Free Republic

This week, FBI and IRS agents searched the home of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, 83. Stevens is under suspicion for his connection to Bill Allen, an oil state-services contractor convicted of bribing Alaska state lawmakers. Stevens has served in the Senate for almost three decades. The Stevens investigation comes hot on the heels of the Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., scandal, in which Cunningham pleaded guilty to taking bribes from defense contractors; the Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., scandal, in which federal agents found $90,000 in cash stuffed in Jefferson's freezer; and the Jack Abramoff scandal, in which Abramoff was connected with...

Monday night marked the Democrats' most interesting debate to date – which is to say, the audience fell unconscious about halfway through, as opposed to during the opening statements. But amid all of the technological hubbub and political jockeying, there was one question that stood out. The questioner was Rev. Reggie Longcrier, pastor of Exodus Mission and Outreach Church in Hickory, N.C. "Sen. Edwards said his opposition to gay marriage is influenced by his Southern Baptist background," Longcrier stated. "Most Americans agree it was wrong and unconstitutional to use religion to justify slavery, segregation and denying women the right to...

This week, Democrats broke out the cots and the S'mores, and held a big ol' Senate sleepover for surrender. By pushing an all-night Senate session purportedly designed to debate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Democrats hoped to show their sincerity and moral indignation. "How many sleepless nights have our soldiers and their families had?" asked oily Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who only two years ago compared U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings." If politics is the...

The battle over the Palestinian Arab territory in the Gaza Strip is a battle between extremists and more radical extremists. Last week, the extremists, led by Holocaust denier and Fatah strongman Mahmoud Abbas, were ousted in a bloody coup by the radical extremists, Islamist terrorist group Hamas. Yet, instead of allowing Fatah and Hamas to slug it out, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed newly appointed Abbas frontman Prime Minister Salam Fayyad that America would resume aid to the Palestinian Authority. "I told the prime minister that we want to work with his government and support his efforts to enforce...

According to the global left, the evidence is in: The earth is warming, and it's all your fault. Don't blame And so, without further ado, I henceforth dedicate myself to achieving the following goals to aid Mother Earth: -- EAT COWS. Turns out, cows are the climate's worst enemy. Cows, it seems, are culpable for 18 percent of greenhouse gases. Their cud-chewing, flatulence and burping create giant clouds of methane. All this time, we thought the cattle were our mammalian friends. But, fools that we are, the cows outsmarted us. While we milked them, they pursued their long-term strategy of...

Proving once again that foolish ideas don't die or fade away -- they walk the earth eternally, preying on the brains of the living -- scientists at a UK think tank have determined that the greatest threat to the planet is more human beings. "The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights," explains Professor John Guillebaud, co-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT). "The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would...

On Monday evening at Tufts University, I attended a long, grueling show trial -- the kind of show trial that doubtless will be repeated at campuses across the United States. This show trial was convened with the sole purpose of punishing The Primary Source, Tufts' lone conservative periodical. What was The Source's sin? On December 6, 2006, The Source printed a tasteless parody carol entitled "O Come, All Ye Black Folk." The carol was written from the perspective of an admissions officer, admitting students solely based on racially discriminatory stereotypes: "All come! Blacks, we need you, / Born into the...

Most contracts for goods and services contain an "Act of God" provision. Such provisions typically allow contracting parties to dissolve a contract in case of an unexpected and unavoidable catastrophe: an earthquake, a tsunami, a lightning strike. This is perfectly logical. Man can act based on predictions about human behavior, but has no control over forces of nature. Conversely, human actions demand human responsibility. Only Divine action should be written off as inevitable tragedy. The Virginia Tech massacre was not an act of God -- it was undeniably an act of man. Yet many Americans have instinctively treated this massive...

How far will the West be pushed? For decades, Iran has embraced a strategy of carefully feeling its oats, prodding at the West, testing our mettle in inches. Now, like Germany in 1938, Iran is beginning to realize that the West will do nothing to stop it. Crippled by a pathological aversion to war, America and Britain sit by silently as Iran develops nuclear weapons, fosters terrorism in Iraq and targets Western interests for total annihilation. Iran's latest test for the West is its abduction of 15 members of the British Royal Navy. Iran feebly claims those sailors were found...

I am a long-time subscriber to Sports Illustrated. I realize the magazine leans left politically; Rick Reilly's liberalism is about as subtle as a brick through a plate-glass window. Still, I was surprised to read a feature article in last week's issue entitled "Everything Is Illuminated." The piece, by Jeff MacGregor, discussed the 15th Asian Games held in Qatar, a sort of mini-Olympics largely consisting of non-Western sports. But the piece, which ran over 7,000 words (10 times the length of this column), was not designed to stir curiosity. It was designed to make a point Sports Illustrated often pushes:...

Scientists reported this week that on April 13, 2036, an asteroid has a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting Earth. The good news: No Tax Day, 2036. The bad news: An entire city or region could bite the dust. "We need a set of general principles to deal with this issue," explains former astronaut Rusty Schweickart. To that end, scientists are calling on the United Nations to take action. The Association of Space Engineers will present a plan to the UN in 2009 involving the construction of a "Gravity Tractor," which would alter the course of potentially threatening asteroids. You...

Apparently, Senator Barack Hussein Obama, D-Illinois, is the Messiah. The New York Times reported on Sunday that in Obama's time at Harvard Law School, he "developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once." Also on Sunday, the Boston Globe reported, "These days, Obama is the hot new candidate for the White House, trying to end the warring in Washington...

President Bush's State of the Union Address was no barnburner. The president was serious and thoughtful, and his speech offered little in the way of rhetorical fireworks. But if President Bush's speech was unexciting, Sen. Jim Webb's, D-Virginia, purported rebuttal was disastrous. Webb decisively demonstrated why Democrats cannot be given charge of America's foreign policy. President Bush acknowledged that American involvement in Iraq has not gone as planned, that the sectarian violence currently wracking Iraq was hardly our goal. Nonetheless, Bush provided a realistic perspective: "This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we...

Two weeks ago, in this column, I suggested that Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, would have difficulty wooing conservatives because of his "anti-torture positions." Commentator Andrew Sullivan immediately pounced on my phraseology: "Good to see plain English being used on the right. Pity the use of torture is now a plus for some in the Republican primaries. But, hey, that's what American conservatism now stands for." Sullivan is perhaps the leading proponent of a blanket ban on torture of terrorist detainees. In an article he wrote for The New Republic back in December 2005, he elucidates his position. "Torture is the...

Apparently, Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) is a woman. Coming on the heels of other shocking revelations, such as John Kerry's service in Vietnam and Barack Obama's racial background, Pelosi's womanhood is a true stunner. Next we'll be hearing that Hillary Clinton has a famous husband. On January 4, Pelosi took the gavel as speaker of the House of Representatives. She was escorted to the podium by her six grandchildren, including a sleeping baby she carried with her. After thanking her family for helping her move from the "kitchen to the Congress," Pelosi humbly chortled over her own achievement. "For our...

On July 14, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain addressed the nation on BBC Radio. The last month had seen the complete collapse of French and British resistance to German aggression on the continent of Europe. The French Army had been decisively defeated, and the Allied armies had been evacuated back to Britain from the coastline at Dunkirk. On June 14, the Nazis had marched into Paris. In the aftermath of the string of devastating defeats that had isolated Britain and left Europe prostrate before Hitler, Churchill spoke. "Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid...

You. Yeah, you. Congratulations. You're Time magazine's Person of the Year, 2006. Why? Because they like you -- they really like you! Well, not really. Mostly, Time is hoping that you are Narcissus, fascinated enough by your reflection on the cover to buy a copy. As Time's managing editor Richard Stengel explained, "If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people. But if you choose millions of people, you don't have to justify it to anyone." It seems we have finally learned the identity of the man in the purple Barney costume: Stengel,...

According to Mel Gibson, his new movie, "Apocalypto," is a metaphor for the death of American civilization. "The precursors to a civilization that's going under are the same, time and time again," Gibson explained at a film festival in Texas. "What's human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?" Gibson's comparison between Mayan and American civilization is deeply offensive. To elucidate just how offensive the comparison is, I must review the film's portrayal of Mayan society. (Warning: There are spoilers. If you are intent on seeing this movie, read no further.) "Apocalypto" portrays two societies within...

According to ABC News, 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) may have recently called his moderate-right credentials into question. "McCain has tapped a controversial academic to be a member of his virtual 'kitchen cabinet,'" ABCNews.com noted. That academic -- Niall Ferguson of Harvard University -- is, according to David Weigel of Reason magazine, a "foaming-at-the-mouth 'national greatness conservative.'" This academic has presented, according to Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University in Britain, an "aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right." Who is this dastardly intellectual twisting the liberal media's beloved "Maverick" McCain into a...

The left has found its newest sex symbol. His name is Markos Moulitsas, and he's the founder of the eponymous Daily Kos, a popular radical liberal blog garnering thousands of visitors each day. The lonely Blanche DuBois of The New York Times editorial page, Maureen Dowd, describes Moulitsas as the "fast-talking former Army artillery scout with the boyish demeanor and dark brown buggy eyes," and calls him an "Internet messiah." Ana Marie Cox, the Internet potty-mouth turned Time magazine reporter, breathes shallowly and does her lipstick: "Compact and wiry, Moulitsas, 34, exudes quivering intensity. He speaks in staccato paragraphs, punctuated...