Free Republic

BARACK OBAMA can deliver a brilliant speech tonight, but its impact could evaporate within days. John McCain and his allies have opened the 2008 Swift Boating season. Four years ago, a smear outfit called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began trashing John Kerry's Vietnam War record. Kerry was never the same. Helter Skelter. What the GOP does is throw out so many attacks that the target and voters get confused and disoriented. This all-out Helter Skelter Republican attack machine is something Obama has never experienced. It always starts small. A small lie. First, they say he's like Paris Hilton. Then...

I've got a great idea! Let's go over to the "Smears" website and use their "PUSH BACK NOW" form letter -- except that before you mail it out, you change the verbiage from: "Friend -- You may have recently heard right-wing smears questioning Barack Obama's birth certificate and citizenship. These assertions are completely false and designed to play into the worst kind of stereotypes. You can see Barack Obama's birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth at: http://my.barackobama.com/fightthesmears Together we can make sure these negative and divisive attacks don't affect this campaign. Thanks for your help....

Smearing McCain   By Jacob LaksinFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, July 01, 2008 DURING THE 2004 ELECTION, Democrats and their allies on the activist Left were adamant that a candidate’s military record was strictly off-limits to criticism. John Kerry was a war hero, and to suggest different was, as columnist David Ignatius averred, defamation. It turns out these partisans meant to exempt themselves from the rule. As an example, observe the nascent smear campaign against John McCain’s military service. This past weekend, retired general and declared Barack Obama backer Wesley Clark went on CBS’s Face the Nation, where he proceeded to...

<p>"This election," Bill Clinton said in the hours before the Pennsylvania primary, "is too big to be small." It was a noble sentiment, succinctly stated, and the core of what Democrats believe - that George W. Bush has been a historic screwup as President, that there are huge issues to be confronted this year. But it was laughable as well.</p>

Documents released by the Office of the Chief of Staff, U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base Florida, in relation to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests files for documents relating to the military investigation into the Scott Thomas Beauchamp "Shock Troops" article in The New Republic magazine. The following are the never-before published statements of soldiers interviewed in the course of the investigation. Names are redacted per federal privacy laws.

If ever there was a candidate who seemed tailor made for talk radio, it is Patrick J. Buchanan... Yet having won in New Hampshire, Mr. Buchanan has suddenly been rebuffed by the nation's most prominent talk-radio hosts ... "I'm amazed at how outspoken a lot of them are," said William Adams, publisher of Talk Daily, a newsletter that reports on the nation's most popular radio hosts... The most dramatic break has been between Mr. Buchanan and Rush Limbaugh ... Now, as radio's archconservative, he is refusing Mr. Buchanan a conservative's label. "Pat Buchanan is not a conservative," he announced on...

It doesn't take long for provocateurs to crawl out of the woodwork to attack candidates, especially in stealth attacks. With Fred Thompson, they've apparently started before he officially enters the race -- and in one case, race is the operative word. Apparently hoping to confuse web surfers looking for Fred's website at www.imwithfred.com, a new site has appeared at www.imwithfred2008.com -- only this site welcomes people to the Ku Klux Klan, "Bringing a Message of Hope and Deliverance to White Christian America!" It includes links to a variety of disgusting racist sites. Who would post something like this as a...

Will Ann Coulter never learn? There are some things you just can't say, not even in jest. And at the top of that list right now is anything derogatory about the "gay" lifestyle or, worse yet, anything that is considered a slur against homosexuals, a protected class of people with special rights which entitle them to live free from all offense. Ann surely should have known this. After all, hasn't she seen any of the countless films or TV shows produced by Hollywood in recent years which promote homosexuality as a perfectly normal and acceptable alternative lifestyle? Indeed, the homosexuals...

Metro police are recommending no charges be filed against newly elected Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons. This comes following accusations that he assaulted a local cocktail waitress, Chrissy Mazzeo, outside a restaurant just two weeks before the general election. Investigators with Metro say the department spent nearly 800 hours investigating the accusation. That included interviewing 44 people and reviewing hours of surveillance tape from a parking garage near the restaurant. Metro says their efforts uncovered no evidence to support the charge of battery. The case is being submitted to the Clark County District Attorney's Office for review.

Some Thoughts on Porter Goss Much has been made, in the Mainstream Media , and out in the hinterlands of the Internet , of the fact Porter Goss did some long-overdue”housecleaning” at the CIA. “Oh-oh-oh !” , the critics moan. “ He got rid of key employees with decades of experience in intelligence gathering – with the aid of a deputy he chose personally, and that we know next-to-nothing about !” It does not seem to have occurred to the critics that those who were swept out may have been those whose intransigence helped keep the CIA from discovering the...

Having reportedly agreed to a movie project for his account of pursuing Delay, as well as using his office to threaten indictments against corporations unwilling to donate to Earle's pet liberal causes, it is the D.A. who appears guilty of betraying his public office for personal agendas. More Republicans should follow Delay's example of going after partisan liberal officials who abuse their powers to criminalize in Court conservative office-holders who advocate conservative policies. No doubt, the goal of the highly vocal Democrat Texas D.A. is to humiliate Delay nationally and strip him of his powers not through the ballot box...

Bennett's Critics Prefer to Misunderstand Him Until we were so rudely interrupted by President Bush's latest Supreme Court pick, we were having an illuminating squabble over Bill Bennett. And since Bennett's remarks on his radio show have already morphed into something of an urban legend in many quarters, I think they're worth revisiting. A quick recap: Bennett got a call from a listener suggesting that Social Security was in financial straights because so many taxpayers had been aborted after Roe vs. Wade. The caller was making an ostensibly pro-life point. But Bennett, also a pro-lifer, objected. That's not the way...

Clint Eastwood's movie character "Dirty Harry" Callahan was clean compared to Dirty Harry Reid, the Senate Democrats' minority leader. Callahan may have roughed up the bad guys but Senator Dirty Harry Reid smears anybody for any reason. While Senator Reid's cheap shot that President Bush was a "loser" -- a strange label for someone who has beaten Reid's party twice -- got a certain amount of notice in the media, a far worse remark by Senator Dirty Harry is that Michigan judge and federal judicial nominee Henry Saad has some things in his FBI file that should give Senators pause...

The future of the legal and political system of this country may be on the line when two judicial nominees that the Democrats refused to let the Senate vote on in the last Congress are being again submitted for a vote. Both are currently members of their respective state supreme courts -- Justice Janice Rogers Brown from California and Justice Priscilla Owen from Texas. Why is this particular vote so important? It is important, in the first place, because the fundamental issue is whether the Senate will be allowed to vote at all, to fulfill its Constitutional duty to "advise...

It is rare to have books exploring the legacy of a presidential administration still in its first term. It is rarer still to have the number of insider accounts that Americans have access to in 2004. “These books appear to be painting history before our eyes,” said Charlotte Abbott, news editor of Publishers Weekly. “No one in the industry of publishing can remember a time since Watergate when so many political books have come out and the public has been interested – and a lot of those Watergate titles came out after.” One of the reporters who first exposed Watergate,...

Weirdness in Kentucky The increasingly strange behavior of Republican Sen. Jim Bunning has led to speculation that he is suffering from some kind of dementia -- and tightened a race he once had in his pocket. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Mary Jacoby Oct. 12, 2004 | It's no secret in Kentucky that Sen. Jim Bunning, a Republican who was expected to coast to reelection on Nov. 2, has been acting strangely. Over the past few months, Bunning has angrily pushed away reporters, exchanged testy words with a questioner at a Rotary...

“When Clinton Lied, Nobody Died” B.S. by Col. Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret. The Democrat National Committee (DNC) is a past master at smear campaigns and predictably is the one that makes the most noise, like a child throwing a tantrum, when unvarnished truth comes back to haunt it. One of the hundreds of examples of Democrat smears appears as a Bumper Sticker (B.S.), “When Clinton lied, nobody died,” with the clear implication being that it was okay for Clinton to lie then, and for them to continue to lie now, just as the B.S. itself is a lie. As the...

AS GORE SMEARS CHRISTIANS, WEBSITE ADVOCATES CHURCH ARSON By Don Feder The Democratic Party isn’t inciting church arson – just yet. But, despite its occasional pious pretenses, the Democrats see Christian America as enemy terrain. Here, at least, the party of Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich is willing to overcome its ingrained pacifism and engage in the rhetorical equivalent of war. The latest issue of The New Yorker contains a 12,000-word profile piece on Al Gore, in which the former vice president disgorges his views on a variety of subjects. Only a hopelessly partisan media would consider the reflections of...

Sadly, as we all know, smear campaigns work. When mud flies, all too often it sticks. So it was heartening to learn last week that filmmaker Michael Moore's ham-handed attempt to trash President George W. Bush, "Fahrenheit 9/11," hasn't raised the temperature of the presidential campaign one iota. As predicted, it isn't changing many minds. This propaganda film, which attempts to link Bush to the bin Ladens and accuses him of a profiteering motive in going into Afghanistan, is sticking, all right, but only with those who hated Bush to begin with. At least that's the conclusion of the National...

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?" It was the classic question posed by Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy 50 years ago during the Red-hunter's hearings investigating the Army for alleged communist influence. With his query, Welch, the Army's special counsel, began the undoing of McCarthy. Unfortunately, the question needs to be asked again. It needs to be posed to shamelessly partisan Republicans who can't stand the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are facing off against a Democrat who fought and was wounded in Vietnam. ***********SNIP************** Kerry criticized what our troops were asked to do in...

During his press briefing with Capitol Hill reporters on Thursday morning, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle could barely contain the smile on his face as he discussed what he believed the Bush Administration knew about possible terrorist attacks prior to September 11. "I wouldn't know," Daschle said with a smile, adding quickly that he was never briefed on those issues by the White House, nor did he ever ask. Daschle should be smiling, and White House staffers know why. The initial leaks about the intelligence briefings President Bush received last August came from Democratic staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee,...

Arnold Schwarzenegger, still reeling from allegations that he’s behaved like a big movie star when working with actresses and that he liked the Autobahn (sometimes called “Hitler’s Highway”), must now fend off new charges. - Schwarzenegger hates woman. According to his 3rd grade teacher, Gretchen Cheepshot, as interviewed for the Slimes detailed story starting on page 1 below and continuing to pages 8 through 12, he hated girls. (Schwarzenegger accused them of having “cooties.”) - Schwarzenegger likes serial killer and torturer of women, Charles Manson. CBS News reports in its lead story and a three hour prime time special that...

Meet Joe Dirt Stuart K. Hayashi In 2001, comedian David Spade came out with a movie titled "The Adventures of Joe Dirt." It now appears that the film was about Joe Conason, the author of "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" and an editorialist for the liberal-biased Salon.com. In the person of Brad Pitt, you've already Met Joe Black. Now Meet the Real Joe Dirt. His book purports to expose how right-wingers harness the corporate media to brainwash society. Instead of demonstrating such, however, Joe is too busy flinging his Dirt around. In two...