Free Republic

Can’t You Feel Hillary’s Pain? On the one hand, Hillary Clinton could just be a very happy woman about now. Witnessing the blockbuster Sarah Palin speech at the Republican convention Thursday night, she has to feel more than a glimmer of hope that Barack Obama will lose in November, making her the presumptive nominee for the Democrats four years from now starting on election day 2008. (And giving her “I told you so” rights galore.) Her moment of glory and vindication may keep getting delayed, but in her mind it’s all about patience, patience, patience. On the other hand, watching...

Friends of mine and I share almost identical theological views. Like me, they are concerned about the popular culture and what our kids absorb from it. When the Civil War epic "Gods and Generals" was released, we agreed that its positive portrayal of Christian men and women was terrific and very unusual in a mainstream movie. But they agonized over whether to let their children watch it because of the scenes featuring General Stonewall Jackson — and his wife — chatting quietly in bed together. I, on the other hand, was saying to my kids, "See? See? That's a husband...

As the end of summer approaches, my kids having been out of school and spending time together for some two months now, I'm reminded again that there's a reason I have written over the years about all sorts of parenting issues, but rarely about sibling relations. It's because there are times when my four kids head for each other's throats and I just think — wow. Now what do I do?

I recently wrote about how I think today's parents are too intense when it comes to kids and pre-school. I just think taking a 4-year-old to a specialist to work on scissor skills (a literal example I've seen in news reports on the subject more than once) is a little excessive.

Deseret Morning News, Sunday, May 15, 2005 Bush's motives may not be about oil after all By Betsy Hart Scripps Howard News Service So maybe President Bush's foreign policy isn't all about oil after all. That's been a charge of many American elites when it comes to Bush and the Middle East: that he's really trying to stabilize Iraq in order to have better access to the region's oil — for all those gas guzzlers back home in America, they implicitly add. But the president's speech in Latvia last weekend shows otherwise. In Russia to commemorate the 60th anniversary of...

In an old "ThirtySomething" show, one mother observes to another, "we obsess about our kids -- our husbands obsess about their jobs." Bang on right. Only we women not only obsess about our kids -- we obsess about ourselves too. Are we fulfilled? Are we happy? Do we like ourselves? Our bodies? Our relationships? So it is with Judith Warner's hot new book, "Perfect Madness: Mothering in the Age of Anxiety" (Riverhead Books), which has the tone of, "I am woman why isn't my world all about me?" Warner tries to tap into the "boiling resentment" of at-home moms who...

So now CBS News anchor Dan Rather, too, is set to leave the evening news show. Rather was at CBS for more than two decades and was known as "Rather Biased" to his conservative foes. I'm not going to speculate on whether Rather's decision, or CBS' decision, was prompted by the controversy when Rather reported a story that was based on forged documents and was damaging to President Bush. Of more importance is the demise of the mainstream news media. For decades, the only way to get television news was to listen to the evening news broadcasts of the three...

The Spanish electorate may have put my children's lives at risk — and I am furious about it. There are times when I am especially thankful that I'm an American — and, even more so, that my children are Americans. One of those times was in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001. The outpouring of national pride, an immediate willingness to take the fight to the terrorists. A wholesome desire to see our government avenge our dead. A resolve to destroy the very roots of terrorism, no matter how long it took. Another one of those times was in the...

Is the parenting culture poised to come to its collective senses in the new year? Well, probably not. But at least common sense is getting some attention in some quarters. In the article "Are You a Parent or a Pushover?" in the January issue of Parents magazine, author Kellye Carter Crocker reported on a Parents survey that showed most mothers expressing "deep concern over today's discipline methods." For starters, 88 percent said parents "let children get away with too much." Magazine surveys may be notoriously inaccurate, but still this reveals some level of angst over how kids are being raised....

We are days away from 2004, and it's a very important year for America. It's the year we'll find out if our country still has a vibrant, two-party system. Or, should we cancel future elections, and just let the Republicans rule? A big "no thanks" on that one from me. But that's where we could be headed if the Democrats don't get their act together -- fast. Here's what Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean had to say in a major foreign policy speech the day after Saddam Hussein's capture was reported: He said it offered America an opportunity to "move...

SISTERS IN ARMS In the Lynch case, cute, blonde, young, and single is what counts. It meant no one had to tell unpleasant stories about a single mom leaving children behind to go to war. In the NBC movie Lynch's best friend, single mom Lori Piestewa, who is later killed, has taped pictures of her two young children to the dashboard of the truck she is driving. (Somehow that doesn't sound like a Hollywood gimmick. It rings true with every mom I know. ) This is who we are deliberately and unnecessarily sending into harm's way? Single moms with pictures...

Paul Krugman is probably not having a good week. Krugman is the perennially grumpy op-ed columnist for the so-called "newspaper of record," The New York Times, and author of the just-out best seller, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century" (W.W. Norton and Co.). The book, whose premise essentially is that George Bush inaugurated the end of America, easily unravels. Krugman's book is a repeat — literally — of his Times op-ed columns, which tend to center on the evil of George Bush, the evil of everybody who has met George Bush and the evils of capitalism....

America has just won, and quickly, a war with Iraq. A war which was, in the end, popular both here at home and by all accounts with the majority of the Iraqi people. On Tuesday, George Bush signed the third-largest tax cut in American history. With all the savage attacks on Attorney General John Ashcroft, even the most ardent "don't interfere with my privacy rights" leftists can do little more than mutter in agreement with the fact that this administration has done something right — there hasn't been a terrorist attack on American soil in almost two years. Meanwhile, as...