Free Republic

For several weeks now consultants on both the left and right were wondering when the Bush campaign would start using more of its tougher hits on Kerry. We have our answer. The answer is April 21. The latest Bush-Cheney ad, "Doublespeak," is, in a word, magnificent. This new ad is, as they say, "gonna leave a mark." Contrary to what many believe, people don't actually learn from history. Senators make awful presidential candidates. The Democrats are going to re-learn this hard lesson. Sure, the Bush campaign hit Kerry on his gas-tax scheme, taxes, and on Iraq funding. And, it worked....

ARLINGTON, VA – Today, Bush-Cheney ‘04 released the campaign’s newest television ad, entitled “Doublespeak.” The ad will air on national cable.Script for "Doublespeak"President Bush:I’m George W. Bush and I approve this message. VO: John Kerry says, "A lot of people don't really know who I am." Well, actually, a lot of people do. Kerry’s hometown paper says, “In his continuing effort to be all things to all voters … John Kerry is engaging in a level of doublespeak that makes most voters wince.” The Wall Street Journal said Kerry's tax plan “would mean increasing the tax burden again, which...

As I was perusing John Kerry's campaign website a while back, I noticed that there were a number of pictures and videos of him riding a motorcycle without a helmet on. This struck me as odd since Senator Kerry is from Massachusetts and there is a helmet law in the Bay State. To get to the bottom of this issue, I contacted Kerry campaign headquarters. When asked about Kerry not wearing a motorcycle helmet, Dag Vega, a Kerry Spokesman, pointed out that Senator Kerry did wear a helmet when he was on the Tonight Show and that, "he only doesn't...

For the past three years, no matter how monstrous the Palestinian attack on Israeli civilians, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has consistently refused to apply the word 'terrorism.' One of the paper's editors explained their 'evenhanded' position in February, 2002: "In the case of the term 'terrorist,' other words -- 'gunman,' 'separatist' and 'rebel,' for example -- may be more precise and less likely to be viewed as judgmental. We also take extra care to avoid the term 'terrorist' in articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotional and heated nature of that dispute." Now, suddenly, the largest paper in...

A small group of Westside High School students plastered the school Monday with posters advocating that a white student from South Africa receive the "Distinguished African American Student Award" next year. The students' actions on Martin Luther King Jr. Day upset several students and have led administrators to discipline four students. The posters, placed on about 150 doors and lockers, included a picture of the junior student smiling and giving a thumbs up. The posters encouraged votes for him. The posters were removed by administrators because they were "inappropriate and insensitive," Westside spokeswoman Peggy Rupprecht said Tuesday. Rupprecht said the...

AP Kills Limbaugh Painkillers Story The Associated Press Saturday, January 3, 2004; 5:06 PM WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Please kill the story Limbaugh-Painkillers, V9991. Rush Limbaugh has not been charged with doctor shopping. A kill is mandatory. Make certain the story is not used.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Rush Limbaugh was wrong when he accused prosecutors of singling him out, but not by much. Palm Beach County prosecutors investigating the right-wing radio host for his prescription drug abuse have filed "doctor shopping" charges against one other person in the past five years, according to records. Limbaugh's lawyer said the court documents, reviewed by The Palm Beach Post yesterday, prove his client was unfairly targeted. "Rush Limbaugh has been singled out for special prosecution because of who he is," Roy Black told the paper. "We believe the state attorney's office is applying a double...

Columnists' Corner "Free Republic to Protest Rather “Fair and Balanced” Award" By Bob Johnson This Monday the Museum of Television and Radio will be honoring Dan Rather at the Beverly Hills Hotel for his life long commitment to fair and balanced news reporting. That’s right. To anyone familiar with the CBS Evening News, this might come as a surprise. For decades, anyone to the right of John Kennedy is firmly aware of Rather’s outright bias and left wing manipulation of the news. The suggestion is at best, comical. Of course, the Museum of Television and Film can honor anyone...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - U.S. stocks edged higher at midday Tuesday, in choppy trade, as investors sorted through more signs of weakness in the labor market in a report that otherwise showed returning strength in the manufacturing sector. Shortly before midday of the first trading session of what traditionally is a tough month for Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average (up 9.69 to 9425.51, Charts), the Nasdaq composite (up 5.71 to 1816.16, Charts) and the Standard & Poor's 500 (up 2.86 to 1010.87, Charts) index all traded on the upside, after testing both sides of unchanged in the morning.....

The future looks bright Language can help to shape the way we think about the world. Richard Dawkins welcomes an attempt to raise consciousness about atheism by co-opting a word with cheerful associations Saturday June 21, 2003 The Guardian I once read a science-fiction story in which astronauts voyaging to a distant star were waxing homesick: "Just to think that it's springtime back on Earth!" You may not immediately see what's wrong with that, so ingrained is our unconscious northern hemisphere chauvinism. "Unconscious" is exactly right. That is where consciousness-raising comes in. I suspect it is for a deeper reason...

When did America's most popular sport turn fascist? The National Football League wielded its dictatorial powers with glee on July 25, when it fined Detroit Lions president Matt Millen $200,000 for failing to interview a black candidate for the team's vacant head-coaching position. "You did not take sufficient steps to satisfy the commitment that you had made," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue scolded. The NFL's Committee on Workplace Diversity recommended last December that each team interview at least one "minority" candidate each time it sought to hire a new head coach. This policy ranks among the dumbest ideas of all time,...

Dobbs: Schools Banning Words at 'Alarming Rate' Political correctness has so infected the government schools that classroom textbooks are now vetted for bad words and phrases that may upset people. Lou Dobbs reported Monday night on his CNN program that "the list of words and phrases now banned in American classrooms is rising at an alarming rate." "You may be surprised" to find out the innocent words and phrases now being deemed inadmissible in a classroom, Dobbs said. Dobbs' launch pad was author and education expert Diane Ravitch's new book, "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn."...

President must go in '04 Elections will be a battle for the soul of America May 27, 2003 The ragtag collection of Democrats hoping to win the nomination as their party's presidential candidate in 2004 must dismay even the most ardent of Democrats. It's not so much that there are nine, which dilutes the power base any one candidate needs to succeed. And it's not that several of those in the running are there to advance either a narrow personal agenda or to increase stature within a narrow segment of society, both of which detract from the ability of the...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Billboards in Louisiana where a serial killer is loose display the image of a grim-faced man with bushy eyebrows, and the title “person of interest.” When Maryland police discovered three bodies last month, they put out an alert for a “person of interest” — the suspected shooter.</p>

Ayn Rand rejects altruism, the view that self-sacrifice is the moral ideal. She argues that the ultimate moral value, for each human individual, is his or her own well-being. Since selfishness (as she understands it) is serious, rational, principled concern with one's own well-being, it turns out to be a prerequisite for the attainment of the ultimate moral value. For this reason, Rand believes that selfishness is a virtue. In the introduction to her collection of essays on ethical philosophy, The Virtue of Selfishness (VOS), Rand writes that the "exact meaning" of selfishness is "concern with one's own interests" (VOS,...

NewsMax.com Monday, March 31, 2003 Leftist Establishment Whitewashes Stalinists The dire warnings in George Orwell’s "1984” are alive and well in the U.S.A. The leftist establishment is downplaying the word "communist” if not wiping it from the vocabulary. Having been embarrassingly wrong all along about Soviet and worldwide communist intentions during the Cold War, the "respected” pillars of academia and communications are ignoring communist pasts or prettying up the records of campus speakers and old hard-line leftists who die. In Sunday’s Washington Times, Arnold Beichman writes that Columbia University had invited Eric Hobsbawm, whom the university describes as a "noted...

{snip) March 31, 2003 OFFICIAL: France Issues Order to Boycott NewsMax With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff For the story behind the story... Sunday, March 30, 2003 11:45 p.m. EST French Government Officially Boycotting NewsMax It's official: The government of France is boycotting NewsMax.com. This past week, NewsMax Pundit Charles Smith called the French Embassy in Washington and spoke with Deputy Press Counsel Agnes Vondermuhal. Ms. Vondermuhal bluntly stated that the embassy had passed details of NewsMax's "Boycott France" campaign, including our recent ad in the New York Times, on to officials in Paris. Apparently, the Chirac government was angered,...

The Bible never mentions abortion, but it does offer support for choice. By Marjorie Brahms Signer The 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, has created a huge amount of misinformation about the nature of being pro-choice. Starting with President Bush’s new proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day, the purpose seems to be to portray those who are pro-choice as godless and heartless. But being pro-choice is firmly grounded in the Bible. Who is pro-choice and religious? Denominations with official and long-standing pro-choice positions include the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Episcopal Church,...