Free Republic

I relentlessly criticize the left-wing media for lies, deceptions and omissions (LDOs). I take a back seat to no one smacking the left up side the head. So I wake up this morning with this tragic right-wing propaganda: Because of the heightened concern over keeping America safe, it's amazing to think the federal government would put management of major U.S. ports in the hands of foreign companies. Who do you think operates our ports now, you dimwit? And who would turn security of our ports over to a mere owner? Please. Like the "emotional" "unpatriotic" left, our blindingly patriotic conservatives...

I recall an old song that goes "What can I say, after I say I'm sorry". Well, folks, I've been humming that tune a lot of late, but it keeps coming out, "except I told you so!" For more years than I care to remember, I have been writing endless columns about the 'Big Lie' and the fact that what is trumpeted loudly, in every quarter, as 'the plight of the poor Palestinians' was, in fact, a travesty caused by their own Arab brothers. I seem to recall I also said once or twice that Israel is the prime candidate...

When governments get in the business of business, there's no enormity they won't engage in. Say you want to attract more movie businesses to your country. So, hey, why not! Subsidize a movie or two or three. After the "Lord of the Rings" success, though -- you know, Peter Jackson's trilogy of films based on Tolkien's trilogy of books -- you might've thought that New Zealand's government would sit back and just wait for more films to be filmed down under. Talk about getting all the publicity they could hope for. So why give $25 million to Peter Jackson to...

There’s probably no single piece of writing in this country that’s as controversial or as likely to lead to fist fights as the U.S. Constitution. It’s difficult to decide which portion of the document gets people riled up the most. At times, it almost seems to change on a daily basis. On Monday, it could be gun ownership, with morons like Michael Moore frothing at the mouth at the mere thought that a law-abiding citizen might own a weapon. You have to believe folks like Moore are planning to burgle your home the way they fret over the possibility you...

It’s been 48 years since I last reviewed a movie without first seeing it. Back then, a fellow UCLA student, Shirley Mae Follmer, and I were competing to be the film critic for the Daily Bruin. One night, passes were supposed to be left for each of us at a press screening. However, she arrived ahead of me, and she had either brought a guest along or there had simply been a glitch somewhere along the line. In any case, they wouldn’t let me in. All I knew was the title of the movie and the name of the star,...

Judging the judges By A question that bears looking into is whether a career in politics inevitably turns people into hypocrites or whether hypocrites are born, not made, and are simply drawn to the field the way that steel shavings are drawn to a magnet. Being a conservative, naturally I hold Democrats in far lower regard than I do Republicans. But, overall, I don’t think that politicians of any stripe should be trusted anywhere near a live microphone or anybody’s wallet. In fact, I find most people’s infatuation with office holders completely infantile and unseemly, and on a par with...

With all the whining and carping about the balance of power between this branch of government and that, why is there nary a peep about the most fundamental of constitutional balances, that between the government and the people? Take a current news story, much blogged. The president recently signed the torture ban. But he did so with his fingers crossed. That is, he added a "signing statement" to the bill, explaining how he interpreted the new law: Quite broadly, in the context of his own expansive theory of presidential power. Like other such statements, this wasn't a Post-It® note scribble,...

In the old days, along with such colonial powers as France, Spain, Holland and Germany, England indulged in what you might call unenlightened self-interest. The prevailing practice was to gut their colonies in Asia and Africa of all the natural resources they could get their hands on while the folks who mined the coal, picked the crops, and dug for the diamonds, lived in abject squalor. It may not have been nice, it may have been selfish and even brutal, but it made perfect sense. When some English noble stoked his fire, he probably never gave a second thought to...

President Bush has my total sympathy. Aside from having to spend all his vacations in Crawford, the thing I would hate the most about his job would be having to deal with France. The French aren't all terrible. I have to keep reminding myself. After all, Voltaire, Toulouse-Lautrec and Claude Debussy, were French. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Les Miserables" were written by a Frenchman. A Frenchman designed and built the Statue of Liberty. Louis Pasteur was French and so was Hilaire Degas. The truth, however, is that they all lived a very long time ago. The closer one...

ASIAN OUTLOOK - August-September 2005 While Americans have been wondering what to make of the daily news from Iraq and the Middle East and the loves-me-loves-me-not swings of U.S.-China policy, the summer’s biggest story has received relatively little attention. The mid-July summit between President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh--during which the two leaders resolved to “transform the relationship between their countries and establish a global partnership”[1]-- initially was covered as a photo-op and remains, in the media’s imagination, a story about nuclear proliferation. But when a sole superpower takes a strategic mate, such a blooming global...

Hurricane Katrina slashed U.S. oil production by 1.4 million barrels a day -- the global equivalent of suddenly losing two-thirds of all oil produced by Iraq or Kuwait. "President George W. Bush has responded quickly to Hurricane Katrina," said a Bloomberg report, "suggesting that Hurricane Ivan last year taught him a lesson about opening up the reserve." Energy Secretary Bodman announced he had "approved a request for a loan of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" and "continues to review other requests as they come in.'' That announcement should have been made by the president at least a week before...

So much is going on in China I sometimes wonder where to start. I know that seems strange. Surely, you ask, if there is so much news, how can there be a problem? A shortage of stories? The problem is one of mood swings. Not mine, but China’s. On the one hand I see before me a great future for what was once a great country before cultural sclerosis set in, followed by xenophobia and political and economic disintegration that brought humiliation, war and Japanese barbarism and the culmination of which was Maoist China, a totalitarian state whose gangster emperor...

Oriana Fallaci's is not a household name in the United States but Ms Fallaci's name cannot be uttered in Europe without generating a heated reaction. Even though her 2002 book, The Rage and the Pride, was translated into English [By Fallaci] and sold many copies in the United States, it was on the other side of the ocean that intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens passionately debated the views of the celebrated Italian journalist. The Rage and the Pride is either loved or hated; Ms Fallaci's positions leave no middle ground. Outraged by the events of 9/11, Fallaci criticizes both Muslims...

I love to fly. It's a time when I can sit back and prepare for a speech (that is my usual destination), think deep thoughts, and fine-tune my sarcasm. As you can imagine, a lot of deep questions pop into my mind during air travel. Fortunately, I manage to keep those questions to myself. But, today, I have a really bad altitude and I feel like letting them fly. Sadly, the following questions and comments came from just one day at the airport and on one flight to Cincinnati: Sir, will you please wrap it up? There are other people...

This publication is generally full of bad news, so it is pleasant to report some good news for a change. Last week Donald Trump, the New York real estate entrepreneur and eccentric star of his own ‘reality’ television series, unveiled his plans for the World Trade Centre site. He received plenty of publicity for his plan, and most people are supporting it. Here he is with a model of the planned replacement: Thank goodness somebody with as much experience in the field as Donald Trump has pointed out what everybody knows already – that the only satisfying solution is to...

Rush Limbaugh sounds off on controversy as many urge boycotts, firing of president An apology by PepsiCo's president who likened the United States to a middle finger is apparently doing little to calm outrage caused by her remarks. In the wake of WorldNetDaily's coverage of Indra Nooyi's commencement speech to graduates at Columbia Business School in which she compared the U.S. to the middle finger with both positive and negative connotations, consumers are vowing to boycott the company, and the topic is being widely discussed on talk radio.

BrookesNews.Com Headline: United Airlines says it can't pay $9.8 Billion in Pensions. Yet they have an infinitesimal problem compared to the Congress of the United States. Congress has an unfunded $11 Trillion Social Security "pension" they haven't either put in the bank or recorded on the people's books. The pilots and stewardesses think they have a problem. Wow, they have no idea what a problem really is. Yet our MSM, the Democrats, the liberal elite, Democrat Congressmen all proclaim "Hey, no problem, No hurry, we can obstruct Republicans" until the unrecorded liability is $25 Trillion (and we have to cancel...

When Zhu Rongji, was China’s Premier he promised to put the state sector on a sound economic footing. He failed dismally. President Jiang Zhemin also struggled with the problem. He too failed. Now President Hu Jintao is faced with the problem and it looks like it might be coming to a head. These so-called state enterprises are economic black holes that are sucking in the nation’s savings. They are overmanned, suffer appalling productivity, swimming in oceans of red ink (despite heroic efforts at cooking the books), producing shoddy goods and building up astronomical debts. This is a fair description of...

Last May, in the aftermath of the massacre of the Hatuel family; the rocket propelled grenade attacks on IDF forces and a steep increase in arms smuggling from Egypt through tunnels to Rafah, the IDF launched Operation Rainbow in Gaza. Its aim was to clean out Rafah of terrorists and stem the hemorrhage of arms being smuggled into Gaza from Egypt. The international outcry against Israel, which began the moment the operation was launched, was hysterical and obscene. Israel was accused of perpetrating crimes against humanity for every action it took to protect its territory and citizens from attack. The...

In one of those coincidences of timing that might lead one to suspect that a particularly mischievous pixie is guiding events, Sen. Ted Kennedy announced he was canceling his meeting with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams the same weekend that the Bush administration let it be known it might deal in some non-coercive way with Hezbollah -- the Islamist terrorist organization based in Lebanon. I fear that President Bush is about to begin matriculating in the same course of study from which Ted Kennedy, after decades, has finally seemingly graduated, the lesson of which is: 'Tis easier to see a...