Free Republic

The frontrunners in the Democratic presidential race have discovered the power of an idea whose time has passed: socialism in women’s wages. Its power is in pandering to feminist voters, and its time passed because it never made any sense even when it was a bright, shiny, new bad idea some 30 years ago. It deserved its place on the junk heap, given that women have been improving their place in our economy without far-reaching governmental intervention. Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton has renewed her push for her Paycheck Fairness Act, and Sen. Barack Obama has endorsed the Fair Pay Act. Whenever...

No matter how many boneheaded, irrelevant questions were thrown at them by MSNBC Thursday night, the Republican candidates for president were really only there to answer one: Can you beat Hillary Clinton in November? (Bonus question being asked by viewers across America: “Will you walk over and beat Chris Matthews right now?”) If Thursday's debate had truly mattered, the performance of Chris Matthews and his Politico.com posse would be an outrage. Can anyone imagine Brian Williams asking Sen. Barack Obama “What do you dislike most about America?” Would Fox News have been able to get away with overtly antagonistic questioning...

Mitt Romney won Thursday night’s debate by every objective standard of style and substance. First, the style: At six-feet-two-inches tall with perfect hair and impeccable tailoring, Romney was Ronald Reagan incarnate. Romney was George Clooney/George Hamilton cool (complete with the tan) surrounded by a dorm-room full of average dudes. Whether it was Romney’s genial laugh, his upbeat persona, his non-arrogant confidence, or his complete mastery of head, body, and hand motion, he couldn’t have been more at ease if he were attending a backyard family barbecue. Regarding substance, Romney appeared to be the smartest kid in the class without sounding...

It's obvious now that in the first major Republican presidential debate Mitt Romney put in a very strong performance. He was good on his own merits, but it certainly helps that he was on the receiving end of the most asinine question of the night about whether or not the government should interfere when Catholic churches deny Communion to pro-abortion politicians. “I wouldn’t say anything to Roman Catholic bishops. They can do whatever the heck they want,” he said. “I can’t imagine a government telling a church who can have communion in their church … This is a nation after...

What's a religion good for, anyway? That is the question retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong never gets around to asking, let alone answering, in his new book, Jesus for the Non-Religious. His title suggests an answer, and he has tried to lob his book like a hand grenade into the institutions of Christendom. The idea is to explode two millennia of traditional belief on which these institutions rest, thereby making room for a new Christianity based on a conception of Jesus that is palatable to “a twenty-first century person.” What actually crawls out of the rubble is a Jesus...

On Monday morning, students trying to raise money to host an alternative BYU commencement ceremony were $11,000 short of the $20,000 they needed for the event. But by Monday night, they'd blown past their goal, organizers say, mostly thanks to a plea on the popular liberal Web site Daily Kos. The BYU students are raising money to host Ralph Nader, Pete Ashdown and Jack Healey in an alternative ceremony because they are unhappy that Vice President Dick Cheney will be speaking at the official commencement. By Friday, organizer Eric Bybee said the group had raised just $9,000 toward a $20,000...

According to the Hoover Institution's Dinesh D'Souza in his new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, the Western radical left has so repelled Muslims with its secularity, impiety and license that it, rather than gruesome Islamist imperial ambition, is a primary cause of Muslim rage and terror against America. The left ought to be indignant, but a peculiar aspect of this controversy, little remarked upon, is that D'Souza's liberal critics, for reasons best known to themselves, are missing in action. True, Alan Wolfe wrote a review for the New York Times , but...

Professors rejected a call to add more history to the proposed general education curriculum in a close vote at yesterday’s sometimes-chaotic meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Faculty members spent nearly an hour debating whether to add the word “history” to the “Culture and Belief” category of the program that could replace the Core Curriculum as early as Fall 2008. The amendment, initially backed by 65 professors, ultimately failed in an 88-68 vote. That the outcome of the vote could only be determined by a recount underscored the procedural confusion that plagued much of the meeting. Professors left...

Mitt Romney is riding high this week after his victory in "the first primary," which consists of raising cold, hard cash to compete: more than $20 million in the first quarter, $5 million more than his closest contender, Rudy "Lay off my wife!" Giuliani. John McCain came in a lackluster third with $12.5 million. Romney's campaign benefited from two distinct donor networks, according to media accounts: Wall Street and Mormons. GOP front-runner Rudy, struggling with one of those weird media freak shows erupting around his wife, Judith (her alleged participation in future Cabinet meetings and former puppy killings), must be...

GMA4/3/077AM teaseDiane Sawyer: “This morning: Raking it in. Republican hopeful Mitt Romney sets off a political earthquake, surprising opponents by raising $23 million. How? Here's a clue: a little help from two unlikely friends.” 7:02Diane Sawyer: “But, at the top of the news this morning, that race for 2008. What a difference a day makes. The Republican underdog blew his opponents out of the water on fund-raising. Mitt Romney raking in the millions. But how? He is here with us this morning. But first, our GMA senior national correspondent Claire Shipman has more. Claire?” Claire Shipman: “Good morning, Diane. Well,...

There's a Mormon running for the White House and radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt has written a book on him, and the prospect of A Mormon in the White House. Hewitt took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez Tuesday night about Mitt Romney and his prospects. Kathryn Jean Lopez: Three percent, in the latest Gallup poll, Hugh? As a presidential candidate, is he worth a book on? Hugh Hewitt: I think the New Hampshire number is much more important (Romney is a very close third), as is the Iowa organization (Romney way out in front), and of course the...

PROVO ? The White House called Brigham Young University in January and offered to have Vice President Dick Cheney speak at BYU's April Commencement exercises. Dick Cheney The Board of Trustees clearly was delighted to land a sitting vice president a year after President Bush was unable to accept their invitation to speak in April 2006, and the three-man First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, acting in their roles as chairman and vice chairmen of the board, invited Cheney. "We are honored to have the vice president speak," BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. Not everyone...

On Tuesday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney returned to Michigan, his native state, to announce that he is running for president. He delivered this earth-shattering news at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, posed between a model of the old Nash Rambler and the new Ford hybrid. The picture was meant to convey a message of "innovation and transformation," the motto of the Romney campaign. The venue had a local message, too. Romney's father, George, a former Michigan governor, was the automotive executive who (temporarily) saved American Motors with the compact Rambler in the late 1950s. Today, with Detroit hemorrhaging...

The fact that Mitt Romney is a Mormon is no secret. Scads of stories have been written about that very fact, and it's a regular topic of conversation among Washington's chattering class. What effect Romney's religion will have on his chances at winning the 2008 Republican presidential nomination is much less clear. Some argue that evangelical voters, a core part of the GOP coalition, will never accept a Mormon candidate as one of their own. Others believe Romney's religion will become a non-issue as the campaign wears on. Who's right? It's still too early to tell, but a look at...

helpful, when watching Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary Friends of God, to picture her as the late, great Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. Mentally swap her urban-hip voice for an Australian accent and her New York clothes for khakis, and she leads a tour through her perceived outback of American Evangelicalism: “We’re far from home, mates! Perhaps we’ll spot the Red-Tinted Evangelical Warbler. Crikey!” Friends of God: A Roadtrip with Alexandra Pelosi, appearing on HBO, is a safari film for liberals to gawk at the Evangelical natives. This is not to say that the documentary is unfair: Pelosi makes a genuine effort to...

A passing exchange during a Senate hearing on Thursday turned into a political flashpoint overnight as Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused one another of insensitivity in comments about motherhood and the war in Iraq. In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Ms. Rice suggested that Ms. Boxer had set back feminism by suggesting during the hearing that the childless Ms. Rice had paid no price in the Iraq war. “I thought it was O.K. to be single,” Ms. Rice said. “I thought it was O.K. to not have children,...

During the 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy downplayed his religion. Another Massachusetts pol, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, is now contemplating a run (he's expected to file presidential-exploratory-committee papers today). And Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is being encouraged to follow in JFK’s footsteps. Kennedy’s September 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association is credited with having destigmatized his Catholicism as a campaign issue. No doubt the Romney camp would like to do something similar — make it so that questions about Mormon temple garments are beyond the bounds of respectable journalism....

My heart sank when I first received the call. It was from a very swish public relations firm - Edelman - and it was an offer of help. It is a general rule in journalism that people who want to speak to you tend to be uninteresting. When they make their offer through a highly paid middleman they tend to be uninteresting on stilts - or else making a case of dubious merit: that the arms trade is good for humanity, or first class airfares are too cheap. But on this occasion I was in for a surprise. Edelman provided...

Someone who refuses to consider voting for a woman as president is rightly deemed a sexist. Someone who'd never vote for a black person is a racist. But are you a religious bigot if you wouldn't cast a ballot for a believing Mormon? The issue arises with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's as-yet-undeclared bid for the 2008 Republican nomination. Romney would not be the first member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to run for the nation's highest office. He follows Orrin Hatch (2000); Mo Udall (1976); his father, George Romney (1968); and not least of all Joseph...

I was reading about John Kerry’s trip to the Middle East, during which he knocked the policies of the president. (The headline over this report is “Kerry Criticizes Bush in Egypt.”) I thought of JFK’s alleged putdown of Nixon: No class. Yes, no class. I also noticed that, about the time Kerry was sitting down with the Syrians, Bush was slamming Damascus for its imprisonment of dissidents. I wonder whether Kerry, in his talks with the regime, raised political prisoners. I wouldn’t bet the ranch. Do you remember when the Democrats — thanks mainly to Jimmy Carter’s rhetoric — were...