Free Republic

A Stranger in Our Midst The following essay by Robert Weissberg, Professor of Political Science - Emeritus at the University of Illinois , Urbana , offers a description of what most Americans are feeling about our government, but haven't been able to articulate. Every once in awhile, someone comes along and uses just the right words to describe a situation. This is it. April 29, 2010 - A Stranger in Our Midst, by Robert Weissberg, Professor of Political Science - Emeritus at the University of Illinois , Urbana As the Obama administration enters its second year, I -- and undoubtedly...

One can find some degree of empathy for Al Gore. When a candidate has lost the presidency by a mere 520 votes, it could well have an emotional and psychological effect on his personality. While those 520 votes tossed the Electoral College toward George Bush, the former vice president clearly knows he won the popular vote in 2000, so his defeat must be particularly grating. Under such stress, perhaps he should return to his spiritual roots and read Psalms or Proverbs or even the book of Job for consolation. Or perhaps seek a secular therapist. However, this week he told...

Salt Lake City's Mayor Rocky Anderson used e-mail this week to call upon activists, Democrats and some of his top administrative staff for “the biggest demonstration this state has ever seen,” when President Bush appears before a national veterans convention Monday. “There should be a collaboration of health-care-provision advocates, seniors, the (gay, lesbian and bisexual and transsexual) community, anti-Patriot Act advocates and other civil libertarians, anti-war folks, pro-Social Security advocates, environmental advocates, anti-nuclear-testing advocates, and anti-nuclear-waste-shipment-and-storage advocates,” the mayor wrote in the e-mail sent Friday. The mayor, a Democrat who serves in an officially nonpartisan office plans to join the...

Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is outraged by the treatment of terrorists held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba (known as Gitmo). According to Senator Durbin, terrorists at Gitmo who may have critical information are aggressively questioned about plans for future al Qaeda attacks. He says they are forced to listen to loud music, wear handcuffs and leg irons, and sit in rooms where the air conditioning is turned up and down. Durbin labels this torture and compares American soldiers to Nazis who murdered 12 million. He compares Gitmo to communist Gulags where more than 20 million...

Wednesday, Mar 20, 2002 Last week U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to garner Arab support for America's war on terrorism, and American envoy Anthony Zinni flew back to the region in a desperate attempt to halt the rising bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians. But many Arabs see America's priorities as the opposite of reality: it is Israel, not Iraq, that poses the greatest threat. Arabs regard the Palestinian problem as a cause of Islamic terrorism, and fear that terrorism will increase unless the conflict with Israel is settled fairly. That conviction was strongly reflected in the...