Free Republic

The assertion of total power through unchecked violence - outside the Constitution, beyond the reach of the law (apart from legal memos from hired hacks instructed to retroactively redefine torture into 'legality') - will be seen in retrospect as the key defining theory of Bush conservatism. It ended with torture. Why? Because reality may differ from ideology; and when it does, it is vital to create reality to support ideology. And so torture creates reality by coercing "facts" from broken bodies and minds. This is how torture is always a fantastic temptation for those in power, even if they first...

The colorful brochure from Mitt Romney's presidential campaign looks like many of the political fliers flooding Iowa mail boxes this time of the year. But there is a difference. The piece is Romney's first to single out his rivals by name, a shift that shows him becoming more aggressive in the final weeks before the Jan. 3 caucuses. The mailing juxtaposes photos and quotes from Romney showing his support for a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman with photos and quotes showing Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson all oppose...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rudy Giuliani assured a conservative legal group Friday that if elected president he would appoint federal judges who adhere to their principles. He also praised a judge who declared the capital city's gun ban unconstitutional and ridiculed efforts to eliminate the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. In a speech marking the 25th anniversary of the Federalist Society, Giuliani spelled out a conservative legal agenda in which he cited Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts as models for the judges he would appoint to the federal...

Chafee quietly quits the GOP 01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 16, 2007 By Bruce Landis Journal Staff Writer PROVIDENCE — Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party. Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment. “It’s not my party any more,” he said. Chafee’s departure...

How A Dark-Horse Can Win The Nomination By Thomas F. Roeser - The Wanderer PressCHICAGO — Two weeks ago I played political strategist for Ron Paul. In the old days of my mis­spent youth, when I was a hired gun political strategist working for the Minnesota Republican Party, nobody asked whom I was for. They didn’t care. My boss just showed me a candidate and or­dered me to devise a strategy for him/ her at lowest possible cost. And because I liked to continue eating, I did it.It didn’t work out too badly. Af­ter a few of us got the...

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state," wrote Shakespeare. Sen. Larry Craig knows today whereof the bard spoke. Rarely has a United States senator fallen so fast from grace or been so completely abandoned. As the nation now knows, Craig was arrested in June in an airport men's room in Minneapolis, charged with propositioning an undercover cop, who was on duty there because the place had become notorious.| According to the officer, Craig, in the next stall, flashed known signals of a man seeking anonymous and immediate sex. Rather than fight the...

HENNIKER, N.H. -- Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani defended his positions on a late-term abortion procedure and gun control Tuesday as he faced skeptical GOP voters who questioned his sincerity. "I don't think there's an inconsistency," the former New York mayor said of his long-standing support of abortion rights and his affirmation last week of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold a ban on what critics call partial-birth abortion, a measure he opposed in the past. Once an advocate of strong federal gun controls, Giuliani also disputed the characterization that he advised President Clinton on the matter, talked of leaving...

Rep. Peter King Endorses Giuliani Rep. Peter King (R-NY), former Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has endorsed former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008, according to the New York Daily News. This is newsworthy because King co-chaired Sen. John McCain's New York campaign in 2000.FROM THE NY DAILY NEWS: Rudy Giuliani has wooed Rep. Peter King away from Sen. John McCain. King co-chaired McCain's New York campaign in the 2000 White House race, but the Long Island congressman says he'll now be lining up other House members for Giuliani. The ranking Republican on the Homeland Security...