Free Republic

For years, the United Nations Oil-for-Food program was just one more blip on the multilateral landscape: a relief program for Iraq, a way to feed hungry children in a far-off land until the world had settled its quarrels with Saddam Hussein. Last May, after the fall of Saddam, the UN Security Council voted to lift sanctions on Iraq, end Oil-for-Food later in the year, and turn over any remaining business to the U.S.-led authority in Baghdad. On November 20, with some ceremony, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan lauded the program’s many accomplishments, praising in particular its long-serving executive director, Benon Sevan....

The number of illegal aliens being apprehended on the southwestern border has jumped 25 percent in the first three months of 2004 compared with last year, and some are blaming President Bush's immigration proposal in January for enticing immigrants across the border. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you the president's speech was the catalyst for lots of folks to make their way north and try to get into this country in order to get what they accurately believe to be amnesty," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican and chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. The increase...

Americans hungry for a mistake-proof party uncompromisingly resolute on national security now have found one — the pre-9/11 Democrats. Created in hindsight and forged in recrimination, the pre-9/11 Democrats are unwilling to let any obstacle stand in the way of their defense of the American homeland. Who knew contemporary Democrats could so readily combine the toughest aspects of J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur? The pre-9/11 Democrats, as portrayed by their reaction to the work of the 9/11 Commission, are not plagued by niggling civil-liberty concerns. They were willing prior to 9/11 — or so they imply now — to...

So how bad are things in Iraq? Answer: not very. Fallujah is not the new Mogadishu, Muqtaba al-Sadr is not the new Ayatollah Khomeini and, despite what Ted Kennedy says, Iraq is not ''George Bush's Vietnam.'' Or even George Bush's Chappaquiddick...

It used to be said, before gays "came out," that they were in "the closet." I wish they would go back into it. The rest of us have been in "Pandora's Box ever since. Not that long ago, in kinder, gentler times, when grown adults actually kept their private business private, and fringe rebels did not get in everyone's face to make their point, what is now considered to be an alternative lifestyle" was in fact, a deviancy. The only thing that has changed is that in 1973, (the same notorious year that also gave us Roe vs. Wade) the...