Free Republic

Bush has warned against for five years. Iran’s nuclear program, its support of groups like Hezbollah and its strident anti-Israel and anti-American statements appear to make it a prime target for American retribution. But the administration finds itself relying on Israel to cripple Hezbollah and on the United Nations and an ad hoc alliance of European nations, China and Russia to try to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. “Iran is the enemy that best fits the definition of the adversary Bush has defined,” said Robert Malley, director of the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group. “This is the...

A Christian for the N.Y. Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 3, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Joseph Farah -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who says the New York Times is anti-Christian? Why just the other day, I read a beautiful profile of an evangelical mega-church pastor from Minnesota. You could just tell the reporter for the Times loved the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd. It isn't Christians the Times loathes. It's just right-wing Christians. And so does the Rev. Gregory Boyd. Boyd has some interesting ideas – given that he claims to base his beliefs on the same Bible I read. But let's start with abortion...

CAMBRIA, N.Y., July 31 — Reaching out to rural voters in New York and elsewhere in the nation, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Monday for increasing federal support for struggling farm communities to revitalize rural America. In a speech delivered on a 152-year-old family farm, Mrs. Clinton called for major federal investments to expand broadband Internet access in rural communities, promote the development of alternative fuel sources like corn-based ethanol and encourage medical school graduates to practice in agricultural areas. “We can build a new rural future,’’ Mrs. Clinton said, after listing economic problems that she said have led...

WASHINGTON, July 28 — Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest. Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. “One of the guys” was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to...

WITH Israel at war with Hezbollah, where, you might wonder, is Al Qaeda? From all appearances on the Web sites frequented by its sympathizers, which I frequently monitor, Al Qaeda is sitting, unhappily and uneasily, on the sidelines, watching a movement antithetical to its philosophy steal its thunder. That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign. Al Qaeda’s Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy...

POUND for pound and pounding for pounding, the Israeli military is one of the world’s finest. But Hezbollah, with the discipline and ferocity of its fighters and ability to field advanced weaponry, has taken Israel by surprise. Now that surprise has rocketed back to Washington and across the American military. United States officials worry that they’re not prepared, either, for Hezbollah’s style of warfare — a kind that pits finders against hiders and favors the hiders. Certain that other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah’s successes, the United States is studying the conflict closely for lessons to apply to its own...

As the bloodbath in Lebanon spilled past its second week — with at least 400 Lebanese dead and many more presumed buried in rubble; some 800,000 refugees, nearly a quarter of the population, on the run; and the fragile nation’s infrastructure shattered — there was no easy way out for either Israel or Hezbollah, the combatants locked in what each saw as a deadly existential struggle.

ROCKY HILL, Conn., July 28 — Senator Joseph I. Lieberman commissioned a poll in January as he prepared for his fourth campaign for the Senate, and the results were sobering. Mr. Lieberman was tied against a hypothetical primary opponent, described only as a Democrat who was opposed to the Iraq war and was critical of Mr. Lieberman’s ties with President Bush, an aide recounted. That poll was one of a number of early warnings that emerged well before Mr. Lieberman found himself locked this summer in a career-threatening battle with Ned Lamont, a Democratic primary challenger who is opposed to...

WASHINGTON, July 27 — Coal-burning utilities are contributing money to one of the few remaining climate scientists openly critical of the broad consensus that fossil fuel emissions are intensifying global warming. The critic, Patrick J. Michaels, is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and Virginia’s state climatologist. Dr. Michaels told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least...

KEVIN BARRETT, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has now taken his place alongside Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado as a college teacher whose views on 9/11 have led politicians and ordinary citizens to demand that he be fired. Mr. Barrett, who has a one-semester contract to teach a course titled “Islam: Religion and Culture,” acknowledged on a radio talk show that he has shared with students his strong conviction that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job perpetrated by the American government. The predictable uproar ensued, and the equally predictable...

by Mark Finkelstein July 23, 2006 - 06:47 Don't the press in general and the New York Times in particular take pride in portraying themselves as ever-the vigilant defenders of the First Amendment? But judging by an editorial in the paper this morning, the Times experiences a power loss worse than the one currently gripping Queens when it comes to defending the First Amendment rights of groups it disfavors, in this case the tobacco industry. Entitled Take the Tobacco Pledge, the editorial urges ratification of The World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, known colloquially as 'the tobacco treaty.'...

Two days ago, the New York Times suggested an out-of-character response to dealing with the crisis in the Middle East should the U.N. Security Council fail to enforce Resolution 1559, which requires Hezbollah to disarm. "If the Security Council isn't willing to issue such explicit demands or link them to clear punishments," the paper editorialized, "the United States, Europe and key Arab allies, who are also eager to see the fighting and Hezbollah contained, will have to bring serious pressure on their own." Of course, the editorial continued, "[t]he United States will have to take the lead." The NYT's argument...

The New York Times has morphed from the newspaper of record — "All the News That's Fit to Print" — into the Bush-hating newspaper of record — any Bush bashing that fits. Take the deficit, which is coming down because tax revenues are going up. It was our big story right at the top of the show. It's a good story because it shows that the Bush policy of tax cuts isn't in place simply to give his rich friends some extra cash for bigger yachts. Money in the economy instead of in the treasury produces more economic activity which...

New Yorkers are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them bragging about the city’s water — so pure it doesn’t need to be filtered, so delicious it is better than bottled. So it may surprise, perhaps even insult, proud residents to hear that federal officials are worried that the fabled water — coming from the largest unfiltered system in the country — is getting muddier and may have to be completely filtered, at a cost of billions of dollars, if it cannot be kept clean. For much of the last year, the century-old water system that delivers 1.3 billion gallons...

Weapons WASHINGTON, July 18 — The power and sophistication of the missile and rocket arsenal that Hezbollah has used in recent days has caught the United States and Israel off guard, and officials in both countries are just now learning the extent to which the militant group has succeeded in getting weapons from Iran and Syria. While the Bush administration has stated that cracking down on weapons proliferation is one of its top priorities, the arming of Hezbollah shows the blind spots of American and other Western intelligence services in assessing the threat, officials from across those governments said. American...

Speaking at a boisterous rally for Israel near the United Nations headquarters this afternoon, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said she supported taking “whatever steps are necessary” to defend Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraq and Syria in the military conflict in the Middle East. Senator Clinton, addressing a crowd of several thousand people, said the United States must show “solidarity and support” for Israel in the face of the “unwarranted, unprovoked” seizure of three Israeli soldiers by members of Hamas and Hezbollah, which she referred to as among “the new totalitarians of the 21st century.” “We will stand with Israel because...

CAN we cure our ailing health care system by sending in more doctors? That is the treatment prescribed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which has recommended increasing the number of doctors they train by 30 percent, in large part to keep up with the growing number of elderly patients. But the most serious problems facing our health care system — accelerating costs, poor quality of care and the rising ranks of the uninsured — cannot be solved by more doctors. In fact, that approach, like prescribing more drugs for an already overmedicated patient, may only make things worse....

AS liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance. They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the “realist” foreign policy school. That school’s most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many liberals a reminder of how easily the ostensible amorality of classic realism slides into immorality. Yet idealism has lost some of its luster. Neoconservatism, whose ascendancy has scared liberals into a new round of soul-searching, seems plenty idealistic, bent on spreading democracy and...

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power. Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to...

Little Green Footballs notes one of the New York Times' "memorable photographs," which was taken by Times photographer Joao Silva. Silva was in the room with a “Mahdi Army” sniper who was trying to kill American soldiers: The Times' commentary on the photo, by Assistant Managing Editor for Photography Michele McNally: "Right there with the Mahdi army. Incredible courage." We have written before about the wire services' use of Iraqi stringers who appear to be members of, or at the least friendly with, terrorist groups. This is a step beyond that, as Silva isn't just an anonymous stringer, but is...