Free Republic

The group Peaceful Tomorrows, which bills itself as an independent group of 9/11 victim families and whose members have led the charge to force the Bush reelection campaign to yank ads citing the Twin Tower attacks, has direct financial ties to the Heinz Foundation, the charitable trust administered by the wife of likely Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. On its Web site, Peaceful Tomorrows identifies itself as "a project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization." A Dec. 2003 report in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review detailed the financial relationship between the Tides Center and the charitable foundation controlled by Mrs....

A widely circulated report yesterday implicating Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry in Vietnam war crimes turns out to be wrong, New York Daily News "Lowdown" columnist Lloyd Grove insists today. But while the report in question did confuse John Kerry with former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, the Massachusetts Democrat did in fact once confess to committing war crimes - at least as he defined them - during his Vietnam War protest days. Blaming "the vast right-wing conspiracy" for spreading the misinformation, "Lowdown" notes that the Web site intellectualconservative.com had slammed Kerry for opposing the Vietnam war, even though he helped...

With Wesley Clark saying increasingly bizarre things, such as abortion being fine and dandy with him right up to the moment of birth, Sen. Joe Lieberman is the least extreme of the White House wannabes, and thus he has little shot at bagging the Democrat nomination. But ... "Some pundits are counting me out, but George Bush isn't. In a conversation he had in Australia, Bush told the prime minister there that he feared only one candidate — and that candidate is me," Lieberman, who isn't even attempting to compete in Iowa tonight, said today in Hanover, N.H. The Australian...

Democratic presidential hopeful Gen. Wesley Clark went "much too far" last week when he promised that if he becomes president he'll guarantee that terrorists won't attack the U.S., former presidential candidate Gary Hart said Sunday. "I disagree strongly with Gen. Clark," Sen. Hart told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg. Before the 9/11 attacks, Hart, along with former Sen. Warren Rudman, chaired a panel that warned that a terrorist attack against the U.S. was inevitable. The Colorado Democrat told Malzberg, "I was a bit startled by [Clark's] statement if for no other reason [that] I think we have been saying we that...

The Democrats still don't get it. The party that has dominated the American landscape from the time FDR swept to power in 1932 has careened into near oblivion ever since William Jefferson Clinton took the oath of office in 1992. The first domino to fall was the Congress, which fell to the Republicans in 1994. And since then, state by state, the union is looking more red than blue, more Reagan Republican than Clinton Democrat. Recently, State Legislatures Magazine reported that the 2003 elections brought only a few changes to the color-coded maps showing partisan control of legislatures and governors'...

Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean was forced to retract comments yesterday where he warned against prejudging the guilt of 9/11 terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, prompted by NewsMax.com's coverage of the story. "As an American, I want to make sure he gets the death penalty he deserves," Dean hastily told the Associated Press, hours after NewsMax called attention to his bizarre comments to the Concord Monitor, which posted its interview with the leading Democrat earlier in the day. In remarks that went unnoticed till late Friday, Dean had told the New Hampshire paper, "I still have this old-fashioned notion that...

Accusing President Bush of "a kowtow that would have made Bill Clinton blush" when he allegedly followed "a script dictated by Beijing" and condemned Taiwan's president for "unspecified comments and actions" relating to a forthcoming Taiwanese referendum , the Weekly Standard's Robert Kagan and William Kristol insisted that the U.S. must stand by Taiwan. Reacting to mainland China's threat to use force against Taiwan if the island nation holds a referendum protesting Beijing’s missile aimed at Taiwan, an administration spokesman privately told reporters that President Bush is dead set against such a referendum. The Standard reported that China has 496...

While many analysts are crediting the U.S.'s capture of Saddam Hussein for the decision by Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi to change his ways, it was actually the discovery by U.S. intelligence of a cache of Libya's WMDs that convinced the duplicitous dictator that the jig was up. According to Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, "One thing that pushed Gadhafi over the top in making this deal was that we intercepted a ship on the high seas sometime in the summer or early fall that had weapons of mass destruction components being shipped to Libya." Kristol told Fox News Sunday that...

In a move urged by the Democrat's talk radio nemesis Rush Limbaugh, presidential front-runner Howard Dean called former President Bill Clinton on Friday to clarify remarks that fans of the former president found insulting. Speaking to a Manchester, New Hampshire audience on Thursday, Dean had complained, "When Bill Clinton said the era of big government is over, I believe that we must enter a new era for the Democratic Party -- not one where we join Republicans and aim to simply limit the damage they inflict on working families." The remark outraged more than a few Democrats, including Bruce Reed,...

Though Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean was relatively magnanimous in his reaction to Saddam Hussein's capture yesterday, his supporters aren't taking the news nearly as well. On Dean's Blog for America Web page, supporter "Carrie" wrote yesterday: "I can't believe this. I'm crying here. I feel that we now don't have a chance in this election." Dean backer "Florida speaks" chimed in with this assessment: "Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism or Al Qaida or weapons of mass destruction, so this is a pleasant PR diversion for President Bush. ... Enjoy the little honeymoon, George. You've had a bad...

It looks like ex-congressional nutball Cynthia McKinney has picked up some new support for her conspiracy theory that President Bush had advance word of the 9/11 attacks - from none other than Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean. Dean said on Monday that President Bush is withholding documents related to 9/11 because they may show he knew what was coming. "The most interesting theory that I've heard so far - which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved - is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis," Dean told a caller to Washington, D.C's...

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Lieberman defended Sen. Hillary Clinton on Sunday, after she made politically toxic comments predicting possible U.S. failure in Iraq during what was supposed to be a morale-boosting visit to the troops on Friday. Asked if Sen. Clinton was wrong to voice such a pessimistic sentiment from the war zone, Sen. Lieberman told "Fox News Sunday," "In the most technical sense that we're in a war now in which, in the last month, we have lost more American soldiers than we have in any other month since the actual war began . . . in a...

<p>Moderator note: I know it's going to be tough, but, please watch the calls for violence against this creature.</p> <p>In a demoralizing message to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq, visiting New York Sen. Hillary Clinton told them that Americans back home are growing increasingly skeptical of President Bush's decision to send them into battle.</p> <p>Describing two meetings with G.I.s over turkey dinners in Baghdad, Sen. Clinton told reporters later that soldiers wanted to know "how the people at home feel about what we are doing."</p>

Just because the left-wingers at the New York Times ran propaganda for Ed Asner's favorite genocidal dictator, Joseph Stalin, doesn't mean the paper has to return a tainted Pulitzer Prize. "The board determined that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case," Pulitzer administrator Sig Gissler claimed today. After a worldwide outcry from Ukrainians and other decent human beings, a Pulitzer subcommittee in April launched a "review" of pro-Soviet propaganda written by the Times' useful idiot Walter Duranty, who in 1932 was handed the prize. Duranty somehow failed to report how Stalin's...

With Los Angeles private eye Anthony Pellicano beginning his jail sentence on Monday, Hollywood is on pins and needles wondering about the Pellicano tapes, illegal wiretap transcripts discovered on the celebrity gumshoe's computer while he was under investigation for a witness intimidation rap. But those aren't the only recordings that document the work of the man known as the "investigator to the stars." In 1992, when "the Pelican" hired on to do damage control for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, Mary Matalin, then the political director for President Bush 41's reelection campaign, found herself in the unenviable position of being sought...

Gen. Wesley Clark's attempt to blame President Bush on Tuesday for leaving America vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks was the harshest assault yet on the White House by any of the nine announced presidential candidates. But it was not completely unprecedented. Two - and only two - prominent Democrats have previously attempted to blame Bush for 9/11: Bill and Hillary Clinton. The outrageousness of Clark's rhetorical broadside - where he said the Bush administration could not "walk away from its responsibility" for causing America's darkest day raises the pertinent question: Did the former first couple put Gen. Clark up...

The folks at CBS apparently hate Ronald Reagan so much that they're willing to go to any length to trash his legacy - even if it means fabricating events, making up quotes and imagining conduct that Reagan administration insiders say never took place. Too bad for the Tiffany network that decision-makers there are so agenda driven that they'd pass over a far more juicy story; where CBS writers wouldn't have to fabricate a single scene. Never mind Ron and Nancy. How about a movie depicting the real-life goings on behind the scenes at Bill and Hillary's White House - based...

Carl Limbacher, noted commentator, NewsMax contributor and author of blockbuster book, Hillary's Scheme, will be the featured speaker at a luncheon sponsored by Accuracy in Media. Date: Tuesday, October 21; Time: Noon; Location: Women's National Republican Club, 3 West 51st St., NYC; Cost: $35.00 RSVP: Lori Hopkins (202)364-4401,#110 E-mail: Lori.Hopkins@aim.org

In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey snagged the Democratic Party presidential nomination without winning a single primary. And before his assassination that same year, New York Sen. Robert Kennedy was the odds-on favorite to win his party's nod, even though he entered the race with just five months to go before the convention. Still, some political experts are saying that for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, time has just about run out for her to get into the 2004 race. Oct. 4 "was the 12th anniversary of Bill Clinton running," Democratic Party spokeswoman Deborah DeShong told Fox News earlier this...

Premier New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman attacked the Fox News Channel on Thursday, comparing the top-rated cable news network to the pro-terrorist Al Jazeera broadcasting company. Using a recent speech by Vice President Dick Cheney to argue that the Bush administration is too narrow-minded in its handling of postwar Iraq, Friedman complained, "Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker through Fox." "Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated [to cover the Cheney speech]," the top Times columnist wrote. "But I wish we would have...