Free Republic

This is a great interactive election map showing which seats are safe, which are leaners, which voted for Bush vs Kerry, etc etc. Pretty amazing how we went from the dems winning both house and senate, to at least the house, to now maybe neither-at least according to the NYTimes latest predictions. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/washington/2006ELECTIONGUIDE.html?currentDataSet=senANALYSIS

He supports tax cuts and the war in Iraq. He opposes stem cell research and the Medicare drug plan. He is a master of his movement’s medium, talk radio. Jesus Christ is his personal savior and Ronald Reagan his political idol. Conjure what might be called the perfect conservative, and chances are he would look a lot like Representative Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who in just three terms has turned 100 House allies into a vanguard and himself into one of his party’s rising stars..... Arriving in Washington, he was dismayed at conservatives’ support for government expansion. In 2001,...

<p>A federal study showing that fourth graders in charter schools score worse in reading and math than their public school counterparts should cause some soul-searching in Congress.</p> <p>Too many lawmakers seem to believe that the only thing wrong with American education is the public school system, and that converting lagging schools to charter schools would cause them to magically improve.</p>

KAYSERI, Turkey — As the muezzin heralded the noon prayers on a recent Friday, a small army of workers fanned out from an industrial park to take their places on mats in a nearby mosque. Fifteen minutes later, the prayers were over and the teachings of the Koran gave way to the demands of the factory floor. “In European countries, workers take a 15-minute smoking break; here we take a 15-minute prayer break,” said Ahmet Herdem, the mayor of Hacilar, a town of 20,000 people in central Anatolia, a deeply religious and socially conservative region which has produced some of...

by Mark Finkelstein August 27, 2006 - 06:29 "Comrade. Potato production 70% below target for 4th year in row in five-year plan!" "True, Kommissar. But we have solution. Will implement training and preparation program for workers!" "Budem - let's drink!" The ostensible purpose of this morning's New York Times editorial was to exult at the results of a study finding that 4th-grade charter school students performed worse than their public school counterparts, even when controlling for socio-economic background. Like a tiger on the smallest of mouses, the Times pounced on this one result to proclaim that it was "Exploding the...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the three-year prison sentence which a Beijing court imposed yesterday on New York Times researcher Zhao Yan for alleged fraud while dismissing the original charge of treason and divulging state secrets. “The court cleared Zhao of the treason charge for lack of evidence and it should have done the same with the fraud charge,” the press freedom organisation said. “Zhao is known for his commitment to China’s peasants and the accusations that were brought against him were all ridiculous. We support his sister’s request for an appeal and we call for his provisional release as...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - The State Department is investigating whether Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons, two officials said.The investigation by the department's Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, said, "We have heard the allegations that these munitions were used, and we...

THREE years into the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, everyone from slicksleeved privates fighting for survival in Ramadi to the echelons above reality at the Pentagon still believes that eliminating insurgents will eliminate the insurgency. They are wrong. There is a difference between killing insurgents and fighting an insurgency. In three years, the Sunni insurgency has grown from nothing into a force that threatens our national objective of establishing and maintaining a free, independent and united Iraq. During that time, we have fought insurgents with airstrikes, artillery, the courage and tactical excellence of our forces, and new technology worth billions of...

Even legal experts who agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion on Thursday that a National Security Agency surveillance program is unlawful were distancing themselves from the decision’s reasoning and rhetoric yesterday. They said the opinion overlooked important precedents, failed to engage the government’s major arguments, used circular reasoning, substituted passion for analysis and did not even offer the best reasons for its own conclusions. Discomfort with the quality of the decision is almost universal, said Howard J. Bashman, a Pennsylvania lawyer whose Web log provides comprehensive and nonpartisan reports on legal developments. “It does appear,” Mr. Bashman said, “that folks...

If ever government whistle-blowers needed protection from official retaliation it is now, in the secrecy-obsessed Bush administration. Federal employees daring to disclose fraud and abuse in their bureaucracies have been under virtual siege, isolated as pariahs and shipped off under gag orders to lesser jobs in far-off places. Appeals to court review under the 17-year-old Whistle-Blower Protection Act have proved fruitless, with the Supreme Court ruling in May that workers have no right to First Amendment protection when they warn lawmakers and taxpayers of government waste and folly. The ruling has thrown the issue back into the lap of Congress....

The carpeted room is full of children in skullcaps crouched on prayer mats, reciting verses from a holy text. Some mumble the words under their breath; others sing them out. They rock back and forth as they chant, their disparate voices blending into an ethereal melody. The children, ages 7 to 14, are full-time students, in class 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, even in the summer. But they are not studying math, science or English. Instead, they are memorizing all 6,200 verses in the Koran, a task that usually takes two to three years. It would hardly...

One evening earlier this summer, Lebanon’s most popular satire show, ‘‘Bas Mat Watan,’’ broadcast a sketch showing an ‘‘interview’’ with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader and secretary general. ‘‘Nasrallah’’ was asked whether his party would surrender its weapons. He answered that it would, but first several conditions had to be met: there was that woman in Australia, whose land was being encroached upon by Jewish neighbors; then there was the baker in the United States, whose bakery the Jews wanted to take over. The joke was obvious: there were an infinite number of reasons why Hezbollah would never agree to...

Though chemotherapy and other treatments have lengthened the lives of people with metastasized cancer, no drugs have been specifically formulated to halt the process. That is because metastasis has remained something of a mystery until the last five years or so. “In the last 30 years, we’ve learned all about identifying genes whose mutations initiate tumors,” said Dr. Joan Massagué, chairman of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. But these advances, he added, did not explain the metastatic process. Now, knowledge of metastasis is beginning to accumulate to the point that new...

THE NEW YORK TIMES’S Dec. 16 article that disclosed the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping has led to an important public debate about the once-secret program. And the decision to write about the program in the face of White House pressure deserved even more praise than I gave it in a January column, which focused on the paper’s inadequate explanation of why it had “delayed publication for a year.”...

Republicans seized on the arrests of terrorism suspects in Britain yesterday to bolster a White House campaign to turn national security issues to their advantage this fall, arguing that the nation needs tough Republican policies to protect Americans from threats from abroad. Officials in both parties said they viewed the arrests as critical in determining how they would approach the fall campaign, with Republicans saying it could be a turning point in a year in which they have been on the defensive over the war in Iraq and other issues. The developments played neatly into the White House-led effort, after...

DID Mel Gibson mean it? Did he mean it when he said, according to a sheriff’s report of his arrest on suspicion of drunken driving, that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world”? Or when he asked the arresting deputy, “Are you a Jew?” snip... So where, exactly, did those words come from? ...snip...Was this alcohol-fueled soliloquy an ugly insight into Mr. Gibson’s character — in other words, in vino veritas? Or was it just the tequila talking? Science, as it happens, has been hard at work trying to understand ...if...alcohol can make people do, and...

There are victory markers strewn across southern Lebanon commemorating the last time Israel withdrew from that land. While reporting a piece for The New Yorker a few years ago, Jeffrey Goldberg would come upon them by the roads. One brightly colored sign, written in both Arabic and (rough) English, marked the spot where “On Oct. 19, 1988 at 1:25 p.m. a martyr car that was booby-trapped with 500 kilograms of highly exploding materials transformed two Israeli troops into masses of fire and limbs.” Busloads of tourists would take victory tours and stop at the prominent sights. Before the current war,...

Damascus, Syria IT is hardly surprising that when discussing the Lebanon crisis, President Bush tends to couple Syria’s role with Iran’s. After all, Damascus and Tehran have spent the better part of the last year deepening their ties, culminating in a June military cooperation agreement. But the United States may well have leverage in Syria that it lacks in Iran. If it is true, as it is reported to be, that Washington seeks to drive a wedge between Hezbollah’s two backers, the Bush administration would do well to modify its democracy agenda to include support for Syrian reform. Syria has...

A Christian for the N.Y. Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: August 3, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Joseph Farah -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Who says the New York Times is anti-Christian? Why just the other day, I read a beautiful profile of an evangelical mega-church pastor from Minnesota. You could just tell the reporter for the Times loved the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd. It isn't Christians the Times loathes. It's just right-wing Christians. And so does the Rev. Gregory Boyd. Boyd has some interesting ideas – given that he claims to base his beliefs on the same Bible I read. But let's start with abortion...

WASHINGTON, — When they first met as United States president and Israeli prime minister, George W. Bush made clear to Ariel Sharon he would not follow in the footsteps of his father. The first President Bush had been tough on Israel, especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr. Sharon had helped develop. But over tea in the Oval Office that day in March 2001 — six months before the Sept. 11 attacks tightened their bond — the new president signaled a strong predisposition to support Israel. “He told Sharon in that first meeting that I’ll use force to...