Free Republic

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

  It’s Rudeness, Not RacismBernard B. Kerik    Crime, police shootings, civilian complaints, officer corruption—all are at historical lows, giving the NYPD good reason to claim that it's more successful now than at any time in its history. Yet not everyone has a high opinion of New York's Finest. In particular, many of Gotham's black residents believe that the cops are racist. But I think they're mistaking something else for racism—something ugly, but entirely color-blind. Two personal experiences illustrate what I mean. In 1988, two years after I joined the force, I became an undercover narcotics officer. To look...

There's an old joke about a guy who went to a fight and saw a hockey game break out. Things are not that bad at the NBA yet, though you might think so from coverage of the recent "basketbrawl" at a Detroit Pistons-Indiana Pacers game. Having come just in time to give Americans something besides politics to discuss over Thanksgiving dinner, the jaw-dropping footage of the Nov. 19 fracas between players and fans at in Detroit's Palace of Auburn Hills has aired over and over again. As a black American who takes pride in the way historical black sports heroes...

WHEN JOHN Edwards and John Kerry gratuitously brought up the homosexuality of Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, it was a classless and dirty trick. Then Elizabeth Edwards trumped them. Lynne Cheney responded to Kerry’s comments by saying he was “not a good man.” Elizabeth Edwards, wife of John, countered that Cheney’s remark “indicates a certain degree of shame with respect to her daughter’s sexual preferences.” Outrageous! How would Elizabeth Edwards feel if the Cheneys invoked her dead son Wade in the context of a political debate, or presumed to know how she felt about his passing? The Edwardses...

My 10 rules to make this a better world Saturday, May 22nd, 2004 Okay, here are the rules: 1. If there's a line, you get at the end of the line, and you wait your turn. 2. You own ONE place in the line. You do NOT have the right to invite friends to join you in the line. This is rude to the people behind you, who got there before your friends and will now have to wait longer. If you want to be with your friends, you can join them at the back of the line. And, no,...

AMONG THE MILITARY WHO SERVED in the White House and the professional white House staff, the Clinton administration was renowned for its lack of professionalism and courtesy, though few ever spoke publicly about it. This aspect of the Clinton administration became apparent to me from my earliest golf outings with the president It was telling to me how often he played golf with certain types of people - people like Terry McAuliffe, his campaign and fundraising guru, and the Rodham brothers, Hugh and Tony. They, like many of Clinton's cronies, were remarkably pompous and inconsiderate individuals. The Rodham brothers are...

I am beyond the pale. My views, said the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, “border on fascism”. David Aaronovitch claimed in The Observer that I am guilty of the “stock-in-trade mendacity of the anti-immigrants”; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown called me a “xenophobe” in The Independent; The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee dubbed me “the particularly pernicious Anthony Browne”, guilty of “naked hate”; on Radio 4’s Moral Maze I was told by the scientist Steven Rose that my arguments were “tinged with racism”. What is depressing about this abuse — apart from how it makes my Mum feel — is that none of my denouncers engaged...

Apologies for the vanity post. But I want to rant a bit.In the past few months, ping lists have proliferated to the point of annoyance. And it is especially irksome to find oneself on a list without having requested inclusion. There's a word for this: .Ponder this question, Chester: Did I ask to be on your #%&@ing ping list? No? Well, then. Draw the logical conclusion. If I wish to be on your ping list, rest assured you'll be the first to know. But while you wait with bated breath for my entreaty to be a party to your wisdom,...

Modern technology is wondrous to behold. Even when it’s used for the most mundane of tasks. Take, for example, the Rejection Hotline. Since prehistoric times - any year before 1992 - a man interested in a woman might well ask for her telephone number. If she weren’t interested in him, she would handle his request in one of several ways. She’d say she was already seeing someone else. She’d say she didn’t have a telephone. She’d say she’d be busy washing her hair or matching her socks. She’d give out the number Beechwood 4-5789. She’d say that between her job,...

Trained boxer jailed over man's station beating death A student who has trained as a boxer was jailed by a court Tuesday for his part in the lethal attack on a man who complained to him for taking too much space on a train seat. Yoshimasa Miyazono was found guilty of inflicting bodily death by the Hachioji Branch of the Tokyo District Court and ordered to serve five years in prison. "Getting frustrated over a trivial matter and putting your boxing skills to use in an impulsive and criminal manner leaves little room for leniency," Presiding Judge Toshikazu Obuchi said...