Free Republic

George Bush is a master at disguising the punch. In 2000, he fooled Al Gore into underestimating his talent as a politician, causing Mr Gore to overreach. This time, he has forced John Kerry to have the wrong conversation with the voters. When he should have been telling the voters his plan for the future, Mr Kerry has been spending his time talking about the past, believing that Vietnam was the way to establish his credibility. Consequently, when the Republicans raised doubts about Mr Kerry's service in Vietnam last month, he had nothing to fall back on. Money talk This...

My husband (Patrickhenryinva) and I ask for you to pray for our dear child. He's 13. He might have an unusually-presenting glaucoma. The alternatives are even worse. If it's LHNO, he could lose the other eye in similar fasion before Christmas. He might also have a brain tumor. Glaucoma is suspected because His intraocular pressure is elevated, and he has optic nerve "cupping" that is typical of glaucoma. He has completely lost the central visual field in his left eye, though the peripheral vision is completely intact. Usually, glaucoma knocks out the peripheral vision and spares the central vision. Visual...

Here’s something you might enjoy: This is, of course, what a liberated Iraqi shouted to the American troops as they rumbled past. This was what America meant to him. You may say it’s a crude reduction of a shallow culture. I say we put it on the twenty dollar bill. (Here’s a small one for your website, if you so desire.)

Donald Rumsfeld Press Briefing Donald Rumsfield.....Darrell Hammond Reporter #1.....Ana Gasteyer Reporter #2.....Seth Meyers Reporter #3.....Rachel Dratch Reporter #4.....Will Ferrell Reporter #5.....Amy Poehler Reporter #6.....Maya Rudolph Reporter #7.....Dean Edwards Donald Rumsfeld: Uh.. [ checks his watch ] ..good afternoon. Today marks the end of the sixth week of our military campaign in Afghanistan. Although the campaign continues to meet with success, let me remind you, as I've done many times before, it's only part of the larger war on terror! Now, I'll be happy to take any questions you may have. [ acknowledges reporter ] Yes? Reporter #1: Today also...

Well, that’s it. War’s lost. It’s amazing how fast things change; in Afghanistan, it took three weeks before someone whispered “Quagmire” and all was forsaken; this time it took but five days before an intrepid reporter stood up at a briefing and asked the military spokesman whether the specter of Vietnam loomed again over the swaggering, clay-footed giant of American power. Right now on TV some reporter is interviewing some bulky pink ex-general about BLACK SUNDAY, noting that everything was going magnificently on Friday, and now we’re meeting - are you ready for this? - resistance. The BBC (about which...

SALT LAKE CITY, March 14 — Plans were under way Friday for a formal review of the Elizabeth Smart investigation, as questions surfaced about police tactics and even the chief investigator acknowledged he made the wrong choice in not releasing a sketch of Brian David Mitchell, the man found with Smart, months earlier. In addition, Mitchell was picked up by police at least twice, then released, during the nine months Elizabeth was held captive....   View scenes from the return of Elizabeth Smart.        SALT LAKE CITY Mayor Rocky Anderson announced an independent panel will be formed to...

Dad Says Utah Girl 'Brainwashed' by Alleged CaptorBy Sue Pleming WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The drifter suspected of snatching a 15-year-old Utah girl rescued after a nine-month ordeal was described on Thursday as a man who believed he was a prophet and who likely brainwashed the child. Elizabeth Smart was found alive on Wednesday in what relatives described as a "miracle," and reunited with her family after police received a tip from two people in a store just miles from the girl's home where she was abducted from her bedroom last June.The teen-ager's father, Ed Smart, told reporters he believed his...

I’m writing this on the anniversary of the murder of Daniel Pearl. Keep that in mind: Thanks to LGF and MEMRI, I’ve become somewhat familiar with the torrents of venom that pour from some mosques in the Middle East. The excerpts I’ve read always end with a plea to God to rev up the slaughter ASAP, with the Jews and the Crusaders being first in line for righteous smiting. There’s a lot of talk about shaking the ground under their feet, terrifying the sons of monkeys, etc etc. On the cool medium of a laptop screen the words look, well,...

And now, disgust. Glenn linked to this story http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_1544480,00.html about an award-winning piece of art in Denver. It’s called “Self Portrait of a Martyr.” Here's the painting: [Go to "the Bleat" URL above to see the picture] I was initially interested by the newspaper story, which is a perfect window into modern journalism. Here’s the opening of the piece: A prize-winning painting by a local artist has so disturbed some students at the Art Students League of Denver that they want it moved to a less-prominent spot in the school. School officials refuse to do that. Got it? The controversy...

OSCAR winner Russell Crowe has blasted the Red Cross for taking too much profit from a telethon for victims of the Bali bombing. Crowe was criticised for refusing to appear in the telethon held in the aftermath of the October 12 blast which killed 191 people, almost half of them Australian. But Crowe, 38, told British newspaper The Sun he turned it down because the Red Cross's cut of the profit was too much. The week before the Bali telethon, he did a program for Farm Hand, from which the Red Cross took a "reasonable" 2.5 per cent of the...

...I was keen to see where Mondale landed on foreign policy. I tuned into his press conference this morning, expecting to learn something. And I did. He wants to make sure children are ready for school. He said that. It wasn’t his top issue; I’ll grant. But it nagged me all day. Does he want to set national standards for peanut-butter thickness on lunchtime sandwiches? Have a national initiative to encourage parents to put the milk money in childrens’ coat pockets the night before school? The entire press conference was full of these vague declamations - it was a litany...

In doing some research for today’s Mondale column, I reread his speech at the 1984 Democratic convention. Here’s a real time-capsule moment for you: “When we speak of change, the words are Gary Hart's. When we speak of hope, the fire is Jesse Jackson's. When we speak of caring, the spirit is Ted Kennedy's. When we speak of the future, the message is Geraldine Ferraro” Well, at least one out of four didn’t cheat on his wife. What a snapshot of 1984: a time when Gary Hart was the 845th blurry photocopy of JFK to be handed around, when Jesse...

FLINT, Mich. (AP) - The man who co-owned the blue Chevrolet Caprice believed to have been used in the Washington-area sniper attacks appeared in court Sunday and is fully cooperating with federal authorities, his attorney said. He said investigators already had questioned his client, Nathaniel O. Osbourne, at length. Osbourne, 26, waived his right to a detention hearing in Michigan, where he was arrested Saturday, and agreed to be moved to federal custody in Maryland. Sasse said he expected U.S. marshals to take Osbourne to Maryland in the next three days. The Jamaican citizen, described as a friend of sniper...

Saw this on Lileks blog today (www.lileks.com) Here was one moment when I just felt naked and dead: Well, that was the same moment for me. And the passengers and crew saved me from a kind of breaking inside I can't articulate. I thank them every day. God keep them and bless them.

...It’s as if people of Dayton’s ilk believe they’re really Senators in some transnational body that represents the world, not a weirdly-shaped state with its head jammed up against the broad flat butt of Canada...

...Some people assume that just because I work at the StarTribune my tongue is thick with Terry McAulliffe’s shoe polish, and they assume I believe certain things...

There are two ways for a religion to approach life: A) Everything is permitted except that which is forbidden; over time, we work out the details as the situations arise. B) Everything is forbidden except that which is permitted, and we will work out the details in advance. The latter seems to characterize the mindset of some of Islamic scholars; they certainly appear to spend more time deciding what is sinful than any Lutherans I know. (Depending on the synod.) This morning I found myself paging through a site that laid out the rules for various human pursuits according to...

A 9-year-old blind and deaf girl who died after tumbling from a third-floor apartment window often was left home alone and recently fell down the stairs when she was not supervised, neighbors said. An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday on Parwin Husan, who appeared to have been tied to a radiator and somehow broke free, authorities said. She then either jumped or fell from the window. Neighbors said they cared for Husan for five hours after she fell last month until her mother returned. Some neighbors then spoke to the girl's stepfather. "We told him, 'Don't leave this girl inside...

First the front-page search utility was destroyed, the ability to restrict searched completely removed. Now the self-search! There is no toggle between comments made "by" and comments made "to" the freeper doing the self search, (also no way to see both at the same time using the self-search button) What's the deal?

Where can I find the full search utility? The one that would search by standard parameters such as "By: anyusername" or "to: anyusername"? For example, when I wanted to see if registered had any cool new photoshops up, I could type "by: registered" in the search box and pull up his latest cool photoshop creations. Or, I could type "by: DUshill" and check out the kinds of topics he posted to, and the comments he made. Or, I could enter "to: monkeyman" to see what folks were saying about his latest post. How does one do that now?