...

Great news for Bay State talk-radio fans: WTKK-FM star Jay Severin will return to the airwaves Tuesday, June 2. Severin, who has been with the station for nearly a decade, was indefinitely suspended in late-April for caustic comments about Mexico’s role in the recent swine flu scare. It is expected that we will hear a kinder, gentler Severin going forward. That’s a good thing: when Severin avoids incendiary rhetoric and focuses on addressing the national scene from a straightforward, conservative/libertarian perspective, he is at his best. Severin never needed to imitate Michael Savage to become the top dog of afternoon-drive...

Will former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney run for President again in 2012? Romney’s stepped-up schedule does seem to suggest a second bid for President Obama’s job in three years. However, considering what happened the last time he ran for President, the chances of Romney actually landing the nomination are Slim and None–and word on the street is that Slim just skipped town. Romney came into the ‘08 Presidential game with two strikes against him: the perception that his ideological shift to the right was more fiction than fact, and the preference among many Republican primary voters for a candidate who...

'I would like to have a family and at the same time serve God." By all accounts, the man who recently spoke those words is more than capable of doing both. The Rev. Alberto Cutié, a 40-year-old Roman Catholic priest, built a devoted international following through his service as pastor of the St. Francis de Sales parish in Miami Beach, his immensely popular Spanish-language radio and television ministry, and his widely distributed advice column. "Father Oprah," he was nicknamed, both for his gifts as a broadcaster and his empathy for the struggles so many face when it comes to love,...

Jay Severin–or at least, a modified version thereof–could return to WTKK’s airwaves soon. According to WGBH-TV’s Greater Boston, Severin–who was indefinitely suspended last month for controversial comments about Mexico’s role in the spread of swine flu–may be brought back under three conditions: a restructuring of his salary (said to be around $1 million annually), a change in the overly sarcastic tone of his show, and an agreement to broadcast the show from WTKK’s Dorchester, Mass. studios, as opposed to his home. A toned-down Severin will be a better Severin. The “Extreme Games” host had a less acerbic tone during his...