Free Republic

Dean goes over the cliff Posted: December 17, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com "But the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer."Wait a minute. Wait a minute. That was an amazing statement. We ought to stay and think on it a bit. The statement came from Howard Dean, who had carefully re-crafted his "big foreign-policy speech" delivered in Los Angeles on Monday to reflect circumstances after the capture of Saddam. So many people are saying stupid things, that the "stupid things people are saying" commentary is accumulating at a torrential rate. Bloggers are in overdrive – see Andrew Sullivan...

Hugh Hewitt has posted links to several reviews of Tuesday's debate between Frank Gaffney and Grover Norquist, about Gaffney's recent Frontpage.com expose of Norquist's Islamist ties which has gotten so much attention at Free Republic the past few days. I checked them out, and thought they were worth a read here... December 09, 2003 Gaffney versus Norquist On his show tonight Hugh Hewitt led with a full hour devoted to a joint interview of Frank Gaffney and Grover Norquist regarding Gaffney's Frontpage article (discussed below earlier today): "A troubling influence." The thesis of Gaffney's article is that Norquist has worked...

The Dean campaign Posted: December 10, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The breathless tone of Samantha M. Shapiro's New York Times Magazine cover story on the Dean Campaign, "The Dean Swarm," suggests that Ms. Shapiro hasn't covered many presidential campaigns. Either that, or the arrogance of the Dean Campaign is equal to the arrogance of its candidate. Every presidential campaign of each party draws a huge host of true believers from a variety of walks of life. They join up, often for odd reasons, and form intense attachments because presidential campaigns are intense adventures, especially if the volunteers are young. For...

Basing the discussion on Frank Gaffney's article on Frontpagemag.com, an issue people have been wondering about for a while is being confronted now on the Hugh Hewitt show: What is Grover Norquist's deal?

Great Christmas presents Posted: December 3, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The Christmas shopping season has arrived and early reports are that the president's tax cuts have worked and the economy and Christmas spending are growing as a result. This is great news for the country and for the president's re-election prospects. But it ought to be great news as well for book-lovers. Christmas is the best time of year to give and receive books. They are the perfect presents, and your choice of title conveys messages of affection clearer than any Hallmark card. But there are hundreds of thousands of...

.Profiles in Self-absorptionTwo new books paint damning pictures of administrations loyal only to themselves.by Hugh Hewitt 11/26/2003 12:00:00 AM SOME BOOKS should be read in tandem. One pair for parallel reading: William Manchester's second volume in his life of Churchill, "Alone," and Rich Lowry's fine new effort: "Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years." Manchester's book chronicles the wilderness years of the greatest man of the 20th century, and it is thus obliged to follow the doings of the not-so-great men who held power in Britain through most of the '30s, including Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Here is...

Those who protect us Posted: November 26, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com This is the third Thanksgiving since the attacks on America took the nation into a declared war. Since Sept. 11, 2001, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have deployed to the far reaches of the globe to end the terrorist threat before it struck again within our borders. Hundreds of these brave men and women have been killed and thousands wounded so that we can sleep more securely in our beds at night and travel freely on broad roads to enjoy expansive feasts this week. George...

Fate of the Democrats Posted: November 19, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Last week marked a huge burst of activity from the United States Congress. Not only did Senate Majority Leader Frist lead his Republican colleagues in an excellent exposing of Democratic obstructionism on judicial nominees, but conference committees finished work on two major pieces of legislation. House and Senate negotiators finished work on a major energy bill and on a Medicare-reform bill that includes a prescription-drug benefit. The energy bill contains some traditional pork, but it also authorizes the construction of a new and much needed Alaska natural gas pipeline....

.I just got off the phone with Hugh Hewitt's producer ("Generalissimo Duane") - who says that they will squeeze me in at the top of the next hour...5 pm California time, 8 pm East coast time - TODAY (11/4/03)...for a quick plug of our upcoming Dan Rather FReep at the Beverly Hills Hotel:...which will be held NEXT Monday (11/10) at 6 pm. You can LISTEN LIVE online at:KCBQ.com

.Up In SmokeA decade and a half of species protection planning helps bring on a species disaster in the fires of California. by Hugh Hewitt 10/30/2003 12:00:00 AM Hugh Hewitt, contributing writerTHE STEPHEN'S KANGAROO RAT was listed as "endangered" by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on October 31, 1988. This little-noticed action launched a revolution in land use in southern California that has culminated in the fires that have now claimed at least 17 lives, destroyed close to 2,000 homes, and consumed more than 600,000 acres throughout the region. For 15 years the federal government, urged on by environmental...

<p>The scale of the wildfires in my home state is simply too staggering for most observers to comprehend.</p> <p>As I write this on Monday night, 400,000 acres have burned. More than 1,100 homes have burned, and more than a dozen deaths are attributed to the fire. The aftermath will bring new challenges, including the mud slides and erosion problems certain to follow in the wake of the first rains.</p>

Who Is William Arkin?A look at the Greenpeace activist cum L.A. Times military affairs columnist who's taking after Gen. Jerry Boykin. by Hugh Hewitt 10/23/2003 12:00:00 AM Hugh Hewitt, contributing writerWHO IS WILLIAM ARKIN? For starters, he is the scribbler who launched the assault on Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin a week ago by providing NBC with tapes of Boykin speaking in churches, and then followed with a Los Angeles Times op-ed that accused the general of being "an intolerant extremist" and a man "who believes in Christian 'jihad'" (Arkin later admitted on my radio program that Boykin never used the...

Defending the IndefensibleThe Los Angeles Times strikes back at its critics, and gets rung up by the blogosphere (again). by Hugh Hewitt 10/16/2003 12:00:00 AM Hugh Hewitt, contributing writer LIKE MOST CALIFORNIANS, I am sick of discussing the Los Angeles Times. I had intended to write this week about the sudden crystallization of the Democratic party around the campaign theme "Higher Taxes, Lower Defenses." This combination of Mondale economics with McGovernite foreign policy is without precedent in American political history and deserves close examination. The appearances of Joe Biden and Jay Rockefeller on the weekend talk shows presented even more...

.Sen. Jay Rockefeller looked shocked Posted: October 15, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com He had expected to say anything he wanted and escape without challenge. But Fox News Channel's Tony Snow had a different idea. Snow thought it might be interesting to stick to the facts for a change. This Sunday past, Sen. Rockefeller took a play from the Terry McAuliffe playbook and simply invented a convenient history. He told Snow and a national television audience that President Bush has alarmed the nation with a speech warning that an attack from Iraq was imminent. Snow coolly played a tape of the...

To: John Carroll, editor, Los Angeles Times From: Hugh Hewitt Subject: Your paper Well, you lost – big-time. We both knew this before the polls closed because of the widespread disdain for the stories you dropped on Arnold in the past week. Folks had already noticed the lopsided anti-Arnold tilt of the paper, and lining up four anti-Arnold columnists in the form of Lopez, Morrison, King and Skelton didn't help. Can you believe your editorial page carried both Scheer and Arianna before the campaign revealed Arianna to be, essentially, disturbed? Not one story of Gray's personality? A buried report on...

The Los Angeles Times is no longer just part of the story on recall, they're now part of the election. SUDDENLY Tuesday's election is more than a recall. It has also become a referendum on the Los Angeles Times. In an astonishing story from page A34 of Sunday's Times, Readers Angry at The Times for Schwarzenegger Stories, the paper struggles to report the damage done to its reputation over the past three days while at the same time offering a lengthy apologia from editor John Carroll. Andrew Sullivan has described the Times as a "Smear Machine," columnist and former Times...

The National Security GapThe real reason Democrats are crying McCarthy on questions of patriotism. by Hugh Hewitt 10/02/2003 12:00:00 AM Hugh Hewitt, contributing writerDEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES for the White House, Senate, and House face a huge difficulty in 2004: They are on the wrong side of the national security gap. The public doesn't trust their party's collective judgment on the key issues of war and terrorism. The 2002 elections underscored the vulnerability of the Democrats on these issues, and the prospect of a presidential campaign dominated by national security concerns unnerves even veteran operatives. Which explains a series of partisan attacks...

NPR's John McChesney is on the bus with California gubernatorial hopeful Arnold Schwarzenegger from San Diego to Los Angeles in advance of the Oct. 7 recall election. An NPR report on Arnold's day yesterday. Scroll down to find title.

Friends, conservatives, Californians, look up from your screens; I come to praise Tom McClintock, not to bury him; The mischief that some men make is forgotten; For others it becomes their only reputation, So might it be with Tom McClintock. There are many at FreeRepublic and elsewhere who claim that only Tom deserves a vote; If that were so, for him I would surely vote; But grievously would our state answer for that vote, With Cruz enthroned and ruling. Here, for a moment free of the shouts of the Tombots, (For the Tombots cannot be everywhere, in fact their numbers...

Betting on the Recall The Indian tribes haven't decided if they're going to stay, hit, or double down on the recall. But once they put their big stack on the table, it could change the picture by Hugh Hewitt 08/19/2003 12:00:00 AM HOW MUCH would you spend to protect and expand a business with $5 billion in annual revenues and no significant local competition? Is that protection worth 2 percent of one year's income? Or 5 percent? Maybe even 10 percent? Whether California's Indian tribes spend $100 million, $250 million, or even $500 million in the next 50 days is...