Free Republic

The Senate is stalling another Bush Administration proposal to effectively fight the war on terror. After the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year that the President does not have inherent authority to try captured terrorists using military tribunals, President Bush asked Congress to grant him that authority in law. The Senate is balking at the President’s proposal, though, claiming that it runs afoul of a portion of the Geneva Conventions known as Common Article 3. But Heritage national security expert James Carafano notes that the administration’s proposal as it exists now would “satisfy[y] U.S. obligations under the Conventions.” In fact,...

April Morning Reverie - or- An Imaginary Conversation with Seymour Hersh It's a beautiful April morning , and I'd like to sit out back and enjoy it: (at my age, you never know if you'll see another Spring) ; but I've got other things on my mind. I find myself engaging in an imaginary conversation with "investigative reporter", Seymour Hersh. Me: Good morning, Mr. Hersh . SH: (Expansively) Call me Sy. Everyone else does - and this IS an imaginary conversation. Me: That Iran article of yours in The New Yorker created quite a stir. SH: Which one ? The...

With “Powerful Rifle” article, journalist shoots self in the foot Michael Marks Director of Legislative Affairs Fifty Caliber Institute Nov. 29, 2005 Journalism is a venerable and timehonored profession, steeped in tradition and burdened with the singular responsibility to tell the truth. The very concept of freedom of the press is founded upon the belief that the public need for reliable information outweighs many of the barriers set up by individuals, companies and governments. It is therefore incredulous when members of this ostensibly noble brotherhood are so will to flush their profession, good name and credibility down the toilet. Nowhere...

THE editor of a Scottish weekly newspaper is facing possible prosecution under Britain's anti-racism laws, following the publication of an article claiming that a massive refugee camp could be built in Scotland. Alan Buchan, the publisher and editor of the North East Weekly, a free sheet based in Peterhead, was arrested by officers from Grampian Police in connection with the publication of an editorial in the latest issue of the newspaper, headlined "Perverts and Refugees". Mr Buchan was charged under a section of the Public Order Act which gives the police powers to arrest any person whom they suspect of...

NewsMax got serious notice Friday in the New York Times for its coverage and promotion of the new, controversial biography of Hillary Clinton. But the Times has bought into the spin liberals have tried to put on "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President" by Edward Klein. The newspaper quotes a journalist who says the book "has the feel of a ginned-up right-wing effort to smear anybody who is seen by the right as politically threatening." What the Times doesn't mention is that Klein is anything but a...

It has been impossible these past few weeks to pick up a newspaper or turn on the news without being drawn into controversies arising out of confidential press sources. First, there was the Newsweek story, apparently based on a misinformed source, about mistreatment of the Quran at Guantanamo, that plunged that magazine into a violent international controversy. Then, "Deep Throat," the most famous confidential source of all, who guided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein through the mysteries of Watergate, revealed himself to be Mark Felt, a former deputy director of the FBI. These events have played out against the backdrop...

Mark Felt’s admission in the July edition of Vanity Fair that he was "Deep Throat", one of those who supplied inside information to The Washington Post to discredit, disable, and destroy Richard Nixon, should be properly understood. Mark Felt, then the Associate Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was not a hero. He was a traitor. He betrayed his responsibilities to the President, and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from whose secret, confidential files he excerpted information for transmission to Left-wing "journalists" who sought to undo the results of the 1972 Presidential election in which Richard Nixon...

The latest hysteria alleging American human rights abuses of suspected terrorists comes from Amnesty International, which apparently hopes to turn even the slightest supposed mistreatment of prisoners into a full-scale Abu Ghraib-type scandal. According to the Washington Times, Amnesty International "last week called on foreign governments 'to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating U.S. officials implicated in the development or implementation of interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' at the U.S. military base known as Gitmo." Furthermore, in a report titled "The State of the World's Human Rights," the organization charged that "the...

Group admits giving out 'gay' sex book High schoolers received 'hard-core porn' homosexual 'how-to' Posted: May 20, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com After strong denials, a homosexual activist group admitted it made available to middle school and high school students an AIDS handbook described by critics as a "hard-core pornographic homosexual 'how-to.'" The Boston Chapter of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, GLSEN Boston, said the distribution at an April 30 event at Brookline High School violated its policy that no sexually explicit materials be made available. A Massachusetts-based group involved in opposition to same-sex marriage, the Article...

There's hardly a reporter in the land who, late at night after the presses have rolled on a story that is then too late to change, hasn't had that terrible feeling of doubt that maybe he has gotten something wrong. We have encountered seasoned newspapermen and women who have gone to bed with that feeling every time they've written through long careers. And we're not inclined to get up on our high horse over the error of Michael Isikoff and Newsweek in respect of the magazine's May 9 report that some American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed pages of the...

Newsweek magazine published a scoop last week. Based on an unnamed source, Newsweek informed the world that American interrogators of suspected Islamic terrorists at Guantanamo Bay had flushed pages of the Koran down a toilet. If this were true, the interrogators would be both morally wrong and stupid. The words of the Koran and the pages on which they are written are considered intrinsically holy to Muslims. As it happens, it was not true. Like Dan Rather and CBS News, Newsweek put politics and craving a scoop ahead of truth, not to mention ahead of America's security. As I said...

Protests were planned across Pakistan Friday as Muslim anger over the alleged desecration of the Koran by the U.S. military spread outwards from Afghanistan, where at least seven people have been killed in violent clashes with security forces. The Pentagon said Thursday there is no evidence to support an allegation that a copy of the Islamic text had been flushed down a toilet "in an attempt to rattle suspects" held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba. The brief item, citing an unnamed source, was published in Newsweek magazine. General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,...

A malicious script that spies on Apple Mac users was discovered over the weekend. The malware, which has been dubbed ‘Opener’ by Mac user-groups, disables Mac OS X’s built-in firewall, steals personal information and can destroy data. Security experts say these traits are common among the thousands of viruses targeting Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system but are virtually unheard of amongst the Apple Macintosh community. Paul Ducklin, Sophos’ head of technology in the Asia Pacific, told ZDNet Australia that the malware, which Sophos calls Renepo, is designed to infect any Mac OS X drives connected to the infected system and...

But it does allow Obama to use what his Harvard Law School classmate Ken Mehlman, soon to be chairman of the Republican Party, calls his "star power" to work with the GOP on bridging Red-Blue divisions and getting some things done. The son of a black economist from Kenya and a white teacher from Kansas might be uniquely qualified to nudge the country toward the color purple. "One party seems to be defending a moribund status quo, and the other is defending an oligarchy," he says coolly. "It's not a very attractive choice." Obama's a Blue State Democrat, all right,...

According to Sunday's S.F.Chronicle, House Democrats meet tomorrow with UC Berkeley linguistic prof George Lakoff in hopes the wordwright can correct their spin. Watch this one!!!! Lakoff is expected to advise the politician on what terminology to use. The big question is this: will the mass media follow? My money says it will. I have 40 years experience in the news media to back my bet. Need proof? The media was powerful enough to limit "choice" to one subject. That alone should be cause for watching the "watchdog." Remember when the press was called "the running dog" of the establishment?...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Others may have sympathized on learning that Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, felt threatened by a graduate student at his own university, but not me. The incident began late on Sept. 27, 2004, when Victor Luria, a Ph.D. candidate in genetics and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, wrote Dabashi an e-mail taking strong exception to what Dabashi had written about the IDF in an article, "For a Fistful of Dust: A Passage to Palestine," he published in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. In response, Luria wrote to Dabashi: I have rarely seen...

2004.11 VANNROX BOOKMARK ARCHIVESINCLUDES 2004 ELECTION POSTS BUSH-HATING DEMS MUST FIND NEW WAYhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1270007/posts Candidate's disappearing yard signs reappear - at the dumphttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1206479/posts 'THOUGHT CONTROL' ALLEGED -Teachers who protest anthem to undergo 'retraining'http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189193/posts Al-Qaeda group downs US spy planehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1214458/posts Al-Qaeda group downs US spy planehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1214458/posts NC License Issue Explodes: Illegal Alien Gang Rape Suspects had Valid NC Licensehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1261858/posts US 'will not free' Iraq scientisthttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1223366/posts 'Bush likes war, makes and creates war' - (Sentiment abroad)http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1203284/posts 'EARLY BIRDS' BACKING BUSHhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1258420/posts A Few of FR's Finest...Every Day...10-27-04...."Writer33 ~ Defining a Conservative"http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1258512/posts CBS FORGES AHEADhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1215359/posts CONGRESS BIGS NIX PROBE INTO 'RATHERGATE'http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1217528/posts KILLER EFFORT TO...

Pesticides, Precursors, and PetulanceApril 2nd, 2004 It has become established conventional wisdom that “no stockpiles of WMD have been discovered in Iraq.” But this reading of the evidence uncovered to date is premature at best, and highly questionable. A closer look at the data, and at the uses made of it, is essential for those who wish to understand the genuine state of Iraq’s WMD threat at the time of Operation Iraqi Freedom.Another Congressional committee hearing has come and gone for the head of the hapless Iraqi Survey Group (ISG).  Charles Duelfer has testified that he did not know how much...

As Democratic hopeful John Kerry whines about the Swift Boat Veterans questioning his Vietnam “war service,” more revelations have surfaced which challenge the legitimacy of his first Purple Heart. The Senator claims that that medal was received because of enemy fire he took, but his own personal diary contradicts that assertion. While the Senator’s supporters tried unsuccessfully to portray President Bush as being “AWOL” during the Vietnam War, they won’t address the fact that Kerry tried to defer his military service at that time for 12 months. And what would Kerry and his friends say about the fact that his...