Free Republic

Allegations of domestic violence involving celebrities are nothing new, but two such stories in the news in the past couple of months have had a relatively unusual twist: The accused perpetrators were women and the alleged victims were men. First, there was the lawsuit against Liza Minelli by her estranged husband, David Gest, claiming that the singer-actress had subjected him to repeated physical abuse. Then actor Christian Slater's wife, Ryan Haddon, was arrested on charges of battery after smashing a glass on her husband's head and causing a cut that required stitches. Yet despite such incidents, the public perception of...

Things are a lot groovier now," declared former reason Editor-in-Chief Robert W. Poole back in 1988, on the occasion of reason’s 20th anniversary. During the magazine’s first two decades, he pointed out, all sorts of political and cultural changes had occurred, most of them unambiguously for the better. The Vietnam War was history, stagflation had been vanquished, and technology that enabled everything from cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars to automated teller machines to videocassette recorders had vastly improved everyday life. As important, "numerous personal freedoms we take for granted were very tenuous in 1968." By 1988, the women’s movement had revolutionized...

This is what the Bush administration has reduced me to: The other day, I was rooting for a Ted Kennedy filibuster. Of course, the Massachusetts senator and I had different reasons for opposing the Medicare bill championed by President Bush and Republican leaders. Kennedy claimed the bill "cynically uses the elderly's need for prescription drugs as a Trojan horse to reshape Medicare," calling it "a calculated program to unravel Medicare, to privatize it and to force seniors into the cold arms of HMOs." I wish the Republicans were that smart. If the Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003...

Harvard's seventh annual US-Russian investment symposium, held in Cambridge last week, passed under the shadow of disturbing recent events in Russia. One of the symposium's scheduled speakers, Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was unable to attend because he is sitting in a Russian prison cell. His arrest, widely viewed as politically motivated, is yet another alarm signal from Vladimir Putin's Russia. Khodorkovsky, who stepped down as chairman of the Yukos oil company after his arrest, has been charged with tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement. It is quite likely that, like most Russian oligarchs who made their fortunes after the collapse...

Socially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative, Personally Narcissist Can Arnold deliver on his substantial political promise? Matt Welch This morning, Californians got what most Americans claim to want—a top government official who is fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Arnold Schwarzenegger may still be a political hologram of sorts (especially after a campaign in which he deliberately avoided specific proposals and serious cross-examination), but the dope-smoking, Kennedy-marrying Friedmanite does radiate a genuine belief that government should stay out of people's lives when possible. As Editor Nick Gillespie wrote this summer, "he mirrors a contemporary consensus that generally wants a slightly smaller, more efficient...

The USA PATRIOT Act lets the feds spy on your finances. But does it help catch terrorists? "This is really a bill which, if enacted into law, will be [a longer] step in the direction of stopping terrorism than any other we have had before this Congress in a long time," one of the bill’s sponsors declared. The legislation authorized broad surveillance of financial transactions, bypassing the Fourth Amendment’s normal protections against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by requiring businesses to collect and share information with the government. After the measure passed and was signed into law, the debate was far...

W Is for What? Bush may be compassionate, but he's no conservative. Jacob Sullum Columnist Ted Rall calls George W. Bush "a right-wing extremist whose agenda makes Barry Goldwater look tame by comparison." If only it were so. </p) Looking at the president's record during the last three years, one is hard-pressed to see any affinity between his agenda and that of conservatives who respect the Constitution and believe in limited government. In particular, Bush repeatedly has forsaken the conservative principles of fiscal restraint, free trade, and federalism. According to the latest figures from congressional budget committees, federal discretionary...

At the United Nations on October 16, after a long and intense effort, the Bush administration won the Security Council's unanimous imprimatur for the American occupation and reconstruction of Iraq. The following day, National Public Radio's Mike Shuster portrayed the Security Council's resolution as a diversion from the real story—namely, the administration's determination to go it alone. Shuster: "The compromises the U.S. has been willing to make have been minimal and, although the Security Council voted unanimously yesterday to support another U.S. resolution on Iraq, it appears that little will change." Shuster was unfazed by the administration's insistence on handling...

Ramadan began this week, which means that Arab TV services will interrupt their usual schedules in favor of a month of special programming, and that could mean a break in the ever-escalating regional storm over Arabic pop videos. Instead of a schedule that includes the often-sexy music productions that have been challenging the Arab world's cultural and social strictures, Arab TV will be offering such fare as religious instruction, cooking shows (focusing on the preparation of "iftar," the meal that breaks Ramadan's daylight fast), and the intensely popular month-long serial melodramas that have become a part of the Arab calendar....

Sending unwelcome e-mail can now be considered trespassing, according to a December ruling by a California court. The case grew out of a squabble between Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi and Intel Corp., which fired him after a workman’s compensation dispute. Hamidi decided to air his grievances with fellow workers -- all 35,000 of them. On six occasions, he sent a mass e-mail complaining about Intel to between 8,000 and 35,000 employees of the computer chip maker. He was asked to stop but didn’t. In 1999 a Superior Court judge enjoined Hamidi from sending any more e-mails to Intel staff, on the...

The nomination of Janice Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest judicial appointment to touch off major opposition. Brown is strikingly libertarian in her writings and decisions, which is one reason she has outraged both liberals and conservatives during her distinguished career. Brown currently serves as associate justice of the California Supreme Court, where she has distinguished herself as a passionate and consistent defender of individual rights. The D.C. Circuit is considered the second most important federal court, and is often a springboard to the Supreme Court. Indeed, three of the...

Good Judge The case for Janice Brown By Clint Bolick The nomination of Janice Brown to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest judicial appointment to touch off major opposition. Brown is strikingly libertarian in her writings and decisions, which is one reason she has outraged both liberals and conservatives during her distinguished career. Brown currently serves as associate justice of the California Supreme Court, where she has distinguished herself as a passionate and consistent defender of individual rights. The D.C. Circuit is considered the second most important federal court, and is often...

Last week, Sen. Bob Graham of Florida pulled out of the Democratic presidential race. It was sad but inevitable. Graham is a good man and a fine public servant, but he can never be president. Only four candidates have a shot next year. They are President Bush, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. The rest are history. Sorry, Dick. Sorry, John. Sorry, Dennis, Joe, Carol, and Al. Turn off the lights behind you. How do I know? Am I psychic? Mad? Possibly and probably; but in this case I rely...

Rush Limbaugh may not be arrested, let alone spend time behind bars, for illegally buying narcotic painkillers. "We're not sure whether he will be charged," a law enforcement source told CNN earlier this month. "We're going after the big fish, both the suppliers and the sellers." If the conservative radio commentator escapes serious legal consequences, there will be speculation about whether a pill popper who wasn't a wealthy celebrity would have received such lenient treatment. Yet the distinction between dealer and user drawn by CNN's source is both widely accepted and deeply imbedded in our drug laws. That doesn't mean...

A dozen years ago on October 15, Clarence Thomas' nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court barely passed senatorial muster, sadly ending the most priapic, innuendo-ridden television series this side of Three's Company and Full House. That incredibly heated "high-tech lynching," to use Thomas' evocative, hyperbolic term for the proceedings, did more than momentarily pump some blood into the flaccid career of Long Dong Silver, tempt Coca-Cola to introduce a pubic-hair flavored version of soda pop, and paradoxically usher in the so-called Year of the Woman and what history will surely remember as the Decade of the Penis. The Thomas hearings...

Last June the Democratic National Committee sponsored an ad portraying the president as Frankenstein creating a monster for a federal judgeship. This, Fox News host Sean Hannity declared, was a typical example of Democratic demonization. "They’re obviously being pretty mean-spirited here," he said, "as they usually are." Confronted with this accusation, Democratic consultant Victor Kamber parried, "It’s the Republicans that have been the hate mongers in the past campaigns." Hannity’s mild-mannered liberal co-host Alan Colmes inquired of another guest, "You think Democrats are a lot meaner than Republicans?" Actually, conservatives have been doing quite well in the meanness sweepstakes, thanks...

I think I must have been ill that day. At some point, no one can say precisely when, libertarians apparently swore a feudal oath of fealty to the Republican Party. In response to an American Prospect article on libertarian disenchantment with the Bush administration, Reason's own former editor in chief Virginia Postrel explained that "real Dean voters don't like Jeff Flake. (I do.)" On the Crossfire view of politics, this makes sense: You pick your team and root for it, come hell or high water. The Platonic Real Dean Voter can't possibly hold any affection for a member of the...

Judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit took one very long look at the Federal Communications Commission's policy on broadband providers and couldn't make heads or tails out of it. Having one set of rules for telephone companies who sell broadband and another set of rules for cable companies who sell broadband is not fair, the court found. Cable providers should have to labor under the same open access requirements that the phone guys are stuck with. And with that the court applied impeccable, deadly logic to the most illogical of regulatory realms. As a result,...

Ah, kids today. Just when it seemed that every possible form of youthful rebellion had been tamed, absorbed, and turned into a jeans commercial, they find one sure to shock their Boomer parents: become conservatives. Such, at any rate, is the impression you might get from following the news. A May article in The New York Times Magazine—one whose author will doubtless burn in one of hell's warmer and more feces-filled concentric circles for coining the term "Young Hipublicans"—claimed that conservatism is becoming mainstream on American college campuses. In a recent American Conservative editorial, Gavin McInnis, right-leaning editor of the...

When Rep. Ronald Coleman changed his mind and decided to support the so-called assault weapon ban approved by the House last spring, the Texas Democrat said he wanted to "make it harder for drug thugs and gangs to get the machine guns that wantonly kill our police officers and children." Coleman was wrong to think that the legislation he was about to vote for had anything to do with machine guns, but let's pass over that point for now. His remark is interesting for another reason: It concisely expresses and draws upon the symbolic power of both firearms and mind-altering...