Free Republic

Former Gov. Michael Dukakis says a Cambridge man facing five years in federal prison for repeatedly lying to the FBI about his pal Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is “a fine young man” who “could have a great future in public service.” Dukakis went to bat for Robel Kidane Phillipos, 21, in a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock ahead of Phillipos’ sentencing today for making false statements to the FBI in its investigation of the Boston Marathon bombings. Prosecutors want five years. Phillipos and Tsarnaev, both 21, grew up together in Cambridge and were classmates at the University of...

Freepers first impressions of Obama are interesting. The comments start at post 1671 and go on through about 1950.

He's the star of bulletins chronicling Barack Obama's movements, one of only a few nonrelatives to consistently get time with the Democratic candidate for president and a trusted confidant who has shared some of the most pivotal moments of Obama's career with him. Yet journalists who have followed Obama's campaign for the better part of two years don't know what he looks like, staffers who have logged countless hours traveling with Team Obama didn't even know he works for the campaign and there's never been a story in a major media outlet about him. He is Michael Signator, an aide...

At the Democratic National Convention, Janeane Garofalo -- comedienne, talk show host and liberal pundit -- called me a "house Negro" and a "fascist." Well! For four days, the Democratic Party put on its quadrennial scare-old-people-and-minorities party. Democrats, of course, rely on the 90-plus percent monolithic black vote. Thus, a black "non-liberal" poses a direct threat to the party's national prospects. When Garofalo agreed to a sit-down, she clearly knew nothing about me. When I defended the administration on the War on Terror, a frustrated Garofalo started to get up and leave, muttering, "This show sucks." After I called her...

Music is the soundtrack of our lives, so it only stands to reason that songs have become the subtext to our political campaigns. At the FleetCenter they ranged from the obvious --... ...and U2 singer Bono told a group of young City Year volunteers that when he was their age he joined a band because he wanted to do two things: change the world and have fun. "I'm a fan of America, one of those annoying fans that follows the singer into the bathroom and asks what happened on the last album," Bono said to explosive applause, hardly needing to...

The Muslim imam who gave a closing benediction at the Democratic National Convention in Boston also served as a character witness to Sami al-Arian, the Florida professor indicted by the U.S. Justice Department on 50 counts of terror-related charges. On the second day of the Democratic National Convention, Imam Yahya Hendi said the closing prayer of the night with some verses from the Quran. Yet, last July, the 9-11 commission heard testimony from terrorism expert Steven Emerson that Hendi, one of the top Islamic clerics in the U.S., backed al-Arian – head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in North America....

A POPULAR conceit of the left is that political hatred is a sickness of the right, one to which liberals are largely immune. "Just who are these Clinton haters," asked Time magazine in April 1994, "and why do they loathe Bill and Hillary with such passion?" It answered, in effect: That's just the way conservatives are. The article quoted historian Alan Brinkley: "Liberals tend to value tolerance highly, so there's a greater reluctance to destroy enemies than among the right." That was a whopper even in 1994, a year when Republican leader Newt Gingrich was routinely vilified as a McCarthyite...

RON REAGAN, JR. TO GIVE PRIMETIME SPEECH AT DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION ON STEM CELL RESEARCH, Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter tells ABC News' Dan Harris...