Free Republic

Back in 1960 the skills required to become President of the United States changed forever. That was the year that John F. Kennedy debated Richard M. Nixon on national network television for the first time. When reminiscing about Kennedy's win, pundits love to cite that he was tanned, good looking, had great hair and had his make-up professionally applied, while Mr. Nixon appeared pale, had a nervous demeanor and sweaty brow. They say that Nixon won on the radio but Kennedy won on TV. 1960 ushered in the era of the Network politician. For better or for worse, after the...

The preliminary passage of legislation aiming to bar Israelis who visit "enemy states" from serving in Parliament has sparked heated exchanges. Israeli-Arab MPs said the plan showed the Knesset was "racist" and vowed not to abide by any eventual law. One of the sponsors defended the proposal, reportedly saying: "Enough of Arab Knesset members spitting in our faces and us saying it's raining." In April an MP who had visited Syria and Lebanon was accused of spying. Azmi Bishara fled Israel after facing charges of spying for the Lebanese group Hezbollah during last year's war. He says he is the...

This right wing assault on college campuses across the country has nothing to do with "free speech" or the oppression of women in Islam. It has everything to do with silencing dissent and whipping up Islamo-phobic hysteria to justify U.S. domination of the Middle East. If you are against everything "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" stands for… -Organize your campus: talk to Women's Studies professors, Muslim Student Associations, Global Warming scientists, and others about the agenda behind "IFAW" -Take a stand: Be bold and uncompromising. Figure out ways to directly confront "IFAW" and expose their lies. Use this week as an opportunity...

Patriots need to learn to two words -- "treason" and "traitor." The American people need to hear the truth - that the left has gone far beyond dissent. It betrays America at every turn. Its hatred of our nation - our history and underlying ethos - is visible in word and deed. It slanders the republic, lies about our past, undercuts our warriors, revels in American deaths and consorts with the enemy in time of war (aid and comfort, and all that). These reflections are prompted by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University, in the course of his...

Muslim terrorist leaders are "thankful" for the efforts of activist and congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan, stating in a new book Sheehan's anti-Iraq war activities and her statements against President Bush "give us hope" the U.S. will change its Mideast policies. "You [Sheehan] give us hope and you show us that there are different Americans than those whom we know," stated Ramadan Adassi, chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group in the West Bank's Anskar Refugee Camp. "This sincere woman says what we've been saying all these last years – Saddam never threatened America or its security. Now Iraq...

ASHINGTON -- Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the influential former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Thursday urged President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq to send a message that the United States is running out of patience with the government in Baghdad. Warner, who has been critical of the troop buildup ordered by Bush in January, said he was not ready to back a Democratic-led effort in Congress to order withdrawals. However, his blunt assessment of the Iraqi government's performance could lead to an erosion of GOP support for the President's war strategy at a crucial...

Town hall meeting - Sen. Ron Wyden takes heat for Congress not bringing the troops home Although few senators can match U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden's long record opposing the war in Iraq, it didn't protect him from being thoroughly roasted Tuesday by angry anti-war activists at a town hall meeting in Portland. The noontime event at Portland State University attracted more than 300 people, many of whom charged that the Oregon Democrat hasn't done enough to end the war. The senator was also repeatedly verbally flayed for not supporting the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. "Do...

...[None] other than John Kerry himself who had counseled Soltz on his anti-victory activism. As reported by Fox News Channel and The Riehl World blog, "Soltz ... thanked Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, who opposed the Vietnam War after returning from combat, for helping him to focus his disillusionment after returning from Iraq." (They have the video to back it up too, which you can watch. .... Yet, left-wing activists have been engaged in a fierce campaign to undermine the war effort. No news there, but what is alarming is the degree to which they are organized, funded, and orchestrated. Jon...

I’m not backing off. I tried to remove myself from the political realm of the US, what BushCo is turning into an Evil Empire, but the blatant audacity of George commuting Scooter’s sentence (he’s not ruling out a full pardon ---and you know he will) has dragged me kicking and screaming back in. I can’t sit back and let this BushCo drag our country further down into the murky quagmire of Fascism and violence, taking the rest of the world with them! I have sat quietly back these past five weeks as the slaughter in Iraq sorrowfully surges along with...

China Apologist : U.S. Must Decline as China Returns to Former Greatness By William R. Hawkins Friday, April 06, 2007 The CNA Corporation is a non-profit organization that is best known for operating the Center for Naval Analysis, which for over 50 years has worked closely with the U.S. Navy to develop strategies and weapon systems to defend American security.  It opened a new China Study Center on March 27, which seems like a natural evolution of its work given Beijing’s rise as a global geopolitical rival to the United States.  China has the world’s third largest shipbuilding industry and its rapidly...

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record high, America was living in a giddy economic era when good times and budget surpluses seemed as if they might continue indefinitely. It was Jan. 14, 2000, the start of another year, another century and another millennium. The economy was roaring along. The jobless rate was a low 4 percent. The "new economy" of young entrepreneurs energized markets with new tech companies that didn't turn a profit. Nobody seemed to care, and excesses piled on top of excesses.

When I first saw this article this morning, I asked my daughter to pinch me. But, it was still there. I then asked her to slap me. No change. Finally, smelling salts. Alas, it was still on my computer screen, and from the Washington Post no less: “The Redder They Are, The Harder They Fall; Republicans More Damaged by Scandals.”

On his radio show yesterday (Thursday, September 21, 2006), host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Thomas B. Edsall, who up until recently was a senior political reporter for the Washington Post. He had been with the paper for 25 years. Through precise and direct questioning by Hewitt, Edsall admitted something that is rarely heard from a liberal these days. In a shocking admission, Edsall articulated that the biases of the mainstream media are "overwhelmingly to the left." He also proposed that Democratic reporters outnumber Republicans "in the range of 15-25 to 1"!In the interview, as Hewitt and Edsall discussed the rise of...

In a recent commentary, former New York Mayor Ed Koch - a Democrat with at least half a brain (which makes him the leading intellectual light of his party) - asked rhetorically, "Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism?" Because they're liberals? During the Spanish Civil War, as the climactic battle for Madrid approached, Nationalist leader Francisco Franco told a reporter: "I have four columns marching on Madrid and a fifth within the city ready to rise at my call." Franco's comment gave rise to the World War...

Arrested Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who took the infamous pictures of a terrorist execution on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and is notorious in the blogosphere for his collusion with jihadis as they tried to kill Americans, is the subject of a very lengthy attempt by the AP to whitewash his acts: U.S. holds AP photographer in Iraq 5 mos. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.) The AP spins furiously and buries it in the middle, but here’s some interesting information from the US Army: The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an...

ABC 9/11 Docudrama's Right-Wing Roots Max Blumenthal Mon Sep 11, 6:28 PM ET The Nation -- On Friday, September 8, just forty-eight hours before ABC planned to air its so-called "docudrama," The Path to 9/11, Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, was presented with incontrovertible evidence outlining the involvement of that film's screenwriter and director in a concerted right-wing effort to blame former President Bill Clinton for allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place. Iger told a source close to ABC that he was "deeply troubled" by the information and claimed he had no previous...

A new film depicts President Bush being assassinated. Should it be shown? * 55345 responses Yes, it's a good display of free speech. 52% No, the filmmakers have gone too far. 43% Perhaps -- but not in the United States. 5.2%

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Friday, June 23, 2006 12:32 a.m. EDTFox Makes Up News, NY Times Editor Says Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines has leveled a shocking charge against Fox News: The leading cable news network makes up its stories. In his new autobiography "The One That Got Away,” Raines – who, ironically, resigned over made-up stories at the Times – writes: "Fox, by its mere existence, undercuts the argument that the public is starved for ‘fair’ news, and not just because Fox shills for the Republican Party and panders to the latest of America’s periodic religious manias....

In response to an MSNBC interviewer asking "You have called President Bush a madman, surely Zarqawi was a madman-taking a knife and slitting your sons throat-are you comparing these men on equal terms? Berg-"Yes, Bush is responsible for the deaths of 150,000 of our brothers and sisters, Zarqawi only hundreds" Berg is running for congress.

Some Democrats, breaking ranks from their leadership, today said the death of terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq was a stunt to divert attention from an unpopular and hopeless war. "This is just to cover Bush's [rear] so he doesn't have to answer" for Iraqi civilians being killed by the U.S. military and his own sagging poll numbers, said Rep. Pete Stark, California Democrat. "Iraq is still a mess -- get out."

WEST CHESTER, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- When Nicholas Berg took an Oklahoma bus to a remote college campus a few years ago, the American recently beheaded by terrorists allowed a man with terrorist connections to use his laptop computer, according to his father. Michael Berg said the FBI investigated the matter more than a year ago. He stressed that his son was in no way connected to the terrorists who captured and killed him. Government sources told CNN that the encounter involved an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui -- the only person publicly charged in the United States in connection with the...

CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin acknowledged Monday that he killed a report about how the U.S. was dealing with Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq after a senior military officer complained that it contained information useful to the enemy. Martin, writing on the CBS blog Public Eye, said that the report had been scheduled to air as the lead story on the CBS Evening News on Thursday and that he pulled it just one hour before airtime. "Not a good career move," he wrote. Martin further acknowledged that he had set aside other stories at the request of the Pentagon "a...

NEW YORK A Tom Toles editorial cartoon published in The Washington Post on Monday and on its Web site has drawn a very rare and very strong protest letter to the editors from all six members of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, E&P has learned. The letter, not yet published by the Post, charges that the six military leaders "believe you and Mr. Toles have done a disservice to your readers and your paper's reputation by using such a callous depiction of those who have volunteered to defend this nation, and as a result, have suffered traumatic and life-altering wounds....

Cindy Sheehan said she will be part of the live audience during the president's State of the Union speech to congress Tuesday. Bay Area Congresswoman Lynn Woosley gave anti-war activist a gallery pass late Tuesday, just hours before the planned State of the Union speech. Sheehan was in Washington to protest the president during his national address, but then came word she was invited to see the speech live. A spokesman for Sheehan says she decided to accept the invitation two hours prior to the speech. The spokesman also said that Sheehan will be respectful and listen to the address...

CNN's CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: 'IRAQ WAR HAS BEEN A DISASTER' Mon Jan 30 2006 21:56:52 ET CNN's top war correspondent Christiane Amanpour now says the Iraq war has been a disaster and has created a "black hole." Amanpour made the comments Monday evening on the all-news network. "The Iraq war has been a disaster. It's a spiraling security disaster," Amanpour explains to Larry King. "It just gets worse and worse." MORE

Federal agents' visit was a hoax Student admits he lied about Mao book By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer NEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story. The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account. Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false....

Celebrated author of children's books (and alleged quadruple murderer and co-founder of the Crips gang) Stanley "Tookie" Williams, was executed last week. Many Hollywood activists wept as the Shel Silverstein of San Quentin was denied clemency and given a lethal injection. There's no getting around it – the Hollywood Left is losing what's left of their whiffle-brained sanity. Virtually every single one of Hollywood's recent pet causes, from political candidates to environmental issues to unjust convictions, have had the same effect on public opinion that "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" had on theater popcorn sales. Couple this with falling box...

Converts to Islam are taking over the terrorist operations previously carried out mainly by Muslim-born immigrants and their children. This was dramatically illustrated when a Belgian convert to Islam, Muriel Degauque, 38, blew herself up near Baghdad on Nov. 9 in a suicide attack on U.S. troops, becoming the first Christian-born Western woman to kill herself for Islamist purposes. And of the fourteen people arrested because of connections to Degauque, half were converts to Islam. In neighboring Holland, a just-published government report specifically worries about radicalized converts. Islamist terror organizations particularly prize converts. They know the local culture and blend...

The Chinese government has pulled the plug on plans to allow foreign newspapers to print in that country – likening them to "saboteurs.” Shi Zongyuan, head of China’s General Administration of Press and Publication, said the role of the international media in popular revolts in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan over the past two years had prompted the suspension of what had been an easing of Beijing’s curbs on foreign news publications. The revolts "were a reminder not to let saboteurs into the house and that the door must be closed, so we have closed it temporarily,” Shi told the Financial...

"Can the News REALLY be Fair, Accurate and Objective?" asked the title of the first lecture in the 2005-2006 George E. McCammon Memorial Distinguished Speaker Series. "Yes," said Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president, news coverage CBS News, speaking at McKendree College in Lebanon on Tuesday night. Her answer was not surprising because she is in charge of news coverage for CBS, a television network that prides itself on those values despite a couple of recent problems. "My job is to pay really close attention to the news, to watch closely and care about it," McGinnis said. She said fair, accurate...

All Cindy Sheehan wants is peace. You can tell from the peace sign she's making with her hands. Cindy Sheehan as she is leaving the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco, California September 9, 2005. Sheehan who says her focus now will be Congress, met a staff member of Senator Feinstein to discuss the war in Iraq.Dianne Feinstein, our senator from California, must welcome Cindy's position that Israel started to war. Or something like that. Unitarian Universalist ministers and others cheer as the police hoist Cindy off the sidewalk. Giant puppets have been shown to be more...

In an open letter to President Bush, The Times-Picayune says every agency official should be fired The New Orleans Times-Picayune called Sunday for the firing of every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, starting with director Michael Brown, for failing to rescue thousands of citizens stranded by Hurricane Katrina. In a "Dear Mr. President" letter to President Bush, the newspaper said federal emergency officials spent "days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands," saying they could not reach victims. At the same time, the editorial said, television reporters were able to do live newscasts from downtown New Orleans and...

Yesterday the New York Times editorial board wrote a fire-breathing editorial that for almost 24 hours ranked as the "most-discussed story" on Technorati and the "most e-mailed article" on nytimes.com. The board wrote that "George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday." Instead of "consolation and wisdom," the President offered "a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast." The board went on to offer a long laundry list of angry accusations. The editorial board doubted that Bush "understood the depth of the current crisis" — unlike...

WASHINGTON (AP) - At every turn, political leaders failed Katrina's victims. They didn't strengthen the levees. They ceded the streets to marauding looters. They left dead bodies to rot or bloat. Thousands suffered or died for lack of water, food and hope. Who's at fault? There's plenty of blame to go around - the White House, Congress, federal agencies, local governments, police and even residents of the Gulf Coast who refused orders to evacuate. But all the finger-pointing misses the point: Politicians and the people they lead too often ignore danger signs until a crisis hits ...

I have to admit I wasn't prepared for the venomous hate mail I received from dozens of rancorous men concerning my column on the nomination of John Roberts for the Supreme Court. Clearly I pressed a scaldingly hot button. While some men politely couched their objections to my argument that putting another conservative white male on the Supreme Court was retrograde, many seem to have lost the power of reasoned speech and were reduced to raving profanities and comments about the headshot that accompanies my column. I was called a racist, and one man, Royce Stanton of Charleston, S.C., (I...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JULY 31, 2005 19:44:05 ET XXXXX HELEN THOMAS ANGRY AFTER 'KILL SELF' OVER CHENEY COMMENTS PUBLISHED White House press doyenne Helen Thomas is plenty peeved at her longtime friend Albert Eisele, editor of THE HILL newspaper in Washington, D.C. In a column this week headlined "Reporter: Cheney's Not Presidential Material," Eisele quoted Thomas as saying "The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar." Thomas also said: "I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if...

Group Authoring Fatwa Has Links to Bin Laden Ally By Sherrie Gossett July 29, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - Thursday's religious edict condemning terrorism was authored and issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Muslim jurists who interpret Islamic law. The edict was signed by 18 council scholars. The Fiqh Council of North America traces its origins to the early 1960s and the Religious Affairs Committee of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) of the United States and Canada, according to the council's website. This Religious Affairs Committee evolved into the Fiqh Committee of the Islamic Society of North...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

During the 32 years I covered Washington for the Los Angeles Times, I learned that leaks from anonymous sources are crucial to informing the public. In the debate over what Karl Rove said when and to whom, and over the role of confidential sources in general, that must be underlined: Without leaks, without anonymity for some sources, a free press loses its ability to act as a check and a balance against the power of government. The stories that have depended on confidential sources, and often on classified information, are legend: Watergate in the Nixon administration, the Iran/Contra scandal and...

OAKLAND, Calif. - The city of Oakland has agreed to pay half a million dollars to settle a lawsuit filed by an anti-war protester who was injured when police fired wooden dowels and rubber balls during an April 2003 demonstration. The Oakland City Council also signed off on two other injury claims from the 500-person protest at the Port of Oakland that took place during the early days of the war with Iraq. A man who said his fingers were broken will get $85,000, while another demonstrator who suffered cuts and bruises is set to get $7,500, according to city...

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050715/tc_cmp/165702500 UN Panel: No Single Nation Should Control Internet Addresses Aoife White Thu Jul 14, 9:38 PM ET BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP)--A U.N. panel created to recommend how the Internet should be run in the future has failed to reach consensus but did agree that no single country should dominate. The United States stated two weeks ago that it intended to maintain control over the computers that serve as the Internet's principal traffic cops. In a report released Thursday, the U.N. panel outlined four possible options for the future of Internet governance for world leaders to consider at a November "Information...

Here is the list so far for sponcers to this hate America fest: ANSWER Code Pink UFPJ NION Al Awda World Workers Party Ruckas Revolutionary Communist party Moveon.org ACORN Campus Antiwar Network International Socialist Org Greens Party Muslim Student Association CPUSA

>>>>Let me set this up, this is the editorial that first started this fight, I will print the rest in order. Why they hate us MARK YOST This is a belated Fourth of July column (superseded by the state shutdown). The headline isn't a prelude to a column justifying why the Islamists hate Westerners so much that they're pouring into Iraq to kill our soldiers (along with innocent fellow Arabs, including Egyptian diplomats). Or defending the sleeper cells planted to blow up Madrid, London and who knows where next. Rather, it's about why most Americans, particularly soldiers, hate the media....

WASHINGTON — Megan Watson, leader of Mainstream Moms, is so angry at military recruiters for invading schools to sign up unwary youth for combat in Iraq that she and her group launched an online movement, “LeaveMyChildAlone.org.” “They offer these trinkets to lure our children to enlist,” Watson said in a phone interview from her home in Bolinas, Calif. “This is very aggressive, demographic targeting to have conversations with our kids that should not be happening.” All branches of the military are falling short of recruiting goals as parents say, in effect, “Hell no! My kids won’t go!” Watson blasted the...

<p>LONDON, July 7 - It is said, usually as a kind of joke, that a day is a long time in politics. Rarely has that been so true - and so bloodily so - as in the past 24 hours of Prime Minister Tony's Blair's roller coaster ride from triumph to tragedy.</p>

Thursday, July 7, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 AM Editorial Exit without apologies Saddam Hussein is toppled from power. The fundamental aim of the Iraq war is accomplished. Now is the time to plan to leave and bring American forces home. As noted in a series of editorials that began on Sunday and ends today, the passage of time only erodes confidence in an enterprise we initially supported. Successive layers of President Bush's rationales for the war were stripped bare. No weapons of mass destruction were found, no prewar terrorist havens or links to Sept. 11, 2001. The war...

GEORGE Galloway was accused by a senior minister last night of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood", after the former Labour MP warned the terrorist attacks in the capital will not be the last. The outspoken Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and anti-war campaigner hit back at his accuser, the armed forces minister Adam Ingram, likening him to a "foul-mouthed ... thug". Sylvia Heal, the Deputy Speaker, had to intervene, reminding the House that "good temper and moderation" were the hallmarks of language in the Commons and they should remember that on this day of...

A.N.S .W.E.R.'s response to Bush:Hit the Streets September 24!Recognizing that the people of the United States have turned dramat ically against the war and occupation of Iraq, Bush went on national televi sion tonight to defend his imperial foreign policy. He repea tedly invoked September 11 as a pretext for the criminal and illegal war ag ainst Iraq. Bush took to the airwaves tonight because the antiwar m ovement is growing in strength. Our power poses a major poli tical obstacle to the continuation of the war and occupation. Now Bush has taken on the additional role of Recruiter-in-Chi ef, urging young people to sign up for military...

Happy birthday America, you suck. That seemed to be the sentiment of National Book Award winner James Carroll in a July 5 Boston Globe column. "After the fireworks, the music, the rhetoric of freedom -- what then? The party is over. Can we think about what, exactly, we were celebrating?" Carroll asked. "Today's date puts the question of how high-flown American ideals square with the quotidian reality of what the nation is becoming." Carroll ended by wondering: "What kind of nation does our flag fly over now?" He answered: "Not a less innocent one, because American innocence was never the...

Londoners have paid the price for Iraq and Afghanistan, says George Galloway. The Respect MP, whose Bethnal Green and Bow constituency includes the site of at least one of the bomb attacks, said the attacks were "despicable". But he told MPs it was the US-led coalition's actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo which had inflamed hatred of the West in the Muslim world. In response, minister Adam Ingram accused Mr Galloway of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood". The armed forces minister added that Mr Galloway's comments were "disgraceful". Same mistakes? Earlier Mr Galloway said he was...