Free Republic

The next feud between America's freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report. Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens. Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into...

So asks Newsweek's cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill's career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power. That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book "Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War" seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book "stinks." Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The...

NORTH America's political columnist, Christopher Hitchens is telling the world+dog that the Everywhere Girl has been replaced by "Islamic Rage Boy". Islamic Rage Boy is a stock photo of a Kashmiri-based rent-a-protester who seems to be protesting at everything which moves. According to Hitchen's Slate column, IRB has been seen protesting Danish cartoons, magazine photos of a Muslim Mosque, a visit to India by President Bush, comments by the Pope, execution of a Muslim terrorist by India and Israeli military action. In other words when big media needs a picture of a stereotyped mad mullah to satisfy the prejudices about...

The gay movement in the United States ...... has had at least one good effect with which nobody can quarrel. The closeted homosexual is a sad figure from the past, and so is the homosexual who tries desperately to "marry" a heterosexual..... This may seem like an oblique way in which to approach Mel Gibson's ghastly movie .... .... an associate of his had once told me, in lacerating detail, that an evening with Mel was one long fiesta of boring but graphic jokes about anal sex. ... long before he emerged as the spear-carrier for the sort of Catholicism...