Free Republic

Being a full-time lawyer and conscientious blogger has really cut into my reading time, and I rarely find the time to read the books sent to me for reviews and/or plugs on Power Line. Why I Turned Right, edited by Mary Eberstadt, promised to be a partial exception to that unhappy rule. It consists of essays in which twelve conservatives explain how they ended up as such, I figured I'd read the three or four by the writers who interest me the most. In the end, I read the whole thing, and so should you. The essays essentially narrate the...

Who is Keith Ellison? (20) Keith Ellison is the endorsed Democratic candidate for Congress in Minnesota's solidly Democratic Fifth District (Minneapolis). Ellison's local leadership of the Nation of Islam, his defense of the "truth" of an attack on Minneapolis Jews as "the most racist white people," his affiliation with convicted murderer and Vice Lords gang leader Sharif Willis, his support of the Vice Lords gangbangers charged (and subsequently convicted) with the murder of Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf, his outrageous attacks on law enforcement authorities, his demand that Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist Sara Jane Olson be freed, his concern for...

The media would love to help the Democrats with their "culture of corruption" campaign theme; unfortunately, the facts aren't cooperating very well. Which didn't stop CBS News from doing its best, in this story about the Justice Department standing firm on the documents seized from Congressman William Jefferson: Top law enforcement officials at the Justice Department and the FBI indicated to their counterparts at the White House that they could not, and were unwilling to, return documents to the Louisiana Republican which were seized as part of a bribery investigation.

We got several emails from readers who heard press secretary Tony Snow interviewed on NPR this morning. Joe Malchow was kind enough to track down the audio; here it is. The fireworks start around five minutes into the clip, but it's all interesting. What I find striking is the hostile attitude of the NPR interviewer, Steve Inskeep. At one point, Snow describes one of his questions as "snarky." Basically, Inskeep was trying to get Tony to agree that past press secretaries had been liars, and pledge not to follow their example. Tony does an excellent job, and keeps his good...

Near the end of President Bush's press conference yesterday, a reporter asked this question: Q. In 2004, when you were doing an event about the Patriot Act, in your remarks you had said that any wiretapping required a court order, and that nothing had changed. Given that we now know you had prior approval for this NSA program, were you in any way misleading? The reporter may have been reading left-wing web sites, many of which are buzzing about this latest "Bush lied!" claim. President Bush began his answer as follows: I was talking about roving wire taps, I believe,...

ABC's Note reports on NY Times reporter Jim Risen's appearance on the Today show: On NBC's "Today" show this morning, New York Times scribe Jim Risen told Katie Couric that he hopes he will not have to reveal his sources to a grand jury and declared his story to be the exact opposite of the Plame case. Risen claims his sources revealed information for the best possible reasons and he went on to declare those sources "patriots." This was highly predictable, of course, but the important thing is that the Plame question is being asked. The force of the Plame...

Haider Ajina has kept us posted on events in Iraq by translating articles of interest from the free press in Iraq. Today he writes with a report from his family in Iraq regarding the election: I just hung up with my dad in Nejaf. He said it went phenomenally well. He spoke to my Grandmother & my uncles aunties etc. in Baghdad and they all voted. Even my cousin who did not vote in January voted. They are all grateful and full of hope. He said Iraqis are very impressed and honored to be given such coverage all over the...

GOP.com has posted an excerpt from John Fund's subscription-only Political Diary: "Senator Sieve." Fund reports: Is Senator Harry Reid all that swift when it comes to U.S. Intelligence matters? Last Wednesday, the Minority Leader appeared on KRNV-TV's "Nevada Newsmakers" program and dropped a stunning revelation. He had been informed just that day that Osama bin Laden was killed in the giant Pakistan earthquake last month. "I heard that Osama bin Laden died in the earthquake, and if that's the case, I certainly wouldn't wish anyone harm, but if that's the case, that's good for the world." Intelligence analysts tell me...

Buckhead is the Atlanta attorney who originally questioned the authenticity of the documents used to attack President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service in the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes II broadcast. He preferred anonymity for professional reasons, but a diligent reporter for the Los Angeles Times tracked him down and identified him in the immediate aftermath of Rathergate. A reader forwarded Buckhead's comments on the documents to us on September 9, and I included them in our original "Sixty-first Minute" post that morning. For the most part he has kept his silence. Now Mary Mapes is out peddling the...

If what I'm hearing is reliable, expect some soon.

We have obtained copies of Scooter Libby's letter to Judith Miller dated September 15, 2005, in which he again urged her to testify before the grand jury, and repeated the waiver that he gave her more than a year ago; a letter dated September 16, 2005, from Libby's lawyer Joe Tate to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, expressing astonishment at the claim that Libby's purported failure to give a "voluntary" waiver was the reason why Miller remained in jail; and a letter dated September 29, 2005--the day before yesterday--from Miller's former lawyer, Floyd Abrams, to Joe Tate, in which Abrams disputes...

Today is September 9, the first anniversary of "Rathergate." It was at 7:51 on the morning of Sept. 9, 2004, that Scott hit the "save" button on the original version of "The Sixty-First Minute", which discussed the 60 Minutes program on President Bush's National Guard service that had aired the previous evening, along with the DNC's advertising campaign on the same subject that was beginning on the morning of Sept. 9. At the end of his post--now the most famous post in the young history of the blogosphere--Scott included a quote and a link to a Free Republic post by...

Yesterday we noted, based on a column by Jonathan Turley, that Senator Durbin appeared to be flirting with the idea of holding John Roberts' deeply held Catholic beliefs against him. Turley reported that, when Roberts met the Senator, Durbin had interrogated Roberts about how he would handle a hypothetical conflict between Catholic principles and the law. The hypothetical is more than a little far-fetched because, to my knowledge, Catholicism doesn't make it a sin to declare bad laws constitutional. Today, according to the Washington Times, Durbin and his staff are denying that the religious interrorgation took place and that the...

In an earlier post, I analyzed Senator Biden's latest attempt to set new guideposts for Supreme Court nominees, and effort intended to preclude the confirmation of someone who dislikes the judicial activism Biden prefers. Fortunately, this was merely an academic excerise, since Biden's views probably are not relevant to the confirmation process. Biden and his fellow liberal Democrats are relevant only to the extent that they can muster enough votes to avoid cloture when they filibuster, and then muster enough votes (51) to defeat a rule change that would end the filibuster. But in doing the bidding of ultra-liberal special...

Major E. writes from Baghdad: The 4th of July was quiet here, and Camp Victory enjoyed steak and lobster--for lunch and dinner, topped off by Baskin-Robbins ice cream. Except for the troops out on offensive operations, many people got a bit of a break. The highlight of my day was the noon prayer service, titled "General Washington in Prayer" (see attached file for photo of program cover). It was thirty-five minutes of patriotic encouragement where chaplains led troops and civilians in separate prayers for the people, leaders, and service members of the United States of America. We also sang the...

Hinderaker (and Buckhead) in the round CNN has just posted videos of the panel discussions on bloggers and blogging that our own John Hinderaker participated in during the CNN annual World Report International Conference in Atlanta on May 31. Also appearing on the panel with John is the man -- Harry MacDougald, a/k/a Buckhead -- whose Free Republic comment on the September 8 CBS 60 Minutes II report on President Bush's Air National Guard service was emailed to us on September 9. We posted his comment in our "Sixty-first Minute" post that morning and spent the rest of the rest...

We missed our opportunity yesterday to pay tribute to the heroes of Gettysburg Day 2, the decisive day of the battle. Among the heroes who saved the Union on July 2, 1863 were the 282 men of the First Minnesota Volunteers. Their story cannot be told often enough, and Mackubin Thomas Owens made it the centerpiece of his terrific 2003 "Reflections on Memorial Day." As John has previously observed here: The pivot of American history turns on the second day at Gettysburg, and, while thousands of men fought gallantly on both sides that day, there were two points where the...

And it's worth every penny the President paid for it. I think he should nominate Janice Rogers Brown to fill the O'Connor vacancy. If there were any doubt about a second vacancy opening up soon, I'd want to make sure that we got one of the most solid candidates confirmed--Luttig, Roberts, McConnell. But we know that Bush will get a second appointment soon. If Bush nominates Brown, the Dems will go stark raving mad--even more so, I think, than they would over the three favorites. If that's possible. But their craziness would strike many people as bizarre, especially given that...

"Throughout Moyers' career, he was free to slander conservatives with impunity, knowing that there was no forum in thich their responses would ever be heard..."

The mainstream media continue their faux outrage over the link that President Bush drew between September 11 and the Iraq war in his speech Tuesday night; here is one of countless examples. This is, frankly, mystifying; as one of our readers pointed out yesterday, the connection between the Iraq war and September 11 was made explicit in the text of the Congressional resolution that authorized military action in Iraq. Here are some excerpts: Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11,...

Last night we posted a partial transcript of Hugh Hewitt's interview with Lt. Peter Hegseth, a Minnesota native who has just returned after a year at Guantanamo Bay. Today, Lt. Hegseth sent the following letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which editorially endorsed Dick Durbin's comparison of our troops to Nazis, Communisists and Khmer Rouge killers: As a recent veteran of Guantanamo Bay, I've been troubled by the willingness of some (namely this editorial page) to make uninformed inflammatory statements about the detention operations at GTMO. I believe that if any one of them had the opportunity to visit GTMO...

June 12, 2005 Major E. Reports Our correspondent in Iraq, Major E., wrote this essay in response to a column he saw in his home-town newspaper which argued that Iraq is a lost cause. We've edited it slightly for length; click to enlarge the photos: The number one question I have been getting from friends and family back home is whether we are winning here in Iraq. In fact, what inspired me to write today was reading an op-ed published by the local congressperson in the Contra Costa Times, a paper I actually delivered for three years many moons ago.......

1600 READING [Rod Dreher]We had White House communications director Dan Bartlett in today for an editorial board meeting. I asked him if blogs fit into the WH's communications strategy. He said he has people on his staff whose full-time job is to monitor the blogs to keep up with what's going on. I asked him what the most important blogs to read, from the White House's point of view, are. He said that in terms of what influences the mindset of the Washington media, Kausfiles, the Slate daily roundup of the papers, and Andrew Sullivan were crucial ones to keep...

Blumenthal Responds, Kind Of I guess we can add Sidney Blumenthal to the ever-growing roster of Power Line readers. He took offense at a post we did yesterday that consisted of an email exchange between one of our readers and Blumenthal, to which I added some commentary. At the risk of boring those who remember the original post, I will reproduce it here to give context to Mr. Blumenthal's response: Former Clinton apparatchik Sidney Blumenthal is better known by the well-earned moniker of Sid Vicious. He now plies his trade in the pages of Britain's far-left Guardian. Sid Vicious addressed...

The Gang of 14, Blogged Down In the Middle By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, May 29, 2005 It was the perfect storm for the blogosphere, an issue on which both right-wingers and left-wingers could rise up in rare unison and smite the craven offenders. Both sides hated, castigated and otherwise took a dim view of the last-minute deal this week that averted a nuclear showdown over Senate filibusters. Let the mainstream media praise as bipartisan statesmen the mushy moderates who cobbled together the compromise. Many bloggers were infuriated, castigating the so-called Gang of 14 (and especially John...

Getting Blogged Down in the News By Michael Getler Sunday, April 17, 2005; Page B06 Being away for 10 days usually means coming back to some old business. It's unusual for old business to remain new business over such a stretch, but that's what has happened with The Post's coverage of the mysterious Senate memo dealing with political strategy in the case of the now-deceased Terri Schiavo. It started on Sunday, March 20, with a front-page story by reporters Mike Allen and Manuel Roig-Franzia about Congress preparing to have the federal courts become involved, in hopes that doctors would be...

There's always second-guessing when it comes to the Pulitzer Prize. But when The Associated Press was given the award for breaking news photography last Monday for depicting the war in Iraq, some conservatives bloggers expressed outrage. "The Pulitzer Prize for felony murder goes to The Associated Press," Scott W. Johnson wrote last Monday in a posting on the blog Power Line. But in an interview yesterday, Mr. Johnson said that the A.P.'s explanation of what happened seemed plausible and that he planned to update the blog, with a link to information posted on Tuesday by the A.P. that he said...

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM once described the American college campus as an island of repression in a sea of freedom. The report of Columbia University's ad hoc grievance committee suggests that Columbia is such an island. On its face, the report presents findings and recommendations concerning allegations by Columbia students that they were subjected to intimidation and abuse by members of the university's department of Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC). However, the report is better understood as a directive to Columbia students to take without protest the poisonous medicine being administered by the anti-Israel, anti-American radicals who dominate MEALAC....

This time, the hoax was on them. Still gloating over their role in unmasking CBS's faulty National Guard memo story last September, right-wing bloggers launched a new memo-based crusade against the so-called liberal media last month, one that turned out to be completely phony. But unlike CBS and its tarred former anchor, Dan Rather, who eventually admitted their mistakes in the Memogate affair, these bloggers (many of whom were also involved in the CBS campaign) haven't had the guts to apologize for their blunder. When the Terri Schiavo story became national news in mid-March, a curious subplot revolved around a...

With the revelation that an aide to Senator Mel Martinez was the source of the widely-trumpeted "GOP talking points memo," we have written this article for the Daily Standard to summarize the story as it has developed to date: For the past two and one-half weeks, Washington has been roiled by controversy over an alleged "GOP talking points memo" that, according to ABC News and the Washington Post, was circulated among Republican Senators on the evening of March 17, when the Senate took up debate on the Terri Schiavo federal jurisdiction bill. The memo, of which Republicans disclaimed any knowledge,...

Where Did They Get That Idea? There's a reason people think that the Terri Schiavo "talking points memo" was written by Republicans. by Scott Johnson 04/04/2005 12:00:00 AM Increase Font Size Printer-Friendly AFTER 60 Minutes II broadcast its fraudulent story on President Bush's Air National Guard service on September 8, 2004 holy heck broke loose on the Internet. Virtually anyone with eyes to see the evidence that accumulated during the days after the report came to the conclusion that the documents on which the story was based were fraudulent; yet CBS stonewalled for 12 days before admitting that its story...

Here we go again. Another fake memo story is handled quite well by new media types John Hinderaker and Cliff Kincaid and along comes the defender of all things old media Howard Kurtz to set the record straight. Kurtz is again put in the uncomfortable position of trying to spin another one of his employers and the rest of the old media out of a poor decision. This time the implication is that the GOP was willing to politicize the Terri Schiavo case. To get to that point, the proof the old media cited was a poorly worded, rambling note...

Bloggers are swarming around a new target: the Terri Schiavo "talking points." Fresh from declaring victory over CBS News and its discredited National Guard memos about President Bush, some of the same bloggers are raising questions about a strategy memo, first reported by ABC News and The Washington Post, that cast the Schiavo right-to-die case as a partisan opportunity for Republicans to stick it to Democrats. "Fake but Accurate Again?" says the Weekly Standard headline on an article by John Hinderaker, an attorney and conservative blogger who had challenged the CBS documents. While there is no hard evidence that the...

Thanks to Lucianne for sending her readers over to check out Rocket Man's reporting on "the GOP talking points memo" with the notation that "ABC picks up where CBS left off." The American Spectator's Washington Prowler has picked up the scent and interviewed Republican Senate staffers: "Dirty Democrat pool." The Prowler reports: "Republican leadership staffers now believe the document was generated out of the Democratic opposition research office set up recently by Sen. Harry Reid, and distributed to some Democratic Senate staffers claiming it was a GOP document, in the hope -- or more likely expectation -- that it would...

Confirming what we reported earlier today, ABC News has admitted that it knows nothing about the origins of the "GOP talking points" memo that it first published. An ABC source writes: the memo discussed a republican bill and was distributed to repulbican senators. That's what we reported. we are obviously not going to divulge our multiple sources. I appeciate your questions, but believe you are approaching this from the wrong end. We asked numerous sources - all confirmed that senators had received the memo in conjunction with one of the bills on the floor. For three days none of those...

It's Rathergate all over again, and the same vigilant entities that brought about to the collapse of CBS News could now also cause heads to roll among Democratic Senate leadership staffers and further shame multiple news organizations that would appear to have fallen for another document hoax. Very quietly, Senate Republican leadership aides to both Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Mitch McConnell, as well as the Senate Republican Policy Committee, have been using the Senate recess break to reconstruct the purported distribution of a document that media outlets, including ABC News, the New York Times and a number of regional...

Washington Prowler Dirty Democrat Pool By The Prowler Published 3/24/2005 12:08:04 AM It's Rathergate all over again, and the same vigilant entities that brought about to the collapse of CBS News could now also cause heads to roll among Democratic Senate leadership staffers and further shame multiple news organizations that would appear to have fallen for another document hoax. Very quietly, Senate Republican leadership aides to both Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Mitch McConnell, as well as the Senate Republican Policy Committee, have been using the Senate recess break to reconstruct the purported distribution of a document that media outlets,...

ABC News and the Washington Post have described--but not actually produced--a memorandum relating to the Terri Schiavo case which they have described as "GOP talking points" that were "distributed only to Republican Senators." Many other news outlets have picked up on ABC's and the Post's reporting, such as this Houston Chronicle article, which relies in part on the memo to support a bitter attack on the Republican Party: Most interesting is a talking-points memo from the Senate side of the Capitol that spells it right out in stark electoral terms: "the pro-life base will be excited" and "this is a...

ABC News, the original source of the story on the alleged "GOP talking points" memo now appears to be backing off the story. Blogger Josh Clayborn has been talking to ABC representatives, both on and off the record, and they are now telling him that they never meant to imply that the "talking points" memo originated with the Republicans--only that it was given to some Republican Senators. See his most recent posts at In the Agora. ABC's current position, as reported by Josh, makes little sense, as their coverage certainly did say that this was a Republican memo. (ABC's website...

The memo that ABC News claims constitutes "GOP talking points" on the Schiavo case has turned up on the web, even though neither ABC nor the Washington Post, which has also reported on the memo and declared it to be genuine, has made it public. This web site, however, has posted the document, saying that it was leaked by "a source on Capitol Hill." Here it is; click to enlarge: The memo is not only "unsigned," as it was described by the Washington Post; it is not on House or Senate letterhead, nor is there any indication of source or...

The Washington Post reported yesterday on an anonymous memo relating to the Terri Schiavo case that allegedly was sent to all of the Republicans in the Senate. ABC News apparently obtained a copy of the memo, and gave it to the Post. Here is how the Post describes the memo: In a memo distributed only to Republican senators, the Schiavo case was characterized as "a great political issue" that could pay dividends with Christian conservatives, whose support is essential in midterm elections such as those coming up in 2006. An unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators, said the debate...

I was very disappointed that John Hinderaker [Hindrocket] chose to take full credit for exposing the CBS memogate scandal rather than at least tipping his hat to those here on FreeRepublic who actually discovered and proved the fraud. Other than that little omission, he did well. He emphasised that the report failed to discuss the coordination between CBS and the Kerry campaign. He emphasized [in legalese, he's a lawyer] that CBS engaged in what he called "affirmative misrepresentation" - what us mere civilians would call outright lies, which puts the lie to their "we were rushed" defense. He mentioned the...

Oh Boy! Just when you thought the legacy media might have wised-up in the wake Dan Rather's career crash, along comes Nick Coleman, the worst columnist at the Worst Major Daily Newspaper in America. The old adage is that when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging. Instead, Nick has rented a metaphorical backhoe. Coleman is about to gain fame well beyond his home market, and I don't think he is going to enjoy the experience. Evidently, Nick has been wounded deeply by the ridicule he has endured at the hands of fellow Minnesotans John Hinderaker and...

Scott "The Big Trunk" Johnson from Power Line Blog (http://www.powerlineblog.com/) has accepted being a write in candidate for MN Supreme Court. Thanks right...one of the guys that helped blow open RatherGate can be a MN Supreme Court Justice...talk about JUSTICE for the MSM. And how ironic - the power of the blog to elect a write in, last minute candidate. Please forward this to everyone you know in MN.

Yesterday I had the good usual weekly talk with my mother over the phone. She lives in Labelle, Florida, not too far east of Ft. Myers. She had just finished her 6 hr all-volunteer phone drive to help get President Bush re-elected. It went pretty well. She then proceeded to tell me that a few days earlier she tried to view some of my postings that had gotten on the Blogs for Bush website at the local Labelle public library's computer. You'd only have 30 minutes to log on if other people are wanting to use the computer. The first...

I know the original Powerline "tip" was posted earlier, but info seems to be getting a little more detailed. (Truth, or just speculation?) #1, article will supposedly appear on front page of Monday's Washington Times. #2, Kerry will apparently be caught in an untruth re foreign policy. Kerry has been so inconsistent on foreign policy, it doesn't seem that another inconsistent statement on foreign policy would hurt him. It will have to be a lot more than that to have any effect. This could be nothing. Just a heads up. Maybe more will leak Sunday. Also see Redstate.org, indcjournal.com.

Tomorrow's Los Angeles Times features an editorial criticizing CBS News for letting down the liberals by publicizing a forgery--well, not so much a forgery, but an obvious forgery: "A Black Eye for CBS News": CBS News has been had. It's hard to reach any other conclusion about newly discovered documents that CBS and anchor Dan Rather are defending as revealing the truth about George W. Bush's military service. Despite Rather's statement Monday that the network "believes the documents are authentic," the evidence keeps mounting that they are not. As The Times reported, conservative bloggers detected glaring inconsistencies, such as a...

Suicide Bombers and CBS News Before September 11, important aspects of our security arrangements were based on the assumption that people, even terrorists, want to live. For example, airlines followed the rule that if a passenger's bags were checked but the person failed to appear for the flight, his bags would be removed from the airplane. The idea was that a bomb could have been planted in the luggage. But as long as the passenger was on the airplane, it was assumed that his bags were safe, since no one -- it was thought -- would blow up an airplane...