Free Republic

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has announced the winners of its 4th annual Tarnished Halo Awards. CCF awards these prizes to America's most notorious animal-rights zealots, environmental scaremongers, celebrity busybodies, self-anointed public interest advocates, trial lawyers, and other food & beverage activists who claim to know what's best for you. The Reverend Rooster Category Awarded to Al Sharpton, the publicity-seeking preacher, for joining PETA to crow at KFC restaurants and attempting to instigate a boycott from the African American community. It's odd that Sharpton would stand side-by-side with PETA, which advocates a complete end to chicken consumption. When the...

<p>IN THE past fortnight, the Democrats have come up with lots of comfort-food explanations of George Bush's victory&#8212;from the idea that the rascal stole the election for a second time (there were a mere 3.3m votes in it, after all) to the notion that he rode into Washington, DC, at the head of an army of hooded fundamentalists. But perhaps the most dangerous of all these myths is the idea that Mr Bush terrified the voters into re-electing him. He divided the country along &#8220;fault lines of fear&#8221;, according to Maureen Dowd in the New York Times; he relied on &#8220;fear of and hatred for modernity&#8221;, added Garry Wills, polymath and devout Catholic. Sooner or later every Democrat starts saying that the president used terrorism to partisan advantage.</p>