Free Republic

We Didn't Dare Wait By William Raspberry Monday, April 19, 2004; Page A19 What follows is the speech the president didn't make at his news conference last week. He can use it now, with no further permission from me. Before I take your questions, I would like to speak plainly for a moment to the American people. We're having some tough times in Iraq, and many Americans are wondering how we came to be in such a tough spot. Some are asking: Isn't it time to just get out? These are tough questions, but the people deserve some answers. From...

President Bush, his credibility in the balance, is appointing a commission to investigate the failures of prewar intelligence on Iraq. His opponents, sensing an opportunity, are saying it's nothing but a trick. Since there's no way the commission would report its findings -- certainly not anything negative -- before the presidential election, the commission only buys the president time to ride out the crisis. The skeptics are probably right. But even they miss what may be the most important point raised by the Iraq War. We are arguing now about what the president knew, and when he knew it. What...

The biggest loser of the year in Texas politics were the Democrats in the Texas House. It has nothing to do with fleeing to Ardmore. The reason the House Democrats get the raspberry is because they never adjusted to their role as the minority party. Here is what I mean. The Texas House works best when the left and the right form coalitions and hammer out compromises somewhere near the center. About 25 percent of the House this year are freshmen. Their perception of the Legislative process was largely fashioned by clueless party ideologues. They had no doubt heard about...

The Bush administration seems determined to get into the business of exporting democracy to the Middle East. And a lot of Americans are wondering what took so long. After all, America is the political, military, economic and, yes, cultural envy of the world, and the one thing we are certain has produced that enviable status is the way we govern ourselves: American democracy. Viewed that way, it seems downright uncharitable not to offer the world a draught of the elixir that has made us what we are. Thus it was that, a month ago, in one of the more stirring...

Vehicles for reparations By WILLIAM RASPBERRY, Washington Post Writers Group WASHINGTON - I've just tossed away another losing lottery ticket. This one would have fetched the tidy pretax annuitized sum of $80 million. When the jackpot builds up once more, I'll probably try it again. I'm trying to make it clear, before I start to talk about reparations for slavery, that I'm not above developing an interest in money I didn't earn. If the group headed by Charles Ogletree, the Harvard law professor, can get me a few mil as compensation for the fact that my great-grandparents (and many generations...