Free Republic

As Labor Day opened the final stretch in John Kerry's 1996 re-election campaign, polls showed that little more than a third of Massachusetts voters believed he deserved a third term in the Senate. That summer's headlines had widened what one Kerry adviser called the "charm gap" between the senator and his challenger, William F. Weld, the affable aristocrat who had won his second term as governor two years earlier with 71 percent of the vote. When Mr. Weld punctuated a news conference by diving fully clothed into the Charles River, Mr. Kerry seemed stiffer than ever by comparison. When Mr....

Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property — by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort. — Ayn Rand, “The Property Status of Airwaves” (1964) Outrage over Janet Jackson’s racy half-time performance during Super Bowl XXXVIII did not go unnoticed by television’s government overseers. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is actually considering fining CBS for the broadcast. According to the February 3 Washington Times, “Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell ... ordered an investigation of the...

Intellectuals who disdain the common man’s freedom never run out of rationalizations for government control. In a recent New York Times op-ed touting his book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, psychology professor Barry Schwartz criticized political reforms aimed at expanding choice. He argued that “for many people, increased choice can lead to a decrease in satisfaction. Too many options can result in paralysis, not liberation.” He offered empirical evidence that a large range of choice makes people less happy, not more. For example, he cites research showing that “as the number of flavors of jam or varieties...

The Ten Commandments monument that led to Roy Moore's expulsion as Alabama's chief justice remains in storage, but the Alabama Judicial Building unveiled a new display of the Decalogue that has satisfied some critics. The 5,300-pound granite monument ruled by a federal judge a violation of the First Amendment is just yards away from an exhibit featuring the Commandments with seven other historical documents that helped form the basis of Western law, WSFA-TV in Montgomery, Ala., reported. Moore, who has argued his monument is a fulfillment of the Alabama constitution's requirement that its public officials acknowledge God, said the new...

The presidentially appointed independent commission is a time-tested tool for taking the heat off the CIA and the administration. It hasn't always worked. In 1975, President Ford named Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to head a prestigious commission to investigate domestic surveillance of antiwar activists by the CIA, which had been uncovered by Seymour Hersh of The New York Times. That inquiry was superseded by Senate and House investigations that uncovered a litany of larger CIA improprieties from drug experiments on unwitting subjects to assassination conspiracies targeting Fidel Castro and others. In 1986, President Reagan named former Sen. John Tower to...

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday he opposes changes to the new Medicare law this year, despite a raft of proposals, higher cost estimates from the Bush administration and steady criticism from Democrats. Frist, a surgeon, also said he does not expect major health care legislation to pass Congress this year, although he said he plans to focus on limiting awards in medical malpractice cases, a hot-button election-year topic. The Tennessee Republican said the sweeping changes to Medicare, including a new prescription drug benefit for seniors, should be given a chance to work before changes are considered. He said...

President Bush named seven people Friday to sit on an independent study commission to look into intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons, choosing former Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb and retired judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, to head the panel. "We must stay ahead of constantly changing intelligence challenges," Bush said. "The stakes for our country cannot be higher." Robb was a former U.S. senator and governor of Virginia and son-in-law of the late President Johnson. He is married to Lynda Baines Johnson and has been practicing law since leaving the Senate. Silberman is a conservative who served as deputy attorney...

If the life of Robert S. McNamara is a series of unfinished circles, one of the biggest ones was closed here Wednesday night. Mr. McNamara, the defense secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, fielded questions from center stage in a packed auditorium at his alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley, for the first time since graduating in 1937. Under the glare of bright lights, Mr. McNamara, 87, faced an audience of graying hippies, men with Vietnam draft lottery numbers still imprinted in their minds and an assortment of 1960's radicals who had devoted the better part of their...

Kurt Warner angered Rams coach Mike Martz when he said on Super Bowl Sunday that religious beliefs might have contributed to his benching last season. The two-time NFL MVP apologized Thursday, saying the speech was almost totally about the power of positive thinking. Warner's agent said the remarks were taken out of context. ``It was my intention to give an inspirational message about keeping the faith and fighting through adversity,'' Warner said in a statement. ``I simply wanted to encourage people to stay true to themselves in good times and bad. ``I regret any controversy this has created. My intentions...

The "animal rights" movement is celebrating its latest victory: an earlier, more painful death for future victims of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease. Thanks to intimidation by animal rights terrorists, Cambridge University has dropped plans to build a laboratory that would have conducted cutting-edge brain research on primates. According to The Times of London, animal-rights groups "had threatened to target the centre with violent protests ... and Cambridge decided that it could not afford the costs or danger to staff that this would involve." The university had good reason to be afraid. At a nearby animal-testing company, Huntingdon Life Sciences,...

Every Valentine's Day a certain philosophic crime is perpetrated. Actually, it is committed year-round, but its destructiveness is magnified on this holiday. The crime is the propagation of a widely accepted falsehood: the idea that love is selfless. Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice. Love based on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we are told, is altruistic. But is it? Imagine a Valentine's Day card which takes this premise seriously. Imagine receiving a card with the following message: "I get no pleasure from your existence. I obtain no personal enjoyment from the way...

The president's budget is both a political statement and an accounting document. It sets out the White House's priorities and agenda and tells us what they will cost. Unfortunately, while the Bush 2005 budget sent to Congress this week fully succeeds at telling us where the president wants to go, it fails just as completely at providing a bottom line that is credible. Indeed, the numbers are so unreliable that in just the few days since the budget was released it has created serious doubts about whether we can afford the policies the administration is supporting. The politics of the...

A media firm working for President Bush's re-election campaign has a share of the administration's publicly funded $12.6 million advertising effort touting the new Medicare law. National Media Inc. of Alexandria, Va., is purchasing $9.5 million worth of television advertising for a 30-second commercial that the administration intends to educate older Americans about changes in Medicare such as the new prescription drug benefit, executives involved in the advertising campaign said Wednesday. Critics of the new law contended the firm's involvement is evidence that the administration is mounting a political rather than educational campaign for the new law. "There are hundreds...

<p>GO TO the White House website, and you can read George W. Bush's sober and reassuring words about his proposed budget for fiscal year 2005.</p> <p>"We're calling upon Congress to be wise with the taxpayer's money," the president told reporters on Monday. "We look forward to working with them to bring fiscal discipline to the appropriations process so we can cut the deficit in half over a five year period of time."</p>

Thank you very much. Incidentally, a couple of visitors came in with me over here -- Don Kendall and Lou Uhler, who are the cochairmen of the drive out there to help with this very thing that brings us together here today. But I'm here to thank 218 Members of the House of Representatives, Republicans and responsible Democrats, who joined together to sign the discharge petition for the balanced budget tax limitation amendment. This is an important step forward in a struggle our administration has waged for many months -- the battle to get runaway spending under control as part...

A year ago the ground of eastern Texas trembled with the horror overhead. The shock waves spread as the worst fears were confirmed: space shuttle Columbia had turned from a high-precision machine into a lifeless meteor, its crew lost. Americans were hit with a degree of shock not equaled since September 11. But why such shock? It wasn't the death toll: instantly, a potentially far more deadly war in Iraq was forgotten like yesterday's weather. Nor is it just that astronauts are an especially fine group of educated, hard-working scientists—before that Saturday, no one cared enough even to know their...

The California grocery strike has entered its fourth month—and there is no end in sight. Workers are still picketing stores, the shelves are under-stocked, and profits are dwindling. Talks between the grocery chains and the United Food and Commercial Workers' union have failed to resolve the mutually harmful conflict. Why? If the union's demands are outrageous, why can't the stores walk away? The stores have hired substitute employees, so evidently some people accept the stores' working conditions. Why can't the stores fire the strikers and end the dispute? The stores can neither back out nor dismiss strikers because they are...

The assault on science that I discussed in my January 30th Report from the Front unfortunately is not confined to bookstores at the Grand Canyon. Proposed curriculum guidelines for Georgia schools suggest that the word “evolution” not be used. It would be replaced with “biological changes over time.” The Georgia Education Department already omits much material referring to the Earth’s age and the relationship of various living organisms to one another. (Yes, if governments didn’t own and run schools, bad ideas might be better confined. But unfortunately that’s not the case.) State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox maintains that the...

American soldiers are dying at a rate of more than one a day in Iraq, despite some commanders' recent claims to have broken the back of the insurgency. The toll in January was 45 - five more than in December - despite hopes that deposed President Saddam Hussein's capture would stop the killings from roadside bombs and other attacks. The number of deaths in January will rise to 47 when the Pentagon changes the status of two soldiers who are missing and believed to have died in the Tigris River on Jan. 25. That would make the second highest monthly...

THE REPUBLICAN high command ought to be ecstatic over John Kerry’s ascent toward the Democratic Presidential nomination. His political profile should reassure George W. Bush’s supporters: Massachusetts upper class, Vietnam antiwar protester, Mike Dukakis’s lieutenant governor, Teddy Kennedy’s protege, 95 percent liberal voter. Yet, ever since Kerry won in New Hampshire, Republican concern about President Bush’s reelection has grown. “I can see the pucker factor,” said one GOP operative, using the old military slang term for an attack of gut-clenching fear. What he implies is that he and his colleagues are confronting the possibility of another Bush becoming a one-term...