Free Republic

It’s too bad that more FR posters were not so vocal about the folly of war in Iraq in 2002. Countless valuable posters on FR were banned at that time for voicing that very opinion.

Mitch Daniels is the only qualified candidate of the three you mention, even though he is the least charismatic of the three.

Chris Christie is great for New Jersey, but probably would not play well across the country. He doesn’t have much executive experience, and some of his activities with respect to his brother are questionable. Plus he is very seriously overweight.

Marc Rubio is from South Florida, which may in fact be even more corrupt than even New Jersey. He’s got a pretty face, and a nice story, and not much else, except a lot of questionable backers.

I noticed that you copied this article to me. I have changed my mind about the subject.

I do not favor using abortion as a litmus test for politicians — especially those who do not profess to be Catholic.

By most accounts,from various political persuasions, Fitzgerald is a brilliant man and could make a fortune in private practice. If you're looking for unscrupulous and ambitious attorneys, I'd start with the private sector first.

This garbage is really beneath FR.

Professional reputation prior to marriage?

re: Mary Matalin

I remembered reading this a few weeks ago when some people began to gossip about exactly what Libby was doing with Judy Miller in an exclusive Washington, DC hotel prior to having breakfast.

Libby's wife name is Harriet Grant, and she was General Counsel to the Judiciary Committee when it was chaired by Joe Biden.

How many other high-level staffers most likely are allergic to the social conservative agenda?

Libby is also married to a lawyer who was a congressional staffer for the Democrats. I think she worked on matters related to the Judiciary Committee.

By all means, let's find out where the fake Niger documents came from.

That will tell us all much.

I admit that I would like to know a lot more about the circumstances surrounding the Vanity Fair spread. I also think that I would not like Joe Wilson as a person.

I still say that the guy in the pic crossed a line that he shouldn't have.

It's easy to do when you're faceless, and you command a mob at your fingertips. It's harder to do when you plaster you face all over an internet site.

Enough with the jokes.

The Freeper in the picture made a fool of himself. Only in the increasingly insular FR community, could he get away with such a stunt without being mercilessly abused.

There is no evidence that Valerie Plame was anything but a victim here. Even if you hate her husband, she was never "fair game."

Relax? Heck, I'm having fun! :)

I got news for ya, Grampa.

Veronica Plame is totally out of the guy in the pic's league.

Some people apparently don't even know when they should be embarassed.

Completely clueless.

Who is the ugly, fat guy in the picture?

The misery and famine lead us to a situation where, even though you have food, shelter and health care, most of others don’t, and therefore they get sick and spread the diseases all over the region.

This is the strongest argument for some sort of universal medical coverage.

Keep trying. Eventually you may find something that sticks.

Fitzgerald has no record of politically motivated indictments, as is clear from his tenure as US Attorney in Illinois. He appears to be an equal-opportunity prosecutor who has gone after both Republicans at the state level and Democrats in Chicago.

What it looks like to the objective observer is that some folks in the Bush administration are in a serious amount of trouble--most likely because they broke the law.

That may or may not be relevant to the party loyalists on this site.

As someone who has frequented a good number of liberal blogs of late, I can tell you that equating elitism and anti-semitism with respect to Mier's nomination is not a Democratic talking point.

It takes a fair amount of hutzpah for someone whom I suspect has regular access to Republican talking points to accuse a long time Freeper of being a troll. But I guess someone who has chosen the pen name of Howlin is fairly adept at coming up with howlers.

Is Robert Bork a pundit or a cowboy?

I don't think the GOP coalition is fragile at all...

You think not? Then consider this.

What would happen if Roe v. Wade were actually to be overturned and abortion no longer became the bright dividing line between the Republican and Democratic parties? Do you think that social conservatives might jump the GOP ship?

I suspect we would see a major--and long overdue-- realignment of the two parties. Speaking for myself, I see no one in Washington who says anything that interests me.

I hope someone remembers to ask Freeh what he thinks about Clinton's relationship with George I.

Let's see how many Republican talking points show up on this thread. It's almost as if certain regular posters receive them regularly. Not too many bored housewives are capable of generating high quality spin all by themselves.

"Put those ... weapons down!" he yelled to troops rolling in on trucks.

He did not say to put them down. He said to point them down.

I am no longer a Republican or a Democrat. I am looking to vote for people who will do the job they say they will and not treat their office as nothing more than an appendage to a giant shake down racket wherewith they line their pockets and the pockets of their friends while spouting meaningless rhetoric about the great nation and people they "serve".

My sentiments exactly.

Most of the violence is probably black-on-black.

What would be helpful is to see black Americans condemn this kind of behavior. I don't criticize anyone for taking food, water, medicine or clothing. Under certain limited circumstances, I could even defend someone looting a jewelry store (jewelry is easily convertible to cash). But raping people in a shelter and shooting at those trying to evacuate a hospital are beyond the pale.

More black anger should be directed at the incredibly incompetent black power structure in New Orleans. It's not pleasant to be played for a fool over and over and over again.

When things calm down a bit, Americans also need to discuss the pernicious effect of black gangsta culture.

If anything whites are almost totally emasculated....especially outside the Deep South

Methinks this is a myth that many white Southern males take pride in believing...

"Not a single tourist caught in the tsunami was mugged. Now with all this happening in the U.S. we can easily see where the civilized part of the world's population is."

I remember the pictures of the incredibly poor villagers who politely greeted US Naval personnel as they landed on islands to deliver water and supplies. Those simple folk of the third world appear to know much more about civilized behavior than portions of the US population.

On June 19, FEMA posted a special bid notice for one of the agency’s largest contract awards ever – offering contracting firms $300 million for a five-year contract to simply prepare plans to create temporary housing on a scale never before imagined, and then stand by.

FEMA sure does like to dole out the money. I want to know a lot more about who it is paying and exactly what they are doing.

When citizens are trained and every community has their own shelter, which is how it was under civil defense, we will be able to work around our incompetent and corrupt politicians and save ourselves, should another disaster strike.

I have sometimes wondered why, since 911, more efforts haven't been made to fortify local, volunteer efforts directed toward emergency preparedness. I know that my grandfather, during WWII, was part of a volunteer patrol in the town my mother grew up in.

Instead, it seems like most Homeland Security funding that has been given at the local level has been used to buy equipment and high-tech communications and monitoring systems. Perhaps this is not the way to go.

Of all of the offensive comments posted on FR about the hurricane, the ones are the worst are those that bother about such trivialities as the NFL football schedule.

Of course this is only my opinion, but the best way to describe what you propose is throwing good money after bad. Leaving alone the possibility of another catastrophic hurricane on the Gulf Coast, I have ZERO confidence that elected officials in Louisiana would handle a rebuilt city any better than they have handled the current one.

Our landscape is littered with amazing feats of engineering. NO will be rebuilt. It can be done and will be done.

If it is to be done, let it be done with private funding for investors who can afford to take the risk. As as taxpayer, I don't think it's worth the money.

Somebody here gets it.

I'm sure there are some issues that this governor and mayor should be taken to task over, but everyone from FEMA on down ignored this situation for a good long time. I don't have the stomach to tee off on the mayor and the governor at this time.

Whatever one thinks about what should have been done about the levees is irrelevant. Keep in mind that public officials knew the levees would be inadequate for the storm that was predicted. All the more reason that they should have implemented an evacuaction plan.

Where's the busses that take 100,000 kids to school each day?

Somewhere on one of these threads there is a picture of them. They're underwater at the moment, unfortunately.

Hussein had been looting his people for more than 25 years and starving them in the process, while he built luxurious palaces and dined on gourmet meals. Looting him was no crime.

Any major,modern city with a large underclass would experience the same as NO. BTW, plenty of people in NO (pre-flood) either lived or visited in luxury and dined on gourmet meals.

My understanding is that there are concerns that trying to "plug" the levees could actually damage them more.

How do you know what they are taking? Perhaps some of them, at least, are in need of medication.

Most retail establishments in NO are going to have to completely write-off their inventory anyway. If I were there, and I was in need, I would take whatever I could find.

Nope. Shep is worth a ransom though. Too bad the he didn't think about that before he decided to chase after Katrina.

In another day or two, complete lawlessness will exixt in NO -what's left of it, that is.

How many people in the affected areas currently are in a position to be able to hear the mayor's latest evacuation warning? How are they supposed to evacuate in the dark?

Does anyone have any idea how many people are left in the city?

Now if you lived in a place 12' below sea level, wouldn't you think that levee maintenance and having working pumps would be the city's top priority?

New Orleans is one of the most corrupt cities in the entire country. Corruption often breeds ineptness.

The incompetence here, though, may rise to the level of crminality.

Do you have any idea of how much money FEMA/Homeland Security has funneled to local and state governments around the country since 911 specifically for the purpose of emergency preparedness? It is inconceivable to me that more planning wasn't done in New Orleans. Someone made the decision that the underclass was expendable.

What? No posh eateries along the Jersey Shore? Or perhaps you think there are no posh localities in the entire state? It sounds to me like you've never been there.

Bush's spinmeisters will make a critical mistake if they, in all of their hubris, believe, they can spin Gonzales as anything other than a betrayal to social conservatives and moderates.

Even blatant demagoguery about 911 and winning the war in Iraq won't save him this time.

There really is such a thing as reality, and you can't spin yourself out of it all of the time.

Prominent spokesperson for conservatives?

Well, that may have been a little overdone.

Like it or not though, he is connected to this website through his posting here and his radio program. If worse stuff turns up, the Left will try to destroy FR. Why do you suppose it was featured on ABC this evening?

It may be hard for regular posters here to believe, but most Americans have a limited interest in politics. What they are going to hear is GAY HOOKER who was a plant as a CONSERVATIVE INTERNET JOURNALIST.

The left has destroyed this man's life because they didn't like his politics, the rest is not important.

Not really, Eva. The Left would have left him alone if he had continued his job as painter in Delaware. The press went after him because he was sitting in the WH Press Room asking questions.

I heard Gannon earlier tonight saying that he has made mistakes in his past. That's fine; we all have. There are still consequences for mistakes, though; and one of them should have been that Gannon could never become a prominent spokesperson for conservatives in this country. He owed that to the rest of us.

Talon news is a nonentity and always has been. It's the attacking of Gannon and the attempt to tie this to Bush (make no mistake, that is what this is all about) that has me exorcised

I know that many on the Left are trying to tie this to Bush by saying that he is either gay or that he personally had something to do with Gannon's placement in the WH press room. Both assertions are ridiculous.

I have watched the interaction between Bush and his wife for 4+ years, and I have no doubts that they are both in love with each other--which isn't bad when you've married that long! Second, Bush is not an idiot. Had he known about Gannon's former occupation, I'm sure Gannon would never have been allowed near the White House.

What I am less sure about is that there isn't some other connection between someone on Bush's staff and Gannon. My advice is to find that out pronto and if there is--- GET RID OF HIM!

Advocating for Gannon does President Bush no good whatsoever.

If Norah O'Donnell was spreading her legs for money on a website, you'd have no problem with her being NBC's White House reporter?

I hesitate to jump into the fray, but I have to comment on what you just said.

It appears to me that there's this weird double standard going on here. I doubt very seriously that many posters on FR would be willing to extend the same lenient treatment to someone in Gannon's circumstances if that someone happened to be a straight female hooker. The automatic assumption would be that she got her job because she was sleeping with someone. But because Gannon is gay and male, any sort of reasonable inference is rejected by the majority of posters here. I think that is due to a refusal to consider exactly who he did sleep with and whether it is at all related to how he came to work at Talon News as a WH correspondent.

Just my two cents.

Bat Ye'or bump!

and most folks here have the stones to admit that.

Actually, I'd say they're the definite minority here.

Since when was being a hooker a private matter, unrelated to professional concerns? If it were to be discovered that I had at any time in my past sold that particular type of "service", I'd be fired in an instant. And that's regardless of whether I had an actual criminal record.

I wonder what types of questions Gannon would have had to answer from the FBI if he had applied for a "hard pass"?(What an awful term in this context!) Isn't lying to an FBI agent a crime? Is that why he serially renewed a daily pass for two years?

The greatest danger to facism and totalitarianism is personal freedom.

That's an interesting hypothesis and one that certainly gets tossed around quite a bit these days. But where is your evidence for this?

Some historians consider the French Revolution the grandfather of both fascism and modern totalitarianism. And what were the infamous ideals of the Revolution? Liberty, Fraternity and Equality!

Personal freedom unhinged from truth may yet give rise to greatest totalitarian state the world has ever seen. It's truth that set you free.

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