Free Republic

The usual sources of outrage are all atwitter over the fact that Justice Sotomayor isn’t a queen with the authority to demand that other justices wear face gags at her behest. Apparently, the overweight and diabetic Sotomayor wants everyone around her to take extra precautions to care for her after she didn’t care for herself, which puts her in a higher risk category for COVID complications. While her Type 1 diabetes was not avoidable, Sotomayor’s weight problem is surely manageable through diet and exercise. She isn’t hiring a personal trainer or going on a diet; oh no, that would require...

Twenty-one years ago Thursday, as the House approved articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was sitting in his study in Pascagoula, Miss., "looking out on a beautiful live oak tree." With a sigh, the Republican leader picked up the phone to call Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, his Democratic counterpart. "Whether we like it or not, this is sitting in our lap," he told Daschle, "and we've got to figure out how to deal with it." Lott was a skilled vote-counter. "I knew the votes were not there and were never gonna be there...

Longtime National Public Radio legal-affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg put on her campaign reporter's hat last week, filing profiles of vice president Dick Cheney and Democratic VP nominee John Edwards for NPR's Morning Edition.Totenberg's liberal leanings are well known to NPR listeners, viewers of the political chat show Inside Washington, and, for that matter, readers of the MRC's publications, so no one in any of those groups should be surprised that she treated Edwards more favorably than she treated Cheney. [Tom Johnson, who monitors NPR for the MRC, filed this item by CyberAlert.] The Edwards piece, which aired last Monday, September...