Free Republic

Those were grim days for race relations in New York City, the early 1990s. There were nearly 2,000 murders each year, blacks and whites died in high-profile racial killings, and a riot held a divided Brooklyn neighborhood in thrall for three dangerous nights. On Jan. 9, 1994, another match landed in this tinderbox: a caller reported a burglary at a Harlem mosque. The police ran in, and Nation of Islam guards threw punches and broke an officer’s nose. The mosque’s minister, accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, drove downtown to register their outrage with the police commissioner, a street theater...

In the first two Republican presidential debates, Rudolph W. Giuliani has addressed questions about his stand on abortion by citing figures showing that abortions declined when he was mayor of New York, while adoptions increased. Mr. Giuliani’s implication was that he had successfully reduced abortions at least in part by encouraging adoptions. “We should do what I did in New York, which is to try to reduce abortions as much as you can, try to increase adoptions,” he said during the debate on Tuesday night, adding that the number of adoptions in the city increased 133 percent during his years...

WASHINGTON, March 7 — When Republicans say they are skeptical that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, can survive their party’s presidential nominating process, they usually point to his record of support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control. But there may be a less obvious hurdle that Mr. Giuliani has to overcome: Whether he is too much of a New Yorker for the rest of the country. Americans like New York City, as officials in both parties are quick to say. Most find it vibrant, entertaining and an object of sympathy and pride since the...

After four years of enjoying private life, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is taking several steps that could lay the groundwork for a presidential bid, strengthening alliances with Republicans nationwide and especially with conservative leaders of the party. Mr. Giuliani's advisers say he will decide around the end of the year whether to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008. It is a decision that will not be made easily: Mr. Giuliani believes that his support for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control would make winning the nomination difficult, according to several friends and former City Hall aides....

It was the climax of George W. Bush's video introduction at the Republican convention: the moment at Yankee Stadium during the 2001 World Series when he threw a pitch all the way to home plate. The video ended, and the conventioneers cheered as Mr. Bush strode onto a stage shaped like a pitcher's mound. Well, live by the pitch, die by the pitch. When you campaign as the man on the mound, the great leader whose arm rescues Americans in their moment of need, they expect you to deal with a hurricane, too. Mr. Bush made a lot of mistakes...

In the view of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops, politicians who belong to the church but depart from its teachings on abortion should be denied honors from a Catholic institution. Unless, some would say, you happen to be a national hero of Sept. 11 who has raised a lot of money for a church-affiliated hospital. That would be the former mayor of New York, Rudolph W. Giuliani, an abortion rights supporter, whose name will grace a new $25 million trauma center at St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan. Ground was broken last week. The hospital is a branch of St. Vincent Catholic...

Fake Crimes Paul Craig Roberts Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004 Studies show Americans are close to being the worst educated and least aware population among First World countries. Americans easily stumble into war and give up their rights because of exaggerated fears of terrorists and criminals. Americans have been losing accountable government, liberty and justice for a long time. At some point, these values become irretrievable. Consider justice. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and imprisons 6 to 10 times as many people as any other industrialized country. Between 1990 and 2000, the U.S. population...