Free Republic

In 1998, then First Lady Hillary Clinton famously observed that a “vast right-wing conspiracy” was subverting her husband’s presidency. A decade later, a similar gang of Republican miscreants has mobilized to bring down the Obama administration and healthcare reform. Recent conservative attacks resulted in the firing of Van Jones. Didn’t liberals learn anything from the coordinated assaults on the Clinton administration? Why isn’t there a left-wing “conspiracy” to counter the kamikaze tactics of the right? The conservative attack machine has three components. The first is political. Conservatives have adopted what Clinton adviser, Sidney Blumenthal, termed the perpetual campaign. As soon...

Below Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck explains the Apollo Alliance on his July 28 show. Beck mentions the Obama administration’s “stimulus” blueprint, “The New Apollo Program: Clean Energy, Good Jobs,” which you can read here.

A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, "Unity '09," aimed at helping President Barack Obama push his agenda through Congress. Conceived at a New York meeting before the November election, two Democrats familiar with the planning said, Unity '09 will draw together money and grassroots organizations to pressure lawmakers in their home states to back White House legislation and other progressive causes. See Also Battle brews over Bush library Media critics pile on Cramer, CNBC Meeting of the minds The online-based MoveOn.org is a central player in the nascent organization, but other groups...

Bill O'Reilly reports on the new VLWC.

The vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organizations. The “8:45 A.M. call,” as it’s referred to by members, began three weeks ago, and it marks a new level in coordination by the White House’s allies at a time when the conservative opposition is struggling for a toe-hold and major agenda items like health care reform appear closer than ever to passage. The call has helped attempts to link the Republican Party...

Thanks, but no thanks -- that's likely to be Democrats' answer to one of their biggest benefactors. Billionaire speculator and left-wing political contributor George Soros has parachuted into the debate over the financial crisis by floating his own rescue plan. Democratic Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia held a meeting Wednesday with Robert Johnson, who once managed Mr. Soros's hedge fund, to discuss his proposal to recapitalize the American banking system by purchasing equity in banks and investment firms with taxpayer dollars. The Hill newspaper also reports that Mr. Soros has been in touch with the Obama campaign. Mr. Soros certainly...

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, hundreds of millions of Americans rejoiced as with a voice. And a grateful world watched in awe as the Doomsday Clock was turned back. But, what, some may wonder, ever became of the Soviet apologists here in the U.S. You probably remember these types. Telling Americans how wondrous the Soviet economy was, when it wasn’t. How much smarter the Soviet scientists were, when they weren’t. How benevolent their dictators were – even while without remorse their killing fields, gulags, State-sanctioned famines and genocides eliminated over 100 million...

I count Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace among the fairest and most incisive interviewers in the business, and hope his tenure at Fox News is a long one. Anyone who can relentlessly cross-exam Mitt Romney on his changed position on abortion the way Wallace did a while back, then turn around and provoke Bill Clinton to near the point of taking a poke at him, is doing his job and playing no favorites. But should Wallace ever wish a change of venue, never fear: MSNBC apparently can find a place for him. Wallace made some news when, appearing on...

Some 50 delegates were reportedly poised to unite behind Barack Obama if he had won by even 1 point in Texas. He lost the popular vote by 100,000 ballots, and now we learn that 100,000 Republicans voted for Hillary Clinton, probably not because of some change in party allegiance but because they thought she would be the easier candidate to beat. This kind of strategic voting often backfires (think Ralph Nader). The Texas crossovers are winners. By helping to prolong the Democratic race, they can claim credit for weakening the eventual nominee, whoever it turns out to be. Obama has...

A few months ago, a day before one of the occasional marches the Capital sees demanding an end to the Iraq War, I began the descent into the Metro stop near my office, looked up, and saw a number of representatives of Code Pink standing at the railing overlooking the escalator. Or rather, I heard them first. They were screaming at the parade of commuters, at the top of their lungs and in a tone somewhere between simple frustration and righteous anger, "End the war!!!" Well, I thought, that ought to take care of things. Good work, hippies! I kid...

The Early Show did its best this morning to help Barack Obama climb out of the hole he's dug for himself with his close association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In a set-up segment, CBS's Dean Reynolds rhetorically asked: "the question is whether the rhetoric is so remarkable, because in African-American churches pastors often seek to rouse their congregants to self-reliance by speaking harshly about the country's troubled racial past and the need to overcome it." Nice try, but how does accusing the US government of introducing AIDS and giving black people drugs equate to a call for self-reliance? Reynolds...

The increasing vitriol of the Democratic presidential WrestleMania shouldn't distract from the opportunity before progressives. The election this year has the potential to be not simply a change election but a sea-change election, one that marks the end of the conservative era that has dominated our politics for nearly three decades. It could be the progressive equivalent of the conservative triumph of 1980. In 1980 Ronald Reagan, the self-described "movement conservative," took the White House from incumbent Jimmy Carter while Republicans picked up thirty-four seats in the House and gained control of the Senate, sweeping out liberal stalwarts like George...

I'm dancing on the top deck with a 71-year-old feminist and psychotherapist whom I've come to think of as the Twirler. We've spent two days attending seminars on The Nation magazine's Alaska cruise; we've talked about the Bush presidency and prison reform and single-payer health care. Now, at almost midnight, my fiercely intelligent and opinionated new friend is putting all the heady political talk behind her by bodily twirling. "If I start to get dizzy, then I twirl in the opposite direction," Charlotte tells me as the live band revs up its throbbing Motown beat. "I won't fall." "Good, please...

CNN has fired producer Chez Pazienza after the network brass realized he had been blogging at his own left-wing site and several others over a period of years: In a phone interview this morning, Mr. Pazienza, 38, said he joined CNN as a senior producer in January 2004 and has consistently received positive performance evaluations of his work. He spent his first year at CNN at the network’s headquarters in Atlanta, then moved to New York to work on “CNN Daybreak,” which has since been canceled, then “American Morning,” which is shown Monday through Friday, from 6 to 9 a.m....

The hatred from supposedly compassionate and open-minded Hollywoodans is something to behold, isn't it? After all, just imagine despising a radio talk show host so much that you would suggest, on national television, that he should die of a drug overdose. Alas, such was the case Friday evening when HBO's Bill Maher actually asked guest P.J. O'Rourke, who was talking about Rush Limbaugh's use of the prescription drug OxyContin (video available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated): Why couldn't have he croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger? Honestly, can you imagine? MSNBC's David Shuster was suspended on Friday for...

One morning last August in San Francisco, six women in pink sweaters marched up a hilly boulevard towing pink roller bags full of shoes. They unzipped the bags in front of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's house, dumped the shoes on her lawn, and went on to arrange loafers, pumps, and pink glittery sandals like hawkers at a yard sale. Anchoring their display was a pair of combat boots, placed on Pelosi's doorstep. The boots, like the other shoes, had been pulled from a dead body in Iraq—the body of Casey Sheehan, in fact, whose mother, Cindy, is running as an Independent...

Today Barack Obama earned the endorsement of MoveOn, one of the largest grassroots membership organizations in the United States, after clobbering Hillary Clinton by 40 percent in Internet balloting. Obama led the final tally 70.4% to 29.6%, clearing the supermajority required for the endorsement. MoveOn, which has never endorsed a presidential candidate before, boasts that it has 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states. The group has over half a million members in California alone – roughly one out of ten primary voters in Tuesday's largest state. "We've learned that the key to achieving change in Washington without compromising core...

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could...

CONTEMPLATING the Clinton-Obama racial war, some Republicans were so excited you’d have thought Ronald Reagan had risen from the dead to slap around a welfare deadbeat. Never mind that the G.O.P. is running on empty, with no ideas beyond the incessant repetition of Reagan’s name. A battle over race-and-gender identity politics among the Democrats, with its acrid scent from the 1960s, might be just the spark for a Republican comeback. (As long as the G.O.P.’s own identity politics, over religion, don’t flare up.) Alas, these hopes faded on Tuesday night. First, the debating Democrats declared a truce, however fragile, in...

According to CNN's fancy map of South Carolina, Fred Thompson is sapping votes away from Mike Huckabee in the socially conservative north. If that's the case, Thompson probably has a smile on his face. Thompson's distaste for Huckabee has been apparent throughout the campaign. Thompson often pushes back against Huckabee at debates and regularly sends emails critiquing Huckabee's stances on immigration and taxes. Persona-wise, Huckabee is everything Thompson isn't—charming, funny, and self-effacing. Most importantly, Huckabee possesses the start power that many Republicans hoped Thompson would have in the race. Huck is bizarro Fred. Most importantly, Huckabee has stolen Thompson's base...

IN 1972, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, was looking for a conservative columnist for his left-leaning Op-Ed page. At a charity dinner, he wound up sitting next to William Safire, the Nixon White House speechwriter who coined Spiro Agnew’s famous denunciation of the press as “nattering nabobs of negativism.” They soon had a deal. But, as described in “The Trust,” the authoritative history of the family that has controlled The Times for more than a century, Sulzberger neglected to involve John Oakes, his cousin and the editor of the editorial page, in the decision. Oakes...

They come so frequently, it's hard to get worked up, but there's a dead giveaway this time. The teaser for the piece reads, "At the risk of sounding like an apologist for the Islamic Republic..." The author is Hooman Majd, who accuses the Pentagon of manufacturing the incident with Iran in the Gulf this week. The Pentagon's version of the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday morning, involving U.S. Navy warships and Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats is, at the very least highly suspicious. On Tuesday, the Navy released video footage and an audiotape to back its claims...

Politico.com an upstart (but seemingly well-funded) political blog has been sticking it to Fred Thompson for weeks. So Friends of Fred are Sticking it to Politico (dot com). Please visit the site.

Quin Hillyer is a conservative, but not a Fred Thompson lackey. His observations? I am firmly convinced that Fred Thompson still has a real shot at the nomination...I watched him with Wolf Blitzer just an hour or so ago and he came across very very well indeed. He really is hitting on ALMOST all cylinders now, more so every day since beginning to really engage about December 1. ...it is also worth noting that the utterly scurrilous Politico story yesterday almost certainly depressed Thompson's vote in Iowa. As I said on Fox News yesterday, for a news outlet to publish...

The man who America is not particularly interested in electing president doesn't really want the job, anyway. And while it's possible he's just playing hard-to-get, statements like this one the other day aren't helping: "I'm not particularly interested in running for president..." - Fred Thompson He defends his remark, saying it's out-of-context, but who would go into an interview and tell the employer that they hated the process that goes along with getting hired?

On the Internet as of sometime this afternoon, Fred Thompson’s closing argument to the people of Iowa. Whereas Romney is saturating the airwaves with attack ads, Thompson pays the voters the courtesy of speaking calmly, and in detail—the video runs to just over 15 minutes. Why should the good Republicans of Iowa support Thompson? Because, the candidate argues, he can win. I believe I am the only candidate in this race who can bring our party to victory in the fall. First, because of the firmness of my principles and the trust that that engenders. Secondly, because of the detailed...

David Yepsen has a horrifically bad column in the Sunday Des Moines Register. In it, he distills each candidate down to the usual cliches of the leftist/"centrist" newspaper agenda: Mike Huckabee The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister has soared in the GOP race following his second-place finish in the Iowa Republican straw poll in August. He has rallied party social and religious conservatives as well as supporters of a big national sales tax to replace the income tax. He's a witty speaker and an affable politician whose criticisms of the nation's economic policies sound a lot like the populist...

Conservative radio host and political pundit, Jed Babbin, did a great job of smacking the Associated Press around in an editorial in Human Events, today. Calling the AP "one of the most politically activist media outlets" out there and pointing out that the wire service is often "caught Hillary-handed," Babbin does a great job of handing the AP its hat. And Babbin warns that every candidate "who exudes a whiff of conservatism" will see the APs guns leveled upon them. To prove his case, Babbin uses the example of how the AP is doing it's level best to destroy the...

Confederate Yankee catches Roger Simon of the Politico making a Fred Thompson visit to an Iowa firehouse sound like it went much worse than it did. Simon describes Thompson's "sour expression" on his face, and suggests that Thompson offended the firefighters when he mentioned his "silly hat" rule. CBS News - you know CBS News, that longtime friend of bloggers - offers video, that shows a lot of laughter and good spirits all around. Come on, man. Thompson apparently makes a reference to this botched story in his latest little video from the road: "Remember, we don't raise our hands...

In this long election cycle, we may be learning as much about media bias as about the candidates. PJM’s Bob Owens has more on the questionable characterization of Fred Thompson by The Politico’s Roger Simon. Fire Chief Dan McKenzie cast more doubts on The Politico’s chief political correspondent Roger Simon’s version of events at McKenzie’s Waverly, Iowa fire station in Simon’s article “Fred Thompson: Lazy as charged.” Questions had been raised about Simon’s article based on a video of Thompson’s appearance, which seemed to show the candidate behaving in a radically different manner from the one described by The Politico...

I had to look up the word "conniption." I wasn't sure how to spell it, but I'm sure that the likes of Code Pink, MoveOn, and other far left anti-war groups had a collective conniption fit last week. One of their poster boys, John Murtha, quit toeing their line. Surely what followed were the same fits of rage I've seen them have before. In September at a Washington D.C. rally as Senator Joe Lieberman began to address a group of pro-mission vets and Gold Star Families, several members of the anti-war groups charged toward the stage with seemingly unrestricted fury,...

The problem for Hillary Clinton that arises from the incident in which a disturbed man invaded her Rochester, New Hampshire, campaign headquarters is not any kind of physical threat. Clinton is the most carefully-managed and thoroughly-secured presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, who when he began to show the first signs of the dementia was placed in a sort of protective custody during the 1984 campaign. Clinton is is no greater danger now than she has been in since the start of her campaign; and neither, thankfully, were her New Hampshire supporters, who exited the headquarters without injury. The problem for...

Like noxious bugs swarming over a crumbling tenement, followers of Ron Paul have invaded the blogosphere. Their target is anyone who dares to criticize their hero. Bloggers have dealt with them in various ways. Some have tried banning them outright. Others allow readers to engage them in back-and-forth debates that can easily take a thread to several hundred responses. I used to find the Paulites annoying, but recently I had a revelation: Far from being scorned, Paul’s rabid fans should be welcomed and encouraged. We should do everything we can to make certain they keep pushing their man, sending him...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 29 (OneWorld) - U.S. war veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have announced they're planning to descend on Washington, DC this March to testify about war crimes they committed or personally witnessed in Iraq. "The war in Iraq is not covered to its potential because of how dangerous it is for reporters to cover it," said Liam Madden, a former Marine and member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War. "That's left a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the American public about what the true nature of military occupation looks like." Iraq Veterans Against the...

Remember the gay retired brigadier general who chastised Republicans for their stance on gays in the military at Wednesday's CNN/YouTube debate? Turns out Keith Kerr was packing a partisan sword. He's served as a member of an advisory team on gay and lesbian issues to the Sen. Hillary Clinton Campaign. In the words of CNN's debate crew: D'oh! And here's Anderson Cooper falling on his nonpartisan sword. So how did this slip under CNN's radar? Maybe CNN could have checked its own website. Instead, they paid for Kerr's airfare and hotel to St. Petersburg for the debate. This is a...

According to MSNBC host Chris Matthews, 2008 Republican candidate Mike Huckabee has been given "the biggest free ride from the liberal media that I have ever seen in my life." Appearing on Monday's edition of "Morning Joe," the "Hardball" anchor speculated that left-wingers would enjoy seeing the GOP "chaos" that a Huckabee victory in Iowa would produce and, as a result, are ignoring the Republican's "crazy" views on gun control. Matthews derided as "black helicopter stuff," the former Arkansas governor's assertion that owning a gun gives Americans the ability to fight tyranny. "It sounds crazy," he told "Morning Joe" host...

* Ron Paul, the libertaran truth-teller who knows how to leverage the Internet * Mike Huckabee, who genuinely appeals to conservative Christians * Fred Thompson, who has name recognition and appeals to country-club geezers * Rudy Giuliani, who will scare voters into thinking he alone can keep the country safe * Lou Dobbs, whose populist appeal and outsider credentials will seduce GOP masses * Mitt Romney, because he has great hair

The most cynical group currently operating on the American political stage, the National Right to Life Committee has endorsed the most cynical man to seek the presidency in recent memory, Fred Thompson, for the Republican nomination. It is a perfect match, although not one that can be said to have been "made in Heaven." After all, what brings the National Right to Life Committee and Fred Thompson together is the fact that both the interest group and the candidate have sold their souls to the highest bidder. National Right to Life gave its blessing to Thompson despite the fact that...

MINNEAPOLIS - Shrouded in black, with a bandanna masking her face, a self-proclaimed anarchist slips into her combat boots and dashes through town, tossing a Molotov cocktail here, launching a bowling ball there. The YouTube video is more parody than threat: The flaming cocktail ignites a charcoal grill, and the bowling ball knocks down pins instead of crashing through a Navy recruiting office window. But as the video fades to black, the message on-screen is clear: "We're getting ready. What are you doing?" With less than 10 months to go before the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St.Paul, activists are already...

On June 1, The New York Times published a front-page article titled, ONE PLACE WHERE OBAMA GOES ELBOW TO ELBOW. The feature detailed Barack Obama's love for pickup basketball, his jersey-tugging style, even the time he hit a long game-winning shot after getting fouled. The Obama camp clearly welcomed the humanizing glimpse at Obama's life; his rivals, probably not so much. In an ordinary campaign, that might have been it. But this is no ordinary campaign--not when Hillary Clinton is a candidate. And so, the Clinton team let Times reporter Patrick Healy, who covers the Hillary beat, know about their...

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal. This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights.

There is an old hymn written by Fanny Crosby, sung at generations of camp meetings, which exclaims: "Crown Him! Crown Him! Prophet, and Priest, and King!" Since the emergence of evangelicalism as a cultural force in the 1950s, three approaches to politics, represented by three personalities, have emerged. They are the prophet, the priest and the kingmaker. The prophet has been psychologist James Dobson, who dispenses child-rearing advice on the radio from his Colorado ministry, Focus on the Family. On family issues, Dobson's counsel is moderate and broadly appealing. On politics, his tone sharpens. He rails against compromise on social-conservative...

In September, I posted another vanity (linked below) in which I observed that the historical trends in this election favored Fred Thompson. Since then, his RCP average has dropped from about 22% to 16-17%. In the more volatile Rasmussen daily tracking poll, he has also dropped to 16%, about a 10 point drop from his post announcement high. In light of the above poll numbers, is it time for me to issue a mea culpa? No. This is not at all inconsistent with the hypothesis of my previous post. Neither of the successful insurgent candidates in modern times, Reagan or...

'WE have turned out the lights in the studio," NBC's Bob Costas told viewers of Sunday's Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game, "to kick off a week that will include more than 150 hours of programming designed to raise awareness about environmental issues." Discerning viewers with eyes keen enough to pierce the sanctimonious glare of Costas' candlelit silhouette may have noticed that the stadium's klieg lights still shone brightly. On a typical game day, a large football stadium burns about 65,000 kilowatt hours of electricity and 35,000 cubic feet of natural gas. The cars driving to the game spew about 200 metric...

t-shirt reads: "Our new weapon in the war against terrorism" - a peace sign(!)Sweatshirt reads "War is not the answer". (I guess, by the looks of it, Krispy Kremes are?)

House Republicans, changing course midway through a vote, tried to force Democrats into a debate on a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney on the grounds he purposely led the country into war against Iraq. The GOP tactics reversed what had been expected to an overwhelming vote to table, or kill, the resolution by longshot Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Midway through the vote, with instructions from the GOP leadership, Republicans one by one changed their votes from yes — to kill the resolution — to no, trying to force the chamber into a debate and an up-or-down vote...

Fred Thompson took his acid bath this morning on Meet the Press. Measured by the traditional standards of Sunday morning political theater, it was an uneven performance. Fred did well on international affairs and "stumbled" on domestic policy. His answer on abortion in particular will come as an uncomfortable revelation to some of his more conservative supporters. I have a team of Jesuits attempting to unravel the yarn-balled logic of Fred's rambling answer, but it appears to boil down to this: "I'm 100 percent pro-life and have voted 100 percent pro-life. I hope one day Roe will be overturned and...

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), a long-shot presidential candidate, plans to force the House to vote this week on whether to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. If he pulls it off, it could make for an uncomfortable situation for Democratic leaders and centrist Democrats. Liberal activists are pushing for impeachment, while leaders worry such a move could turn off independent voters. They have made it clear that impeachment of Cheney or President Bush is off the table. Kucinich says he will offer a privileged resolution on Tuesday requiring House members to vote on what to do with the impeachment measure, which...

Summary: At a Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Hillary Clinton ducked some questions and gave misleading answers to others. She falsely implied that the reason White House documents about her communications with her husband haven't been released is due to bureaucratic delays, and she avoided saying whether she would ask Bill Clinton to clear their release from the National Archives. She avoided a yes-or-no answer to whether she supports giving New York driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and at one point denied saying the idea made sense, when in fact she said less than two weeks earlier that it "makes...

A look at the Sunday morning chat circuit ... Former Sen. Fred Thompson visits NBC's "Meet the Press." Of special note, the program is reaching its 60th anniversary. It debuted on Nov. 20, 1947, and is the world's longest-running TV program. It airs at 9 a.m. on WESH-Channel 2. Former President George H.W. Bush will talk to "Fox News Sunday." It airs at 9 a.m. on WOFL-Channel 35. Sen Joseph Biden will take questions on CBS' "Face the Nation." It airs at 10:30 a.m. on WKMG-Channel 6. Another guest will be Mark Penn, who is a strategist for Sen. Hillary...