Free Republic

Almost from the beginning, critics have attacked the Bush administration for the way it has dealt with science. In many areas - and emblematically in the case of climate change - well-qualified accusers have complained that the White House and its political appointees across the federal government have interfered with the work of scientists, misrepresented their findings and censored their public statements. Many of these cases are shocking - or at least they were, until people became inured to them. The administration's record on managing the government's own scientific efforts, and on respect for science more broadly, is awful.

President Bush, at podium, speaks to members of the media prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony ... At this morning's ribbon-cutting for the newly renovated White House Briefing Room, President Bush dropped in just long enough to rub reporters' noses in his cheerful refusal to take them seriously. ... the president was in full frat-boy mode, clowning around during introductory remarks by C-SPAN's Steve Scully. ... Bush apparently felt Scully went on too long. "I like a good, short introduction," Bush jeered as soon as Scully gave up the podium. Here's the transcript. "We missed you -- sort of," Bush...

Vatican City - US President George W Bush drew gasps at the Vatican on Saturday by referring to Pope Benedict XVI as "sir" instead of the expected "His Holiness", pool reporters said. They could clearly hear the US leader say "Yes, sir" when the pope asked him if he was going to meet with officials of the lay Catholic Sant'Egidio community at the US embassy later during his visit. A handful of pool reporters were on hand as Benedict greeted Bush at the door of his private library ahead of a private audience of about half an hour. On his...

June 4, 2007 issue - The United States Department of Justice has not always been above politics. John F. Kennedy, after all, appointed his brother and consigliere Robert to be attorney general. But the Justice Department is supposed to stand for the rule of law—to be the enforcer of the laws of the United States, not the place presidents go to get around the law. Independence is an important tradition in the columned limestone building on Constitution Avenue. It is worth remembering that before Richard Nixon could find someone at the Justice Department willing to fire the Watergate special prosecutor...

DISILLUSIONED supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation. Tom Bernstein went to Yale University with Bush and co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team with him. In 2004 he donated the maximum $2,000 to the president’s reelection campaign and gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee. This year he is switching his support to Obama. He is one of many former Bush admirers who find the Democrat newcomer appealing. Matthew Dowd, Bush’s chief campaign strategist in 2004, announced...

BAGHDAD (AP) -- An Iraqi military spokesman says the leader of the al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, has been captured in a raid west of Baghdad. U.S. officials had no confirmation

Ministers: No Bush library at SMU By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer 27 minutes ago A group of Methodist ministers from across the nation launched an online petition drive Thursday urging Southern Methodist University to stop trying to land George W. Bush's presidential library. The petition, on a newly created Web site, http://www.protectsmu.org, says that "as United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate." "Methodists have a long history of social conscience, so questions about the conduct of this president are very concerning," said one of the...

Press Gaggle by Tony Snow 11/06/2006 Aboard Air Force One En Route Pensacola, Florida 12:09 P.M. CST MR. SNOW: All right, I'm at your disposal. What's up? Q Not much. (Laughter.) Just a little election coming up. MR. SNOW: Thank you, thank you very much. Q What about Crist? Is that -- do you regard that as a snub? MR. SNOW: No. Look, he says he wants to go around and go for votes around the state. The President is going to be campaigning for Charlie Crist today. He will mention him in the speech, and he's also going...

Correcting The Record Myths V. Facts: Debunking Newsweek's Article on Afghanistan: “The Rise of Jihadistan” (October 2, 2006) INCORRECT NEWSWEEK CLAIM: “The 2003 invasion of Iraq did more than divert essential resources from Afghanistan; it created a test lab for new insurgent weapons and tactics that have since been adopted by the Taliban.” RESPONSE: The assertion that the Iraq invasion “diverted” resources from Afghanistan is a talking point of critics of the Bush administration. It is an opinion, not a fact.

Finally, a Republican scandal that may stick Usually when the Republican chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children instant-messages an underage boy and asks him to get out a ruler to measure his... Well. Ahem. Let's just say: Usually when a congressman is involved in a scandal, he doesn't bring the whole party down with him. This time could be different. The Mark Foley affair is so simple and so human, it's like a Cliffs.Notes version of all the other Republican scandals: Rampant corruption. Leadership? Ha. No one cares till the klieg lights get turned on. THE...

Do scandals involving Rep. Foley and others affect your attitude toward all parties? * 2419 responses Yes. I'm fed up with both Republicans and Democrats. Both parties are equally corrupt. 29% In general, the Republican party is the most corrupt. 54% Generally, Democrats are the most corrupt party. 5.8% There are alternatives to both parties- that's why I vote independent! 3.8% Scandals pass... and it's a shame a few bad politicans give Capitol Hill a bad image. 7.4%

WASHINGTON -- The last time the Dow Jones industrial average closed at a record high, America was living in a giddy economic era when good times and budget surpluses seemed as if they might continue indefinitely. It was Jan. 14, 2000, the start of another year, another century and another millennium. The economy was roaring along. The jobless rate was a low 4 percent. The "new economy" of young entrepreneurs energized markets with new tech companies that didn't turn a profit. Nobody seemed to care, and excesses piled on top of excesses.

When I first saw this article this morning, I asked my daughter to pinch me. But, it was still there. I then asked her to slap me. No change. Finally, smelling salts. Alas, it was still on my computer screen, and from the Washington Post no less: “The Redder They Are, The Harder They Fall; Republicans More Damaged by Scandals.”

YOU WOULD think that a consensus report from all 16 U.S. intelligence services concluding that he has blown the "war on terror" would be a really big deal to the president. But that assumes that George W. Bush values intelligence. Clearly, he does not. So the news that a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate concludes the threat of terror against the United States has increased since 9/11, largely thanks to his irrational invasion of Iraq, has not disturbed Bush's branded "what, me worry'' countenance. Instead, predictably, the administration's response to the leaked conclusions of the shared assessments of both civilian and...

On his radio show yesterday (Thursday, September 21, 2006), host Hugh Hewitt interviewed Thomas B. Edsall, who up until recently was a senior political reporter for the Washington Post. He had been with the paper for 25 years. Through precise and direct questioning by Hewitt, Edsall admitted something that is rarely heard from a liberal these days. In a shocking admission, Edsall articulated that the biases of the mainstream media are "overwhelmingly to the left." He also proposed that Democratic reporters outnumber Republicans "in the range of 15-25 to 1"!In the interview, as Hewitt and Edsall discussed the rise of...

Just About the Dumbest Thing I’ve Ever Read smalldeadanimals.com 21 September 2006 In its attempt to sway, manipulate, and form world opinion to fit with editorial boards, the MSM now has a new tool: World Opinion Polls. In case you missed that, I’ll rephrase it. The MSM now conducts WORLD opinion polls so that we can be enlightened by knowing what the world thinks. The concept is so flawed that I won’t insult the intelligence of readers here by even bothering to debunk it, but I will say this. What does it say of news media editorial boards, when...

Things have actually been going a bit better in Iraq these days.  Fewer American soldiers are dying and the Iraqis are slowly taking on more power and responsibilities.  This presents a quandary for the media.  You see, as part of their Bush-bashing template, they need to continue to push the war in Iraq as an un-winnable failure.  The Democrats are counting on failure in Iraq to carry them to victory this fall. That's right...the Democrats are actually invested in American failure in Iraq.  They need more American troop deaths to put them over the top at the polls in November. ...

I called Tim Russert to ask if Dick Cheney had washed his hands after their interview on Sunday. "No-o-o," he replied, sounding confused. Any sort of scrubbing, I wondered? Antiseptic wipe, Purell, quick shower on the way out? No, Tim assured me, the vice president did not stop at the basement shower at NBC, or even drop by the men's room you pass on the right as you head out to the parking lot. According to The New York Times' health section on Tuesday, Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate were not alone in wanting that "damned spot" out. "People who...

In recent years, The New Republic, one of the nation's leading magazines of political and cultural commentary, has been embarrassed by scandals involving two of journalism's original sins: fabrication of stories and plagiarism. But the latest scandal, involving the magazine's cultural critic Lee Siegel, has to do with a transgression peculiar to the Internet age: sock puppetry. A sock puppet, in Internet parlance, is a false Internet identity created for deceptive purposes. Siegel, who had been writing a culture blog for The New Republic, had started using the pseudonym "sprezzatura" on the blog's forums to praise himself and savage his...

Arrested Pulitzer Prize winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who took the infamous pictures of a terrorist execution on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and is notorious in the blogosphere for his collusion with jihadis as they tried to kill Americans, is the subject of a very lengthy attempt by the AP to whitewash his acts: U.S. holds AP photographer in Iraq 5 mos. (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.) The AP spins furiously and buries it in the middle, but here’s some interesting information from the US Army: The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an...