Free Republic

Lisa Miller defends Hillary Clinton against critics of her marriage in the latest from Newsweek. Although admitting that Hillary has brought the focus onto the marriage herself because of the nature of her claims to “experience”, Miller scolds people for speculating on the nature of the relationship. However, Miller doesn’t explain how to separate that from the nature of Hillary’s experience: Cindy McCain is a grown-up woman who has suffered her share of personal and marital setbacks—including an addiction to prescription painkillers that she hid from her husband—but she knows that what America wants in a First Marriage is something...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's elections were supposed to usher in democracy after eight years of military rule, but for Talat Hussain life doesn't look much different. Every time his TV station tries to air shows critical of President Pervez Musharraf, the screen goes black. Pakistan's main opposition parties announced they would form a coalition government to bring civilian rule after voters delivered a crushing blow to the pro-Musharraf ruling party in Feb. 18 parliamentary polls. Two days after the vote, Aaj, the privately owned station where Hussain is news director, was knocked off the air. Its signal has been jammed...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. - An e-mail sent by local immigration officials to their agency head the day after the city adopted an ID program for illegal immigrants suggests that the timing of a raid soon thereafter was not coincidental, the city's mayor said. Regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told agency Director Julie Myers in a June 5 e-mail that New Haven's Board of Aldermen had voted 25-1 the previous night to make the city the nation's first to offer illegal immigrants ID cards. City officials said the cards would help immigrants better integrate into mainstream culture by allowing them...

On the Paul Harvey Radio Show a few minutes ago, it was reported that in Uganda, a number of actors pretending to be bank robbers, were filming a movie in front of a bank recently. Apparently the Ugandan police then showed up, unaware that this was a movie set, and opened fire on the actors, killing 2 and wounding 3 more. Further complicating the tragedy, was the Freerepublic revelation that the police officers turned out to actually be, in reality, movie critics pretending to be policemen. This is playing to the fears of Hollywood that their actor-activists who show up...

People for whom indignation is a way of life — and there seem to be an increasing number of such people — repeatedly have outbursts of outrage whenever the police fire a lot of shots at some criminal. People who have never fired a gun in their lives, and have never had a split second in which to make a decision that could mean life or death for themselves or others, are often nevertheless convinced that the police used excessive force. As someone who once taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps, it has never seemed strange to me that...

The Number Of Professional Music, Dance And Movie Reviewers Is Shrinking. Are They Missed? When Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert sat across from each other in a semi-darkened theater and discussed movies it was more than a handy way to figure out how to spend your movie bucks. It was an education. Their conversations were often more entertaining than the movies. Anyone who cared to listen learned a new language. The fact that a movie's future might depend on whether it got the most magical of critical endorsements — "Two thumbs up" — illustrated the power of their opinions. Looking...

WASHINGTON - Even some critics of President Bush's Iraq war policies are conceding there is evidence of recent improvements from a military standpoint. But Bush supporters and critics alike agree that these have not been matched by any noticeable progress on the political front. Despite U.S. pressure, Iraq's parliament went on vacation for a month after failing to pass either legislation to share the nation's oil wealth or to reconcile differences among the factions. And nearly all Sunni representatives in the government have quit, undermining the legitimacy of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite. Still, there have been signs of...

San Joaquin Valley dairies should keep cows in enclosed barns and use special waste collectors to reduce air pollution, say critics of existing dairy air standards. The Fresno Healthy Dairy Commission, an advocacy group including doctors, business and religious leaders, says dairies cause harmful emissions in Fresno County, which has some of the nation's worst air pollution. The group said Friday a proposed county dairy ordinance needs tougher air quality regulations. The commission cited recommendations for enclosing dairy barns and cattle waste in a report it requested from the California Institute for Rural Studies, based at the University of California,...

WASHINGTON - The fragile coalition that produced this week's immigration deal risks being picked apart by forces across the political spectrum as the measure begins moving through Congress. Lawmakers want to revise key elements, such as letting millions of illegal immigrants stay in the U.S., favoring skills and education over families and setting out the terms of a new temporary worker program. Any one of the changes has the potential to sink the whole measure, which was unveiled with fanfare Thursday but was still being drafted late Friday. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who helped negotiate the compromise, called it "very...

SACRAMENTO - Despite continuing opposition from environmentalists, a $1 billion liquefied natural gas facility proposed for off the Malibu coast could win key state approvals as early as next week. To be built by Australian energy giant BHP Billiton and anchored about 14 miles offshore, the floating facility would become California's first such plant. The 214-foot-high terminal would accept liquefied natural gas from tankers, convert it into natural gas and pipe it to a facility in Oxnard. "The facility we're proposing is absolutely the most environmental facility out there," said Renee Klimczak, president of BHP's liquefied natural gas division. "That's...

KEYPORT, Wash. - Critics of a Navy plan to use dolphins and sea lions to guard waters off the coast of a major submarine base say the ocean is too cold for the plan to work. Other critics who showed up at a public open house Tuesday questioned the use of live animals rather than sophisticated technology at Hood Canal, home of the West Coast Trident submarine base. The animals are trained to alert a handler when they detect anyone in the water. The handler, in a small boat, then places a strobe light on the nose of the animal,...

ABC News' Teddy Davis reports: In the forthcoming issue of Texas Monthly, former Bush Strategist Matthew Dowd writes that President Bush's "gut-level bond" with the American people "may be lost" and that "wholesale change" is needed in Iraq."Sending a small contingent of troops is likely going to be seen as not helpful," Dowd writes. "He'd be much better off with the public if he said, 'This is a mess, we made mistakes, and the only way to fix it is a wholesale change.' And that could mean either a serious increase in troop strength or withdrawal."

Lazarus Revisited Devout Christians believe Jesus of Nazareth raised Lazarus - brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany - from the grave – four days after his death and burial. One pious tradition has it that Lazarus subsequently wandered with a small band of early Christian followers to Marseilles, became the first Bishop of Provence, and was martyred by the Romans. Others say he remained in the holy land, lived a quiet and examplary life, and was buried as a saint in Constantinople. Ah, but “Biblical people” were real people : motivated by the same petty things we are –...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking on just about every major interest group in California in his audacious effort to bring universal health care to the nation's biggest state: unions, small business, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, conservatives. Whether the former Hollywood action hero can prevail and get it passed — or get it passed in still-recognizable form — is far from clear. "I think it's very difficult in its present form," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist. "He's got universal Republican opposition to it and the stakeholders are all going to get hit with a tax — doctors,...

It happens to everyone who loves movies: You're in a conversation at a bar, or at a wedding, or online, and someone begins rhapsodizing about one of their favorite movies and you can't help but say, "Uh, that movie sucks. It's totally overrated." How two perfectly well-balanced individuals can have such drastically different views of the same film is one of the great wonders of being a film fanatic. It happens to us at Premiere all the time, enough so that sometimes we find ourselves questioning who we work with (boy, did it get ugly here when Love, Actually came...

To understate the case, my last column, "America, Not Keith Ellison, Decides What Book a Congressman Takes His Oath on," seems to have touched a national nerve. It has caused a national discussion -- actually, more hate-filled attacks on me than civil discussion -- and has been covered by just about all major American news media. To their credit, CNN and Fox News both gave me ample time (in television terms anyway) to express my views on two of each network's major shows: "Paula Zahn Now" and Headline News on CNN, and "Hannity & Colmes" and "Your World with Neil...

Who says critics don't matter anymore? The new trailer for Paramount's upcoming numskull comedy "Jackass: Number Two" is full of quotes from reviews of the first movie. There's just one tiny twist: The studio uses the vitriolic reviews attacking the first film ("A disgusting, repulsive, grotesque spectacle" says an aghast Richard Roeper) to promote the new picture. With a sly, leering note of triumph, the narrator intones: "Unfortunately for them, we just made 'Number Two.' " All in all, it's been a rotten tomato of a summer for America's embattled film critics. "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" broke...

The Hizbullah and Hamas provocations against Israel once again demonstrate how terrorists exploit human rights and the media in their attacks on democracies. By hiding behind their own civilians the Islamic radicals issue a challenge to democracies: Either violate your own morality by coming after us and inevitably killing some innocent civilians, or maintain your morality and leave us with a free hand to target your innocent civilians. This challenge presents democracies such as Israel with a lose-lose option, and the terrorists with a win-win option. There is one variable that could change this dynamic and present democracies with a...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Hit or Miss: Grading U.S. Missile Defense Dave Eberhart, NewsMaxFriday, July 7, 2006 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- On July 5, just hours after the provocative North Korean test-launch of seven missiles, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that the threat remained clear and present. The communist country's launch included a missile capable of hitting the U.S. Northwest. Critics charge that U.S. missile defense remains a long way from being a reliable sentinel against that clear and present danger. Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) revealed after the North Korean launches, "Each and every...

NEW YORK - The sweeping immigration bills in Congress would add many thousands of beds to the patchwork network of detention facilities that hold illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers — places that critics say are over-costly and under-regulated. Already, activists say, far too many nonthreatening people are held for too long in demoralizing conditions. "I'm not against homeland security," said Edward Neepaye, a pastor and human-rights campaigner from Liberia who was detained in New Jersey for four months. "But the greatest nation on earth must come up with a remedy that accords immigrants some respect, rather than throwing them in jail...