Free Republic

A friend of mine called this morning who’d seen Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell last night in Hollywood. She knew I was seeing it this morning in New York. “It’s going to upset your apple cart of an Oscar list,” she said. She was right. Eastwood, at 90, has made a jewel of a film in “Richard Jewell,” a real masterclass in filmmaking. Eastwood will have to be nominated for Best Director. The screenplay and music (by Arturo Sandoval) will have to be nominated. And the actors, the actors now roll right into the top 5 in their respective categories. Paul...

Clint Eastwood points a stern finger at FBI investigators and the media in the first trailer for his new fact-based drama “Richard Jewell,” which explores the security guard who reported finding an explosive device at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics — and then was falsely accused of planting it himself.

...Gore's work was entirely based on the belief that nobody would commit suicide while hijacking a plane. So the only purpose of CAPPS [Civil Aviation Passenger Protection System] was to assure that these passengers boarded the airplane with their checked baggage — since the feds assumed that the checked bags couldn't have a bomb in if the terrorist was on the plane himself. As naive and shortsighted as this assumption was — and as disastrous as it turned out to be — until now we have only been able to chalk it up to Al Gore's particular brand of myopia....

The Washington Post has angered some conservative Christians by quoting a so-called terrorism expert as saying accused bomber Eric Rudolph is a "Christian terrorist." A more accurate description would be "doper." The Post had previously noted in passing that Rudolph had traveled to Holland to procure high-quality marijuana seeds for the marijuana he raised and smoked. http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2003/06/13.html Attorney General John Ashcroft applauded the apprehension of Eric Rudolph, who had been eluding law enforcement for five years, by saying, "American law enforcement's unending efforts to capture Eric Robert Rudolph have been rewarded. Working with law enforcement nationwide, the FBI always gets...