Free Republic

John McCain has always gotten great press, especially since he started riding around New Hampshire in a bus in 1999 and conducting rolling news conferences with reporters that would last for hours. McCain fell short in that election, of course, but he emerged as the media's favorite maverick. In the first Bush term, McCain won some battles in which he challenged his own party--on campaign finance reform and an anti-torture amendment--that further burnished his legend as an independent truth-teller. John Kerry, you may recall, even begged him to run on the Democratic ticket. During that whole time, McCain never presented...

Gregory Gets Caught in Political Battle By DAVID BAUDER NEW YORK (AP) - In some circles, having a Web site devoted to getting you fired could be proof that you've really arrived. NBC News chief White House correspondent David Gregory admits he's clicked on firedavidgregory.com. How could he resist? Presumably he wasn't among the 2,839 visitors who, through Friday, had signed a petition urging his removal. "People have their own political views and they view me through that lens and they go on the attack," Gregory said. "I think that's kind of part of the territory." What put the target...

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation took nearly two years, sent a reporter to jail, cost millions of dollars, and preoccupied some of the White House's senior officials. The fruit it has now borne is the five-count indictment of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff--not for leaking the name of Valerie Plame to Robert Novak, which started this entire "scandal," but for contradictions between his testimony and the testimony of two or three reporters about what he told them, when he told them, and what words he used. Mr. Fitzgerald would not comment yesterday on whether he had evidence...

President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has divided the conservative movement. Initially, most conservatives, but not quite all, expressed disappointment with the nomination. Since then, paths have diverged. Some conservatives, having gone on record as wishing that Bush had chosen someone else, have now migrated back into the fold, pronounced Miers a qualified candidate, and defended her nomination as the president's prerogative. Other conservatives have continued to ratchet up their attacks on Miers. Nearly every day produces yet another instance of Miers's alleged incompetence, inexperience, or suspected liberal sympathies. Some of the criticisms of Miers are...

America's worst DA, the execrable Ronnie Earle, admitted today that he went grand jury shopping. After his initial indictment of Tom DeLay fell apart, he went to a second grand jury, presented his evidence, and the grand jury refused to return any charge against DeLay. Undeterred, Earle then went to a third grand jury that was more pliable and agreed to a "money laundering" indictment on the basis of what could only have been, at most, a few hours of "evidence." The Austin Statesman has a report: A Travis County grand jury last week refused to indict former U.S. House...

PHOENIX (AP) -- Headed to Europe next month for a two-week trip, Gov. Janet Napolitano plans to take the reins of state government with her. The Arizona Constitution says a governor's powers pass to the secretary of state -- currently Republican Jan Brewer -- when the governor is absent from the state, but Napolitano, a Democrat, has taken the position that the provision written decades ago shouldn't be read literally these days. With satellite phones, fax machines, the Internet and other tools of modern technology, a traveling governor can still remain in contact and make any necessary decisions, Napolitano aides...

We passed another marker in this war on terror last week. The U.S. military death toll in Iraq hit 1,500. Did you know? Yes, there were stories about it in the national news, small and elusive at times, nothing compared to the stories about Martha and her sleek SUV ride out of the clink. In the local accounts, any mention of the 1,500 was often even less prominent. Some war supporters got all bent out of shape last April when "Nightline" decided to devote an entire show to reading the names and showing the photographs of the more than 700...

He reported the death of John F. Kennedy, made Richard Nixon squirm over Watergate and helped show the world a myriad of abuses perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison. But as Dan Rather prepares to leave the top anchor chair at CBS News in March, he is more likely to be remembered for a series of controversial memos whose validity he was never able to prove. Rather didn't mention his controversial 60 Minutes story in the announcement that he would leave the CBS Evening News on March 9, 2005 - his 24th anniversary as the network's...

SAN ANTONIO -- Democratic Senate candidate Ron Kirk suggested Friday that Republican opponent John Cornyn's comfort in sending U.S troops to Iraq may come down to racial and class differences between him and those who would be actually taking enemy fire. "Look who would be doing the fighting," he said following a joint rally with Tony Sanchez, the Democratic candidate for governor. "They're disproportionately ethnic, they're disproportionately minority." Kirk said that if the children of Cornyn's wealthy friends and acquaintances were destined to be on the front lines, "he would be just as deliberative as the rest of us." Kirk,...