Free Republic

I despise the institution of independent prosecutor, or “special counsel” as the current iteration is known in federal regulation. I am thus sympathetic to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s insistence, in Senate testimony on Tuesday, that the Biden investigation — which the administration disingenuously minimizes as if it implicated only the president’s son, Hunter — is in the capable hands of the Biden Justice Department, with no need to appoint a special counsel.

In the ghost town of Fort Quitman, 80 miles southeast of El Paso, four US road workers were up at dawn attending to "shovel ready" jobs by filling potholes with gravel. Unfortunately, "at least one Mexican gunman," who probably just wanted a chance to do jobs Americans won't do, "fired a high-powered rifle across the border," barely missing the workers. "The bullets struck private land ...about half a mile from the border fence." Thankfully, the quartet escaped unharmed. "Mike Doyle, Chief Deputy of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office, said after the fact, a rancher spotted a white pickup fleeing the...

The announcement that Helen Thomas has been sent to journalistic Valhalla is good news on several levels. Not only because it at last removes an erratic, out-of-control figure who has represented a political and social embarrassment for decades, but also because it signals that America has once again dodged the anti-Semitism bullet. A country that accepts anti-Semitism is a country on its way to destruction. The historical record could not be clearer on this. Late 19th-century Germany was one of the leading states of the Western world, the heir of Beethoven and Goethe, a standard-setter for the sciences, the humanities,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Buoyed by a come-from-behind victory over a ballot initiative that threatened labor's powerful role in state politics, union leaders said Wednesday their next move is to defeat Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election bid. "In the coming days and weeks, working families are going to begin our efforts to ensure that in California we elect a Legislature and a governor that will fight for the interest of working families," said Martin Ludlow, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Proposition 75, which would have required public employee unions to get permission from members annually before...

33 Years Later, Draft Becomes Topic for DeanBy RICK LYMAN and CHRISTOPHER DREW Published: November 22, 2003 In the winter of 1970, a 21-year-old student from Yale walked into his armed services physical in New York carrying X-rays and a letter from his orthopedist, eager to know whether a back condition might keep him out of the military draft. This was not an uncommon scene in 1970, when medical deferments were a frequently used avenue for those reluctant to take part in the unpopular war in Vietnam. And this story would have little interest save that Howard Dean was the...