Free Republic

Correction: In the original version of this report, NEWSWEEK misquoted Falwell as referring to "assault ministry." In fact, Falwell was referring to "a salt ministry"—a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says "Ye are the salt of the earth." We regret the error.

Deliberate’ Neglect Laid to Bush In Policy on Katrina’s Aftermath By JOSH GERSTEIN Staff Reporter of the Sun SAN FRANCISCO — Senator Clinton told a largely friendly audience here Saturday night that the slow pace of government-sponsored reconstruction following Hurricane Katrina was the result of a deliberate decision by the Bush administration and may have been motivated by a desire to discourage Democratic voters from returning to the devastated region.

Cameron takes aim at chocolate orange By Christopher Adams and Jean Eaglesham David Cameron, Conservative leader, on Wednesday launched an outspoken attack on retailers, singling out WH Smith for offering cut-price chocolate oranges. He accused it of irresponsible marketing that made people fat. His remarks, in a speech on health policy, sparked concern that the Tories had embarked on a campaign against big business to win votes from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Mr Cameron said the consumer industries could do more to promote healthy lifestyles. “Try to buy a newspaper at the train station and, as you queue to...

America’s Earliest Terrorists Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror. By Joshua E. London At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation — an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators. Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy’s call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded...

In late January, I uncovered a password-protected Arabic-language website, Barsomyat.com, that was frequented by Middle Eastern Muslims, predominantly Egyptians. The purpose of Barsomyat.com was to systematically track Christians who were active in religious debates against Muslims on the internet chat service PalTalk. Barsomyat featured pictures of these Christians (some of which were obviously obtained by hacking into the Christians' computers) along with death threats and attempts to track down the subjects' physical addresses. Even Barsomyat.com's banner showed the website's intentions toward Christians, as it pictured a sheep--obviously intended to represent Christianity--getting its throat slit.

Given the nonstop talk about what the Bush administration didn't find in Iraq, it is high time Bush officials remind people of what they did find there: a chaotically administered, out-of-control weapons program that was easily accessible to terrorists. As inspector David Kay reported, Iraqi scientists up until the beginning of the war were "actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin"; "We know that terrorists were passing through Iraq. And now we know that there was little control over Iraq's weapons capabilities....The country had the technology, the ability to produce, and there were terrorist groups passing...

Science Standards We can’t afford to go light. Science education in America is already a hot topic, but it's about to get hotter. A federal committee you may not have heard of is set to vote on a document that could do it long-term damage to the teaching and learning of science in U.S. primary and secondary schools, just when it needs to be strengthened. The timing couldn't be worse, nor could the signals that this decision will send into states and schools across the land. As Thomas Friedman shows in his best-seller, The World Is Flat, there is ample...

The Party of Sam's Club Isn't it time the Republicans did something for their voters? by Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam THE PRESIDENCY OF GEORGE W. Bush has three years yet to run, but this season of scandal and disillusionment is an opportune moment for conservatives to start thinking seriously about the post-Bush era--and particularly how to fashion a domestic policy from the wreckage of Bush-style, big-government conservatism. Thanks to the abiding weakness of the Democratic party, Republicans haven't yet paid a political price for insider-friendly appropriation bills, Medicare boondoggles, or the smog of semi-corruption rising from the party's cozy...

Is Laffey the Best Medicine? Meet the Pat Toomey of 2006. Steve Laffey wants to become the Pat Toomey of 2006, with one important difference. Whereas former congressman Toomey failed in his bid to unseat liberal Republican senator Arlen Specter in last year’s Pennsylvania GOP primary, Laffey hopes to upset liberal Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee in next September’s Rhode Island GOP primary. “Our nation is not in good financial shape,” says Laffey. “I want to give the smallest state the strongest voice in the Senate.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee is so concerned about Laffey that it’s already running a...

The suggestion that the [Yale] alumni magazine's editors are insensitive to women is...delusional...In [a recent] issue.., the renowned-alumnus slot goes to Debbie Stoller, the editor of Bust magazine ("For Women With Something to Get Off Their Chests") and author of Stitch 'n Bitch Nation, which inspired an international network of women's knitting groups.

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL Miers Remorse Conservatives are right to be skeptical. The scantiness of her philosophical record has led reporters to focus on the two years of her career where she had to take stands: her one term as a member of the Dallas City Council during 1990 and 1991. There she established a record as an advocate of good government, increased funding for the arts, and building a light-rail system. Her one moment of high drama came when she quieted an angry crowd alleging police brutality. She apologized to the protesters on behalf of the city and...

Palestinians’ embracing hip-hop to push ‘perspective of the victims’ By Dion Nissenbaum GAZA CITY — The wanna-be gangsta boys arrive in baggy jeans and oversized T-shirts bearing the likeness of rapper Tupac Shakur, looking for a chance to freestyle with the night's star performers. The groupie girls in glittery tops throw their hands in the air, cheering on the breakdancers, when the hip-hop party is brought to a screeching halt: Time for evening prayer. Across the Gaza Strip, West Bank and even in Israel, young Arabic rappers are trying to juggle Middle East traditions with contemporary Western culture to create...

Pork-Barrel Republicans The problem is on the congressional right. Last week I had an interesting experience. I was asked to testify before a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. I made it clear to them that I was a Republican, but they said they wanted me anyway. I suppose they knew that I have become very disturbed by the Republican party’s fiscal policy and they presumed that I would attack it. I did not disappoint them. I explained that I am not particularly a deficit hawk and that the size of the Bush tax cuts does not bother me....

Tilting towards terrorists Under Condoleezza Rice, U.S. foreign policy continues to veer in the direction of the "Arabism" of her mentor Brent Scowcroft and James Baker. Diana West points to the latest evidence. First, according to West (who cites worldtribune.com), the Bush adminstration snubbed Israel's efforts to provide aid in the early aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Then, once it finally accepted Israel's aid, the State Department apparently omitted Israel's name from the list of countries participating in the relief effort, a list that touts Arab aid-givers. These affronts may be less the work of Rice than of Karen Hughes, to...

Now I realize that private charity would do much more -- if government hadn't crowded it out. In the 1920s -- the last decade before the Roosevelt administration launched its campaign to federalize nearly everything -- 30 percent of American men belonged to mutual aid societies, groups of people with similar backgrounds who banded together to help members in trouble. They were especially common among minorities. Mutual aid societies paid for doctors, built orphanages and cooked for the poor. Neighbors knew best what neighbors needed. They were better at making judgments about who needs a handout and who needed a...

A Civilizational Vacuum By George Neumayr Published 9/8/2005 12:09:11 AM A republican form of government presupposes self-government -- the capacity of citizens to govern themselves according to reason -- and does not, if it intends to survive, champion them as "victims" when they don't. But the shocking lack of self-government demonstrated by New Orleanians is the one area of government that our republic's vapid media won't scrutinize in their post-mortems on the city's collapse. Reporters keep shaking their fists at "the government," as if America were not a republic but a statist autocracy in which remote rulers can snap their...

A Two-City Tale New Orleans and Houston offer a study in contrasts. by Noemie Emery 09/06/2005 4:36:00 PM Late last week, as New Orleans was sliding into savage conditions, some talking heads were glowing with pleasure at the idea of a moral meltdown of such immense proportions that it would not only bury George Bush in its rubble, but erode forever the country's self confidence. Or, as Robert Scheer would happily write, "Instead of the much-celebrated American can-do machine that promises to bring freedom and prosperity to less fortunate people abroad, we have seen a callous official incompetence that puts...

A New Low for the MSM? The mainstream media's handline of Hurricane Katrina and the disasters in New Orleans is a disgrace, possibly the worst instance yet of media bias. Insane claims by left-wing nuts that President Bush botched the recovery effort on purpose so as to kill black people are repeated by the MSM in a chin-stroking mode, as if to say, "It's an interesting question--they might be on to something." Meanwhile, no one points out that it was President Bush who implored Governor Blanco to issue a first-ever mandatory evacuation order for the city, an action by the...

Canada Blames Us Gun-control folly here, up north, across the pond... By John R. Lott Jr. If you have a problem, it's often easier to blame someone else rather than deal with it. And with Canada's murder rate rising 12 percent last year and a recent rash of murders by gangs in Toronto and other cities, it's understandable that Canadian politicians want a scapegoat. That at least was the strategy Canada's premiers took when they met last Thursday with the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, and spent much of their time blaming their crime problems on guns smuggled...

Keep Quiet And Listen! The words of radical Islam speak for themselves. “You will find that the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations.” When and where did that venom come from? This last May — and out of the hateful mouth of a prominent Palestinian cleric, Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris. He was broadcast on a Palestinian Authority station. The televised Sheik finished with an even more frightening thought: “The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews — even the stones and trees which were...