Free Republic

 The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies Kay S. Hymowitz Summer 2005 Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility, and poverty in the recent New York Times series “Class Matters” and you still won’t grasp two of the most basic truths on the subject: 1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city. By now, these facts shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be...

Though he had a distinguished career as a journalist and editor at such places as the New York Times, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair, Edward Klein has seen his sterling reputation go into near meltdown in just a matter of days. The reason? He has committed a cardinal sin for liberals: he has harshly criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton. Long time friends are distancing themselves from him and others are going to great lengths to besmirch him. Such was the case last week when the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's daughter Maura penned an article about Klein and his new book "The...

NEW YORK (CBS) A spokesman for Sen. Hillary Clinton is branding a new book about the New York Democrat as being "full of blatant fabrications." Edward Klein, in his book "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President," says Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan - who publicly championed her 2000 race for the Senate - was privately less enthused about the former First Lady. According to an excerpt in July's Vanity Fair magazine, both Moynihan and his wife, Liz, felt disdain for the aspiring senator and didn't trust them when...

Moynihan with Clinton in 1999. Photo: Alan Solomon ....Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and his wife despised a "duplicitous" and ruthless Hillary Rodham Clinton, who they believed would do anything to advance herself, according to a bombshell new book. "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Be come President," by Edward Klein, is excerpted in Vanity Fair and slated to roll off the presses later this month. Sen. Moynihan's wife, Liz, griped to a friend that a "duplicitous" Clinton "would say or do anything that would forward her ambitions"........."She can...

The nomination of John Bolton as am bassador to the United Nations fi nally cleared the Foreign Relations Committee last week and is heading for the Senate floor, but Democrats are still working to torpedo it on everything — save the actual merits. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced at week's end that she is placing a "hold" on the nomination until the State Department forks over a barrel-full of documents demanded by the Dems in hopes of finding a smoking gun to sink Bolton once and for all. Placing a hold means the nomination is subject to an open-ended delay....

MUCH CRITICISM has been leveled at the president's decision to nominate John Bolton as our next ambassador to the United Nations. While equally outspoken intellects like Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick were accepted as appropriate for their time, Bolton's bluntness and penchant for courting controversy in a diplomatic quiet zone like the UN, his critics say, make him ''uniquely ill-suited" to the UN's current demographics. This argument misses the forest for the trees. As even Vice President Cheney noted last Friday, Bolton's historic views about the UN and how it functions, combined with his strong ties to President Bush...

"There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world -- and that's the United States -- when it suits our interests, and when we can get others to go along...." This kind of mindless creation of the United Nations as something different from what it's in the United States' interest to do isn't going to sell here or anywhere else. You know this speaker and his ilk. Or do you? Read on. One of the primary complaints about John Bolton is that he does indeed...

President Bush has named John R. Bolton to be America's new ambassador to the United Nations. He will, in my opinion, be in the tradition of Pat Moynihan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, John Negroponte and Jack Danforth. In a March 9th editorial, The New York Times ridiculed Bolton's appointment by citing various statements he made in recent years. The Times stated that in a 2000 interview on National Public Radio (an acknowledged left-wing outpost of the radio dial), Mr. Bolton told Juan Williams, "If I were redoing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of...

As Social Security’s critics know, the government program is robed in myths, for example, that it is “insurance” financed with a “trust fund,” paying “guaranteed” benefits “as a matter of earned right.” These myths have given most Americans a mistaken understanding of Social Security. As a result, they perniciously affected policymaking in the past and severely constrain reform options today. Beginning in 1935, when Social Security was enacted, the program’s administrators made a huge effort to shape the public’s understanding of and beliefs about it. In speeches, articles, pamphlets, and other mass-circulation literature, they described Social Security as “insurance” under...

<p>WASHINGTON — President Bush's commission to create a plan to mend Social Security is loaded with members who favor privatizing the federal retirement plan to some degree.</p> <p>Bush wants to allow voluntary private investment accounts. He will officially announce his commission on Wednesday. The group's task is to hammer out the details of a new plan by this fall.</p>

"Hell no, we won't go" is the wrong liberal approach on Social Security reform.The late Pat Moynihan used to joke when I asked him why liberals were so reluctant to consider changing Social Security so that it guaranteed wealth as well as income: "It's because they worry that wealth will turn Democrats into Republicans." Leaving aside that possible correlation, it will be a shame if liberal voices, values and ideas are not brought into the debate initiated by President Bush's Social Security reform proposal. To make certain the reforms are done correctly liberal thinking is urgently needed.There is no doubt...

President Bush must really be on to something with his proposals to reform Social Security. The liberals are circling the wagons and hunkering down for a desperate defense. You'd think these self-described "progressives" would be more receptive to an overhaul and modernization of a 70-year-old program that was designed during the Great Depression. This vehement opposition is over more than the mechanics. It's ideological. The left regards Social Security as the cornerstone of FDR's New Deal socialism. Privatizing it is nothing short of blasphemy. A Ponzi scheme can only survive as long as the number of suckers grows. With the...

While national Democratic leaders have been busy pummeling President Bush, New York's senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, a Democrat, spent part of a campaign debate on Sunday aligning himself with the president, saying he voted with Mr. Bush "to extend the child income tax credit,'' and that he "voted with the president for authorization to go into Iraq." With those comments, Mr. Schumer underscored a strategic reality as he seeks re-election: He is not just content to win a second term in the United States Senate, but he is looking to win big. And to do that, he must attract...

Purging the Neocons January 6, 2004 Did you know that the word neoconservative — often shortened to neocon — is an ethnic slur? Neither did I, but some, er, conservative pundits have set me straight. David Brooks of the New York Times says of “the people labeled neocons” that “con is short for ‘conservative’ and neo is short for ‘Jewish.’” So when other people call these people “neocons,” you see, they’re really calling them Jews, which for some reason is anti-Semitic. This must come as a surprise to Irving Kristol, who long ago cheerfully, indeed proudly, accepted the term. Though...

The year-end obituaries have paid due homage to the national icons, the rich and famous, the talented and not so. But there really ought to be obituaries not just for people but for the qualities they represented. For traditions, customs, styles that have faded. For example: • Original, incisive, apolitical thought in the United States Senate. I don't think of Daniel Patrick Moynihan much anymore — only when the subject is foreign or domestic policy and anything in between or beyond. More important than the way he voted was the way he thought — as if we could actually reason...

Is Bush a Ronald Reagan or a Richard Nixon? Neocons and Big Government by Bruce Bartlett Posted Aug 21, 2003 For some months, we have been hearing a lot about how neoconservatism underpins the Bush administration's foreign policy, especially the war in Iraq. Now, some neoconservatives are saying that their philosophy underpins the administration's domestic and economic policy, as well. The evidence for this contention is strong, a fact that will undoubtedly exacerbate tensions between President Bush and traditional conservatives. To understand what this debate is all about, one needs to know what neoconservatism is and where it came from....

 Slouching toward Gomorrah - Robert Bork "A Nation's moral life is the foundation of its culture" ----------------- Death of the West - Pat Buchanan [On Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions]"What is happening? Socialism, the beatific vision of European intellectuals for generations, is one reason. ...By freeing husbands, wives, and children of family responsibilities, European socialists have eliminated the need for families."-------------Defining Deviancy Down - Senator Moynihan  Speech?This pattern can be characterized as what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed "defining deviancy down." Senator Moynihan argues that societies with high levels of crime also have low standards for what constitutes acceptable behavior.  

Friends and family of Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan are more than miffed at Junior Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (Democrat-NY) who broke the news to a stunned United States Senate Chamber last week that the longtime New York Democratic Senator had died.'That was not hers to announce, it was classless,' says a family representative.The family had planned to issue a statement Wednesday at 6:30 PM, but Senator Clinton spilled the beans earlier without the family's okay.What happened? Clinton associates say she was in a caucus meeting when an aide told the group of Moynihan's death.Since she had replaced Moynihan, Clinton...

Moynihan Myths   Moynihan Myth 1: "Scholastic" Means "Smart" Mia TMarch 26, 2003 Flip-flopping aside, Daniel Patrick Moynihan's scholastic and excessively subtle reasoning justifying his vote not to impeach and remove bill clinton reveals more about the hog-and-bow-tied senator and his party than about the Constitution of the United States. It had long been rumored that Sen. Moynihan was the Democratic Party's mind. A complete absence of the construct failed for decades to disabuse us of this notion. This apparent incongruity only widened in the '90s. Under the tutelage of the clintons, "Democratic Party mind " quickly devolved from...

John Marshal, more impact than presidentsSaturday, March 29, 2003By GEORGE F. WILL WASHINGTON--Many of America’s largest public careers have been those of presidents. Many, but by no means all. Chief Justice John Marshall was more consequential than all but two presidents--Washington and Lincoln. Among 20th- century public servants, Gen. George Marshall--whose many achievements included discerning the talents of a Col. Eisenhower--may have been second in importance only to Franklin Roosevelt. And no 20th-century public career was as many-faceted, and involved so much prescience about as many matters, as that of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who died Wednesday at 76. He was...