Free Republic

Every once in a while a highly visible political gambit comes completely a cropper. Particularly when it involves - to say nothing of embarrasses - the president of the United States, it generally gets considerable public notice. Often the proverbial head rolls. At the very least, a course correction usually is quickly effected. What are we to make, then, of the astonishing silence, the utter lack of accountability and the absence of any apparent shift in electoral strategy that has accompanied the meltdown of one of the Bush political team's major initiatives. I refer to its effort to recruit Muslim-...

GROVER NORQUIST'S STRANGE ALLIANCE WITH RADICAL ISLAM. Fevered Pitch by Franklin Foer Post date 11.01.01 | Issue date 11.12.01 On the afternoon of September 26, George W. Bush gathered 15 prominent Muslim- and Arab-Americans at the White House. With cameras rolling, the president proclaimed that "the teachings of Islam are teachings of peace and good." It was a critically important moment, a statement to the world that America's Muslim leaders unambiguously reject the terror committed in Islam's name. Unfortunately, many of the leaders present hadn't unambiguously rejected it. To the president's left sat Dr. Yahya Basha, president of the ...

The more terrorist sympathizers change, the more they stay the same. At long last, the University of South Florida has fired Islamic Jihad's U.S. chief, Professor Sami Al-Arian. But Al-Arian's long overdue firing is not enough. He should be deported, at the very least – and more deservedly, he should be punished with a long prison term. And the University of South Florida should be punished along with him for waiting so long to do the right thing, and for doing so for the wrong reasons. In my previous columns, I've outlined how Dr. Al-Arian operated the U.S. front ...

Ellen Ratner and Gareth Schweitzer attempt to criticize me in their article "Removing Norquist's burkha" (WorldNetDaily, May 31) for a series of sins. I count 10 attacks, and each is a falsehood. One is always aware of one's very real deficiencies and failures – and thus, being attacked for things one didn't do is only mildly annoying, and as Churchill said, like being shot at without effect. The personal attacks are all borrowed without attribution from an article that printed in the New Republic last fall. I am not angry at Ms. Ratner, but disappointed that she could have avoided...

A couple weeks back someone posted an article from the New Republic about Grover Norquist's going in the tank for Islam, and engineering Dub's "Islam is a religion of Peace" PR strategy. There was also an article from National Review Online on the topic.Someone in one of the threads mentioned that Grover is on the NRA board of directors. I informed the NRA that I wouldn't renew my membership if that remained the case.My question is, have there been any recent developments? I know that Weyrich and a couple other folks had mildly chastised Norquist; but it seems that if...

CONSERVATIVES TURN ON ASHCROFTTue Jul 23 2002 20:58:38 ET Many religious conservatives who were instrumental in pressing President Bush to appoint John Ashcroft as attorney general -- now say they have become deeply troubled by his actions, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report in a blistering Page One spread on Wednesday. "His religious base is now quite troubled by what he's done," Grover Norquist tells the TIMES's Neil Lewis. MORE Several Bush advisers have begun complaining that Ashcroft has projected himself too often and too forcefully. More significantly, they say privately that he seems to be overstating the...