Free Republic

Over 270 BBC journalists have signed a petition opposing the decision earlier this month by the UK's largest trade union of journalists to boycott Israeli goods, saying they are "dismayed" at the passing of the motion. Earlier this month the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted at their Annual Delegates Meeting (ADM) for "a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions and for the Trades Union Congress to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations." David Harris: A blow to journalistic...

The new Ronald Reagan in the presidential raceGerard Baker Last week in these pages I noted the unusually large number of New Yorkers in the running for the US presidency. Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani and the current mayor of the city, Michael Bloomberg, all have high hopes of representing Democrats, Republicans and independents respectively in next year’s election. But in my customary haste, I omitted to mention perhaps the best-known face of all in the race. Arthur Branch is the District Attorney for New York County, the official, legal name for Manhattan. He is that unusual but highly attractive political...

April 26, 2007 — Sen. John McCain, who officially announced his bid for the 2008 White House Wednesday, stopped by "Good Morning America" to talk about his campaign and ended up defending himself about a joke. The Arizona Republican said that people upset by his comments about IEDs to Jon Stewart on Tuesday night's "Daily Show" should "lighten up." After being grilled by Stewart , McCain jokingly told him that he had a present for him — an IED that he could place under his desk. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., was furious and publicly assailed McCain on the House floor....

CORALVILLE, Iowa - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should be ousted if he interfered with a prosecution. The former Massachusetts governor, however, stopped short of calling for Gonzales’ resignation, saying not enough details were known about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. “If he removed someone to interfere with the prosecution or an intended prosecution, then that would be wrong and would justify his removal,” Romney said after a campaign event in eastern Iowa. “A president can change people for any reason he wants, but interfering with a prosecution would be wrong.” Many Democrats have...

April 22, 2007 -- MICHAEL Chabon's first full-length novel for adults in seven years, the delayed follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," is bound to set off a firestorm of controversy. "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" depicts Jews as constantly in conflict with one another, and its villains are a ruthless, ultra-Orthodox sect that resembles the Lubavitchers, reports The Post's Kyle Smith. Chabon, who is Jewish, depicts some of his Jewish characters as willing to do anything, including massacring other Jews, in the cause of Zionism. Like Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," it takes place...

How do you say "Rudy Giuliani" in French? The answer is Nicolas Sarkozy, the brash conservative politician expected to lead the field in today's first round of national balloting in France, culminating in a May 6 runoff to decide the presidency. The top three candidates – Mr. Sarkozy on the right, Segolene Royal on the left and Francois Bayrou in the center – are all baby boomers and represent a generational change of power. All three promise a break from the economic stagnation, cultural malaise and overall decline that has drained France of its vitality. The French people know they...

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani already had presidential campaign organizations set up in all 50 US states; now he also has one in the State of Israel. The thousands of eligible absentee voters in Israel could have a significant impact on who will win the Republican and Democratic nominations. Giuliani is running first in a close Republican race. Giuliani Supporters in Israel is a grass-roots effort to mobilize the support of Israelis with US citizenship that was set up by Mordechai Twersky, a former Bronx, New York, communal leader and candidate for the New York State Assembly and the...

THE RACE: The presidential race for Republicans, Democrats in New Jersey. THE NUMBERS - DEMOCRATS Hillary Rodham Clinton, 38 percent Barack Obama, 16 percent Al Gore, 12 percent John Edwards, 9 percent Joseph Biden, 3 percent THE NUMBERS - REPUBLICANS Rudy Giuliani, 49 percent John McCain, 18 percent

(US News) You've probably seen the "Clinton-Obama '08" bumper sticker proclaiming the Democratic dream team. Now on the GOP side we're hearing lots of buzz in political circles and among Republican congressional leaders of a Rudy Giuliani-Fred Thompson ticket. But Thompson isn't keen on riding shotgun yet. "If he gets in," says an ally, "he's running to win the presidency."

If voters on the right think Rudy Giuliani's love life is too racy, what will they think about Fred Thompson? The former Tennessee senator, who is considering his own run for the GOP nomination, was a swinging single during most of his eight-year tenure in the Senate, making him a favorite of gossip columnists, who often referred to him as the "Tennessee Stud." Just weeks after winning his first campaign for the Senate in 1994, Thompson was spotted waltzing with country singer Lorrie Morgan, who dated him for more than a year. "He's a wonderful man. He's very special to...

Her ex-boyfriend before Rudy says she'd be a natural as our First Lady Rudy and Judith Giuliani came dressed for success at Metropolitan Opera's opening night last September. Theirs was a relationship that spanned five special years. They shared dinners, theater and a love of New York. And in his first in-depth interview, Judith Giuliani's ex-boyfriend tells how he believes passionately that she will be a terrific asset to her husband Rudy's presidential campaign - and a wonderful First Lady. "Her heart is in all the right places in terms of doing good. She is well-trained for this kind of...

Rudy Giuliani spent nearly $5.7 million on his presidential campaign during the first three months of the year, a display of frugality that left him with a healthy amount of cash on hand. The campaign reported nearly $11 million in the bank and contributions of $13.6 million for the primary election. The campaign also raised $1.1 million for the general election, which Giuliani cannot use unless he wins the Republican nomination. The amount in hand is significant because it puts Giuliani on par with Mitt Romney, one of his top rivals. Romney aides last week reported raising nearly $21 million...

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t kill Don Imus’ show. It was a suicide, and that the vultures showed up shouldn’t confuse us about what happened. When Imus took an off ramp and drove forty blocks out of his way to run over the Rutgers women hoopsters –and then backed over them again while turning the car around to get back—he did himself in. It just took a few days for him to bleed out. The vultures always show up, but make no mistake. Imus has Imus to blame: His sponsors wanted nothing to do with his brand once that...

The Grand Old Gang that can't shoot straight ought to be particularly nice to Hillary Clinton and maybe even Barack Obama. Without an opponent like one of these worthies, the Republican candidate for president next year wouldn't stand a chance. Hillary and Obama are racing to exploit the national fury at Don Imus, the potty-mouth talk-radio host. Mr. Obama says he will never go on Imus in the Morning, and not in the evening, either, and late yesterday Hillary hurried off to Rutgers to commiserate with the young women of the basketball team whom Mr. Imus called "nappy-headed hos." Their...

His show gave many of them a way to reach a national audience of white males -- a crucial voting bloc. WASHINGTON — They came by the hundreds that hot August day in tiny Johnson City, Tenn., gathering on an asphalt parking lot to meet Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. It was not just that he might become the state's first black senator. More than that, even in Republican eastern Tennessee, the Democratic congressman was a celebrity — a regular guest on Don Imus' radio show. And today, with Imus' career in tatters, the fate of the controversial shock jock...

On the same day that Rudy Giuliani comes to town, a Strategic Vision poll has released a poll that puts him at the top of the GOP presidential pack in Georgia. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads among Georgia, but both Barack Obama and John Edwards are close on her heels. The poll by Strategic Vision, a Republican-leaning public affairs firm, also shows U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the Republican incumbent, beating Vernon Jones, the only Democrat who has expressed public interest in the ’08 Senate race, by 57 to 29 percent. Here are the parameters of the three-day poll:...

A new Republican presidential poll shows former mayor beating McCain; Clinton tops the Democratic roster WASHINGTON - Rudolph Giuliani navigated the first choppy waters of his campaign to sit atop a new Republican presidential poll yesterday that shows him easily beating one-time front-runner John McCain, the Arizona senator who tumbled to third place over Iraq. But the Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll also suggests conservative skeptics are still casting about for an alternative to the moderate Giuliani, with a second-place showing by someone who isn't even in the race - actor and former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson. On the Democratic side,...

March was undoubtedly a rough month for Rudy Giuliani (and April's not shaping up so great, either). But, the fact is he's still doing extremely well in the polls. Much was made of Mr. Giuliani's drop to 31% in the Gallup poll at the end of March, from 44% in the same poll at the beginning of March. However, in the first Gallup poll taken in April, Mr. Giuliani's back up to a quite-robust 38%. John McCain is still on his way down (to a low of 16% in the Gallup poll). And Mitt Romney is still a flat line...

Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean will fly to Denver today to try and put out a political fire that has led labor groups to threaten to withdraw support from the 2008 Democratic National Convention. In urgent meetings with union leaders and members of the convention host committee, he will attempt to take action to head off the threat that Democratic delegates attending the convention next year will have to cross picket lines to get in. The dispute, which tarnishes Dean’s first visit to Denver since the party selected the city to host the convention, arises from labor’s fury...

If there is one certainty in politics it is that you can never be certain about where Presidential candidates stand on the most important issues of the day. Scripted by political consultants who are maniacally risk-averse, most Presidential candidates speak in platitudes and generalities, always railing against something but afraid to be for anything. Luckily, the 2008 Presidential election offers voters a compelling alternative to the prototypical candidate in Rudy Giuliani, a battle-tested leader who has made a career of staking out clear and uncompromising positions, and, more importantly, fulfilling those commitments. For the American-Jewish community, the stakes for the...