Free Republic

President George W. Bush may have unwittingly given homosexual activists just the boost they need to get state governments to pass domestic partnership laws, which put gay unions on an equal footing with marriage. OK. Perhaps I'm being charitable, but I would prefer not to believe it was a cold, calculated attempt to pander to yet another voting block. On Aug. 15, in an interview with CNN's Larry King, the president was talking about his support for a federal marriage amendment when King asked him, "What about the union of gays?" Mr. Bush said, "Well, that's up to the states,...

July 26, 2004 Bush Administration Sells Out Property Rights By Peyton Knight During his 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush repeatedly promised the nation that “Help is on the way.” Property rights victims, especially those in Midwestern and Western states, cheered the President’s message and came out in droves to support him on Election Day. Finally, there would be an end to the reckless Clinton regime that treated landowners like second-class citizens and barriers to radical green utopia. Or would there? The Endangered Species Act is still thriving as the number one tool of federal agencies and green extremists to...

Conservatives, the backbone of Bush's political base, are increasingly uneasy about the Iraq conflict and the steady drumbeat of violence in postwar Iraq, Halper and some of his fellow Republicans say. The conservatives' anxiety was fueled by the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal and has not abated with the transfer of political power to the interim Iraqi government. Some Republicans fear angry conservatives will stay home in November, undercutting Bush's re-election bid. "I don't think there's any question that there is growing restiveness in the Republican base about this war," said Halper, the co-author of a new book, "America Alone: The...

Some Key Conservatives Uneasy About Bush SCOTT LINDLAW Associated Press WASHINGTON - When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. But nearly 150 conservatives listened in silence recently as a veteran of the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations ticked off a litany of missteps in Iraq by the Bush White House. "This war is not going well," said Stefan Halper, a...

Cheney, who visited both clubhouses after batting practice, watched part of the game from the box of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and part from a first-row seat next to the Yankees dugout, where he sat between New York Gov. George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (news - web sites). Cheney was booed when he was shown on the right-field videoboard during the seventh-inning stretch.

WASHINGTON - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday that Osama bin Laden met with a top Iraqi official in 1994 but found "no credible evidence" of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States. In a report based on research and interviews by the commission staff, the panel said that bin Laden explored possible cooperation with Saddam even though he opposed the Iraqi leader's secular regime. A senior Iraqi intelligence official reportedly met with bin Laden in 1994 in Sudan, the panel found, and bin Laden "is said to have requested space to...

President Reagan's death brought to the fore his outstanding accomplishment of ending the Cold War. Like American presidents before him he led the U.S. in the charge against the "evil empire" by forging alliances and sending troops to remote theaters at high cost in blood and treasury. What makes Reagan's vision for victory particularly remarkable is that it stemmed from the belief in the power of technology as both a force multiplier and a game changer. For the three and a half decades that preceded Reagan's presidency, Americans lived in the ominous shadow of a thermonuclear war that threatened to...

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.” Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in...

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- A film that claims to expose "the 10-year campaign to destroy Bill Clinton" is scheduled for its first public screening June 15 in Little Rock. "The Hunting of the President," a 90-minute documentary that re-creates interviews for the New York Times best-selling book by the same name, has already played at four film festivals and will premiere by invitation only in New York on June 9. The movie has a June 11 release date. But the first public showing, at $50 a ticket, will be at a 1,500-seat ballroom at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little...

US tried to plant WMDs, failed: whistleblower Daily Times Monitor According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to “plant” WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire”, the Environmentalists Against War report. Nelda Rogers is a 28-year veteran debriefer for the DoD. She has become so concerned for her safety...

March 31, 2004 Nevada lists nuke rail line woes Planned transport would disrupt much in state By Cy Ryan <cy@lasvegassun.com>SUN CAPITAL BUREAUCARSON CITY -- A proposed railroad line that would stretch from the Caliente area to Yucca Mountain for the transportation of nuclear waste would disrupt mining, ranching and recreational activities in Nevada, the state says. The rail line, even without an accident, would cause health hazards to workers, could cross land that is sacred to Native Americans and could interfere with the applications of water rights sought by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the state wrote to federal officials...

Saturday, 11-Oct-2003 1:10PM NEW YORK, Oct 11 (AFP) - A rising number of US voters would replace US President George W. Bush in the 2004 elections, a new poll said Saturday, while Bush is in a statistical dead heat with Democratic hopeful Wesley Clark. Fifty percent of voters would replace Bush, according to the Newsweek poll, up three percentage points from 47 percent in a similar poll conducted September 25-26. Clark was preferred by 43 percent of registered voters and Bush by 47 percent -- a dead heat in a poll with a three-percentage-point margin of error. Clark topped the...

He counts his unit's kills meticulously, each one a tick in black pen on his khaki helmet which is, by now, bleached by the sun and battered from battle. Perched in the turret of his tank, just behind the barrel that is hand-painted with intimidating war cries such as "kill 'em all" or "I'm a motherf***ing warrior", he talks only to those Iraqis with the temerity to approach: he feels vulnerable without a 60-ton Abrams girding his loins. It is impossible to read anything in his eyes because they are always obscured by mirrored sunglasses. Only in the safety of...