Free Republic

The big Congressional stories this year have been big-ticket legislation, like Medicare prescription drugs and the pork-layered energy bill. But barely under the political radar, a long-sought, hard-right G.O.P. agenda has been quietly progressing. Proposals dear to the Republican leadership that would undermine gun controls, women's reproductive freedom, a citizen's right to seek court redress, and a vital array of other constitutional bulwarks are moving slowly toward what in some cases seems like almost certain passage. In past years of split-party control of the Capitol, such a wish list represented the dark side of political grandstanding, scraps of meat for...

I'm in a debate on another forum and need info-- is the CIA still convinced that the two mobile biological lab trucks are valid? Really meant for making bio weapons? Thanks

How many people here are tired of the U.N.? How many think we need to get rid of it? Can we list it on Ebay? I'm serious, but I don't want to go ahead and do it until I'm pretty sure we can get press attention. This could be cool, need suggestions as to how to proceed.

Portugal is to face austerity measures imposed by Brussels under threat of punitive sanctions, making it the first country to lose control over tax and spending policy as a result of joining the euro. The European Commission said yesterday that it was legally obliged to take action against Portugal after it emerged that the country's budget deficit was far above the 3pc of GDP limit established by the EU's Growth and Stability Pact. The shock figures were announced by the new centre-right prime minister, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, who accused the outgoing socialist government of "reckless mismanagement" and concealing the...

President Bush has offered a far-reaching, moral vision for the future of the Middle East. The question is how to get there from here. As laid out in two speeches, one in April and the second yesterday, Mr. Bush wants to see two thriving democratic states, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, sharing the strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The 1993 Oslo peace framework may have collapsed under the strain of Palestinian terror and Israeli military retaliation, the president is saying, but its opponents will not be permitted to declare victory. The Oslo goal of...

Nope. It’s not the Norwegians. I've gotten a lot of traction out of my seemingly banal observation that it is highly improbable that the United States will ever become a Nazi-like or otherwise totalitarian nation. For some reason, this is the sort of obvious statement which strikes lots of folks as shocking or controversial, even though it's only slightly less of a "Well, duh" assertion than saying, "The oceans will not turn into diet Mr. Pibb in our lifetimes." The feedback on my syndicated columns and G-File on the allegedly outlandish claim that America is a reliably good nation has...

<p>WASHINGTON -- In the chaotic days after Sept. 11, as several of his top advisers argued over whether to launch a strike on Iraq, President Bush sided with those urging restraint.</p> <p>There was, after all, no real evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had anything to do with the terror attacks. And President Bush wanted to keep the focus on al Qaeda, the Afghanistan-based terrorist group that engineered the deadly hijackings.</p>

Sometime after September 11 I read on Free Republic a quote that I believe was from George Orwell, to the effect that "the barbarians are always at the gate." I have searched and searched, but cannot find it. Can anyone point me to the source of this quote, and it's full text? Is it Orwell? Thanks.

TWO MONTHS to the day after the first U.S. and British missiles struck Afghanistan, the regime that chose to host and defend the terrorist sponsors of Sept. 11 surrendered its home city yesterday and collapsed. That the Taliban movement crumbled so quickly and ignominiously was a testimony to the rottenness of its rule, which subjected Afghan men and especially women to inhuman cruelty and exposed millions to starvation even as it nourished the world's foremost base for mass murderers. But the victory also vindicated the military strategy of the Bush administration, which, by using an innovative combination of air power, ...

It is already conventional wisdom to see the attacks of September 11, 2001, as something new in our nation's history. After all, our present enemies have no planes or tanks of their own. Indeed, no state claims al Qaeda as its own military arm. Our adversaries wore no uniforms — at least as they went up the ramps of our planes, and before they put on their macabre death headbands — and were seemingly innocuous as they sat among their victims. In our response to the present surprise attack, we are told also that Americans may not know exactly whom ...

Since September 11, whenever I've so much as mentioned Bill Clinton even en passant, a torrent of missives has arrived along the lines of "Oh, come on, get over it. He's gone, and you right-wing nuts are the only ones who haven't moved on." I have a bit of sympathy for this point of view. When the globetrotting high-end lounge act, making a rare appearance back in the United States, turned up on the streets of Lower Manhattan a couple of days after 9/11, he looked for the first time oddly anachronistic-- stuck in the day before yesterday, like some ...

Here south of Houston a variety of factors lead me to believe that our recovery will take a good bit longer than the nation as a whole: the Enron meltdown, Compaq still digging out, oil prices falling, etc.. What are your prognostications for your city/town, and why?

Having Their Day in (a Military) Court How best to prosecute terrorists. By Robert H. Bork, an NR Contributing Editor From the December 17, 2001, issue, of National Review The debate over the president's order creating military tribunals to try suspected terrorists consists largely of warring slogans and overripe rhetoric: "shredding our Constitution," "seizing dictatorial power," etc., on the one hand, and some version of "the bastards don't deserve any better" on the other. Analysis is in short supply. The issue of the balance between security and civil liberties will be with us, in various guises, for a long time ...

Now that I have your attention I would beg your indulgence while relate a relevant story: A few years ago I was chosen to be part of a jury on a civil case. The details aren't important, but one party felt he had a legitimate beef, and, although the law generally held that for this sort of beef a particular resolution was warranted, this guy didn't care. He wanted his day in court, and he got it. I should mention at this point that this guy fired a series of lawyers whom he felt weren't advising him appropriately, and ended ...

I'll give you women and blacks. But you can't be serious about white men." This was just one of the scores of dissenting e-mails I received over Thanksgiving weekend in response to last Wednesday's column. I wrote, "From the moment the Declaration of Independence was signed to the moment you eat your turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day 2001, Americans have become more, not less free. Maybe not on a month-to-month basis but the trendline is undeniable." I knew this would be a controversial proposition among some loyal readers, but I wasn't quite prepared for the assault. And since it looks ...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Neither the pilots' conversations nor any background noises in the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 587 show evidence that a terrorist attack or sabotage brought down the plane, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Monday.</p>

Why West Is Best Secrets — or rather, obvious ingredients — of the Good Society. By Paul Johnson, the British journalist and historian, is the author of many books, including A History of Christianity and A History of the Jews. From the December 3, 2001, issue of National Review No such thing as a perfect society exists in the world or ever will. But the Good Society can and does emerge from time to time, and is far more likely to exist within the orbit of the Western system than in any other. Why is this? To begin with, consider ...

My daughter just came home from a school-- a friend of hers, not close but she's known her since elementary school, committed suicide last night. She hung herself. I talked to my daughter, and she's napping now. They were with the counselors all afternoon, after they found out. I just can't make any sense of it. This is the second one in two years. Where are their parents? Their teachers, their churches? Where are the adults that are supposed to be paying attention to these kids? She was a freshman in high school-- 15 years old. It breaks my heart.

<p>By Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer and the author of "Fighting For The Future: Will America Triumph?" (Stackpole, 1999).</p> <p>The greatest allies Islamic extremists have in the West are America's strategists. Still unable to move beyond Cold War models of geopolitics and subject to the diplomatic groupthink that cuts across party lines in Washington, those who would pass as sages warn us that we must restrict our actions in Afghanistan so that we do not destabilize Pakistan and other countries in the region. But stability is a false god, and on Sept. 11 we paid dearly for worshipping it above all others.</p>

<p>I clicked on the Wall Street Journal, to be presented with their headline "U.S. and Britain Strike Targets in Afghanistan, Taliban Official Says 20 Civilians Were Killed In Attack; Pentagon Says It's Too Early to Say" and I was just stunned that the press, the WSJ of ALL papers, was already whining about civilian deaths. Don't they get it??? What will it take?</p>