Free Republic

As Canadians, we sit atop the continent, watching as our neighbours slide into cultural civil war. It has become easy to just be appalled as America becomes riven, with social media and antagonistic rhetoric on both sides of the political spectrum erasing the middle ground. There are two Americas, incommensurably separated on the fundamental issues of the day: climate change, the economy, social issues like health and education, employment, the media, immigration in particular, and globalization and free trade. We’ve learned more and more about the populism that has fuelled this complicated moment as the fracture in America races like...

In an open letter published in La Presse on Tuesday, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer invited Quebecers to give his party another look, citing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “incompetence” and the “existential crises” crippling the Bloc Québécois. The Conservatives spy an opportunity in Quebec. And given the party’s growing support in the province, they might be right. Quebec was the only province in which the Conservatives made gains in the 2015 federal election. Their increase in the popular vote there was modest — just 0.2 percentage points, up to 16.7 percent — but their seat haul jumped by seven to 12,...

The Conservatives will follow Andrew Scheer into the 2019 election, after the young Saskatchewan MP won an upset victory at the party’s leadership convention in Toronto Saturday night. Scheer, who turned 38 on May 20, edged out front-runner Maxime Bernier by less than two percentage points on the 13th and final ballot Saturday night, finishing with just under 50.95 per cent of the vote. The room at the Toronto Congress Centre erupted in a shocked cheer as party officials read out the final count, with confetti and blue and white balloons falling onto the crowd. “What a campaign this has...

As most of you have read or seen by now, a journalist and NBC/MSNBC media consultant named William “Bill” Arkin has created quite a stir by viciously insulting American soldiers in Iraq. He wrote at his Washington Post blog, “Early Warning: William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security” column (1/30/07), that “… this NBC (Nightly News) report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer force that thinks it is doing the dirty work” re Iraq. The “report,” according to Arkin, featured “a number of soldiers (who) expressed frustration with...

In blind retaliation, we wreaked havoc on Iraq and continue to slaughter peasants in Afghanistan. What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan, as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would then-Vice President Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law? As assaults...

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran's nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of WWIII, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Chuck Hagel for president By ROBERT SCHEER Published Sunday, January 21, 2007 Chuck Hagel for president! If it ever narrows down to a choice between him and some Democratic hack who hasn’t the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote. Yes, the war is that important, and the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic candidate, still can’t or won’t take a clear stand on the occupation is insulting to the vast majority of voters who have. Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet who...

Robert Scheer: Top Spy’s Story on Prewar Intel Is Finally Told http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060425_prewar_intel_iraq_iran/ Posted on Apr. 25, 2006 By Robert Scheer “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.” —Tyler Drumheller, formerly CIA’s top spy in Europe Confession time: In fall 2004, during a crucial presidential election campaign, I made the mistake of playing by corporate media rules that amount to self-censorship. Specifically, I joined other journalists in denying the public the right to learn of a definitive investigative report by CBS’ “60 Minutes” on President Bush’s disregard...

Speech that is not felt by some powerful group to be loathsome is hardly in need of protection. The value of an absolutist opposition to the censorship of speech, as enshrined in the US Constitution's First Amendment, is that it holds out the prospect that the right to speak will be honored even when the content of those utterances is not. What is disturbing in both the Irving and Muhammad cartoon situations is the stuttering hesitancy of many who claim to be committed to free speech to speak out in opposition to those--be they Muslim clerics or Austrian judges--who seek...

Bad news tonight for Tribune Company shareholders: Shares in Tribune Co. tumbled Thursday after the media company reported a 6.1% drop in revenue last month on declines in both its newspaper and television businesses. Tribune, whose holdings include 26 television stations, 11 urban U.S. dailies and Spanish-language Hoy, said December revenue fell to $539 million from $574 million a year earlier. The company's stock fell $1.01, or 3.2%, to $30.80 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Tribune shares sank 28% in 2005. Advertising revenue in the publishing division fell 4.5%to $333 million, down from $349 million. The...

NEW YORK A delegation of progressive Los Angeles Times readers angry with last month's firing of columnist Robert Scheer met Dec. 13 with Times editors -- and have devised an "inside-outside" protest strategy. That's according to an LAObserved.com report linked Tuesday on Jim Romenesko's media blog at Poynter.org. The delegation -- which said it met for 90 minutes with Times Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez and Op-Ed Editor Nicholas Goldberg -- wants more liberal voices in the Times to balance conservative columnists such as Max Boot and the Tribune Media Services-syndicated Jonah Goldberg. Martinez and Goldberg said the Times does...

Anatomy of a left-wing cause Last week a delegation of progressives met with the top opinion editors at the L.A. Times to complain about the axing of Robert Scheer's column and push for more anti-war voices on the op-ed page. In a report to their supporters, the delegation recounts details of the meeting, claims some success and describes an "inside/outside strategy" to pressure the paper that includes subscribing for three months as a "contingency subscriber" and pestering editors: Commit to writing at least one letter a month, affirming or challenging LA Times content, paying special attention to columnists such as...

NEW YORK Los Angeles Times readers upset with the dropping of Robert Scheer's column plan to picket outside the newspaper's building Tuesday at noon. "We think he was fired totally for political reasons," Karen Pomer, a media activist who helped organize the demonstration, told E&P Monday. "Now they don't have anyone who covers national issues in the same way. The Times needs a full spectrum of voices. It's becoming insipid." To make the point about blandness, demonstrators plan to distribute slices of Wonder bread at the Tuesday picket. Scheer believes he was dropped at least partly because Times Publisher Jeff...

Thirty years after the last helicopter beat a hasty retreat from a Saigon rooftop, U.S. credit card companies American Express and MasterCard were boldly advertised in Vietnam over the weekend on parade floats marking what was once thought to be an ignominious American defeat. If then-President Ford had not possessed the courage and wisdom to order the end of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam, we probably would still be embroiled in combating a never-ending insurgency. advertisement advertisement Instead, the United States is now the biggest marketplace for exports from Vietnam, which began abandoning a failed centralized economy two decades ago...

January 18, 2005 – On Thursday, an estimated $40 million worth of inaugural pomp and circumstance will only temporarily triumph over an incalculable record of deceit and error. Of course, some might say it's tacky to rain on the president's parade, but two crucial news stories compel it. First came the report, confirmed by the White House, that the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had officially but secretly ended shortly before Christmas without, of course, any sign of the much discussed weapons that were such a critical justification for the war in the first place. This...

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist? < snip > Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror. "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is...

Mocked and reviled by Americans, the world body has been quietly getting it right on Iraq again and again. November 2, 2004 – I want to cast my vote in favor of the United Nations. Some Americans like to talk as if the U.N. exists merely for the convenience of the Third World, forgetting that it was the United States that fought to create an inclusive international forum to help restrain mankind's new ability to destroy itself. With the radioactive dust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still in the air, it was shock over our own human barbarism that led this...

Thread of Abuse Runs to the Oval Office Phony justifications for war led to brutal intelligence-gathering. Someone's lying — big-time — and neither Congress nor the media have begun to scratch the surface. Clearly we now know enough to stipulate that the several low-ranking alleged sadists charged in the Iraq torture scandal did not control the wing of the prison in which they openly and proudly did the devil's work. That power was in the hands of high-ranking U.S. military intelligence officers who established abusive conditions that were condemned by the Red Cross in a complaint to U.S. authorities well...

<p>It's hard to believe that it was just a slip of the tongue rather than a calculated lie when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sullied the memory of those who died on 9/11 by exploiting their deaths for propaganda purposes. The brainwashing of Americans, two-thirds of whom believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, is too effective a political ploy for the Bush regime to suddenly let the truth get in the way.</p>

<p>How can the president tell us with a straight face that we taxpayers have a patriotic duty to cough up $87 billion more to enable him to sink us deeper into the Iraq quagmire of his making? That's a lot of money on top of the $79 billion already appropriated by Congress in April — enough to bail out California and every other state experiencing a budget crisis because of economic problems this president has only exacerbated. Shouldn't those who warned against Bush's folly at least qualify for another one of his signature tax rebates?</p>