Free Republic

Unions: An Ohio contractor was wounded by gunfire Wednesday by a shadowy man vandalizing his SUV with union threats. Where's Washington's outrage at such lawlessness? Had King Electrical Services owner John King been shot by, say, a Tea Partyer, there'd be no end to the public pontificating from Washington's politicians and media commentators about their rhetoric or protests inciting violence. It's quite a different story for the Lambertville, Mich., contractor who woke up in the dead of night a week ago found a silhouetted figure on his driveway spraying "SCAB" on the side of his vehicle. The figure fired a...

<p>There are two things my father wishes I would never discuss on this blog. My love life, and my finances.</p> <p>I'm cool with avoiding my love life. Not much to report there. I hope it stays that way.</p> <p>But with finances, I feel obligated to speak up. But before we enter into that discussion, visit this link to understand what happened with the mortgage industry to cause the current situation.</p>

Politics: Was what Al Gore called "the largest global entertainment event in all of human history" also the largest in-kind political contribution? And where's the Fairness Doctrine when you need it? Considering that here in the U.S. the Peacock Network's three-hour Gore infomercial on global warming lost out in the ratings to "Cops" and "America's Funniest Home Videos," Gore's claim may be open to question. Live Earth, in fact, may have been America's funniest home video. Ever. But thanks in large part to the 75 hours of free airtime that NBC gave Gore on its various stations, starting with NBC...

Campaign '08: Presidential candidate John Edwards is set to begin his poverty tour. But he might have more credibility on the issue if he took a poverty vow instead. A week after rock stars and miscellaneous other narcissists hectored the world about global warming, the Democrat from North Carolina is going to nag America about its supposed poverty problem. Is there no end to the hypocrisy of the left? The "Road to One America" tour will begin Sunday and cover 12 cities in eight states over three days. It's billed as part of Edwards' grand plan to end "poverty in...

Cuba's late Marxist revolutionary, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, is experiencing something of a revival these days. His fiery-eyed visage and rock-star good looks, immortalized in an iconic snapshot by photographer Alberto Korda in 1961, seem to epitomize the youthful idealism of revolution, rebellion and free-spiritedness.

War On Terror: Two years ago, U.S. forces reportedly knew where al-Qaida's leaders were meeting in Pakistan and were ready to snatch them. The mission was aborted out of respect for Pakistan. The news, first reported by the New York Times, only confirms our long-held suspicion that Islamabad, not Washington, is running by default our war against al-Qaida Central. Two years ago, if the classified reporting is accurate, Osama bin Laden's deputy should have been in leg irons at Gitmo. Instead, Ayman al-Zawahri is directing al-Qaida's foot soldiers around the world. Last week, he delivered Jihad Inc.'s latest quarterly report...

Political Correctness: Seems the ACLU couldn't care less that a San Diego public school has set aside 15 minutes of classroom instruction time for Muslim students to pray, while non-Muslims twiddle their thumbs. Right now it has no plans to legally challenge the budding madrassa as endorsement of a religion by government. Apparently the establishment clause only applies to the practice of Judeo-Christian rituals in public places. The special accommodations for Carver Elementary's nearly 100 Somali Muslims don't stop with organized prayer. The school cafeteria has banned pork and other foods that conflict with the Islamic diet.

Global Warming: If the rock stars who flew hundreds of thousands of miles in their jets to save the earth wanted to hug trees, they could have hugged the forest that once covered Greenland. We didn't see Sheryl Crow passing out single-sheet allotments of toilet paper to Live Earth concert-goers. But we did see perhaps the biggest-ever exercise in hypocrisy and futility as performers around the globe plugged in and amped up to save the earth from the climate impact of excessive energy consumption. John Rego, environmental director of Live Earth, insists the multi-continent charade, like the mansions of Gore,...

Competition: After Boeing unveiled its new 787 Dreamliner, rival Airbus did the noble thing: It congratulated the U.S. jet maker. If Airbus really wants to be noble, however, it should give up its government subsidies.

Nicolas Sarkozy was a divisive figure during his campaign for the French presidency, but he's governing as a uniter, not a divider. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 promising to ease partisan divisions. He has left our politics a wreck of recrimination, anger and polarization. This weekend, the contrast between Sarkozy and Bush could not have been more conspicuous. From France came word that the center-right president was urging the International Monetary Fund to name Dominique Strauss-Kahn as its managing director.

Free Trade: Congressional Democrats justify scrapping a U.S. trade pact with our best ally in the hemisphere on vague claims its government violates human rights. Last week, Colombia's people saw a different enemy. It was couched in syrupy language, but it was as bad a blow to Colombia as any dealt by its enemies. The U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, in a statement by Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Charles Rangel and Sander Levin declared the Democratic Party would deny free trade indefinitely to 46 million Colombians over a few dozen unsolved murders of union activists in the last year....

In the five years between the 2002 kidnapping of 12 state legislators by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the rebels' recent announcement that 11 of those hostages have been killed, much has changed for the better in Colombia. The lawmakers were taken at a time when the state was very weak. Their murders, on the other hand, appear to be a desperate act by a frustrated band of thugs who have failed to achieve their desired results with terror. Colombia today is significantly more secure and economically healthier than it was in 2002. Yet as events in...

Congress: Democrats continue to poke, prod and probe the Bush administration. Some of the investigations are a mere nuisance. Others, if not reined in, will compromise our national security. We've editorialized recently about the many attack investigations on the White House, thinking Democrats had only launched a few dozen because no one had a real handle on how deep their maliciousness ran. Now we know. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said last week that the Democrats had "launched over 300 investigations, had over 350 requests for documents and interviews, and they have had over 600 oversight hearings in just about...

War On Terror: The Talibanization of tribal Pakistan demands a military solution. Not from Islamabad, but Washington. Not via coalition-building, but unilaterally. Not later, now — before it's too late. Last September, on the orders of Pakistan's president, Pakistani forces withdrew from the tribal area in North Waziristan in an ill-advised amnesty deal with local militants. Since then, both North and South Waziristan have come under Taliban control, creating a dangerous new sanctuary for al-Qaida.

Defense: Apart from prosecuting the global war on terror, creating a comprehensive missile defense shield is the Pentagon's most important job in the 21st century. Yet some in Congress are trying to kill it. Why is Congress trying to defund the U.S. missile defense shield in Eastern Europe — where it will protect not just our allies but the U.S. as well? Hard to say. Today, some 19 countries have ballistic missile capabilities. At least eight of those have nuclear weapons — and more are on the way. No doubt, most warrant watching. In just a few years, Iran and...

Media Bias: MSNBC would be fairer and more balanced with Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on the air instead of Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Where is its "Fairness Doctrine"? After the Senate's immigration amnesty bill lost for the second time last month, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, complained: "Talk radio is running America," and "we have to deal with that problem." Dealing with it could mean letting liberal Democrats such as Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and John Kerry of Massachusetts revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine, to once again force broadcasters to give "equal...

Environment: Will Al Gore's "Live Earth" concerts to remind us of the global warming bogeyman be acoustic affairs played without lights and amplification? No? Then why not call them the Live Hypocrisy concerts? As many as 2 billion of us are expected to watch more than 150 pop and rock acts Saturday at various locations across the world. Gore sees the extravaganza as the "beginning of a three-year campaign worldwide to deliver information about how we solve the climate crisis." But there's no crisis here except for a crisis of credibility — and not just that of Gore, whose credibility...

Missile Defense: Vladimir Putin thinks the U.S. should station part of its missile shield on Russian soil. Given his country's increasingly belligerent ways, that doesn't strike us as a very good idea. The U.S. and its NATO allies have long wanted to set up missile defense outposts in Eastern Europe. Russia's recent behavior only makes it more necessary. It has shown a tendency to revert to its old Soviet ways of paranoia, seeing U.S. machinations behind every Russian setback.

Justice: Those who criticize President Bush's decision to commute Scooter Libby's 30-month prison sentence should remember: The punishment should fit the crime. And in this case, there wasn't one. Yet, that hasn't stopped Bush's foes from going into high dudgeon about Bush letting Libby avoid jail. The New York Times editorialized that Bush, rather than showing basic decency, "sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell." Presidential candidate and media darling Barack Obama opined this demonstrated how the Bush White House has "consistently placed itself and its ideology above...

Wealth: Mexico's Carlos Slim has surpassed Bill Gates as the world's richest man. As the kvetching starts about why Slim is so rich from a place so poor, the real issue is why his country doesn't have more like him. We can already hear the grousing about how Slim could amass a $68 billion fortune in country where the average income is $6,700 a year and one of seven workers has fled to the U.S. to work illegally. And Slim's net worth is impressive, no matter how it's viewed. For example, it amounts to 8% of Mexico's annual economic output,...