Free Republic

WASHINGTON - An anguished James Dobson prayed Wednesday for a sign from God, telling his Christian radio listeners he was questioning his early endorsement of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. Dobson, founder of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, is one of the most prominent religious conservatives to back Miers, citing his trust in President Bush and a confidential briefing he received about her from the White House. But in his regular radio broadcast Wednesday, Dobson prayed he was not making a mistake. "Lord, you know I don't have the wisdom to make this decision," Dobson said. "You know that...

So, you landed a big king salmon this summer? It can't compare to the colossal king Alaska Airlines plans to land this morning in Anchorage. The Seattle-based carrier has painted nearly the full length of a Boeing 737-400 passenger jet as a wild Alaska king, or chinook, salmon. The airline has dubbed its flying fish the "Salmon-Thirty-Salmon." It's a bold promotional move

As some may have recognized in my last column, by my use of the words “disgusted, ”unburdened by principle,” “Big Government,” and “tartar sauce,” I was not very pleased with President Bush’s address to the Nation regarding the coming long-term response to Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. My disappointment focuses around several distinct points. Primary among these is that I have had about all I can afford of “compassionate conservatism.” Unnecessary deficit spending is neither conservative nor compassionate, and if someone discovers the budgetary difference between a compassionate conservative and a bleeding heart liberal, please, let me know. So far, my best...

President Bush has just concluded his obligatory speech from New Orleans to tell us how we're all going to be heavily involved and invested in the rebuilding of the Crescent City. Let's take a quick look at his laundry list -- a list for which he neglected to name a price tag. • The federal government will "do what it takes" and will "stay as long as it takes" -- great, just what I wanted to hear. • States will be reimbursed for their efforts in responding to Katrina. Does that include states like North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Montana...

I used to believe that the Democrats sought to expand government because of a philosophical affinity for socialism and social spending. Tonight, after watching the President’s Grand Central Plan for the Redevelopment of the Gulf Coast, I realized that the old collectivist philosophies were just excuses for justifying and celebrating what they wanted to do anyway: take credit through taking control. The real motivation to spend was simply that they were the party in power and could therefore take credit for the spending. Every dollar spent ingratiated voters and advertised the party. Likewise, the party out of power is outflanked...

As President Bush addressed the United Nations Wednesday, a new advertising campaign blasting the world organization was going on just outside the UN's New York City headquarters. While the UN began celebrating its 60th anniversary, signs reading "Broken Promises: The United Nations at 60" were plastered on locations surrounding the Turtle Bay building. The advertisements for a new, in-depth documentary on UN failures were purchased by the Citizens United Foundation (view the trailer here). The ad campaign was timed to begin Wednesday as 170 heads of state gathered in NYC for the United Nations World Summit. The ads are located...

Sen. Joe Biden probably does not realize it, but in his exchange with Judge John Roberts in today’s confirmation hearing, he echoed the basic complaint conservatives have made about the Supreme Court for decades: It has become a super-legislature where five unelected people can decide--virtually without accountability--the most profound issues of public policy. Biden did this when he candidly likened Roberts to a senator running for office--then chastised Roberts for not answering questions about “issues” just as he would be made to do if he were a politician running for office. “[I]t’s kind of interesting this Kabuki Dance that we...

The man who is very likely the most famous novelist in the world made it clear last week that he has not changed his favorable opinion of two decades ago about the former Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicaragua. In an on-line response to a query from HUMAN EVENTS' John Gizzi, Salman Rushdie--best known for the $5 million bounty placed on his head by the Ayatollah Khomeni in 1989--wrote that "I haven't changed my mind about the Sandanistas of those days, the mid-1980's." From his London home, Rushdie went on to denounce the Reagan Administration's efforts to upend the regime of President...

Katrina has displaced hundreds of thousands of Americans who now need food, housing, and cash. Relief for those necessities will have to be temporary and it will be many months before they can return to New Orleans, if ever, so what they need most of all is jobs. Our government should act immediately to put these displaced Americans in the jobs now held by illegal aliens. Some 10 million illegal aliens are now working in our country, so there is no excuse for not replacing a million of them with unemployed American citizens. President Bush should announce an immediate crackdown...

Having watched the news for the past week, I now believe that Hurricane Katrina represents a colossal failure of the Federal Government. At first, I thought that maybe local government, through the police and fire departments (a.k.a. “first responders”), had the immediate role in saving people, but I was wrong. The way the mainstream media has hammered away on me with constant wailing repetition has really been persuasive. If having small children has taught me anything, it’s that authoritative speech is marked by great volume and numbing reiteration. So yes, Mama Media, it’s all about a Federal failure. But what,...

"It is reported that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive." This blood-curdling news came from self-described social-justice advocate Randall Robinson, former chief of TransAfrica, an architect of the anti-apartheid sanctions movement, and author of The Debt — What America Owes to Blacks, an impassioned plea for slavery reparations. Writing for Arianna Huffington’s webpage, huffingtonpost.com, last Friday, September 2, Robinson continued: Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them. I am a sixty-four year old African-American. New Orleans marks the end of...

Barry Goldwater suggested four decades ago that New York City and the rest of the liberal U.S. Northeast seaboard should be sawed off and allowed to float out to sea. In the wake of New Orleans’ recent catastrophic swamping by Hurricane Katrina, another great public figure, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, has proposed a more serious notion, that the oddest city in the U.S. (even weirder than San Francisco) should not be rebuilt, in which case New Orleans eventually would subside into the Mississippi mud for an eternal rest. Meantime, a majority of otherwise-charitable Americans shortly and abruptly may...

It's Bush who's to blame for the London subway bombings in July, according to Jann Wenner, founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine. "If the London bombings are the work of an al-Qaida offshoot," contended Wenner, "then you have to fairly say, in the same way we condemn other's terror, this is in part the result of Bush's War on Iraq." In Wenner's world, a swaggering and trigger-happy Bush is driving people nuts, causing four otherwise normal guys to go wild and simultaneously blow themselves to smithereens during the morning rush hour in London. Of course that doesn't explain former...

Where to even begin in being one more idiot talking about Hurricane Katrina? I hate the subject. It should be a news item and a humanitarian cause --a huge recovery and reconstruction effort joined in by all. It should not a political issue fit for “commentary.” But the Hurricane tore at more than just the weaknesses in New Orleans’ inadequate levees. The shortcomings of the levee system were known to all who ever lived on the Gulf Coast, and in the end, all the levees really did was encourage expanded development in a huge geologic bowl sitting between a large...

The author of Unfit for Command was a law clerk for the late Chief Justice and remembers him fondly.The busts of the Chief Justices of the United States stand facing each other two-by-two across the Great Hall of the Supreme Court Building. Hughes and Taft, Vinson and Warren the fifteen statues march slowly to the courtroom doors, marking silently the progression of our nation's history. There is an empty niche immediately outside the doors of the Great Courtroom. Soon that niche will be filled with a marble depiction of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist—the last World War II veteran to...

I am sitting at my desk, a thousand miles from New Orleans, watching the city destruct over a live internet feed. Like many Americans, I am cycling through various news websites, blogs and online newspapers, marveling at the damage that is unfolding. Hurricane Katrina is dinnertime conversation, and I am astonished by the dire situation that is unfolding in Louisiana. However, unlike most of the people watching this tragedy unfold, I called New Orleans home until recently, and I feel a terrible sense of helplessness as I watch my hometown descend into chaos. The images are startling, made even more...

President Bush and House conservatives are on a collision course over the contentious issue of immigration reform, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) said Thursday. Tancredo, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus and author of the REAL GUEST Act (HR 3333), said he expects Bush to embrace legislation drafted by Senators Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and John McCain (R.-Ariz.). Conservatives strongly oppose the bill, which Tancredo said is tantamount to amnesty. Tancredo’s bill instead focuses on enforcement, particularly on companies that employ illegal immigrants. He said once illegal workers are denied jobs, they will no longer flood into the United States. “If...

If a number of heavyweight Republicans have their way, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be running for governor of Kansas next year. Gen. Richard B. Myers, whose four-year term as JCS chairman ends next month, is reportedly planning to settle in Kansas to teach at the university level. However, the Kansas State University graduate has begun to be boomed as the Republican opponent to Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in '06. Although the general's political views (and even his party registration, if any) are unknown, sources in Kansas told HUMAN EVENTS that Republican Sen. Sam Brownback "thinks...

I recently wrote about the fact that Liberals don’t really hate war, but they demonstrably do hate freedom — and America, too. The numerous responses I got to that intentionally provocative topic were quite interesting, to say the least. Predictably, most Conservatives seemed to love the concept. Meanwhile, most Liberals really “hated” it. Funny how intolerant these Left-wing, progressive, sometimes-defenders of the virtue of universal “tolerance” can be when it’s their own ox getting gored. I truly think some of these Woodstock Nation peaceniks might get a little violent if provoked. So then I got to thinking, “What else do...

A Gainesville, Georgia, talk show host returning from visiting our troops in Iraq wrote a letter to the New York Times disagreeing with the paper's pundits' conferring on Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier, the status of "absolute moral authority" regarding our involvement in Iraq. With sensitivity, Martha Zoller wrote that many mothers and fathers of fallen heroes, with equal moral clout, support our mission in Iraq. To her surprise, this southern gal received a bundle of e-mails from the New York City area calling her a "Nazi" and "concentration-camp capo," the latter a pejorative used often by Jews...