Free Republic

At a reception for an emerging artist, a tipsy friend approached me to continue a private chat we had long ago. "So, you still want John McCain for president?" he said, in the neighborhood of 30,000 decibels above a whisper. Jaws dropped. Conversations stopped. I felt every cultural elitist eyeball in the gallery was on me. Awkward!

May 8, 2008 Senator Barack Obama Obama for America P.O. Box 8102 Chicago, IL 60680 Dear Senator Obama, This has been an historic and exciting campaign. Millions of new voters have been brought into the process and their enthusiasm for the Democratic Party and the principles for which you and I have fought and continue to fight is unprecedented. One of the foremost principles of our party is that citizens be allowed to vote and that those votes be counted. That principle is not currently being applied to the nearly 2.5 million people who voted in primaries in Florida and...

A few days ago I was talking to a prominent conservative commentator who told me how much he'd come to admire the campaign Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., had waged against Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. No fan of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the commentator said to me that if Clinton promised to not raise income taxes and she gave the conservatives the next Supreme Court pick, he'd vote for her. That won't happen, of course -- but it's a remarkable phenomenon, and now it's showing up in conservative publications. Rich Lowry, writing in the National Review: "Was just talking to a...

/begin my translation Kim Jong-il's Niece Killed Herself in FranceParents opposed her love affair with a man with bad ideological background [2006-09-15 13:19] Jang Sung-taek, Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law Jang Kum-song(age:29), the only daughter of Jang Sung-taek(age:60), Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law, and First Director of Worker's Organization and Capital Construction Division of N. Korea's ruling party, is reported to have committed suicide recently in France.  A source on N. Korea in Europe said on Sept. 14, "We learned that Ms. Jang recently took her own life in France, and it is due to 'love problem.'" Ms. Jang is the daughter of Jang Sung-taek, and Kim Kyong-hee, the sister of Kim Jong-il....

When I was growing up in Bellflower, Ca., I never, as a child with a good imagination, could have ever imagined that my life would take the peculiar turn that it has. I could not have foreseen giving birth to a child that would eventually be wrongfully and devastatingly killed in war or that I would be meeting with world leaders or be nominated for the Noble Peace Prize. Along with the Vice President of Spain, Foreign Minister of Ireland, Attorney General of Australia and countless parliamentarians from all over the globe, one of the world leaders that I have...