Free Republic

Obama spokesman Bill Burton just put out the traditional pre-debate memo touting McCain's strengths and downplaying expectations for his own candidate -- and openly mocked McCain's performance this week. The memo is the most direct questioning yet from Obama's campaign of McCain's temperament, and his fitness to lead. Burton writes: On the economy, McCain’s words and actions over the course of the past week have illuminated his lack of expertise. He admitted he does not understand the economy -- his erratic, out-of-touch behavior this week, his failure to do anything of substance to move the agreement forward on the bailout,...

Several hundred years ago, the coral reefs of the Caribbean had up to six times more fish than they have today, according to a study published Wednesday. The estimate is made by US scientists poring over the fate of the Caribbean monk seal, a fish-loving mammal driven to extinction in 1952. Historical records from the 17th and 18th century show there were huge numbers of monk seals, distributed among 13 colonies across the Caribbean. They were so plentiful that some ships' maps of the West Indies even noted particularly dense locations of seals. Alas for Monachus tropicalis, colonisation of the...

The numbers tell the story. Time magazine wanted to talk theology with Mel Gibson recently on the set of The Passion, his new movie depicting the last hours of Christ. Asked what he thought about the effects of the Second Vatican Council on the Catholic Church, the Braveheart of Catholic traditionalists said, "Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." Gibson's post Vatican II ergo propter Vatican II argument would be enough to drive any high school logic teacher crazy. Is the Council responsible for all the Church's ills, including the priestly sex-abuse crisis, that have arisen since the...

WHEN GEORGE Washington took command of the Continental Army in June of 1775, he wrote to his wife that he expected to be home by fall. He returned eight years later. Union and Confederate soldiers rushing off to fight the Civil War feared they wouldn’t reach the battlefields before the war was over. Americans have a habit of underestimating the length and horror of war. The difference between now and then is that Americans no longer are a patient people. The war is different, too, but that does not mean it is incapable of being won. As the Iraq war...

LONDON -- Westminster Abbey has implicitly criticized churches that opened their doors to the filming of "The Da Vinci Code" last year by denouncing the thriller as "nonsense" that should be exposed by Christians. The abbey barred the filmmakers from its premises in June, saying that the best-selling Dan Brown novel on which the film was based was "theologically unsound." But Lincoln and Winchester cathedrals cooperated with the Hollywood adaptation, as did Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. The film -- starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou and Sir Ian McKellen -- is expected to be one of the blockbusters of the year...

President Bush will make stops in Arizona and Texas this week to address an issue that has divided some members of his own Republican Party -- illegal immigration. After spending the holiday weekend with family at his Crawford ranch, the president will visit Tucson, Arizona, on Monday, and El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday. A senior administration official said that the president, in a speech on immigration, will focus on three areas: border security, enforcement and a temporary worker program. The official said the president will talk about "additional resources and the use of technology to secure the border," and will...

President Bush today will call for a crackdown on illegal immigration, a move aimed at further rallying conservatives who recently cheered Mr. Bush's tough talk on Iraq and the Supreme Court. But the president will also renew his call for a program to allow Mexicans who have already entered the U.S. illegally to remain here for up to six years. That initiative has long angered conservatives who equate it with amnesty.

In your Nov. 17 (San Diego UNION)editorial, "No half-baked bills," you lament the lack of a comprehensive immigration bill "that does everything that needs to be done to reform a broken immigration system." Yet the five requirements identified are all contained in the Comprehensive Enforcement and Immigration Reform Act (S1438) that Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, and I introduced earlier this year. For example, the Cornyn-Kyl bill contains: Increases in Border Patrol agents. The bill authorizes an additional 10,000 Border Patrol agents over the next five years, along with additional detention beds, facilities and vehicles. In short, the border security provisions...

October 30, 1991: President George Bush opens the Madrid Conference with an initiative for a Middle East peace plan involving Israel's land. On the same day, an extremely rare storm forms off the coast of Nova Scotia. (It was eventually tagged "The Perfect Storm," and a book and movie were made about it.) Record-setting 100-foot waves form at sea and pound the New England Coast, even causing heavy damage to President Bush's home in Kennebunkport, Maine. August 23, 1992: The Madrid Conference moves to Washington D.C. and the peace talks resume, lasting four days. On that same day, Hurricane Andrew-the...

After enlarging their majority in the past two elections, House Republicans have begun to fear that public attention to members' travel and relations with lobbyists will make ethics a potent issue that could cost the party seats in next year's midterm races. In what Republican strategists call "the DeLay effect," questions plaguing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) are starting to hurt his fellow party members, who are facing news coverage of their own trips and use of relatives on their campaign payrolls. Liberal interest groups have begun running advertising in districts where Republicans may be in trouble, trying to...

MILFORD, Neb. - It took nearly four months, but to the relief of neighbors miles around, a burning manure pile has been extinguished. David Dickinson, owner and manager of Midwest Feeding Co., said Wednesday that several weeks of pulling the 2,000-ton pile apart proved effective by late last week. "We got far enough through it, that it quit," Dickinson said. Dickinson's feedlot, about 20 miles west of Lincoln, takes in as many as 12,000 cows at a time from farmers and ranchers and fattens them for market. Byproducts from the massive operation resulted in a dung pile measuring 100 feet...

When the film "The Day After Tomorrow" debuted, even Al Gore and other global-warming crazies condemned the "science" on which the picture was predicated. But that didn't stop some Connecticut public schools from showing it -- uncritically and without discussion -- in high school science classes, thus giving it credibility it does not deserve. Now schools and lawmakers are embracing as a teaching tool a movie that is the second most dubious "documentary" of this century, behind "Fahrenheit 9/11." Inspired by a lawsuit blaming McDonald's for making people fat, "Super Size Me" conducted a bogus experiment to "discover" what would...

INDEPENDENCE, Wis. (Reuters) - John Kerry, veteran senator from Massachusetts, New England blue blood and Democratic White House hopeful, learned to swear from a farmer, loved to drive a tractor and once had a passion for plowing.· 'Kid from the East' Kerry Feels Farmers' Pain. "When I was a kid, this kid from the East, I had an aunt and uncle who owned a dairy farm," Kerry told a town hall meeting on Saturday in Independence, midway through a 546-mile July 4 weekend road trip across America's heartland to win over rural voters. The son of a diplomat who was...

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.” Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in...