Free Republic

A man, they say, can be judged by his friends. If that's the case, then Barack Obama can surely be judged by George Clooney. The UK Daily Mail reported this week that the "Ocean's Eleven" actor regularly speaks with and text messages the presumptive Democratic nominee, advising him on everything from fashion to foreign policy. "George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East," stated a Democratic Party insider. "George is pushing him to be more 'balanced' on issues such as...

This 2008 presidential election cycle has been jam-packed with irony. John McCain has been forced to rely on the 527 groups he so despises; Barack Obama has been denounced by members of the black community but embraced by upper class whites; the Clintons have been rejected by the very media that put them in power. But perhaps the most ironic fact of the 2008 election cycle is this: John McCain will win the 2008 election because the war in Iraq was not a war for oil. Since the liberation of Iraq in March 2003, liberals have been screaming that the...

Barack Obama's messianic tour of Europe is over. And, like Jesus, he has risen again -- in the polls. According to Gallup's daily tracking poll, Obama is now up 8 percent among registered voters. According to Rasmussen, his lead is a whopping three points. (According to USA Today/Gallup, John McCain actually leads Obama among likely voters by 4 percent. But God knows that Jesus' poll numbers are always vacillating, too.) Obama's return has meant jubilation in the streets. Demure virgins wave palm fronds over the triumphant conqueror as he wanders the highways and byways of the campaign trail. Obama gracefully...

I got married last week. Hence my absence from this space for the first time in seven years. It was a beautiful wedding in Acre, Israel, overlooking the ocean at sunset. My father wrote the music for the processional, which brought everyone to tears. My bride looked stunning, of course. We broke the glass, we danced, we ate and we celebrated until deep into the night. Outside the wedding hall stood a guard. Every wedding in Israel requires an armed guard to prevent terrorist attacks. Only the armed guards prevent the infliction of mass casualties at joyous events; only the...

I was sitting at lunch with a colleague a few weeks back, and he mentioned that he did not understand the general media hubbub over Michelle Obama's unpatriotic statements. "So she said that she hadn't been proud of America in her adult life," he said. "So what?" I answered that many Americans, rightly, were offended at the idea that a prospective First Lady of the United States was not proud of her country. "If you don't believe this is the best country on earth, don't live here," I said. "That's 'love it or leave it,'" he answered. "I don't have...

On Monday, the U.S. military turned over the war-torn Karbala province to Iraqi security forces. The assumption of control by Iraqi security forces marked the eighth such handover by the U.S. military since the start of the Iraq war. Of the 18 Iraqi provinces, 10 remain under U.S. military control. Cautious optimism is beginning to bloom in the desert. Though the Iraqi government itself has acknowledged its foot-dragging with regard to assuming responsibility over security -- "Allow me to say that we are late, very late, to reconstruct, to rebuild our forces for reasons that I do not want to...

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...