Free Republic

Lobbyists Hillary Clinton (D) $517,525 John McCain (R) $314,840 Mitt Romney (R) $215,775 Christopher J. Dodd (D) $211,575 Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) $206,300 Bill Richardson (D) $122,050 Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D) $111,810 Fred Thompson (R) $72,800 Barack Obama (D) $70,249 Duncan Hunter (R) $30,900 John Edwards (D) $21,500 Sam Brownback (R) $17,225 Mike Huckabee (R) $3,664 Tom Tancredo (R) $250

6.12.2003Principle v. ExpediencyIf he wasn’t one of my heroes before, he certainly is now. William Pryor, the Alabama state attorney general who has been nominated by President Bush to a seat on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, put on an extraordinary demonstration of courage, tenacity, and integrity this month in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Facing the bitterly divided Senate Judiciary Committee, he threw caution to the wind and actually told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It was quite frankly, a rare feat that left Senators on both sides of the aisle more than...

I got a phone call last week from the head of one of the many departments in the Clark County School District which I had mentioned in my March 16 essay on elephantine school districts, headlined "Mission Creep." "Do you even know what my department does?" demanded the fellow, whose listing in the district's administrative phone directory says only "Warranty Department." I had no idea, I said. And, I continued, that was the whole point of the listing: The sheer number -- hundreds -- of bureaucrats being paid $60,000 and $80,000 and more per year, leeches living off taxpayer funds...

COVER STORY 'RED' ALERT One man's "fear-mongering" on terror is another's "preparedness," but clearly the threats are taking their toll on the nation's psyche—particularly as Americans consider the possibility of terrorist retaliation after the first shots are fired in Iraq. But a plainspoken, ex-Army Sarge suggests that Americans put away the duct tape and plastic wrap and calmly learn to stay safeBy Lynn VincentAmerican policymakers and members of the United Nations debating society are not the only ones talking about VX nerve gas, anthrax, and other terrorist weapons. On a Southwest Airlines flight out of Phoenix last week, two couples,...

Tuesday, January 7, 2003462 WordsThe sacred but endangered Bill of RightsJohn W. Whitehead Four hundred, sixty-two words. To those who value freedom, they are the most important words in the English language–words that approach sacredness and constitute the only remaining barrier against an ever-encroaching government. These 462 words make up the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution.These unequivocal declarations of human rights may not be the most eloquent ever written, but they contain the most potent and powerful rights ever guaranteed to a group of people. The First Amendment, for instance, guarantees the freedoms of religion, speech and...

Wednesday, July 17, 2002 Salt and Light in School Jim Babka | Who am I to tell Christians that they should stop supporting government education? My recent RazorMouth article on the Pledge of Allegiance was republished in two other venues, and I received a lot of angry email. One Christian mother from Florida wrote to tell me that, because her sister home-schooled her children, she had prayerfully re-evaluated whether she should do the same. Both she and her husband felt that God was clearly leading them to leave their children in the government schools. In her words: one of the...

Conversation with a Pacifist On the night in 1940 when the big ack-ack barrage was fired over London for the first time, I was in Picadilly Circus when the guns opened up, and I fled into the Cafe Royal to take cover. Among the crowd inside a good-looking, well-made youth of about twenty-five was making somewhat of a nuisance of himself with a copy of Peace News, which he was forcing upon the attention of everyone at the neighbouring tables. I got into conversation with him, and the conversation went something like this: The youth: "I tell you, it'll all ...

CALL FOR REPARATIONS FOR DUTCHMEN I am a Dutch-American who grew up in northern New Jersey. I am a descendent of the noble Dutch settlers who lived in peace on Manhattan Island during the early 1600s. This land was legally purchased from the original owners (the Canarsees) circa 1626. On August 18, 1664, English warships carrying hundreds of professional soldiers, sailed into New Amsterdam’s harbor and forced the peace loving Dutch to surrender. This act drove innocent Dutch women and children from there homes and forced them to migrate to abysmal places like northern NJ, northern California, Michigan & Lynden, ...