Free Republic

Last Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing--at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was insulted by senators and ridiculed by spectators--was Washington political theater at its lowest. But some significant information did manage to get through the senatorial venom directed at Mr. Gonzales. It now appears certain that the terrorist surveillance program (TSP) authorized by President Bush after 9/11 was even broader than the TSP that the New York Times first revealed in December 2005. It is also clear that Mr. Gonzales, along with former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, tried to preserve that original program with the knowledge and...

Within a few weeks of becoming prime minister of Great Britain, I have come to the United States to affirm the historic partnership of shared purpose that unites our two countries. Outside observers may think of even great alliances only in narrow, 19th-century terms: treaties of convenience driven forward by nothing more than mutual needs and current interests. Yet I believe our Atlantic partnership is rooted in something far more fundamental and lasting than common interests or even common history: It is anchored in shared ideals that have for two centuries linked the destinies of our two countries. Winston Churchill...

An Allentown man who smashed an electronic voting machine because he didn't trust it and believed that election results could be altered was convicted Wednesday of summary offenses of disorderly conduct and criminal mischief. After a Lehigh County nonjury trial, Michael C. Young, who represented himself, was sentenced to 180 days of probation and was ordered to pay $2,910 for replacement of the touch-screen machine. Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., admitted that he went to a polling place at the Good Shepherd Home at Sixth and St. John streets, Allentown, on Nov. 7. He testified that he struck the...

In 2006, voters put control of the U.S. Congress back in the hands of the Democrat Party after just 10 short years. Voters were growing unhappy with a lot of things at the time and certainly the War in Iraq contributed. But this latest survey of voters across the country (Battleground XXXII), suggests the changing of Congressional leadership has done little to stem that tide.Today voters are even more negative about the direction the country is taking. Perhaps most importantly a plurality of American voters now think in the future their children will be worse off than they themselves are...

WHEN a majority of Supreme Court justices adopt a manifestly ideological agenda, it plunges the court into the vortex of American politics. If the Roberts court has entered voluntarily what Justice Felix Frankfurter once called the “political thicket,” it may require a political solution to set it straight. The framers of the Constitution did not envisage the Supreme Court as arbiter of all national issues. As Chief Justice John Marshall made clear in Marbury v. Madison, the court’s authority extends only to legal issues. When the court overreaches, the Constitution provides checks and balances. In 1805, after persistent political activity...

In the 1960s, history called the Baby Boomers. They didn't answer the phone. Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers--those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation--took the opposite path from their parents during World War II. Sadly, the excesses of Woodstock became the face of the Boomers' response to their moment of challenge. War protests where agitated youths derided American soldiers as baby-killers added no luster to their image.  Few of the leading lights of that generation joined the military. Most calculated how they could avoid military service, and their attitude rippled...

The next American President will take office alongside a new generation of world leaders. Few were in office when the attacks of Sept. 11 occurred, but all have been influenced by its impact. This is a moment of rare opportunity for new American leadership. To succeed in the 21st century, America must expand our historic commitment to free people, free governments and free markets. That means expanding our involvement in the global economy and strengthening our reputation around the world. A commitment to free trade can build bridges between America and the rest of the world. Higher living standards abroad...

Liberals are hailing a report that calls for federal regulations to end the "structural imbalance in political talk radio." Two think tanks, the Center for American Progress and the Free Press, complain that more than 90 percent of the programs on talk radio feature conservative hosts and themes while only 10 percent are "progressive." Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has promised to examine the report's recommendations for possible legislation and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., says flatly, "It's time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. I have this old-fashioned attitude that when Americans hear both sides of the story, they're in a better...

Earlier this week, the U.S. military made public new and disturbing information about the proxy war that Iran is waging against American soldiers and our allies in Iraq. According to Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, the Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members. Gen. Bergner also revealed that the Quds Force--a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps whose mission is to finance, arm and equip foreign Islamist terrorist movements--has taken groups of...

Organisers of the Live Earth concerts should not sell burgers or hot dogs at the high profile gigs, an animal rights group claimed today. Peta said that selling meat at a concert for the environment would be like selling cigarettes at an anti-cancer fundraiser because of the amount of greenhouse gas emitted by the meat farming industry. And Peta activists said that Wembley should take meat off the menu after a recent UN report found that the meat industry creates more greenhouse gases than all the cars, trucks, ships and planes in the world combined. Wembley Stadium is set to...

A quarrelsome claque of five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court of the United States has abandoned the court's historic commitment to integration. These arrogant men scorned judicial precedent -- overturning the historic Brown vs. Board of Education without having the honor to admit it -- and ignored both history and today's reality. Outlawing voluntary local school district efforts to increase diversity in the schools, the court imposed court-ordered resegregation. Once more, men in robes stand in the schoolhouse door, only this time their robes are black, not white. Where the court once spoke with one voice on ending segregation...

WE — the human species — have arrived at a moment of decision. It is unprecedented and even laughable for us to imagine that we could actually make a conscious choice as a species, but that is nevertheless the challenge that is before us. Our home — Earth — is in danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings. Without realizing the consequences of our actions, we have begun to put so much carbon dioxide into the thin shell of air surrounding our world...

The late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was a true liberal--a man who welcomed debate. Just before he died this winter, he wrote, quoting someone else, that history is an argument without end. That, Schlesinger added, "is why we love it so." Yet concerning Schlesinger's own period of study, the 1930s, there has been curiously little argument. The American consensus is Schlesinger's consensus: that FDR saved democracy from fascism by co-opting the left and far right with his alphabet programs. Certainly, an observer might criticize various aspects of the period, but scrutiny of the New Deal edifice in its entirety is something...

This essay is a response to a fascinating article by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira entitled "Back to the Future: The Re-emergence of the Emerging Democratic Majority." Judis and Teixeira argue that the 2006 election signals a realignment that favors the Democratic Party. I think their theory is underdetermined, and in this essay I shall offer my justification for that position. First, let me make clear that what follows is a non-partisan critique. I am not going to try to convince you that the facts point toward the opposite of what Judis and Teixeira argue. I'm not going to...

Attack on Fred Thompson's abortion position sent anonymously.

Michael Moore's denunciation of America's health-care system is about to hit the silver screen. In the film's trailer, a desk attendant at a British hospital smiles while explaining that in Britain's National Health Service, "everything is free." But for free hospital care, Britons pay an awfully high price. Just ask the nearly 1 million British patients on waiting lists for treatment. Or the 200,000 Britons currently waiting merely to get on NHS waiting lists. Mr. Moore must have missed those folks. Curiously, though, many American policymakers seem to think that a government-managed, NHS-style system is the answer to all of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. may be able to reduce combat forces in Iraq by next spring if Iraq's own security forces continue to grow and improve, a senior American commander said Friday. He denied reports the U.S. is arming Sunni insurgent groups to help in the fight against al-Qaida. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top day-to-day commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, did not predict any reductions in U.S. forces but said such redeployments may be feasible by spring. There are currently 156,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon from his headquarters outside Baghdad, Odierno...

WASHINGTON -- In the heat of their successful campaign last year to retake the House and Senate, Democrats made voters promise after promise. They promised to end the war in Iraq. They promised to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. They promised to lower prescription drug prices for seniors and raise the minimum wage. But six months after taking over Congress, Democrats find they have accomplished little of their agenda. Perhaps not coincidentally, Congress' job approval rating has reached a dramatic low, tumbling 13 points since February to 24 percent, according to the Gallup Poll. Republicans, damaged by...

The Polish PM has stunned European leaders today with an astonishing attack on Germany for starting the Second World War. In a spectacularly undiplomatic outburst, he said his country was losing out in today's European Union as a direct result of the millions of deaths that followed its invasion by Germany in 1939. "We are only demanding one thing - that we get back what was taken from us," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski at the opening of the EU summit in Brussels, chaired by German chancellor Angela Merkel. "If Poland had not had to live through the years of 1939-45, Poland...

WASHINGTON - Iraq remains chaotic and immigration overhaul faces an uncertain fate. But if President Bush wants to sing the old tune, “They can’t take that away from me” he can turn to the Supreme Court where his appointees Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito sit. As the high court nears the end of its 2006-2007 term, the impact of Bush’s appointees is becoming clearer. In high profile-decisions, Roberts and Alito have bolstered the conservative wing, which includes Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and occasionally Justice Anthony Kennedy. Former Reagan administration Justice Department official Doug Kmiec,...