Free Republic

Investigation Continues as Congressman Enters Mayo Clinic May 5, 2006 — Capitol Police have taken disciplinary action against a watch commander for the handling of Rep. Patrick Kennedy's car accident, acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher McGaffin said. Lou Cannon of of the Fraternal Order of Police for the District of Columbia said there are questions about whether Rep. Patrick Kennedy received special treatment. (ABC News) McGaffin said the incident was improperly delayed due to "poor judgment" on the part of police managers and that a field sobriety test should have been administered to Kennedy after his car hit a barrier...

The president showed class and passion in a far-reaching lecture. Saturday evening’s Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series speech by former President Bill Clinton was a breath of fresh air for many of the attendees, most of whom were left-thinking. Clinton outlined five points relating to his goal of creating more integrated communities in a world where, in his opinion, “interdependence” rather than the more common term “globalization,” prevails. The lecture had a broad focus with a “how to fix the world as told by Bill Clinton” feel, but it was clear the president is still as passionate as ever about the...

Linda McQuaig says right may have met its match in hurricane crisis When terrorists struck the World Trade Center, George W. Bush and his handlers quickly adopted a muscular approach to the crisis. Not so with Katrina. While 9/11 prompted the administration to unleash the full resources of America in response, the deadly Katrina crisis had trouble catching Bush's attention. But then 9/11 was quickly spotted as the perfect justification for what Republicans wanted to do anyway: mobilize the U.S. for war and enhance the power of the military-industrial complex. The Katrina disaster offers no such opportunities. On the contrary,...

he city of London was shaken by terror when three bombs exploded last week on the London subway. In the middle of the chaos, media outlets lacked professional and objective integrity by jumping to hasty conclusions and blaming Muslims for the atrocity. The words “Islam” and “terrorism” were recklessly used by media staff and political analysts on television. Not only was it difficult for professionals to differentiate between the act of terror and the faith of Islam, but the connection was made without the slightest afterthought. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that the evidence points to al-Qaida but that...

Amnesty International investigates, documents and takes action on human rights violations around the globe using one standard – that of international human rights and humanitarian law – and strives to do so in an impartial way. Nevertheless, the annual Amnesty International Report 2005 covering human rights violations around the globe in 2004 generated criticism in this newspaper from David Forman ("We are not paranoid," May 30) and Michael Ehrlich ("Amnesty International – do your homework," June 2). Forman accuses Amnesty International (AI) of being "out to get" Israel while ignoring serious human rights violations elsewhere in the world. Most of...

'Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it. 'The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." 'Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed . . . ."

Jane Fonda now says she was bulimic for the past 35 years

From Scarborough Country to the Spin Zone, the attacks on Professor Ward Churchill are coming across the airwaves. Near Hamilton College in Clinton, New York the hills are alive with the sound of fascism. In a statement released on January 31, 2005, Churchill says, ”...The bottom line of my argument is that the best and perhaps only way to prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S. is for American citizens to compel their government to comply with the rule of law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this is not only our right, but our obligation. To the extent we shirk...

Give me a break — or a big glass of vodka. We've gone from shock and awe to shuck and jive, and Captain Quagmire ran the table anyway. Now he's got the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the military and a chip on his shoulder he's calling a mandate. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a Republican haircut just to blend in. For four years it's been one big all-you-can-eat buffet for the corporations, and now they're coming back for more. Go ahead, you marvelous bastards! Rip out all the trees, pave the beaches, build 12-lane...

President Bush famously botched the truism, but the way it goes is not complicated: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The first time, it could be argued that the American people were fooled. They didn't give Bush a plurality, but enough felt the country could afford a "compassionate conservative" in the White House. Little did they know what was in store. They condoned the invasion of Iraq because they were lied to about weapons of mass destruction. They were led to believe the war on terror justified assaults on civil liberties. They didn't object...

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation. This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes...

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant,...

Of all the dirty tricks in this unhappy presidential campaign, the most outrageous has been the ad campaign by the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," attempting to discredit John Kerry's service in Vietnam. Supporters of the malingering Bush have shamelessly challenged the war record of a wounded and decorated veteran. Their campaign illustrates the tactic of the Big Lie, as defined by Hitler and perfected by Goebbels: Although a little lie is laughed at, a Big Lie somehow takes on a reality of its own, through its sheer effrontery. "Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry" is a matter-of-fact...

Many Still Troubled by Reagan's Legacy By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer As one of the first physicians to confront AIDS when it began its rampage through the gay community, Dr. Marcus Conant lobbied the Reagan administration in 1982 to launch an emergency campaign to educate Americans about the disease. It took the president five more years to publicly mention the crisis. By then, almost 21,000 Americans had died and thousands more had been diagnosed. Conant, who lost scores of friends and patients to the disease, is still deeply angry — one of many Americans who view Reagan's legacy in...

Newlywed Gays Brave Critics in Search of Security Fri Mar 12, 3:43 PM ET By Teresa Carson PORTLAND, Ore. (Reuters) - Daffodils line the walkway, a tricycle sits by the front door and family photos are proudly displayed on the shelves in the house where two-and-a-half year-old Avery is trying to finagle himself a cookie. This tranquil domestic scene belies the turmoil, including death threats, lawsuits, Bible thumping and a bitter national debate prompted by this family and others like it. Avery's parents, both women, just got married. Kelly Burke, 34, and Dolores Doyle, 38, have been together for 16...

"How can anyone legislate who you can love?..." THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL RIGHTS CONTINUES Remarks by Barbra Streisand Upon Her receipt of The Human Rights Campaign Humanitarian Award, March 6, 2004 I have been fortunate to receive a few awards in my lifetime, and I always appreciate them, but I must say that this is a very special one because the gay community has supported me from the very beginning. I know that this is a challenging moment in your history. So I am very proud to accept this award from the Human Rights Campaign at this time. You are...

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Michael Moore isn't the apologetic type. Any regrets over proclaiming to a worldwide audience during last year's Academy Awards ceremony that George W. Bush was a "fictitious president ... sending us to war for fictitious reasons"? No way. But the crusading leftist author and filmmaker does have a small confession: That rip-roaring acceptance speech after his "Bowling for Columbine" won the Oscar for best documentary almost went undelivered. "Every bone in my body wanted to just thank them, blow them a kiss and walk off the stage," Moore confides, stirring whipped cream into a steaming...

Letter from the fat turkey himeslf titled: Turkeys on the Moon... from Michael Moore

In order to understand why George W. Bush doesn't get it, you have to take several strands of common Texas attitude, then add an impressive degree of class-based obliviousness. What you end up with is a guy who sees himself as a perfectly nice fellow -- and who is genuinely disconnected from the impact of his decisions on people. On the few occasions when Bush does directly encounter the down-and-out, he seems to empathize. But then, in what is becoming a recurring, almost nightmare-type scenario, the minute he visits some constructive program and praises it (AmeriCorps, the Boys and Girls...

Straight talk It's not anti-Americanism, it's anti-Republicanism Zafar Sobhan I don't often find myself in agreement with much that pop stars have to say about the state of the world, but British singer Elton John's words at a benefit concert last month hit the nail right on the head. Dennis Miller the one-time comedian from Saturday Night Live who has bizarrely chosen to reincarnate himself as the Bush administration's court jester had just finished one of his typical sets in which he denigrated liberals, Arabs, Muslims, and non-Americans in general. Before he sat down to perform, John remarked, "This night...

November 16, 2003FRANK RICHAngels, Reagan and AIDS in America onight is the night when Americans might have tuned into Part 1 of "The Reagans" on CBS. But the joke is on the whiners who forced the mini-series off the air. Just three weeks from tonight, HBO will present the first three-hour installment of Mike Nichols's film version of Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," starring Al Pacino and Meryl Streep. (Part 2 is a week later.) This epic is, among other things, a searing indictment of how the Reagan administration's long silence stoked the plague of AIDS in the 1980's....

CBS dancing to Republican tune ANTONIA ZERBISIAS I'm thinking of having the above photo retaken in order to show the drywall embedded in my forehead. It's a wonder I stopped bashing my head long enough to eke out this column. It's been that kind of week. First, there was CBS's dumping of its sweeps period biopic The Reagans after a right wing-organized backlash, and then, at Thursday's Canadian Journalists For Free Expression awards dinner, I got into a surreal argument with a TV network foreign affairs producer who made the outrageous claim that the U.S. never lied about its motives...

...Take his deion of his fellow countrymen and their blind pursuit of the American Dream: "They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 per cent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 per cent of us don't own a passport."

THE AWKWARD CONSCIENCE OF A NATION MICHAEL Moore sits in a Santa Cruz hotel room outlining his dream to parade a hand-cuffed George Bush before the world as a two-bit crook when word comes in that yet another American soldier has been killed in Iraq. The scatter-gun humour and throaty laughter fade as the grizzly bear in the baseball cap falls silent. Then in slow, deliberate tones, he spits out his anger: "So what do you tell his parents, hmm? What did he die for? To protect America? No. So what's the reason? What would Haliburton (the US oil giant...

HAVANA (AFP) - Noted US linguist and left-wing social critic Noam Chomsky said he was surprised at the failed US policy in Iraq, especially after such a relatively easy invasion. The 74-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor said it took "real talent" to botch things up as badly as the United States has in Iraq, especially in view of prostrate state the country was after years of UN sanctions. Speaking through an interpreter at the formal presentation of his book "Noam Chomsky en La Jornada," a compilation of articles published by the renowned US scholar in the Mexican newspaper La...

Scrutiny of the New York Times best-seller list discloses a new and important trend: Bush-hating has eclipsed Clinton-, Democrat- and liberal-elite-hating. There's Bill O'Reilly, liberal-hater in chief at Fox News, at the No. 2 slot; but Michael Moore's ''Dude, Where's My Country?'' sits on top of the greasy pole, while Al Franken's ''Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)'' occupies the No. 3 spot. Molly Ivins's ''Bushwhacked'' is farther down, as is David Corn's ''Lies of George W. Bush,'' a register of alleged mendacity so relentless that it puts one in mind of Mary McCarthy's famous gibe at Lillian...

Rush, to Judgment It’s been a bad year for bully-boy conservatives. Time for them to taste their own bitter medicine. NEWSWEEK Oct. 20 — If you listen hard, you can hear the booming voice: Look, the Clinton liberals and feminazis won’t tell you, but here’s the problem with this big talk-show host who turns out to be a prescription-drug junkie. You have a guy who finally stops spinning and fesses up for his actions. Fine. He says he won’t play the victim. Good. He’s off to rehab. God bless. But what he and his apologists want you to forget is...

One pops pills. Another gambles. Another lets her mother die alone. Yet these are Bush's virtue-mongers It was America's "virtuous majority" (as they conceive themselves) who made George W Bush president. He keeps these core voters sweet by appointing aggressively virtuous subordinates - men whose sole claim to office, as Bill Maher puts it, is that they "read the Bible and f*ck their wives". (Maher, you'll remember, lost his talk show on the ABC network for saying that the 9/11 bombers, whatever else, were not "cowards"). What, Bush was asked, was the first thing he would do on taking over...

George W. Bush's grandfather helped finance the Nazi Party. Karl Rove's grandfather allegedly helped run the Nazi Party, and helped build the Birkenau Death Camp. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian father volunteered for the infamous Nazi SA and became a ranking officer. Together, they have destabilized California and are on the brink of bringing it a new Reich. With the Schwarzenegger candidacy they have laid siege to America's largest state, lining it up for the 2004 election. The Bush family ties to the Nazi party are well known. In their 1994 Secret War Against the Jews, Mark Aarons and John Loftus use...

"It's easy for people to say that if they shoot up on heroin the only people they're hurting are themselves. But that's not true. ... Drug abusers destroy their families ... If we legalize these vices, we erode the societal support for prohibitions against crimes such as murder. The erosion of the moral fabric of society is a gradual, insidious process." -- Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, pp 53-54. As I sifted through hundreds of comments from Rush Limbaugh fans over the last week, some interesting trends emerged. About 50 percent just wanted to call me names....

<p>All right, so a couple "major" polls show the famous thick-necked slab of Austrian meat wielding a dangerous Conan-like lead over quivering not-as-bad-as-you-think Gray Davis.</p> <p>And Schwarzenegger's bouncing around like a Hummer on meth, inflicting that weird maniacal grin and massive blocklike head all over the unsuspecting media, as pretty much the entire population of even slightly aware and intelligent people in California and in fact all over the nation go, oh holy Christ, please dear God no.</p>

<p>THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.</p> <p>Rush Limbaugh's week went from bad to worse today. His name has surfaced in a drug investigation in Florida. According to law enforcement sources, he allegedly bought large amounts of prescription painkillers illegally. This after he quit under pressure as host of ESPN's Sunday NFL countdown for his racially charged remarks.</p>

  Hubris is costing Bush plenty Monday, September 29, 2003There's a common denominator flaw in President George W. Bush's conduct of both foreign and domestic policy. It's arrogance -- and it goes a long way in explaining his troubles today in both spheres.From the very outset it was manifest in his conduct of foreign policy. His decision in his first days in office to unilaterally abrogate the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia [Uhhh, that was with the Soviet Union John, a country that no longer exists] and to kiss-off the Kyoto agreement on atmospheric pollution [Um, didn't Congress have...

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president . . . right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Teddy Roosevelt, 1918 Ever have one of those foreign military adventures when your own foot becomes a better target than the enemy? If the tough-guy act is wearing thin, you can always whine. Faced with well-deserved criticism of their adventure in Iraq, Bush administration officials have started to point fingers -- blaming, variously, the French, the United Nations, al-Qaida, Syria and Saddam Hussein. (Who knew Saddam might...

Bands Rock Against Bush Concerts and tours to raise awareness about 2004 election Sonic Youth, the Donnas, the Liars, the Locust and Erase Errata are among the groups who have pledged their support for Bands Against Bush, a self-explanatory new artistic collective dedicated to lending its support to the "struggle against a world of perpetual fear and violence bolstered by the Bush administration." BAB has set up more than twenty regional chapters in the U.S. and abroad, with a directory of groups willing to participate in various events to raise voter awareness. Among the events planned is an October 11th...

hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I'm tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism--"I inherited half my father's friends and all his enemies"--conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than...

Franken's book bravely presents the truth by Deborah Locke, Editorial Writer, St. Paul Pioneer PressAt least two sections of Al Franken's book ought to grab the attention of people from Minnesota. In "Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them -- A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," Franken recounts the Paul Wellstone memorial. The chapter is a good example of the way right-wing pundits aided by their media outlets will distort the facts to the American people. A more chilling theme throughout the book is the way mainstream media organizations buy into the lies and report them as...

September 11 is often said to be the defining moment in the Bush presidency, even of modern history. How strange, therefore, that Bush's behavior that morning--along with that of his Administration--is almost never examined in any detail. This is all the more incredible when one considers the fact that 9/11 is among the most exhaustively chronicled days in human history and Bush among its most heavily covered individuals. No less odd has been the media's willingness to let the many inconsistencies in White House stories pass unexamined. They seem content instead to let Showtime tell the story, Leni Riefenstahl-style. That...

Under the heavily ironic heading "Behind Every Choice is a Story," Planned Parenthood is advertising an artwork and poster contest "celebrating 30 years of choice." Serrin Foster, with Feminists for Life, is concerned about the images in the minds of women who have suffered through an abortion. "And I think what they're going to miss are the untold stories of women who've had abortions and all the millions of young men and young women who aren't with us this year," Foster said. "The thoughts that they're going to have on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade imagining the children...