Free Republic

Why, all of a sudden, are things going so wrong for the White House? Conservatives up in arms about Harriet Miers and about the president's plans for the Gulf Coast; an anti-war mother camped outside the Crawford ranch dominating the news for a month; the president Bush's approval ratings lower than they've ever been: This is the price of surrendering control of the agenda. The white flag went up — and Bush's troubles began — unnoticed, months ago. Shortly after his re-election, the president announced he was prepared to spend political capital winning approval for top priorities like Social Security...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- Manuel Hernandez gets nervous at the sight of a police car behind him in traffic, knowing he is breaking the law each time he gets behind the wheel. The Guatemalan citizen living in Lexington lacks a drivers license. “It’s a risk,” he said. But, “it’s reality.” Hernandez is like thousands of undocumented immigrants, driving without a license because state law says they can’t have one. It is also difficult, if not nearly impossible, for them to get driver’s training or secure a driver’s manual in their native language to learn the rules of the road in...

Episode 7: Pharsalus Synopsis As Caesar waits hopelessly for more of his soldiers to arrive from Italy, Pompey's camp prepares for their attack - and for the spoils of victory. Only Brutus appears apprehensive, conceding that while the Republic must be free of tyrants, he cannot celebrate Caesar's defeat. "He was as my father to me." For his part, Pompey suggests letting Caesar's cornered army "disintegrate and disappear," but the senators argue for a decisive attack. "You are Pompey Magnus," Scipio intones. "You conquer and crush your enemies like insects. People will be disappointed by anything less." This strikes a...

THE DISAPPOINTMENT many conservatives feel over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court will not vanish unless and until Miers begins writing solid conservative Supreme Court opinions. In the absence of such opinions, there is little reason to believe that the Miers nomination fulfills President Bush's stated desire to nominate Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas. In fact, we cannot even be highly confident that Bush has nominated a reliably conservative vote, as opposed a swing vote in the O'Connor or Kennedy style. Some dispute the latter proposition. They argue that Bush is in the best...

"The rich" in Connecticut are the official state pinata. When the budget goes into deficit, or when Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the socialist legislature want to raise spending by more than 9 percent to keep their special interests happy, or when they just feel like sticking it to the wealthy, they beat them with the stick of higher taxes and then scurry to pick up all the money that spills on the floor. The rich do most of the taxpaying in this state. Upward of 55 percent of all income taxes come from the top 10 percent of income-earners....

NASHVILLE - The head of Tennessee's leading anti-abortion group says the extent of the organization's effort to unseat three state Supreme Court justices next year will depend on whether there is a credible challenger to Gov. Phil Bredesen. Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life, said the group "at the least will be educating our members" about the justices' role in a 2000 Supreme Court decision that found Tennessee's state constitution grants women greater rights to an abortion than the U.S. Constitution. Bredesen is up for re-election next year and so are incumbent Supreme Court justices. In the case...

For a few conservatives, the accumulation of discontents may have begun building toward today's critical mass in December 2001 with the No Child Left Behind law, which intruded the federal government deeply into the state and local responsibility of education, grades K through 12. That intrusion has been accompanied by a 51 percent increase in the budget of the Education Department that conservatives once aspired to abolish. The accumulation accelerated in December 2003, when the Republican House leadership held open for three hours the vote on adding a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare. The time was needed to browbeat enough conservatives...

I have not heard anyone else say this yet, so I may be the Lone Ranger on this one, but all the references to Michael Luttig over the past week got me to wondering if the frequent mentions might result in some unintended consequences. I have probably heard Luttig’s name mentioned a hundred times or more in relation to the Miers nomination. All the references had to do with the fact that Miers was chosen while the more qualified and deserving Luttig was passed over. Those mentioning Luttig all did so in the most complimentary ways, praising his intellect and...

Colossians 2: 6-7 ”And I assure you of this: If anyone acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I, the Son of Man, will openly acknowledge that person in the presence of God’s angels.”

You are an animal-control officer. One morning, you get calls about a roaming pit bull terrorizing people in several neighborhoods. Now, do you go out and impound every dog you see, or do you limit your search to pit bulls? If the answer is that obvious, why is it wrong for federal agents and state and local police to focus their attention on Muslims when they're trying to stop Islamic terrorism? A recent U.S. Justice Department investigation concluded agents in New Jersey's Office of Counter-Terrorism entered into the state police database at least 140 reports on people who were suspected...

"Read my lips: no new taxes." These six words ultimately led to what conservatives have come to see as one of the worst betrayals in the annals of political history. As Dick Armey - who as it happens was the Texas congressman who had led the rebellion over President Bush's tax hike - might say, "the President couldn't have been this wrong by accident." Let's look back at 1990. Even before the tax hike the President's conservative base was restless. A row over funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and signs of a sagging economy had created a...

Question: What does Harriet E. Miers, a highly successful lawyer, longtime member of Valley View Christian Church in Dallas and confidant of the president of the United States, want more than anything else? Answer: The approval of the faculty of Yale Law School. Or at least that is the fear among conservatives. They worry that although Miers is believed to be a pro-life evangelical conservative, she -- like David Souter and Anthony Kennedy before her -- will be seduced by liberalism. As former Bush speechwriter David Frum noted after Miers was nominated, "The pressures on a Supreme Court justice to...

TAQADDUM, Iraq - If every male soldier here were having as much sex as he claims, his female comrades would hardly have time to fight the war. Still, sex happens. And in Iraq, it happens a lot. It's hardly a national secret that male and female soldiers have been mingling for as long as both sexes have been in uniform. And, some soldiers are wont to point out, some male warriors have been finding comfort in each others' arms for as long as wars have been fought. But with limited exceptions in other conflicts, there has never been a time...

A newly discovered virus has killed dogs in at least seven states, and veterinarians, kennel operators and pet owners are concerned because researchers say there is no vaccine and dogs do not have immunity to the new flu. Dr. Cynda Crawford, an immunologist at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine, said in an audio interview posted on the university Web site that the disease is only deadly in rare cases — about 10 percent in puppies and old dogs — but is of concern because it is spreading rapidly.

Among thin-skinned elites, the worst name one can call an American Indian is "redskin." According to a recent Washington Post report, the term is considered a "gross pejorative" that has been used "for centuries to disparage and humiliate an entire people." Not so, says Smithsonian Institution linguist Ives Goddard. He spent months researching the term's history and determined it was coined by 18th-century Indians to distinguish themselves from white people. When redskin first appeared as an English expression in the 1800s, "it came in the most respectful context and at the highest level," he told the Post. The most notable...

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS The First Amendment has been getting a workout in recent weeks on two college campuses — the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — where students are learning that free speech is a messy business. The two cases, one involving a columnist at North Carolina and the other a political cartoonist at Florida, have inflamed minority groups — Muslims and black students, respectively — provoking protests and debate. That’s the good news insofar as protest and debate are the currency of free speech. What’s not such good news is that...

Three explosive devices found in a courtyard between two Georgia Tech dormitories on the East Campus Monday morning were part of a "terrorist act," an Atlanta police official said.

In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". rapier \RAY-pee-er\ adjective extremely sharp or keen Example sentence: In the June 1992 issue of Field & Stream magazine, Dave Hughes offered the following fly-fishing advice: "In one fluid motion, lift the rod up and back, and drive it forward with a rapier thrust." Did you know? A rapier is a straight, two-edged sword with a narrow pointed blade, designed especially for thrusting. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "the long rapier was beautifully balanced,...

One of the few positive effects of 9/11 has been renewed American interest in Islam and the Middle East. Unfortunately, much of the information disseminated in the media about those topics is ignorant and misleading. This is unfortunate because any hope that the predominantly-Christian West and the Muslim world might transcend conflict requires that the former be accurately informed about the latter (and vice-versa, but that's an issue for another column). There are in particular seven myths about Islam and Islamic history that have been repeated so often in the media that they've achieved conventional wisdom status. First, it is...

Dear Editor, the Tribune: This is an open letter to President George W. Bush: I am writing to let you know how I feel about the way you are handling the United States. As president, you are an embarrassment. You have lied and cheated and are inept as a leader. The situation along the Gulf Coast not only shows that you are unfit for the office you hold but also shows your lack of knowledge, concern or caring. Why did you wait so long to act and send help to the region? Was your bike-riding more important than our citizens’...