Free Republic

So Liz Mair is gone. The GOP consultant thrown under the bus that is the Scott Walker campaign. But before we get to the Mair story? Once upon a time the people who worked for a presidential candidate were, believe it or not, longtime loyalists. Think JFK’s brother and campaign manager Bobby Kennedy. Ronald Reagan’s Ed Meese or Lyn Nofziger, Jimmy Carter’s Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell, George W. Bush’s Karl Rove or, to go back even further in time, FDR’s Louie Howe. The world changed. Long ago. Somewhere along the line the people working to elect candidates became “operatives.”...

The dude's a carpenter. Every once in a while, sometimes by happenstance - other times by plain old dumb luck, I find a bit of inspiration. In what seems to be a world on the verge of being devoured by any number of very serious problems, I was inspired yesterday in the course of a fifteen minute telephone conversation. The document embedded above will come with little commentary as it speaks for itself. I hope any who elect to read the document are similarly inspired. Whether it be a nurse in Florida or a builder from Massachusetts, seemingly ordinary people...

To anyone feeling blue today, enjoy this image. Please caption with your thoughts. (I found this image in the dictionary entry for "Awesomeness"). http://i54.tinypic.com/1znoryt.jpg

POLITICAL LITTER BOX © THE USUAL OCCUPANTS by Norman Liebmann A schoolboy riddle asks, “Why don’t fish have feet?” The answer is – “Because they don’t want to step in anything.” It also explains why extraterrestrials don’t have feet - because they don’t want to land in Washington. The Clinton campaign is like a pachinko machine. Bill supplies the balls and Hillary supplies the clatter. John McCain is not a maverick, he’s a mutineer. Toni Morrison who labeled Bill Clinton “The first Black President” is endorsing Barack Obama, which raises the question: How black is black? America can thank Al...

....What is new about the new atheists? It's not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won't encounter a single point you didn't hear in your freshman dormitory. It's their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote -- both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell. For them, belief in...

SIN AND FOLEY In the early days of 2001, amid the hasty removal of the letter "W" from White House keyboards and the theft of the presidential china from Air Force One's galley, the departing President Clinton was busily dispensing no fewer than 176 last-minute presidential pardons to convicted criminals from sea to shining sea. One of these was for Mel Reynolds, a former Democrat congressman from Chicago. Reynolds had been serving a five-year federal sentence for fraudulent-loan and campaign-finance practices, having completed a 30-month sentence for 12 counts of statutory rape of a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. Clinton pardoned Reynolds...

INTERVIEW WITH A “PROGRESSIVE” JOURNALIST This morning, I’ve decided to do something different in The Morning Paper by interviewing one of the “Progressive” journalists who so enrich our Internet experience. My guest is Rancid (Rance) De Mento ,whose website – bashdubyadaily.org – I happened to spot while browsing the English language page of Al-Behedder Online – which, as you may surmise,is popular in the Arab-speaking world. TMP: Mr. De Mento, I could not help but see your featured article in Al-Behedder today: BUSH PLANS TO NUKE MECCA,SEIZE OILFIELDS ! I must say it seems a bit… De Mento (Chuckles) Startling...

  Canada: Not as boring as you think - Paul Whitney Mon, June 13, 2005The other day I read another newspaper story about how boring Canadians are - that Canadian society has taken all the rough edges off life and Canadians are dull, boring and unadventurous. As a proud, thrill-seeking Canadian, I immediately protested this accusation in a firm but polite manner and was about to organize an unbiased committee to discuss these claims in a non-confrontational, non-gender-specific and unbiased, manner. In spite of that, here's my opinion. There is plenty of adventure to be found within Canadian borders, as...

The Way of the Whigs Geoff Metcalf There may be a place for partisanship … but NOT in the middle of a war; NOT in the wake of historic elections of representative government in: - Afghanistan - Ukraine - Iraq - and even municipal elections in Saudi Arabia Now is NOT the time to focus on the ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ acrimonious petty whizzing match. Sycophant democrats are still so wrapped around partisanship, they are incapable of recognizing the self-destruction they are fueling. The river ‘Denial’ runs wide and deep. The ‘leaders’ of the party (Kennedy, Reid, Pelosi, Biden, Kerry et...

A YEAR AGO, Stan Statham was California's answer to the Maytag repairman. As president of the California Broadcasters Association, he sat by in frustration while his planned gubernatorial debate in Sacramento failed to materialize (Governor Gray Davis, ahead in the polls, didn't want to risk a direct encounter with the Republican challenger, Bill Simon). Last night, as he moderated CBA's recall debate--five candidates, gathered on the CSU-Sacramento campus--Statham went from the outhouse to the political penthouse. About 500 journalists asked for working credentials; 200-or-so actually attended (many of them found out the hard way that their cell phones were inoperable...

Converted to the Past: The appeal of Orthodoxy After 15 years as an Episcopalian priest, Gary Mathewes-Green could no longer tolerate being under the authority of apostate bishops. He and his wife, Frederica, both adult converts to Christianity who had attended seminary together, began looking for a denomination that still honored the traditional creeds and moral principles. The dissident Anglican branches wouldn't do, because Gary "felt he couldn't climb further out from the branch to a twig; if anything, he had to return to the trunk." The couple briefly considered the Roman Catholic Church, which allows married priests in Gary's...

Artists Supporting Saddam ... Join N.O.W. : P