Free Republic

Felicity Huffman made her first court appearance since her arrest on charges she’d cheated her daughter’s way into college. The “Desperate Housewives” star stands accused of engaging the services of William Rick Singer to bribe an SAT proctor, who is alleged to have corrected her daughter’s answers to ensure a higher score. On Monday Ms. Huffman agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. Here’s the great unasked question: What’s the moral difference between Ms. Huffman’s getting her daughter into college with an SAT score she didn’t earn and...

The ubiquitous Kim Kardishian is in the news for apparently no longer being newsworthy. [quote] Everything the reality family touches turns absolutely toxic — with party promoters, magazine editors and television execs all scrambling to blacklist them, insiders told The Post. Ratings for the family’s reality show have plummeted, sales of magazines with Kim Kardashian’s mug go unsold, and her products are unmarketable, insiders say. [end quote] The writer opines that her fall from grace stems from her publicity-stunt marriage to New Jersey Net's forward Kris Humphries, which afforded those who consume celebrity objects only 72 days of vicarious thrills....

Left to their own devices, most Americans can work these differences out in politics much as they do in their everyday lives, as untidy as these solutions may be. Unfortunately, when the courts short-circuit this process, they do three things corrosive to our politics. First, they act as dishonest referees, imposing one set of preferences over another. Second, they cheat the American people of an honest political contest, where candidates need to persuade the people of their views to put them into effect. Ed Whelan, a former Justice Department official who now runs the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center,...

McGurn replaced Mike Gerson, who is taking on other duties in the West Wing. Gerson, who was often seen scribbling at a coffee shop near the White House, filled speeches by the famously plainspoken Bush with soaring rhetoric tinged with religious overtones. Gerson finally persuaded McGurn, a longtime Wall Street Journal columnist and chief editorial writer, to take his place. He admired McGurn's ability to turn an elegant phrase when advocating conservative social politics and complex economic issues, the latter especially timely as Bush promotes his plan to introduce private retirement accounts as part of Social Security. ``I was taught...

Michael Gerson has served George W. Bush magnificently as chief speechwriter, during both the 2000 campaign and the first term in office. His departure would have prompted us to declare his enormous talents "indispensable" to this president but for the two pieces of good news that accompanied its announcement. The first is that Gerson will remain at the White House in a new senior position. The second is that he will be replaced as chief speechwriter by another superb talent: our former colleague William McGurn, who was NR's Washington editor for three years in the early 1990s. We lost McGurn...

President Bush met with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who reported on his tour of the tsunamis-devastated areas in SE Asia. Bush received some measure of vindication over unsubstantiated allegations ("Rathergate memos") about his Air National Guard service when CBS announced today, on its web site, that four employees were fired following the release of an independent investigation into the '60 Minutes' story about President Bush's military service. Media bias is now called "myopic zeal." Since no discovery of media bias or forgery was admitted in the report CBS executives ordered (which did accurately credit FreeRepublic.com), decide for yourself how...

President Bush will start his second term with many of his closest and longtime aides by his side including chief of staff Andrew Card, senior adviser Karl Rove and Communications Director Dan Bartlett. Although the visual picture will largely look the same after Jan. 20, Bush's words may sound very different. Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter, who has helped craft nearly every one of Bush's speeches during his first term, is leaving his job. Gerson is expected to move into the policy arena and be replaced as head speechwriter by Wall Street Journal editorial-page writer William McGurn. Gerson's job change...