Free Republic

There is some important good news for which Republicans and Democrats alike can share credit: The teen birth and pregnancy rate in America has plummeted over the past decade. Last year there were 41.7 births per 1,000 kids between the ages of 15 and 19, down dramatically from 61.8 in 1991, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. The progress is across the board, among younger teens too and especially pronounced among African-Americans. The best evidence suggests this decline is attributable to comprehensive approaches to the teen-pregnancy problem. These include more and earlier safe-sex education and better distribution...

WSJ executive Washington editor Al Hunt joins Bloomberg News in January as managing editor for government reporting. "In his 39 years at the Journal, Al has been cited as 'Washington's most trusted reporter,' and "most dynamic bureau chief' before he turned to commentary and TV as a columnist and anchor," writes Bloomberg News editor-in-chief Matt Winkler.

NEW YORK After 39 at The Wall Street Journal, Al Hunt is leaving the newspaper to join Bloomberg News. He'll take the post of managing editor for government reporting, according to memo from Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, posted today at the Poynter Institute's Romenesko site. Hunt, a fixture of political talk shows, is currently the Journal's Washington-based executive editor. In another Bloomberg staff move, Rich Jaroslovsky has been named the news service's managing editor for government and economy in the Americas. Also a Journal vet, he served as the paper's White House correspondent during the Reagan administration and...

At then endo of last night's "The Capitol Gang, Al Hunt decided to go after John O'Neill during his "Outrage of the Week." Here is the trasncript from CNN:____________________________________________________________________________ HUNT: John O'Neill, who first appeared as a Chuck Colson pawn to discredit John Kerry 33 years ago has reemerged, this time as the pawn of rich Bush backers. He's co-authored a book with a vicious bigot that tries to smear Kerry's Vietnam record again. ABC's "Nightline" sent a crew to Vietnam and actually found a few Vietnamese who corroborated some of the official counts and all first- hand witnesses of...

Pity the poor historian a hundred years from now trying to assess John McCain. He is unlikely ever to be President (though he plans to run in 2008); he isn't a powerful legislative leader like Henry Clay or Bob Dole or Ted Kennedy; and he hasn't led a political movement like Robert LaFollette. Yet he is the most popular and, in many ways, influential politician of our times. John Kerry and George W. Bush vie to associate themselves with the Arizona Republican, as do politicians of every stripe all around the country, ranging from liberal Democrats, who disagree with him...

Now that the truth is coming out about John Kerry's Vietnam war record his sycophantic media groupies are losing their grip. For instance, arch lefty Albert Hunt of the Wall Street Journal became positively combustible when he found that John Kerry had been exposed for the fraud he really is. According to this paragon of journalistic virtue it's grossly unfair to "focus attention on John Kerry's Vietnam War record and subsequent protests." Given that John Kerry made his Vietnam war record a central issue of the election campaign and actually invited scrutiny, how can Hunt seriously complain when those who...

Suppose in the 1992 presidential election, after an unconfirmed rumor surfaced about an alleged affair then President Bush had years earlier, Clinton supporters decided to make marital fidelity a central issue. That would be almost as crazy as the current effort by some Bush backers to focus attention on John Kerry's Vietnam War record and subsequent protests. This is being significantly funded and directed by Texas fat cats and political operatives who have more than a passing relationship with Bush political guru Karl Rove. These are some of the same people who surreptitiously smeared John McCain in the last election....

The selection of John Edwards as the Democratic vice presidential candidate just made the electoral map larger for John Kerry. The populist North Carolina Democrat, more than anyone else the preferred choice of Democratic politicians, starts off making selective Southern and border states more competitive than just a few days ago. President Bush remains the favorite in almost all of the South and of the border states such as West Virginia and Missouri -- he swept these in 2000 -- but the Edwards pick gives the ticket a shot at a few upsets. At a minimum, he will make Republicans...

<p>WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Five deeply spiritual, religiously knowledgeable men and women bring different perspectives but all agree that the most popular religious movie in years, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," is too violent, unfaithful to history and incendiary.</p>

<p>Ralph Nader is absolutely right: It's offensive to suggest he's not entitled to run for president. Of course he is.</p> <p>So was Harold Stassen. Likewise, former heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes had every right to come out of retirement and fight the likes of Butterbean. But in pursuing such quixotic quests, Messrs. Stassen and Holmes tarnished their reputation and legacy. That's also what Mr. Nader, in his egocentric repeat run for the presidency, is doing.</p>

<p>"The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react." -- President Bush this week explaining why the surge of violence in Iraq actually is a sign of American success.</p> <p>The Iraq war is going badly and the rationalizations are even worse.</p>

<p>MADRID -- Perhaps it's only semi-rational paranoia, but as one of six Americans waiting several hours in a train station, there seemed to be glares of hostility; and this is one of the few major countries that was with us in the Iraqi war.</p>

<p>Are the Democrats about to be taken over by counter-culture, neo-socialist, pacifists? That's the picture painted by Senator Evan Bayh, who fears the party is "at risk of being taken over by the far left," and Joe Lieberman who worries about the dominance of an "extremist ideology."</p>

<p>As the debate escalates about how much the Bush administration hyped the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Peter Galbraith today will talk about what may be a graver miscarriage: the arrogantly ill-conceived post-conflict plans.</p> <p>"The administration did almost no planning," he will tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning, a view that is reinforced daily. Tuesday's front-page headlines: "U.S. soldiers face persistent resistance," in the Washington Post, and "Widespread reports of looting leaves Iraq's oil industry in ruins," in the New York Times.</p>

<p>To those who say the scandal over the fraud committed by New York Times reporter Jayson Blair is a byproduct of affirmative action, there are numerous rejoinders, including Stephen Glass, Ruth Shalit and Foster Winans.</p> <p>Mr. Glass and Ms. Shalit, writing for the New Republic and other publications, fabricated stories and plagiarized others; two decades ago, Mr. Winans, a stock market columnist for this newspaper, took bribes for passing on information to investors. They were all white; Mr. Blair and Janet Cooke, who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning story for the Washington Post about a fictitious heroin addict, are black.</p>

<p>Newt Gingrich, a historian by training, has always been a revisionist.</p> <p>Family values were a staple of his successful Republican revolution, even though he gave his first wife her walking papers the day after she got out of cancer surgery. He launched the impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying about sex, while the remarried speaker was carrying on an affair with a staffer. He made his initial splash with devastating attacks on the ethics of top Democrats and then became himself an ethical leper.</p>