Free Republic

Grover Norquist is known as an anti-tax crusader, but in the coming weeks he will be just as much a pro-immigration crusader, combatting what he calls the “bitter enders” who oppose comprehensive immigration reform. Norquist says that he’s trying to counteract the effect of “a handful of radio talk-show hosts who talk loudly.” “The bitter-enders who are still responding to radio talk-show hosts from eight years ago haven’t noticed that the world has shifted from underneath them,” he says. “The people who need cover are the guys who are still voting like they were Pat Buchanan.” Advertisement Norquist’s group, Americans...

WASHINGTON It's a classic story line in myth, literature and movies: a man coming into his own is torn between two older authority figures with competing world views; a good daddy and a bad daddy; one light and benevolent, one dark and vengeful.When Bush the Elder put Bush the Younger in the care of Dick Cheney, he assumed that Mr. Cheney, who had been his defense secretary in Desert Storm, would play the wise, selfless counselor. Poppy thought his old friend Dick would make a great vice president, tutoring a young president green on foreign policy and safeguarding the first...

<p>Talk about sore losers. Arnold Schwarzenegger won more votes on Tuesday than Gray Davis received in support of his staying in office. After absentee votes are counted his share of the vote will approach 50%. But many Democrats are bound and determined to fight the new governor, despite the state's fiscal crisis.</p>

Democrats block EPA nominee vote in Environment Committee By Susan Davis, CongressDaily Senate Democrats Wednesday blocked the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from voting on President Bush's nomination of GOP Gov. Michael Leavitt of Utah to head the EPA by boycotting a markup. "Unfortunately, the Democrats, in boycotting this markup, have publicly shunned committee precedent and insulted one of the most highly qualified people ever to be nominated for this job," said Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla. Senate rules require 10 members of the 19-member committee to be present to constitute a quorum, and...

President Bush's senior advisers describe the Democratic field as unusually weak heading in to the coming election year, Monday's NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report in a Page One splash. "Each of them has relative strengths and weaknesses, but happily for us, in each case the relative weaknesses outweigh the relative strengths," Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, tells the TIMES. "They're all Howard Dean now. They have adopted harsh, bitter, personal attacks as their approach. They are a party of protest and pessimism and offer no positive agenda of their own." Team Bush has delayed the...

Something my brother said to me long ago about the ebb and flow of the war on Islamic terrorism -- not before 9/11, but well before a coalition of willing American and British forces liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein -- comes back to me from time to time. To be precise, his comment comes back to me not so much on the "ebb" of our military and political progress -- which, with patience and forbearance, will prevail -- as on the "flow" of the forces arrayed against that progress.The United States' war on barbarism (for what else are terrorists,...

The Democrats' vile attitude toward the war reveals that they still do not accept the Bush Presidency. Let's get something straight: Bush won the presidency and he won it fair and square, despite what the Dems and their media whores claim. To the Dems' hardcore fanatics, however, no Republican administration is ever legitimate or ever will be. Does anyone think, for example, that the vicious race-baiting Charles B. Rangel would consider giving Bush a break under any circumstances? This is the hypocrite that spent so much time licking Castro's bloodstained boots he had to have several tongue transplants. Then there...

Washington -- After waiting two and a half years for the Senate's Democrats to allow a vote on his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Miguel Estrada has decided to become rich. Rather than hear such paragons of balderdash as the Hon. Charles E. Schumer calumniate him as politically extreme Estrada withdrew his name from the Senate's butcher block. Now he will continue his extremely lucrative law practice at one of Washington's most prestigious law firms. For over two years he has wondered if he would be able to afford a lovely country retreat...