Free Republic

.Spin vs. security Posted: April 14, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Why were some members of the 9-11 Commission on the Sunday shows this past Easter weekend? Isn't the Commission supposed to be non-partisan? Isn't it supposed to be acting in the national interest? Isn't it supposed to speak with one voice on the means by which another 9-11 might be avoided? If so, why would Democrats Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey feel obliged to appear on newsmaker shows? What "news" are they trying to make? The truth is obvious: Ben-Veniste and Kerrey have thrown the national interest overboard in order...

.Silence won't work any longer Posted: March 31, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com "People in Rome are becoming more and more aware there's a problem with John Kerry," a Vatican official – an American – told Time Magazine this week, "and a potential scandal with his apparent profession of his Catholic faith and some of his stances, particularly abortion." When John Kerry attended Mass during his skiing-snowboarding-upbraiding-the secret-service-agent-falling-down-repeatedly vacation, and then jetted off to make a rare appearance in the United States Senate to vote against a bill defining an unborn child as, well, an unborn child, devout Catholics across the...

Without a Federal Marriage Amendment, the gay marriage movement is threatening to overturn one of our bedrock legal principles: that all laws stem from the consent of the governed. THE WASHINGTON POST opened its Wednesday coverage of Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on an amendment to the United States Constitution concerning marriage with the hardly neutral declaration that "[d]espite indications that a bill to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriages has little hope of passage, GOP congressional leaders continued to push the amendment yesterday, prompting Democrats to charge that Republicans are orchestrating an emotionally divisive issue for the fall...

JOHN KERRY presented President Bush with a St. Patrick's Day gift via the Wednesday morning New York Times. Responding to a new Bush ad reminding voters that Kerry had voted against last year's $87 billion dollar appropriation to support the troops deployed in Iraq, Kerry responded: "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." This beautiful bit of nonsense from the nominee followed Sunday's Miami Herald piece on Kerry's many positions on Cuba and Cuba-related issues. The choice paragraphs from among many: "Asked in the Herald interview last year about sending Elián back to Cuba,...

John Kerry and his Harvey the Rabbit leaders Posted: March 17, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com John Kerry is caught in a lie. And it is an obvious lie, and it is hurting him. Kerry and his allies have made credibility a central issue in the presidential campaign, repeatedly accusing George W. Bush of lying in order to push the country into war. Of course, the president did no such thing, and no serious analyst argues that the WMD data was fabricated by the Bush team because every Western intelligence service believed that Saddam possessed stockpiles of WMD. So too...

.Rise of the MilblogsSome of the best sources of information on the war are from the people actually fighting it--and their blogs.by Hugh Hewitt 03/12/2004 12:00:00 AM AS THE WAR enters a phase where most of the fighting is far removed from the networks' cameras, it gets harder and harder to find reliable news on the conflict's many fronts.Unless you read the milblogs, that is. "Milblogs" is short for "military blogs"--online journals run by active duty military or reservists who have returned to civilian life for the time being. These first person accounts of the world and the nation through...

'Scary John Kerry' lying to Americans? Posted: March 10, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com On Monday, John Kerry shocked the reporters in attendance at a Florida fund-raiser when he declared to the audience that "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, 'You've got to win, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that." CNN did a search of the available records of Kerry meetings over the course of his candidacy and could not find any meeting with any foreign leader. The generous...

JOHN EDWARDS had one thing right: There are two Americas. But he botched the description of the line dividing these Americas--not surprising given that, after all these months and all that trial lawyer cash, he managed only to win the Democratic primary in South Carolina, which is like a Republican winning only the GOP primary in Washington, D.C. The dividing line between Americans runs between those who are serious about the world and the nation and those who are silly on these subjects. Silly people listen to Michael Moore. Silly people issue marriage licenses to couples ineligible to receive them...

Lawlessness and civil disobedience Posted: March 3, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com The radical nature of the ongoing confrontation over homosexual marriage is obscured by the subject matter. Gay couples are common in large, urban areas, so their public affection hardly causes a ripple in many parts of America, but other parts of the country are scandalized. The debate over homosexuality in general, and gay marriage in particular, is also difficult to separate from the debate over religion in public life. There is such intense anger on both sides of the issue that debates flare suddenly into shouting matches. The issue...

The Washington Post's Paul Farhi had a story Saturday morning on how the echoes of John Kerry's 1971 testimony are beginning to be heard in the 2004 campaign. I wrote about the reaction to my playing of the complete audio of those remarks in my column for the Weekly Standard, but of course the vast majority of the electorate has yet to hear the actual audio of the testimony, much less see the video. Reading the transcript does upset some folks, but hearing Kerry's assault on American soldiers is a much more disturbing thing. Then there is Kerry's approving reference...

THERE ARE A COUPLE of key pieces of conventional wisdom floating downstream from Washington these days. The first is that a Bush-Kerry race will be very, very close. Bush-Gore close. The second is that Senator Kerry's anti-war radicalism following his return from service in Vietnam shouldn't--and won't--be an issue in November. You can believe one of these views, but you cannot hold on to both. If the election really will be a replay of 2000, then every issue that moves even handfuls of voters matters a great deal. Examples: Florida went for Bush by less than 600 votes, which means...

IT TOOK A LOT OF DIGGING, but my producer Duane was able to find the audio from John Kerry's 1971 appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I played the entire 19 minutes for my radio audience on February 17, and the reaction via the phones and email was uniform: Disliking John Kerry for his actions and words of 33 years ago is not a rare thing, especially among Vietnam veterans and active duty military.Does this reaction matter? In the California primary it might. According to the 2000 Census, there are 1,122,528 Vietnamese Americans, 447,032 of whom live in...

The Things They Kerry'd Introducing the first edition of Hugh Hewitt's exclusive "Kerry Files" memo. by Hugh Hewitt 02/12/2004 12:00:00 AM WITH LESS THAN 38 WEEKS until the November 2nd vote, radio hosts have got to sharpen the message. That's less than 200 broadcast days, and even with 15 segments per three hour show, that's only 3,000 opportunities to present a four- to twelve-minute segment that focuses on some aspect of John Kerry's record. As a service to my broadcast colleagues, I will prepare occasional talking point memos to fill the spaces between now and November 2, 2004. So here...

Win the war, lead the world Posted: February 11, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com "Win the war, lead the world": That's my suggestion for the Bush-Cheney 2004 slogan. It summarizes the key message of the coming campaign and contrasts nicely with John Kyoto Kerry's view of the globe. Josh Marshall and some other pundits think the president's interview on "Meet the Press" was a mistake, which is why Josh and his colleagues are scribblers and not running campaigns. Most people haven't even seen the interview, but they have heard its key messages: "I am a war president," "I did the right...

Terry McAuliffe: The Manchurian Chairman? Posted: February 4, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Terry McAuliffe, whom we ought to call the Manchurian Chairman, hit a new low Sunday, saying on ABC's "This Week": "George Bush never served in our military in our country. He didn't show up when he should have showed up. And there's John Kerry on the stage with a chest full of medals that he earned by saving the lives of American soldiers. So, as John Kerry says, 'Bring it on!'" McAuliffe is to politics what MTV is to Superbowl halftime shows: Low, tacky, and a failure....

Judgement Call John Kerry's patriotism isn't the issue--it's his judgement on the big decisions. by Hugh Hewitt 01/29/2004 12:00:00 AM "A VOTE for the Liberals is a vote for the Boers!" That's about as tough as a campaign slogan can get. It was the rallying cry of the Lord Salisbury-Joe Chamberlain forces in Great Britain's Khaki election of 1900. The war with the Boers had begun to go well after shocking, initial defeats, and the Tory-Liberal Unionist alliance called for an election and made it a referendum on the conduct of the conflict. In "Dreadnought," Robert Massie provides a sense...

Wesley Clark Speaks Out The general explains why the president isn't a patriot and only Democrats are devout. by Hugh Hewitt HOWARD DEAN'S BELLOWING the roll call of the states on Monday night may capture the weird sweepstakes this election season, but Wesley Clark can't be counted out just yet. Most of the cameras were in Iowa while the general tromped around the Granite State, but the record he left is promising when it comes to snap potential. Rick Lowry had a tape recorder on when Clark delivered some choice words on faith and the president's patriotism, and was kind...

NANCY PELOSI was upset after the federal appeals court upheld the new congressional districting map for the Lone Star State Tuesday: "This is just the latest attempt by President Bush, Tom Delay, and other Republicans to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. The Texas redistricting plan shows once again that when Republicans cannot win elections fair and square, they rig the rules."Then Pelosi went Alamo: "We will fight to the finish for Texas."That's a wonderful image: The hyper-lefty from San Francisco leading a crusade to turn Texas into a Democratic state. I hope someone brings a video camera. Sore loser rhetoric,...

Minimizing the Holocaust Posted: January 7, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com While there is plenty of news this week – from North Korea's "offer" concerning its nukes to Howard Dean's embrace of the campaign equivalent of the NFL's prevent defense – I want to point you to the best and worst aspects of Americans' use of the Web. Spirit of America is an innovative use of the Web to provide help to our military in Iraq via the donation of material and money to be used in assisting the local populations in rebuilding. From frisbees to footballs to funds for...

.Contagious madness Posted: December 24, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Hours after the Homeland Security alert level was raised on Sunday, a poster at Howard Dean's "Blog for America" made this comment, which is representative of opinion among the Dean Dongs: "Dean's remarks about national security and the Saddam capture not making the U.S. any safer has [sic] been validated by today's Orange Alert."There's no arguing with such reasoning – even by pointing out that although banks continued to be robbed after Dillinger was killed, banks were indisputably safer than when he was alive and among the robbers. The left does...