Free Republic

Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns about Arlen Specter becoming the Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and the comments he made regarding President Bush's judicial nominees. I appreciate hearing from you. I have had the privilege of serving for two years on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Since I took office in the Senate, much of our work has been done in a very bipartisan manner. This has not been the case in the approval of President Bush's judicial nominees. The Constitution clearly states the Senate should give "advise and consent" to the President's judicial appointments,...

Liberals have been busy warning one another to prepare for 2008. Now conservatives are getting a "heads-up" from Time magazine's Michelle Cottle, who believes American culture will ultimately accept homosexual "marriage," stem-cell research and other "culture war" issues that irk conservatives. "While the Bush White House may be on the side of social conservatives, time is not," she writes, later noting, "As with women's rights and civil rights, the genie cannot be stuffed back into the bottle. "Day to day, liberals have the luxury of ignoring conservative America. ... Social conservatives, by contrast, cannot escape the world view of blue...

In a column recounting her family Thanksgiving, the oft-private New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd revealed an e-mail sent to her by her brother Kevin Dowd — an ideologically opposed sibling who lives in Maryland. "I breathe a huge sigh of relief and rejoice in the common sense of the American voting public. Congratulations to President Bush for winning re-election in a poker game played with a stacked deck," Mr. Dowd wrote. "No candidate, including Richard Nixon, ever had to endure the biased and unfair tactics of our major media in their attempt to influence the outcome of an election....

Reported on Fox news.- Masked gunmen assassinated a Sunni cleric north of Baghdad on Tuesday - the second such killing in as many days. Sheik Ghalib Ali al-Zuhairi was a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerics group that has called for a boycott of nationwide elections scheduled for Jan. 30.

Many liberal pundits and newspaper letter writers have been bragging about how brilliant they are while bemoaning the supposed stupidity of those who voted to re-elect President Bush earlier this month. So it probably should come as no surprise that two college professors wrote to the New York Times to explain why a recent survey found that Republicans were grossly outnumbered in academia: Republicans simply aren't smart enough to teach at the college level. "Academics are trained to reason using logic, to question evidence and to consider and evaluate several possible interpretations of events," Markus Meister, a professor of biology...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen on Monday assassinated a member of an influential Sunni clerics' group that has called for a boycott of national elections, just a day after Iraqi officials announced the balloting would be held Jan. 30 in spite of rising violence in Iraq (news - web sites). Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces recovered 12 bodies, including five decapitated ones, from an area south of Baghdad, police said Monday. One was identified as a member of the Iraqi National Guard. The bodies were found during a raid Sunday in Latifiyah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, said Lt. Adnan Abdullah....

COLLIERVILLE, Tenn. — Police searched Wednesday for a 10-year-old boy reported missing from his residence near Memphis, and ...issued a statewide Amber alert. Police said the parents of Hunter Wade Craig reported the boy went missing between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. CST. "His parents woke up this morning and he was missing," said Jennifer Johnson, a spokeswoman for the TBI. The youngster is described as a 4-foot-11 white boy with blue eyes and brown hair. He was reported to be wearing green pajamas. Anyone with information on Hunter Wade Craig is asked to call the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation...

On the Saturday night after the election, the Kerry campaign assembled at H2O, a waterfront nightclub in Southwest Washington, for a final evening of drinking, the New Republic's Ryan Lizza writes. "To everyone's surprise, John Kerry himself flew down from Boston to attend the festivities. Trying to buck up his demoralized troops, the ex-candidate gave a short speech about how much his team had accomplished," Mr. Lizza said. " 'People are going to try to rewrite history and say we didn't have a message in this campaign,' Kerry told his staff, according to one Democratic strategist. 'And, let me tell...

" 'The last mission of Vietnam War veterans ended on Nov. 3, at 2:08 p.m. Eastern Time, when John Kerry conceded the presidential race to George W. Bush,' announced James Warner, a lawyer who was a Marine pilot in Vietnam and spent five years and five months in Hanoi as a prisoner of war," John Fund writes at www.OpinionJournal.com. "On Saturday night, Mr. Warner gave a 'debriefing' on the role that two controversial groups of veterans played in raising doubts about John Kerry's fitness to serve as commander in chief. His audience consisted of attendees at Restoration Weekend [in Boca...

Pro-life forces are closely following the California conviction of Scott Peterson for the murder of his wife, Laci, and her unborn child — the first high-profile case to be decided since the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. "The Petersons' preborn child, Conner, was described by some as a non-person," says Judie Brown, president of American Life League. "The verdict makes it crystal clear that he, and all those who reside in the womb, are indeed human persons, not possessions."

"We don't have the internals on this poll, but the significance seems pretty plain," National Review says in an editorial. "Democratic Underground, a left-wing online forum, asked its readers, 'What is more depressing: 9/11/01 or 11/3/04?' Two hundred forty-five voted, of whom 73 percent picked the presidential election. Some Democratic Undergrounders were as disgusted by this result as normal American would be," the magazine said. " 'I'm about to bail on this forum after reading garbage like this,' wrote one. 'I'm starting to think many of you are way out of touch.' Hold on to that thought."

Firing into the air, Palestinian security men struggled earlier to remove the coffin from the aircraft and then held on to it tight as they placed it on a vehicle that plied its way through a dense throng of weeping mourners. "With our blood and soul we redeem you, Abu Ammar," the crowd chanted, using the nom de guerre of their leader, who fought for decades for a state he never achieved. At least nine Palestinians were wounded by shots fired by the security forces or gunmen. Medics said hundreds were treated after fainting or for minor injuries during the...

With the pressure now on to break filibusters, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist last night told the Federalist Society that Democrats face a choice — either stop, or face a rules change that will make judicial filibusters a thing of the past. "The Senate now faces a choice — either we accept a new and destructive practice, or we act to restore constitutional balance," Mr. Frist said in prepared remarks he was set to deliver to the group of conservative legal minds in Washington last night. "One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end," he said. "The...

More than one name with Georgia connections has floated above the Potomac since the election, but whether any of them land remains to be seen. Former Atlantan and current Westchester Countian Larry Thompson was frequently mentioned in the speculation over the attorney general's job, until the White House tapped Alberto Gonzales for the post Wednesday. Mercer Reynolds, an Ohioan by address but a Georgian by resort, has been the subject of similar speculation for the Commerce secretary's job. But our favorite Potomac float comes from Michael Ledeen, the contributing editor for National Review Online, who argues in a recent column...

"Enjoyed your article," James B. Davis writes about our item on disgruntled Americans who are contemplating moving to Canada or beyond because they can't stomach four more years of President Bush. Mr. Davis, fittingly enough, is founder of Help.Them.Leave.com, a 501(c)3 organization that offers relocation assistance for "disenfranchised" citizens at absolutely no cost. "In return for your irrevocable renunciation of your United States citizenship, and a sworn statement that you will never return, we will provide free one-way transportation to one of our politically matched, recommended countries on one of the jets we have chartered to provide this service," the...

"Dear Justice Marshall: On behalf of the American Conservative Union, its Board of Directors and ACU's 1 million members, permit me to offer our heartiest congratulations and thanks for almost single-handedly making possible President George W. Bush's historic election victory," ACU Chairman David Keene writes in a letter to Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. It was the Massachusetts high court which, by mandating same-sex "marriage" in that state, thrust the issue into national prominence during the election year. "Had it not been for your courageous decision to ignore the will of the people of...

The exodus of rural Georgia conservative Democrats started on Monday, even before their caucus met to elect new leaders. "If you are in the minority and are from rural Georgia, you are not going to have much say in the legislative process," said state Rep. Chuck Sims of Douglas, who was elected as a Democrat to his fifth term last Tuesday. On Monday, he joined the new Republican majority in the Georgia House of Representatives. "You are not in the game if you are in a minority party, and rural Georgia can't afford that," he repeated. State Rep. Hinson Mosley...

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, one of the nation's most prominent Democrats, compares President Bush to Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Mr. Daley said the 2004 election reflects a political change on the order of what occurred under those legendary Democrats. "You talk about Roosevelt. You talk about Kennedy. And you have to talk about Bush. You have to give credit to his discipline, to the message he stayed on line. People made fun. They underestimated him all the time. He showed them all," Mr. Daley told John Fund, who wrote about the interview at the Political Diary...

Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell III is calling on Newsweek to issue a public apology in its next issue for misinforming the public about television ads produced by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Newsweek said in its post-election special issue: "When the Swift Boat vets made ads attacking [Sen. John] Kerry with images from his 1971 testimony, they used a voice-over, an actor reading Kerry's words." (The Newsweek story was written by Evan Thomas, based on reporting from Eleanor Clift, Kevin Peraino, Jonathan Darman, Peter Goldman, Holly Bailey, Tamara Lipper and Suzanne Smalley.) "We have checked with...

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who in her first postelection column last week accused President Bush of "dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule," apparently thinks she went too easy on the Republican. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that her second postelection column, published yesterday, bordered on the hysterical. "Just how much did Karl Rove hate not being one of the cool guys in high school in the '60s? Enough to hatch schemes to marshal the forces of darkness to take over the country?" Miss Dowd asked. "Oh, yeah," she...