Free Republic

Twenty-seven years ago, I began my professional career at Time Magazine as a reporter-researcher in the World section, which was devoted to international news. Generally speaking, the World section ran 12 pages in the magazine. Nation, devoted to news within our borders, ran about the same or a page shorter. Think of that—an American publication, marketed to millions, that devoted slightly more of its attention, and vastly more of its budget, to news about events outside the United States.

The thing is, Eliot Spitzer is a crook. I’m not referring to the current prostitution scandal. I’m not referring to the scandal last year involving his senior aides and the leaking of confidential police information to the Albany Times Union. I’m not referring to the threatening phone call he made to the august John Whitehead, retired head of Goldman Sachs, who had the temerity to question a case Spitzer was building against an old friend of Whitehead’s. I’m referring to his conduct dating back to 1994, when he designed a complex scheme involving loans and real estate and collateralized apartments to evade...

Michelle Obama today said that “for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change. I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction.” Really proud of her country for the first time? Michelle Obama is 44 years old. She has been an adult since 1982. Can it really be there has not been a moment during that time when she felt proud of her country? Forget matters like the victory in the Cold War;...

THE American Right is up in arms. The new immigration-reform bill announced with great fanfare last week is, say my fellow conservatives, a disaster of Biblical proportions. Virtual spittle is being expectorated all over the senators who negotiated the terms of the bill and the White House, which supports it. Anti-immigration conservatives are the most vocal people in the country when it comes to saying that our immigration system is broken. But now they have been presented with an "immigration reform" bill that attempts to address some of their concerns, and they're screaming bloody murder about it. They're right to...

NOBODY knows what is going to happen in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, the one-time chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Every day, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's team presents evidence that Libby lied to a grand jury. Every day, Libby's defense effectively pokes holes in the prosecution's case. ...snip.... I have no doubt that Fitzgerald gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror and sees a righteous man. But alas, his eyes deceive him, and his mirror shows nothing but Narcissus.

THE profound quality of the suggestions offered by the Iraq Study Group - the panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that presented its report with such fanfare to the president yesterday morning - can be inferred from the following passage on page 60: "RECOMMENDATION 19: The President and the leadership of his national security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership." Truly, a grateful nation should fall on its knees and thank the benevolent Creator that the nine wise men and one woman who comprise the Iraq Study Group were willing to...

GEORGE W. Bush just delivered what may be the most important speech of his presidency since he went before the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, and declared his intention to seek regime change in Iraq. The time has come, the president all but said yesterday, to take the gloves off with Iran. "The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said flatly. He prefaced those words by saying that efforts were being made to find a diplomatic solution to the problem. Nonetheless, Bush has now said in the strongest sentence he has yet...

THE ABSURDITY OF THE 'HILLARY IS A BITCH' THEORY OF ELECTABILITYAND OTHER PODHORETZ NONSENSE by Mia T, 5.07.06 This is why many believe nominating a woman - nominating Hillary - will play into the GOP's hands. If the public is looking for a tough guy, won't the public want a guy? Maybe. On the other hand, if there were ever an American woman politician who could pass for a tough guy, it's Hillary Clinton. Start with the purely cosmetic. The fact that she never quite figured out what to do with her hair or her clothes, the fact that...

The lovably irascible Beldar, the Texas trial lawyer who is one of the two people on earth hotly defending the Miers nomination (the other being our buddy Hugh Hewitt), has posted a convenient link to articles written by Harriet Miers during one of her stints as a bar association honcho. He did this in part to address a charge I made on Hugh's show that Miers shouldn't be taken seriously because over the past 30 years of hot dispute on matters of constitutional law she hadn't published so much as an op-ed on a single topic of moment. Thank you,...

The War on Terror has always been an imprecise term, a vague placeholder for the real name of the conflict into which we have been unwillingly plunged. In a landmark speech he delivered yesterday, President Bush made it plain for the first time, really, that our enemy is not "terror" per se but something far more complex and therefore far more difficult to defeat.... And while he quickly followed that ground-breaking sentence with one assuring his listeners that "this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam," there's no mistaking that, four years into the War on Terror, the...

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) September 27, 2005 -- Liberals on the airwaves and across the Internet have assailed the bestselling new conservative children's book "Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed" (Kids Ahead; hardcover $15.95; ISBN 0976726904) since it was announced several weeks ago, but the criticism took a surprising turn on Monday when prominent liberal Andrew Sullivan waded into the controversy, this according to the book's publisher. Sullivan — the author of multiple books and a former editor for the magazine "New Republic" — claimed on his popular blog that the book contains nudity, a charge which set...

The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today. To mark our 10th anniversary, we invited several of our valued contributors to reflect on the decade past and, at least indirectly, on the years ahead. More specifically, we asked them to address this question:  "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last 10...

...Then the Weekly Standard arrived in 1995, and Washington was suddenly a two-magazine town. William Kristol, Fred Barnes and John Podhoretz came up with the idea and Rupert Murdoch came up with the money.... Ever since, the Standard has proudly flown the banner of conservatism from Washington each week, sometimes conservatism of the "neo" sort.... "The Weekly Standard: A Reader" offers an impressive sampling from the magazine's first 10 years. Irving Kristol, William's father, defines neoconservatism, insofar as it can be defined -- he calls it a "persuasion," not a movement or ideology. Andrew Ferguson, tired of hearing Edward R....

ALL eyes are now on the United States Senate, which has unexpectedly become the epicenter of American politics. The question of the year is whether a change in a specific Senate rule — the one that creates the condition for the never-ending debate called a "filibuster" — would represent a shocking breach of American tradition. The Senate, we're told, is an institution that exists to slow down the mad rush of politics and allow issues to percolate and stew. But as yesterday's debate in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the nomination of John Bolton demonstrated yet again, at moments...

DEMOCRATS in Washington may be on the verge of making a calamitous political error. What's more, they have every reason to know it — because they saw Washington's Republicans make the same terrible mistake a decade ago. But because they are so convinced they are in the right — and because they live in an ideological bubble that deafens them in the same way that another bubble deafened House Republicans to the political consequences of their actions on Terri Schiavo — Washington's Democrats are going to go ahead and do themselves serious injury anyway.

There are two media camps in America today: one that is digging into Col. Jerry Killian's memos and examining what typewriter fonts were in use in 1972 and parsing Ben Barnes's statements about National Guard admissions, and one that is not. George Bush received an honorable discharge from the Guard--that much is not in dispute. Everything else--including whether the documents "60 Minutes" obtained are authentic--seems to be in play.

<p>September 10, 2004 -- THE populist revolu tion against the so- called mainstream media continues. Yesterday, the citizen journalists who produce blogs on the Internet — and their engaged readers — engaged in the wholesale exposure of what appears to be a presidential-year dirty trick against George W. Bush. What the bloggers and their audiences did was call into profound question the authenticity of four documents proudly trumpeted by CBS News in a much-heralded investigative report on Wednesday night's edition of "60 Minutes" about the president's National Guard service in the early 1970s.</p>

September 3, 2004 -- THE world will little note nor long remem ber George W. Bush's speech last night. It wasn't his finest hour by a long shot, though it did feature a remarkably moving account of the sacrifices of the families of veterans who have fought for freedom since 9/11. "I am awed," he said, "that so many have used those meetings to say that I am in their prayers — to offer encouragement to me. Where does strength like that come from? How can people so burdened with sorrow also feel such pride? It is because they know...

September 2, 2004 -- HE gave them Zell. I don't think there's ever been a speech like last night's keynote address by Georgia's Democratic senator, Zell Miller. First, it's unprecedented for a senator of the opposing party to deliver the most important remarks at a convention besides those of the presidential and vice-presidential nominee. Second, and even more important, it was astonishingly harsh — and harsh about Democrats and the Democratic Party in a way that no major Republican politician would dare to be. If a Republican said, as Miller just did, that "our nation is being torn apart and...

THE most startling thing about Ronald Reagan, when you were in his presence, was just how big a man he was — even at the age of 77, as he was when I found myself privileged to work as one of his speechwriters during the last six months of his world-altering presidency. Even in 1988, 24 years after his final appearance as an actor, you could easily see what it was that the legendary Warner Brothers casting director Max Arnow had seen when a 25-year-old sportscaster named Dutch Reagan traveled from Iowa to Hollywood for a screen test 52 years...

<p>May 14, 2004 -- A MAN has his head cut off by al Qaeda in Iraq, and The New York Times aggressively markets the idea - on its front page yesterday - that his death is somehow the fault of the United States. "The family of Nicholas E. Berg challenged American military officials on Wednesday," according to lead paragraph in the Times' story, "insisting that the man beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq had earlier been in the custody of federal officials who should have done more to protect him."</p>

In this rousing, persuasive, and hugely entertaining book, John Podhoretz says that George W. Bush has earned a place in the pantheon of great American chief executives---and shows in one amazing detail after another how Bush's success has driven some of his critics into a pathological frenzy. Podhoretz is the first to acknowledge that the odds were stacked against Dubya, the inexperienced Texas governor who took up residence in the White House lacking an electoral majority, dogged by widely publicized verbal mishaps, and widely viewed by the American elite as a lightweight. But to the delight of his friends and...

<p>January 6, 2004 -- THE Democratic presidential candidates had a debate on Sunday in Iowa, and the the pundits were unanimous: Despite attacks by his rivals, Howard Dean's relentless march toward the nomination wasn't slowed down at all.</p> <p>"Dean Still Standing After Foes Take Shots; Old Barbs Do Little to Rattle Front-Runner," ran the headline on yesterday's Washington Post analysis by the King of Conventional Wisdom, David Broder.</p>

Confronting sagging ratings, the producers of The West Wing plan to take a more bipartisan approach next season, focusing in initial episodes on the character portrayed by John Goodman, a conservative speaker of the House, who takes over as the country's leader. (In the season finale, which was repeated on Wednesday, the president, portrayed by Martin Sheen, temporarily steps down during an international crisis in which his daughter is kidnapped. Speaking to reporters during a conference call on Thursday, exec producer John Wells, who is taking over from creator/writer Aaron Sorkin, said that the views of a conservative Congress will...

<p>August 29, 2003 -- THE rise of an ardent, pas sionate, angry and en gaged left is the most im portant political story of 2003.</p> <p>The hottest book of the new publishing season is Al Franken's "Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)." Joe Conason of the New York Observer has a fast-selling tome called "Big Lies." At the end of September comes "The Lies of George Bush" by David Corn of the Nation magazine, which will likely hit the bestseller list as well.</p>

<p>August 26, 2003 -- A PAGE-ONE Washington Post article summed up this week's conventional wisdom perfectly: "The president no longer enjoys the aura of invincibility that surrounded him only a few months ago . . . Democrats especially have re-evaluated his presidency and concluded that, on the issues now dominating the political debate, Bush does not have the upper hand."</p>

<p>August 20, 2003 -- THIS is how they test us: with car bombs and truck bombs. That's how Muslim terrorists try to determine whether the citizens and governments of democracies are serious about confronting them - or whether we can be shaken from our resolve by their nefarious deeds.</p>

<p>August 16, 2003 -- WHAT a difference 26 years makes.</p> <p>In the summer of 1977, on the hot night of July 13, the city of New York went dark - and Americans bore horrified witness to a fragile civil society that almost instantly fell to pieces. Entire shopping districts were decimated by looters acting in nefarious concert. From the Upper West Side to Jackson Heights, from Brooklyn's Fulton Street to Third Avenue in The Bronx, the economic carnage was at near-Basra levels. It only took about six hours for faceless mobs to steal and destroy an estimated $2 billion.</p>

<p>July 15, 2003 -- THE liberal/ Democratic/media assault on President Bush has "gained traction," as the politicos say. Some ostriches on the Right want to pretend otherwise. They ought to know better. The weeklong controversy over the supposed "lie" Bush told in the State of the Union Address completely overshadowed the president's historic trip to Africa, a trip intended to cast light on his revolutionary new AIDS policy. His poll numbers have fallen 10 points in the past few weeks.</p>

<p>July 8, 2003 -- The CIA has determined that Saddam Hussein is alive. Funny: It was the CIA that determined Saddam was hiding in a Baghdad bunker on March 20, leading President Bush to begin the war on Iraq two days early with a massive cluster-bomb attack on Saddam himself. Then the CIA heard Saddam was at a restaurant in southwest Baghdad on April 7, and another massive strike leveled the place.</p>

<p>July 3, 2003 -- HAVE you ever noticed that whenever you hear liberals talk about what's great about America, they often end the sentence by noting that America's greatness lies in the right of all citizens to criticize her? That's true, of course, but it's a little like saying intimacy is a good thing because it allows people to say really nasty things to each other. It's like they're looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, which gives them the impression that America is a cramped, tiny and unpleasant place.</p>

<p>June 24, 2003 -- LET'S try to get this straight: The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that universities can use race as a positive factor in admissions - meaning that a minority kid can get an advantage over a white kid simply by virtue of the color of his or her skin.</p>

<p>June 17, 2003 -- OSCARS are usually given to the wrong movie. But this past March, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences committed a special sort of hate crime when it handed out the Best Documentary trophy. The winner was Michael Moore, the fact-challenged America-loather, for his "Bowling for Columbine." It's certainly unfortunate that Moore can win any award other than the Stalin Prize, but the campaign some conversatives have started over the Internet to get the Oscar rescinded is kind of silly.</p>

<p>April 25, 2003 -- IF you want to count the myriad ways in which the ascension of George W. Bush has saved the Republican Party from its own worst tendencies, you need look no farther than the remarks this week of Sen. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.</p>

<p>April 18, 2003 -- OK, I'll admit it. I'm part of a vast conspiracy to control American foreign policy.</p> <p>Yes, we neoconservatives have succeeded in brainwashing the leaders of the United States and Britain, using nefarious mind-controlling techniques. Those techniques include: Writing articles, circulating letters, giving speeches and appearing on television.</p>

<p>April 15, 2003 -- THE question on everybody's lips yesterday was: Is Syria next?</p> <p>The answer: Syria is indeed next: It will be the next Arab country to change radically.</p> <p>That doesn't mean American forces will march on Damascus, or that U.S. smart bombs will rain down on Syrian military positions near the Golan Heights - that is, unless Syria acts in ways that seriously endanger or cost the lives of coalition forces in Iraq.</p>

<p>EVEN as Marines and Iraqis worked together joyously to tear down that obscene statue of Saddam Hussein, pundits and policymakers wouldn't even pause to revel in the wonderment of a people freed from totalitarian tyranny.</p> <p>They were already suiting up for the next foreign-policy battle.</p>

<p>April 9, 2003 -- YOU know those protesters who carry posters with a short brush mustache under the president's nose and the slogan "Bush = Hitler"? The protestors who, rational liberals assure us, represent the irresponsible and reckless wing of the antiwar, anti-Bush movement?</p>

Apr. 3, 2003 WAR ON ALL FRONTS: What else is new?, By John Podhoretz By JOHN PODHORETZ Join me, if you will, on a brief tour through the brain of the standard-issue mainstream American journalist, surveying the war in Iraq: "The battle plan is flawed. There are civilian casualties. There are military casualties. The generals briefing reporters in Qatar aren't saying enough. "The commanders on the ground are angry at the Pentagon. The Pentagon is lying when it says the war is going well. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't let the armed forces bring in enough troops. "There aren't enough...

Join me, if you will, on a brief tour through the brain of the standard-issue mainstream American journalist, surveying the war in Iraq: "The battle plan is flawed. There are civilian casualties. There are military casualties. The generals briefing reporters in Qatar aren't saying enough. "The commanders on the ground are angry at the Pentagon. The Pentagon is lying when it says the war is going well. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't let the armed forces bring in enough troops. "There aren't enough Iraqis cheering American and British troops, which means Iraqis hate American and British troops, which means they...

<p>OK, let's get the official wartime caveats out of the way: One casualty is too many. War is hell.</p> <p>Now let's get the official personal caveats out of the way: No, I have never served in the military and I am not "embedded" anywhere except in Brooklyn after midnight.</p>

This Media Life You've Got Sex Or rather, dear America Online, you had it. But as the suits at Time Warner prudishly looked away, you squandered your lead as the nation's leading purveyor of dirty chat. By Michael Wolff The theatrical effort to revive America Online is not just a business soap opera but one of those great, almost poignant instances of the culture going one way and a heroic, albeit oddly out-of-it, ragtag group thinking it can hold fast against the tide. Here's the real rub: AOL's fundamental business -- which has always been a level or two down...