Free Republic

New York TimesAVERLY, Iowa, Nov. 1 — Howard Dean's rivals for the Democratic nomination roundly attacked him on Saturday for telling an Iowa newspaper he wanted "to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" in defending his opposition to some gun-control legislation. But Dr. Dean retorted that he had said much the same thing in front of largely black audiences months ago and said his opponents were merely flailing away at him in desperation. The fracas comes as the other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination — especially Senator John Kerry and Representative Richard A....

The Confederate Battle Flag has fared about as well in America's contemporary political battlefields as it did on the battlefields of Virginia in the 1860s, with a mixed bag of wins and losses. The NAACP and other liberal organizations scored victories in the past decade by having the controversial banner removed from state capitol buildings in Alabama and South Carolina. The forces of heritage bowdlerization then turned their focus to Georgia and Mississippi, states that incorporate the most recognizable symbol of the late Confederacy into their own flags.Mississippi, a state with a large black population, held a public vote on...

Dear Ted Turner, At this advanced stage of your long and complicated career you have finally crossed the line – making a contribution to your country and its culture so unequivocally positive and powerful that every American, regardless of political perspective, owes you a debt of gratitude. No matter how one feels about your creation of CNN, your donation of a billion dollars to the UN, your marriage to Jane Fonda, your operation of the Atlanta Braves, your divorce from Jane Fonda, your dismissal of Christianity as "a religion for losers," your bison ranching, or your yachting, or your fanatical...

Three MAJOR civil war cinema epics are due in 2003. 1) Robert Duvall plays Robert E. Lee in Gods & Generals, out Feb. 21; 2) Jude Law portrays a jaded confederate in Cold Mountain, due Dec. 25, 2003; and 3) Tom Cruise plays a Civil War veteran who witnesses the end of a Japanese culture in The Last Samurai, due Dec. 12, 2003. Gods & Generals is replete with special effects, although director Maxwell still used more than 10,000 extras to re-create battle scenes.

Confederate-heritage boosters say they would win a flag referendum in Georgia, despite potential boycotts. The defeat of Governor Barnes was among several recent indications of voter support for Southern Independence symbols: 1) South Carolina Gov. David Beasley was defeated in 1998, two years after he pushed a measure to remove the Confederate banner from atop the Statehouse in Columbia. 2) In April 2001, Mississippi held a referendum in which 66 percent voted to retain that state's Confederate-themed flag. 3) On Tuesday, 58 percent of voters in Harrison County, Miss., elected to keep a Confederate flag display at the beach in...