Free Republic

So Much News, So Little Sense May 27, 2007 MARK STEYN News, news everywhere -- so much one can hardly take it all in: Item One: In Gaza, Islamic Jihad is planning to send waves of female suicide bombers into action against the Zionist Entity. Asked by an Israeli reporter whether self-detonating ladies enjoy the same 72-virgin deal as the lads, an Arab scholar said no, but that the gals will be served in Paradise by "dwarfs." Snow White got seven dwarfs, but it's unclear whether Blow White will get the full 72: Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, etc., all the way...

Light Bulbs That Don't Signify Ideas April 29, 2007BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Everything's difficult, isn't it? In the Democratic presidential candidates' debate, Sen. Barack Obama was asked what he personally was doing to save the environment, and replied that his family was "working on" changing their light bulbs. Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to "work on" changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the...

Undisclosed DNA Results Go PublicThe defense analyzes mounds of data provided by the lab Mike Nifong hired to conduct DNA tests, then counterattacks. The results devastate the prosecution. Joseph Neff, Staff Writer On Dec. 5, Jim Cooney met Mike Nifong for the first time. Cooney, a veteran defense lawyer from Charlotte, had recently taken over as lead attorney for Reade Seligmann, one of three Duke lacrosse players Nifong had charged with rape. Cooney wanted to start on the right foot with the man trying to put his client in prison for 20 years, so he began with a goodwill gesture....

Iran's Bluff Humbles BritainApril 8, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Watching Tottenham Hotspur fans taking on the Spanish constabulary at a European soccer match the other night, I found myself idly speculating on what might have happened had those Iranian kidnappers made the mistake of seizing 15 hard-boiled football yobs who hadn't got the Blair memo about not escalating the situation. Instead, as we know, the mullahs were fortunate enough to take hostage 15 Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines. Which were which was hard to say upon their release. The Queen's Navee had been demobbed. The token gal...

Taking of Hostages by Iran is not Britain's Finest Hour April 1, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Twenty-seven years ago, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a student in Tehran and is said (by a former Iranian president, for one) to be among those in the U.S. embassy who seized and held American citizens hostage for more than a year. Today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is president of Iran and bears less ambiguous responsibility for Western hostages. This time round, they're British subjects: 15 sailors and Royal Marines. There are a few differences between this kidnapping and the last: Back in 1979, the Iranians...

MUSHARRAF CAUGHT IN A STICKY WICKET March 25, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist The other day Pakistan's Gen. Pervez Musharraf took time off from his hectic schedule of trying to survive assassination attempts to pay tribute to someone who, alas, had been less successful at dodging the attentions of his killers: A week ago, during the cricket World Cup, Bob Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistani national cricket team, was murdered in the Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, in what Mark Shields (not the American TV pundit but the veteran Scotland Yard man leading the police investigation) called ?extraordinary...

Victor Victorians. A Lesson in Real Morality March 18, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist 'William Wilberforce,'' writes Eric Metaxas in Amazing Grace, "was the happy victim of his own success. He was like someone who against all odds finds the cure for a horrible disease that's ravaging the world, and the cure is so overwhelmingly successful that it vanquishes the disease completely. No one suffers from it again -- and within a generation or two no one remembers it ever existed.'' What did Wilberforce ''cure''? Two centuries ago, on March 25, 1807, one very persistent British backbencher secured the...

How Gore's Massive Energy Consumption Saves the World March 4, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Stop me if you've heard this before, but the other day the Rev. Al Gore declared that "climate change" was "the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced.'' Ever. I believe that was the same day it was revealed that George W. Bush's ranch in Texas is more environmentally friendly than the Gore mansion in Tennessee. According to the Nashville Electric Service, the Eco-Messiah's house uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home. The average household consumes...

Alan D. Eames, 59, Scholar of Beers Around the World, Dies By DOUGLAS MARTIN Published: February 27, 2007 Alan D. Eames, who cultivated his reputation as “the Indiana Jones of beer” by crawling into Egyptian tombs to read hieroglyphics about beer and voyaging along the Amazon in search of a mysterious lost black brew, died on Feb. 10 at his home in Dummerston, Vt. He was 59. His wife, Sheila, said he died after suffering respiratory failure while he slept. Mr. Eames called himself a beer anthropologist, a role that allowed him to expound on subjects like what he put...

Why the Iraq war is turning into America's defeatFebruary 18, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist The week's news from Iraq: According to the state television network, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was wounded in a clash with security forces just north of Baghdad. A senior deputy was killed. Meanwhile, the punk cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has decided that discretion is the better part of mullahs and has temporarily relocated to Iran. That's right: The biggest troublemaker in Iraq is no longer in Iraq. It may be that his Persian vacation is only to marry a cousin...

Don't Ruin Economy Over Tiny Temp Rise February 11, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Our Thought For The Week comes from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." That would be yours truly: the climate holocaust denier. I wrote last week about "global warming," or "cooling," or "climate change," or (the latest term) "climate disruption" -- for...

What's so Hot About Fickle Science? February 4, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist From the "Environmental News Network": "Science Is Solid on Climate Change, Congress Told." "The science is solid," says Louise Frechette, deputy secretary-general of the United Nations. "The science is solid," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein. "The science is really solid," says TV meteorologist Heidi Cullen. "The science is very solid." And at that point, on "Larry King Live" last week, Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, remarked: "Heidi says the science is solid and I can't criticize her because she never says what science she's...

<p>"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states ..." -- Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 2.</p> <p>"What's the Constitution between friends?" -- Rep. Timothy Campbell, a Tammany Democrat, to Democratic President Grover Cleveland after Cleveland said that a bill Campbell favored was unconstitutional.</p>

Old U.S.S.R. Made Old Europe Look NewJanuary 28, 2007BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist John O'Sullivan's new book The President, The Pope And The Prime Minister has a marvelous account of the funeral of Yuri Andropov. In case you've forgotten, he was one of those late-period Soviet leaders who looked like he'd been plucked in haste from the local embalmer's and propped up against the balcony for the May Day parade. When he was eventually pronounced (officially) dead in 1984, Margaret Thatcher was prevailed upon by an aide to stop at a shoe store en route to the airport and get...

Edwards Home County's Largest The 28,200-square-foot Edwards home in Orange County is expected to be valued at more than $6 million. RALEIGH — Presidential candidate John Edwards and his family recently moved into what, according to county tax officials, is the most valuable home in Orange County. The home, which includes a recreational building attached to the main living quarters, also is probably the largest in the county. “The Edwardses’ residential property will likely have the highest tax value in the county,” Orange County Tax Assessor John Smith told . He estimated that the tax value will exceed $6 million...

Pelosi a rare example of a woman who 'has it all' January 14, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist I don't know where they stand on apple pie, but the Democrats have come out for motherhood in a big way. In fact, who needs apple pie when you've got the extra-sugary content of the Washington Post? Last Wednesday, the capital's newspaper of record (now available in print, online and in granulated form) published a column headlined ''Grandma With A Gavel.'' Can you guess which grandma it was, boys and girls? Yes, it was Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has single-handedly, as...

What We Need in New Year is Some Resolution December 31, 2006 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist My New Year's resolution is not to make any New Year predictions. I called last year pretty badly -- readers may remember my confident assertions every week or two that the Republicans would hold the House and Senate. War is a tough sell in a democracy, particularly the kind of war we face today. On the other hand, one should never underestimate the seductiveness of complacency. If you happened to catch John Edwards, the hair-today-gone-tomorrow pretty boy of the 2004 campaign, re-emerging in...

<p>When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.</p>

Why Radical Islam - and Why Now?By Victor Davis Hanson Thursday, December 21, 2006 Read any newspaper or turn on any news broadcast and you're bound to encounter stories of Islamic radicals fighting, killing and threatening each other — and just about everyone else. In Somalia, jihadists, with the support of al-Qaida, have clashed with troops loyal to the country’s internationally recognized interim government and now threaten neighboring Ethiopia with all-out war. Nearby in Darfur, Muslim militiamen called janjaweed are waging genocide against black Christian and animist villagers — apparently with the consent of the Sudanese government. Shiite and Sunni...

Higher Taxes Only Increase PovertyNovember 27, 2006 This is about taxes and the rise of the Democrats, so it is expected that Democrats’ eyes will glaze over immediately. That’s the problem; Democrats’ eyes glaze over every time they hear anyone start talking about the evils of high taxation. They believe — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — that raising taxes increases government revenue.It doesn’t. Art Laffer, propounder of the theory that lowering taxes generally raises government tax revenue, has long since been vindicated. George W. Bush’s tax cuts are only the latest proof of Laffer’s theory (called, as it...