Free Republic

She did fine, I suppose. She was animated and confident. She displayed an ability, for the first time since her convention speech, to repeat with a fair amount of credibility, the formulations that her handlers had given her. You knew she was well prepared when practically the first words out of her mouth were, "Go to a kids' soccer game..." She had that folksy thing down - -SNIP- Indeed, Sarah Palin's high-energy performance in the vice-presidential debate was the most glaring demonstration - since George W. Bush's performances in 2000 - of how little you can get away with knowing...

Time's Karen Tumuly writes that "McCain Plays the Race Card" in an ad featuring former disgraced Fannie Mae executive Franklin Raines: This is hardly subtle: Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman. Let me stipulate: Obama's Fannie Mae connections are completely fair game. But this ad doesn't even mention a far more significant tie--that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team after it was revealed he got a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Instead, it relies...

Your must-read of the morning: Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin’s barbecue of a fawning documentary about Helen Thomas. Here’s a taste: Multiple choice quiz: Helen Thomas has been covering the White House for 48 years. Which of the following stories did she break? A. President Kennedy’s plans to invade the Bay of Pigs. B. President Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia. C. The Pentagon Papers. D. The Watergate scandal. E. None of the above, or anything else, either. The answer, of course, is E, though you might not guess it from the fawning HBO documentary Thank You, Mr. President: Helen...

How out of touch is Barack Obama? He's so out of touch that he suggested that if all Americans inflated their tires properly and took their cars for regular tune-ups, they could save as much oil as new offshore drilling would produce. Gleeful Republicans have made this their daily talking point; Rush Limbaugh is having a field day; and the Republican National Committee is sending tire gauges labeled "Barack Obama's Energy Plan" to Washington reporters. But who's really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030....

The casino craps player is a social animal, a thrill seeker who wants not just to win but to win with a crowd. Unlike cards or a roulette wheel, well-thrown dice reward most everyone on the rail, yielding a collective yawp that drowns out the slots. It is a game for showmen, Hollywood stars and basketball legends with girls on their arms. It is also a favorite pastime of the presumptive Republican nominee for President, John McCain. The backroom poker player, on the other hand, is more cautious and self-absorbed. Card games may be social, but they are played in...

Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan's absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle? Check. Devilish fun? Check. But Nolan is just warming up. There's something raw and elemental at work in this artfully imagined universe. Striking out from his Batman origin story, Nolan cuts through to a deeper dimension. Huh? Wha? How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked,...

Just because the U.S. military now lacks what defense eggheads call a peer competitor — a country capable of beating us in a head-to-head confrontation — that doesn't mean it lacks for imagination in conjuring fearful foes. Sure, it was easier for John F. Kennedy to blow smoke about a non-existent "missile gap" with the Soviet Union, or for Ronald Reagan to convince us of the need for a "Star Wars" missile shield when Moscow was still our superpower rival (it may no longer be, but we're still spending $10 billion annually on missile defenses). Snip...The scientists also warn that...

DNC: Fla., Mich. Can't Be Fully Restored By AP/NEDRA PICKLER (WASHINGTON) — A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully restore the two states as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers. Democratic National Committee rules require that the two states lose at least half of their convention delegates for holding elections too early, the party's legal experts wrote in a 38-page memo. The memo was sent late Tuesday to the 30 members of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee, which plans to meet Saturday at a Washington...

After George W. Bush won Florida in 2000--O.K., I apologize to my Democrat readers for legitimizing Bush by using the word won. Also, I apologize to the Republicans for delegitimizing Bush by apologizing to the Democrats ... This is what Florida has done to us. Nearly eight years after Bush--um, "became President"? Can we agree on that?--the Florida recount still grips our politics, down to its semantics. To choose a verb is to take sides. Florida is not just a state but a state of mind: the widely held attitude that the game is rigged (by the courts, the media,...

When you do battle with the mainstream media that is wearing a phony mask as "non-partisan," it can be somewhat interesting. Viveca Novak, who "mutually agreed" to have her job with TIME MAG terminated, did an unapologetic hit piece. When they got caught, of course, they would not back down. I will at least give them credit for publishing my response. I was informed by NEWSWEEK that it would also be published on its site. I expect to see more of this nonsense, as those wearing the kneepads and drinking the Kool-Aide do all they can to protect the criminal...

waiting for CNN link

For some time, the web site Real Clear Politics has been known as “one of America’s premier independent political web sites.” This has been especially noticed in the section they label Readers Articles, a sub-section featuring “the most popular articles as submitted and voted by RCP users.” Readers, mostly amateur bloggers and writers usually submit stories they write for their blogs and other readers cast votes as to whether they like them or not. That I could ever tell no one wins any prizes or accolades, just the knowledge that other readers appreciate their words. For some unknown reason, around...

Jenna Bush answers questions from people across America: If the war in Iraq is so noble, why aren't you and your sister serving our country there? —Donald Pence, San Francisco I understand that point, but there are many ways to serve our country, and I think my skills are better suited for teaching and representing the U.S. in Latin America through UNICEF. I respect the men and women of our country who are over there fighting. It is an unbelievably selfless thing to do. But if people really thought about it, they would know it's not even a practical question.

Since then, Frost and his family have been introduced first-hand to something else that most kids his age haven't: the reality of how brutal partisan politics can be in the Internet age. It started over the weekend, when a blogger calling himself Icwhatudo put up a post on the conservative website Freerepublic.com noting what he had found by scavenging around the internet: that Graeme attends a private school, lives in a remodeled house near one that had sold for $485,000 in March and is the child of parents whose wedding was announced in the New York Times. The post also...

When I worked at a newspaper, my fellow reporters and I made mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes were on the front page of the paper; sometimes tucked away on B7 between the obits and the county's largest legume. Sometimes they were mispelled names and misplaced box scores; sometimes misused facts and mishandled reputations. But no matter the nature of the mistake-- its size or its import-- the correction always went in the same place. Second page of the A section, bottom right-hand corner. It was policy, and the policy had the unfortunate consequence of usually making the correction of a mistake...