Free Republic

Forget the small fry: the big guys are still out there By Mark Steyn (Filed: 16/06/2002) By common consent, the "dirty bomb" story bombed. At the beginning of last week, John Ashcroft, the US Attorney-General, announced that the authorities had apprehended an American citizen, Abdullah al-Muhajir, formerly Jose Padilla, for plotting to explode a "dirty bomb", which, as Mr Ashcroft helpfully explained, "is highly toxic to humans and can cause mass death and injury". He was being detained "for the safety of all Americans". The Dow Jones immediately dropped 80 points on the announcement, while the rest of America gave...

The Duty to DieThomas Sowell Our betters have been telling us how to live our lives for so long that it is only the next logical step for them to tell us when to die. We have grown so used to meekly accepting their edicts, even on what words we can and cannot use -- "swamp" has virtually disappeared from the English language, replaced by "wetlands," as "bums" has been replaced by "the homeless, "sex" by "gender" -- that it seems only fitting that they should now tell us when to die. The new phrase is "the duty to ...

My nephew (much to my chagrin) is a born again greenie. He recently sent us this link (WARNING! This is a nasa.gov site for those of you (justifiably) concerned about cookie abuse!), which is a photograph from space showing the western hemisphere at night, the point being to show my wife and me the dreadful over-indulgence of energy use in our country. I sent him the county by county map of the 2000 election and asked him to note that the largest clusters of light visible from space coincide with the blue areas on the map...no surprise there, I s'pect! ...

America No Longer Exists Lawrence Auster, Wednesday, April 25, 2001 Aside from the important debate over whether the United States humiliated itself to retrieve its people from China, was I alone in sensing the vague air of unreality that hung over the entire hostage situation? During those 11 days, I kept getting the odd impression that the standoff with China was occurring at some great remove and was of little concern to us – whether the "us" were the media, the American people, or the U.S. government itself.I'm not talking about such alienist media figures as Peter Jennings, with ...

Amtrak’s Bad Trip If our national passenger rail line can't turn a buck running trains, maybe it can by enlisting in the drug war. By Michael W. Lynch In addition to its high prices, weak coffee, bad food, and horrible service, here’s one more reason to avoid Amtrak: It gives federal drug cops your travel itinerary.If the narcs don’t like how you paid for your ticket (helpful hint: avoid cash), or find a digit wrong in your phone number (or find none at all), or don’t like the spelling of your name (any guesses which ones are most suspect?), you ...

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasury." Alexander Tyler

The score: Marines: Mucho! Clinton: 0! This is "one-upsmanship" that is going to be hard to beat. The Marines certainly pulled off a cool covert operation and nobody saw it until now. I am not sure if this is correct but if it is I think they have scored for 8 years. "CNN this morning showed George W. leaving HM-1. The Marine at the front step saluted, GW returned it, and as he walked away, the Marine executed a right face to stand facing GW's back...something that was missing in eight years of the Clinton presidency. The traditional Marine Corps ...

CAMP DAVID, Md. (Reuters) - President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared to hit it off on Friday when they met for the first time at the snow covered presidential mountain retreat. The future of the ``special relationship'' between Britain and the United States, which both had hoped to reinforce, looked to be in good shape as they described their meeting in glowing terms. ``Pretty darned good. Very good,'' Bush told reporters who asked how the get-acquainted session had gone. ``Excellent,'' Blair chimed in.