Free Republic

When I pulled my car into a parking space at Dallas City Hall, I looked over to my left, and there was the man in the red jacket and matching beret, talking on his cell phone as he paced slowly on the concrete strip. I had a 4 PM meeting with the leader of the legendary crime fighting group that has become an adjunct to the justice system in America. He had just emerged from a meeting with Mayor Laura Miller, who, he told me later, was very negative about his presence in “her” city. Curtis Sliwa, the founder and...

By J.R. By now anyone who watches the news on the television, listens to news on the radio, or reads a newspaper has heard of the Terri Schiavo case. Terri Schiavo, a woman, who at age 26, collapsed and suffered brain damage under ambiguous circumstances, is said to be in a constant vegetative state according to her husband, Michael Schiavo. Mr. Schiavo wants to have her feeding tube removed so that she will die and says that's what Terri would have wanted. The Schindlers, Terri's parents, have been fighting a 10 year legal battle with Mr. Schiavo, their son-in-law, in...

A study by Media Tenor -- a German-based international media research institute -- shows that leading European newspapers and TV stations still produce twice as many negative statements about the U.S. as positive ones (even if that criticism slightly decreased from December to January). 'snip' The finding that European coverage can be more critical of the U.S. than even the Arab media mirrors results of previous Media Tenor studies. In 2003, Media Tenor published a report about four weeks of news coverage during the Iraq war that showed German television in particular covered U.S. military actions more critically than Al...

Fireworks in Washington, despair around the world The Bush administration is in denial about its disastrous failure in Iraq Robin Cook Friday January 21, 2005 The Guardian Inauguration does not do justice to the exuberant celebrations of this week. Coronation would come closer. Washington ended yesterday with nine official balls. The night before George Bush gave a new spin to the phrase moveable feast by fitting in three separate banquets. He then expended as much ordnance in peppering the sky over the Capitol with fireworks as would get his occupation forces in Iraq through a whole 24 hours. The contrasts...

Journalists' killers 'not being brought to justice' Dominic Timms Tuesday January 18, 2005 The culprits responsible for killing more than 100 journalists and other media workers worldwide last year are only half as likely to be caught as London burglars, a leading international press group claimed today. The International Federation of Journalists said most of the 129 deaths of media staff in 2004 - the highest on record - resulted from either "deliberate attacks" by gunmen, corrupt officials, armed gangs and governments, or "nervous, unruly and ill-disciplined soldiering". In most cases, the IFJ added, the killers were still at large....

A new, comprehensive poll of British opinion on foreign nations was just released by The Telegraph. The results: Israel is considered by Britons the #1 'least deserving of international respect,' the 'least beautiful country,' the country Britons would 'least like to take a holiday in,' and would 'least like to live in.' How did this British animosity toward Israel come about, with Israel ranked worse than Egypt, India, China and 20 other countries?

...In the heat of the U.S. campaign, people with limited access to the facts -- that is to say adherents to certain TV and print news outlets -- may have gotten the impression that Mr. Bush's had alienated nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the planet with his proactive style. Actually, his international opposition, aside from Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, consisted mostly of the acolytes of French President Jacques Chirac. Now that the American people have spoken, Mr. Chirac, who never had as many friends as he was credited with, is looking all the more lonely. Even the Germans,...

...The ferocious partisan dissension that has broken out at home over the war on terror dangerously subtracts from the nation's war-fighting effectiveness. • Partisan warfare at home has given credibility and confidence to America's enemies abroad.... • Partisan disunity has damaged America's alliances.... • Hyper-partisanship has weakened America's own war-fighting strength.... It's essential to acknowledge mistakes and learn from them.... At home, ...Democrats will do everything they can to stop [Bush].... There are, however, some actions that might help President Bush introduce some useful bipartisanship to American foreign policy. • Listen: For months after 9/11, President Bush met once a...

<p>In 1984, Walter Mondale's running mate was Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, a Catholic woman from New York. Ronald Reagan carried Catholics, women, New York -- and even Ferraro's district. Vice presidential nominees rarely sway this or that national demographic group. However, a running mate should help carry his or her state. But last week Bush carried North Carolina, getting 295,026 more votes than in 2000, and carried John Edwards' home county, as he did four years ago. Edwards was supposed to cut Bush's appeal in rural America. He did not.</p>

Jacques Chirac, the French president, yesterday threatened to reopen transatlantic rifts between the EU and the US over the war in Iraq by ignoring Tony Blair's plea for Europeans to "face up to the reality" of George Bush's resounding re-election as American president. Mr Chirac compounded his opposition to appeals for closer cooperation between the US and Europe in Mr Bush's second term by snubbing an EU summit lunch for Ayad Allawi, Iraq's interim prime minister, and urging Europe to act as a counterweight to American hegemony "in a world that's more multi-polar than ever".

Just lately (noticeably since the US election result) there seems to be an awful lot of anti-British sentiment on here (there always was a little but I put that down to a handful of xenophobic kiddies) What I would like to know is do most Freepers now share the low opinion that some (many) on here seem to have of our nation or is it just a small (but very vocal) minority of morons? I've enjoyed this forum (for the relatively short time that I've contributed) and have always liked Americans in general, but I now find myself reconsidering my...

Could the Guardian and its Operation Clark County be responsible for a second Bush term? That was one topics round the water cooler today, and it seems we're not the first to think of it. Just dipping into the Guardian's blog, someone has written in: "Just wanted to thank the Guardian for helping deliver Ohio to Bush. Cheers!" For those of you who aren't familiar with Operation Clark County, it was a project launched by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in the UK. The well-meaning but not well received project attempted to link political pen pals in Britain with residents of...

Caught this interesting post on a British Blog {start of post snipped} Welcome to the new media world, Polly*. Up until now, an information elite has been able to misrepresent and manufacture fact with virtual impunity - sometimes accidentally, sometimes as a deliberate means of pushing a chosen agenda. For example, if a newspaper polemicist wanted to contend that "Scandinavian countries are best of all" at overcoming obesity, it was unlikely that many would notice and connect the fact that: "Norway has the highest percentage of overweight men in Europe, according to a new report by the World Health Organization...

None other than the Kossack... http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/markosmoulitsas/story/0,15139,1342263,00.html

Do you remember that patronising stunt the Guardian pulled last month, writing to voters in Clark County telling them to vote for Kerry? And how it backfired. I think we should show our appreciation in writing to Britain's leading leftie broadsheet for so kindly lending a hand to the Bush campaign...My fellow non-Americans ... The result of the US election will affect the lives of millions around the world but those of us outside the 50 states have had no say in it - until now. In a unique experiment, G2 has assembled a democratic toolkit to enable people from...

a word to the wise For all my LJ-loving friends, this is a word of warning, a word to the wise, and a word of utter exhaustion after the wringer I've been put through in the last twenty-four hours. A couple of weeks ago, following the last presidential debate, I said some rather inflammatory things about George W. Bush in a public post in my LJ, done in a satirical style. We laughed, we ranted, we all said some things. I thought it was a fairly harmless (and rather obvious) attempt at humor in the face of annoyance, and while...

An Observer investigation in the United States has uncovered widespread allegations of electoral abuse, many of them going uninvestigated despite complaints of what would appear to be criminal attempts to manipulate voter lists. The allegations, which come just two days before Americans go to the polls in one of the most tightly contested elections in a generation, threaten to plunge Tuesday's count into a legal minefield and overshadow even the elections of 2000. The claims come as both Republicans and Democrats put in place up to 2,000 lawyers across the country to challenge attempts to manipulate the vote in swing...

George W Bush moved yesterday to seize the political advantage after Osama bin Laden's extraordinary intervention in the US presidential election on Friday night. The campaign descended into a final bout of acrimony yesterday as both sides attacked each other for making political capital out of the al-Qaeda leader's video address. But it appeared to be the incumbent who will gain any political advantage. A Newsweek tracker poll published yesterday suggested the momentum may be moving in the incumbent's way. The poll predicted Bush to win by 50 per cent to Kerry's 44, compared with a 48-46 gap last week....

There are two ways to tell when a political party thinks it is losing an election. The obvious one is where the candidates are choosing to campaign. If they’re stumping in their own backyards and shoring up their bases, while the other side is on the attack, that’s a clear sign. But so is the level of lying. When all is almost lost, the unethical campaign will haul out the lies – the bigger the better. Others have commented on the political geography of where Bush and Kerry are respectively campaigning in the closing days of this campaign. This comments...

IT turns out that a former New Yorker, one-time David Dinkins press rep Albert Scardino, is behind the stunts that have embarrassed Britain's looney-left newspaper, The Guardian.