Free Republic

What happened to the Sen. John McCain we once knew? What happened to the jovial, optimistic war hero who promised a civil and elevating presidential campaign? Where's that campaign that would be based on real issues, not brainless emotions or partisan cheap shots? Ah, those were the days. That was long before the economy tanked and McCain's poll numbers went into a slide behind Sen. Barack Obama's like the Dow Jones industrial average. These are the days in which McCain's attacks against the Democratic nominee have grown sharper and angrier. He unleashed his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, like...

So you think the chorus of white hate groups is seething with rage that Barack Obama could become president? Think again. Members of the knuckle-dragging set are taking a rosier view, judging by their Internet posts. They say the possibility of a biracial president is helping their recruitment efforts.... Obama has a bigger immediate headache than [David] Duke and his allied dimwits. It's the rising chorus of anti-Obama attack books that don't always let truth get in the way of a good hatchet job. Leading the pack is "Obama Nation" by Jerome R. Corsi. It leads the New York Times...

After cutting ties with his controversial former pastor, Sen. Barack Obama received a word of sympathy from an unusual source: a Republican. Former presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee says that Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. wants to derail Obama's bid for the White House for a simple tactical reason: Wright does not want Obama to prove that America has made that much racial progress. "His campaign is not being derailed by his race," Huckabee told reporters following a fundraiser in Montana. "It's being derailed by a person who doesn't want him to prove that we have made great advances in this country."...

Democratic voters face two challenges heading into 2008. The first is deciding which Democratic candidate to support. The second is agreeing on which Republican candidate they'd most like to run against. It was hard to believe anybody could be easier to beat than one of the original three frontrunners, until the spotlight turned on Mike Huckabee and the media started swooning over a "Huckaboom." First, there's that messy matter of an Arkansas state pardon for convicted rapist Wayne Dumond - who went on to rape and murder another woman, maybe two, after his release from prison. In 1998, for example,...

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions," the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a scholarly New York Democrat, used to say, "but not their own facts." Sorry, "Pat." But, my e-mail box runneth over with misconceptions from readers who feel entitled to their own facts about President Bush's commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence. The former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney had been sentenced to 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine before President Bush commuted the prison term, calling it "excessive." However, Bush let the fine stand, along with probation.

WASHINGTON -- On the day before President Bush launched his new border security/guest worker proposal, he was almost upstaged by a timely and telling U.S. Border Patrol complaint: The labels on their uniforms read "Made in Mexico."

Mr. President, can we talk about the war too? Cindy Sheehan's vigil raises uncomfortable questions for Bush Published August 14, 2005 WASHINGTON -- I sympathize with Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who wants to talk to President Bush about her son Casey, who was killed in Iraq. I also sympathize with President Bush. It can't be easy to look as confident as he usually does while he's trying to get his country out of a bigger mess than he expected to get it into. It is August, normally a no-news time in which the president can roll up his shirtsleeves...

WASHINGTON -- Now we know why it is called "spin." Your head could spin around from all of the information and disinformation swirling around disclosures that Karl Rove did, indeed, leak the identity of a CIA agent to at least one reporter. As I boil it all down, there are three big questions:

I'm aware of Clarence Page initially via the generally conservative Jewish World Review political site. At first I thought this gentleman is probably a dissident libertarian like Larry Elder or Thomas Sowell. But the more I read the mroe he strikes me as being as from the left. I'm wondering: is Page a conservative or centre-left? Any answers would be greatly appreciated.

Politics gets into everything these days, even "Star Wars." "George Lucas must be a Democrat," said our 15-year-old son as he arrived home from the opening day of the latest Star Wars movie, "Revenge of the Sith," a film with the unfortunate initials, "ROTS."Ah, The Force is strong in this one, I thought, echoing Darth Vader. For, without the benefit of any advance word or special Jedi abilities, our young Jedi easily detected the anti-Bush propaganda that some liberals, to their delight, and some conservatives, to their fuming outrage, allege is imbedded in Lucas' new flick. In keeping with today's...

Sometimes our efforts to stand up for the less fortunate actually can grease their slide backward into even less fortune. That's what I thought of the verbal sucker punch with which August Wilson, the distinguished black playwright, walloped Bill Cosby, the distinguished black comedian. When Time magazine asked Wilson what he thought of Cosby's controversial criticisms of black parenting, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright was dismissive: "A billionaire attacking poor people for being poor," he said. "Bill Cosby is a clown. What do you expect? I thought it was unfair of him." I, by contrast, think Wilson is being unfair...

A politician should have three hats, the poet Carl Sandburg once said: "One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected." Judging by the polls three months after President Bush's inauguration, he is keeping a happy face, but quietly looking for rabbits. As he celebrated his re-election in November, Bush told reporters that he earned political capital and he intended to spend it. But polls are showing that Bush's approval ratings and presumably his political capital have evaporated, almost as quickly as the budget surplus he inherited the beginning of...

I usually avoid commenting on the feuds that occasionally boil up between my fellow column writers and commentators. Most bar fights offer more substance, not to mention the visual excitement. But syndicated columnist Susan Estrich's verbal and e-mail assault against fellow pundit Michael Kinsley, editorial and opinion editor at the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Co. newspaper, actually raises some important questions about how well the media, and men in general, give a fair hearing to women. And, for the record, I felt that way even before my wife told me to. For years newspapers have wrestled with criticisms and...

Republican efforts to court black voters, helped along by black church leaders, "should be cause for alarm" among Democrats. That's not me talking. That's Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, writing in the Feb. 28 issue of Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. Brazile, a Louisiana Catholic and the first black woman to manage a major presidential campaign, offers a message to her fellow Dems: Don't get caught nappin' while your competition is standing at your supporters' doors - tappin'! Black voters have turned away from the Republican party since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. But...

Republican efforts to court black voters, helped along by black church leaders, "should be cause for alarm" among Democrats. That's not me talking. That's Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, writing in the Feb. 28 issue of Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. Brazile, a Louisiana Catholic and the first black woman to manage a major presidential campaign, offers a message to her fellow Dems: Don't get caught nappin' while your competition is standing at your supporters' doors—tappin'! Black voters have turned away from the party of Abe Lincoln since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. But...

WASHINGTON -- Sometimes the political right looks remarkably like the left--and vice versa. In President Bush's crusade to reform Social Security, we see the right-left switcheroo revealing itself in unexpected ways. The Republicans sound like the folks with bold, new ways for government to help people, while the Democrats sound like the side that wants to keep things just the way they are.

There are substantial revisions to our lineup and schedule of syndicated national columnists: Six columnists from our current lineup - Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Maureen Dowd, Leonard Pitts, David Broder and Ellen Goodman - are continuing, but their work will appear on different days of the week. We're adding five new columnists to the page - three conservative, two liberal - with an eye toward freshening up the mix and upgrading the quality of the writing and advocacy. Conservative Michael Barone, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal co-writer of the "Almanac of American Politics," has...

Thursday, December 02, 2004 - KWEISI Mfume's sudden departure after nine years as president and CEO of the NAACP signals a seismic quake that rattles far beyond the doors of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. In a year when Bill Cosby's fiery comments on black self- reliance have caused at least as much comment among black folks as anything said by the Revs. Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, sudden changes at the top of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference reveal an important evolution, if not a revolution. Reports have leaked out for months that...

As a political junkie who was born and raised in conservative southern Ohio, I was acutely interested in a post-election study by the liberal group America Coming Together of why President Bush beat Sen. John Kerry in the Buckeye State. The answer, according to their poll, sends a message that is conveniently flattering to grassroots organizing groups like America Coming Together as Democrats prepare to choose a new party chairman and assess where they go from here.

WASHINGTON -- Could this be the beginning of the end for "The Hammer"? House Republicans have rewritten their ethics rules so Majority Leader Tom DeLay won't have to resign if he is indicted by a Texas grand jury. This big favor to the ethically challenged Texas Republican gives new meaning to Mark Twain's description of Congress as a "distinctly native American criminal class." Somehow I don't think this is what most of the Republican voters had in mind when they told exit pollsters that "moral values" was their most important issue. Republicans passed their indictment rule back in 1993, modeling...