Free Republic

After watching more than 200 Haitians break into the United States and scurry across a Miami causeway, I remarked on the radio--rather cynically, I might add--that the republic was acquiring a new batch of citizens. Sure enough. The next day, a group of Haitian-American activists proved me right by angrily condemning American immigration policy that called for sending the Haitians back home and pressuring Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to demand that President George W. Bush issue an executive order to let the Haitians enter our country. Haitian community leaders in Miami argue that while Haitians are routinely deported back to...

It's said that politics has no place in the Olympic Games. Right. Tell that to the Israelis, who watched in horror as their athletes were massacred in cold blood in Munich. Tell that to any American who watched defiant black fists thrust in the air in Mexico City. Tell that to the crew of a Black Hawk helicopter hovering above Salt Lake City during a medals presentation this week.Tell it to Al Gore. You ask, "Al who?" Al Gore is the guy who was sitting in front of his TV set Friday night watching President George W. Bush mingling with ...

...this is a jolly good time to be listening to the national debate over "our rights," the rights of Americans to be free to move about as we like, to looke like we like, to say whatever we like, to marry whomever we like (and preferably, love), to pursue the career that we like, to live in the neighborhood that we like, to worship the God that we like, or not to worship at all. Those, among thousands of others, are "our rights." Those are our rights as American citizens. Those are not our rights as members of the human ...

WASHINGTON--A coalition of eight wildlife organizations will petition Interior Secretary Gale Norton today to reconsider her decision to block the re-introduction of grizzly bears to the northern Rocky Mountains of Idaho and Montana. Arguing there is an "unprecedented consensus of scientific opinion" supporting the Clinton[yuk] administration's grizzly bear recovery plan, the groups will tell Norton that her June 20 action flies in the face of her commitment to base her actions on "good science." Norton's decision to drop the bear plan was a victory for Idaho Gov. Dirk Kemmpthorne--who had voiced fears of a return of "ill-tempered, flesh-eating carnivores" to ...

I wouldn't know a stem cell from a AAA battery if I met them both in the drugstore aisle. All I know about cells is that every time I try to make a telephone call, I find myself in a bad cell--and AT&T sends me a bill for my trouble. With that in mind, I listened to President Bush intently Thursday night when he announced his decision to permit federal funding for limited stem-cell research, using existing, doomed embryonic material. Do you detect the fine line in that sentence? Yeah, me too. In a single sentence, the intricacy of the ...

A Colorado Springs contractor battling to end a federal affirmative action program was not suprised to learn Friday that President Bush will fight him in court. In a brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the program in place, Bush disappointed some supporters but set the stage for a ruling that could settle the 11-year-old case. And that was just fine with Randy Pech, owner of Adarand Constructors Inc. of Colorado Springs. "We want to go to court on this thing." Pech said. "We want a Supreme Court decision." Bush's stance surprised many, considering his campaign pledges to end ...

We hate to accuse President Bush's Social Security Commission of being a terrorist organization. But what else can you call a group that tries to frighten senior citizens by falsely charging that their principal retirement program is bankrupt? A draft report by the commission last week warned that the Social Security fund will begin to pay out more money in benefits than it takes in by taxes as early as 2016. The commission reaffirmed the same scare language at its meeting yesterday. Frankly, the forecast that Social Security payments will exceed taxes in 2016 is allmost certainly too pessimistic. If ...

Chris Rutan was jet-lagged and groggy. He'd had nine "intense" days in Bonn, Germany, and had returned home to Denver late Sunday night. On Monday morning, he logged on to the Internet to see how the negotiations were going without him. The news hit him like a high-octane caffeine rush. "I'm really happy now," he said. "Yahoo says, 'world clinches climate deal. U.S. isolated.' This is fantastic. We worked really hard for this."The 21-year-old University of Denver senior went to Bonn at his own expense to urge the international community to ignore America's oil-industry backed president.On Monday he was celebrating.Mission ...

"I always pictured Reno doing speaking tours or law or something."

The confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft for U.S. Attorney General just about wore out two perfectly good words: "divisive" and "insensitive." These labels were tossed about like beach balls as one senator or another took turns attacking President Bush's choice to head the Justice Department. The truly extraordinary thing about the spectacle was that those accusing Ashcroft of being insensitive ("lacking acuteness of feeling") and divisive ("creating dissension and discord") didn't pause for a nanosecond to consider whether those same labels might just as easily be applied to them. After all, wasn't it Bill Clinton who started his administration by ...

Who ever thought that the fate of the American Republic might rest upon the question of whether Al Gore has as much class as Richard Nixon? Forty years ago, Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy in and election deeply tainted by fraud in Illinois and Texas. Unwilling to jeopardize America's standing in the world at the height of the Cold War (and reluctant to focus a spotlight on the GOP's own funny business in downstate Illinois), Nixon decided not to challenge the election. Partly as a result of his statesmanship in 1960, Nixon was elected in his own right in ...