Free Republic

Mike Barnicle just wrapped up the Obama Parrot of the Week. That's the award I hand out on my local TV show to the MSMer doing his sycophantic best to parrot the Obama party line. Barnicle gave his award-winning performance on today's Morning Joe, in the course of tossing two super-softballs to David Axelrod. Barnicle's first lob was about the difficulties of governing in this hyper-partisan, cable-TV age. His second softball chastised Republicans for their announced intention to oppose Pres. Obama's Supreme Court nominee. Which raises the question: do the names Robert Bork—or Clarence Thomas—mean anything to Mike Barnicle? View...

We do not honor Ted Kennedy's memory by perpetuating his mistakes. Despite all of the live prime time cable TV coverage last night of speeches extolling his legislative accomplishments and willingness to reach across the aisle on occasion, Kennedy's extreme views on foreign policy, judicial appointments and health care are not worthy of emulation. Unlike his brother John F. Kennedy who understood the Soviet menace and America's special mission to carry the torch of liberty throughout the world, Ted Kennedy was a moral relativist when it came to dealing with our enemies. An anti-war and nuclear freeze advocate to the...

"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of citizens." -- Sen. Edward Kennedy, floor of the U.S. Senate, 1987. I'm all for remembering a man's good qualities upon his death. But not at the price of ignoring—and denying—history. Yet that's just...

The death of Senator Edward Kennedy from a malignant brain tumor superimposes somber intimations of mortality onto a frequently frivolous political scene. It puts us in mind us of what Wordsworth called the "fallings from us, vanishings" that ultimately reconcile us to our own mortality. As a young man Senator Kennedy became, as he is today, the pillar of a large extended family. We extend our sympathies to his family upon his death. Senator Kennedy became the lion of the Senate and of American liberalism. For better or worse, his legislative accomplishments have done much to shape the United States...

I am deeply grateful for the contribution that Ted Kennedy, who died last night, made to my education. Until Kennedy delivered his intemperate tirade against Robert Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the summer of 1987, I hadn’t known that a United States Senator could brazenly lie to his colleagues and the American people and get away with it. I’m not talking about little fibs, or broken promises, or private dissimulations: all that I took as standard operating procedure in a fallen world. No, Ted Kennedy raised — that is to say, he dramatically lowered — the standard by...

Senator Ted Kennedy has died.

Part 3 of a symposium on the career of Judge Robert Bork and the publication of A Time to Speak. Part 1. Part 2.When Slouching Toward Gomorrah appeared, it bore on its dust jacket a few words of mine praising the book and its distinguished author: “The ideological triumph of liberalism among American elites, far from bringing the individual and social enlightenment it promised, has produced unprecedented decay. The principal victims of this decay are the poorest and most vulnerable among us, those most in need of a healthy culture. Bork courageously and boldly states these truths. A judge as...

Controversy over the American Bar Association's ratings of potential judicial nominees is likely to continue with the announcement that the bar group will resume its role of evaluating candidates before their nominations. In fact, a soon-to-be-released study by political scientists concludes what conservative groups have long charged: The ratings are biased against potential conservative nominees. Political scientists Richard Vining of the University of Georgia, Amy Steigerwalt of Georgia State University and Susan Smelcer, an Emory University doctoral candidate, will present their findings next month at the Midwest Political Science Association's 67th Annual National Conference. The three academics, all of whom...

Former Supreme Court Justice nominee Robert Bork predicts that President-elect Barack Obama’s judicial nominees will orchestrate a profound sea change in U.S. jurisprudence, legalizing same-sex marriage, restricting or eliminating the death penalty,...

I have decided to keep posting articles I think should be brought to the attention of my readers, but I have to suspend publication of new posts that I write until I get my anger under control. As a respecter of truth and (I think) as a decent person, I don’t want to act in the mean-spirited way that so many liberals do. For eight years now, we have had to contend with a concerted drive by liberals to destroy the reputation and the moral authority of President Bush through a campaign of lies and smears, and even a book...

Clarence Thomas, the only black member on the Supreme Court and a highly respected jurist, was demeaned and insulted for political gain by Senator Obama in Saturday's forum. As a conservative nominee, we well remember the "high tech lynching" that took place by Democrat senators and operatives at Thomas's hearing because he had the gall to be a black conservative who also believed that abortion is wrong. Using a playbook that was originated at a previous hearing for Judge Bork, Thomas was smeared and lied about and private detectives went through his garbage.

An honest disagreement is one thing, but there is a phenomenon going around the internet, mostly at the expense of conservative bloggers like me, known as baiting. These are liberals who get some kind of perverse pleasure by visiting conservative blogs and trying to harass them or tie them in knots. Their favorite technique is to seize on some trivial point or side issue and argue with it, completely disregarding the main point of the article. Another technique is to hunt for some reference that disputes something you have said – easy to do in a world where the liberal...

There are many versions of the cliché that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged,” and Robert Bork has just given rise to another. A tort plaintiff, it turns out, is a critic of tort lawsuits who has slipped and fallen at the Yale Club. Mr. Bork, of course, is the former federal appeals court judge who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987 but not confirmed by the Senate. He has long been famous for his lack of sympathy for people who go to court with claims of race or sex discrimination, or other injustices. He...

My weblog started as an e-mail discussion group of friends about three years ago. About a year and a half ago I converted it to a blog that has a moderate-right, conservative slant on political and social issues of the day. I still e-mail my original group, which includes both liberals and conservatives, to notify them whenever I post a new article. One thing I have noticed that has become very clear: the liberals in my group have stopped making (usually opposing) comments on my posts. I still get plenty of comments from conservatives and from liberals who just happen...

One issue posed by the normalization of homosexuality, which Lawrence largely accomplishes–the only step remains is the creation of a constitutional right to homosexual marriage–is whether as a society we want a significant increase in the number of homosexuals. Other arguments are largely beside the point. Homosexuals argue that allowing them all the rights of heterosexuals, including the right to marry, is simply a question of justice, of the equal protection of the laws. That argument leaves out of the account the effects of normalization on individuals and on society. It would have force only if there were no serious...

How should parents react when a son or daughter announces that he or she is "gay?" The Supreme Court has adopted a principle that, by its own logic, suggests that the parent should be indifferent, that the question of sexual "oreintation" is nobody's business but the son's or daughter's, and that any contrary attitude is nothing more than bigotry. That answer is not only morally perplexing but has absolutely no plausible connection to the Constitution the Court claims to be interpreting. The Court's answer, however, has everything to do with the modern liberal attitude toward sexuality. That answer was given...

How liberals are using international law to promote their agenda and create a boomerang effect in the United States:  By creating novel new international laws, the New Class hopes to outflank American legislatures and courts by having liberal views adopted abroad (by foreign governments and organizations such as the United Nations) and then imposed on the United States.This approach is working. These new laws boomerang back to the United States; courts now cite the decisions of foreign courts in “interpreting” our Constitution.  Radical decisions on social issues, values, religion, and speech that are made by foreign legislatures and courts...

Justice Scalia’s argument about the death penalty has two aspects. The first concerns the duty of the judge; the second has to do with the respect owed by Catholics to the Pope’s call for the virtual abolition of the penalty in Evangelium Vitae. As to the first, the duty of the judge, there can, it seems to me, be no reasonable disagreement. The Constitution several times explicitly recognizes capital punishment, leaving legislatures free to choose or reject that sanction. Most American legislatures have chosen it. By what warrant, then, can a Justice of the Supreme Court abolish what the Constitution...

An Open Letter to the Press in Western Carolina From: John Armor, Candidate for Congress, 11th District Date: 16 March 2006 re: certain comments by Deborah Potter on behalf of Congressman Charles Taylor Ladies and Gentlemen, Below is an exact and complete copy of an e-mail that Charles Taylor's Press Secretary, Deborah Potter, sent to Don Yelton, a friend of mine. (For those who don't know me, I'm a lawyer and author who lives in Macon County, and I'm running against Taylor in the Republican primary.) The Potter e-mail refers to me as "Armor and his bunch of left-wing radicals...

It ought to be a major intellectual event in constitutional law when a Justice of the Supreme Court comes forward publicly to explain his theory of judging. Explanation is needed, for by now nobody familiar with the work of the Court believes it confines its rulings to the principles of the historic Constitution. There have always been instances when the Court voted its sympathies rather than anything resembling the Constitution, but over the last half century the divergence between the document and the decisions has sharply increased. Indeed, the criticism that the Court routinely departs from the Constitution’s principles, as...