Free Republic

LONDON — For a long time Barack Obama’s mother was little more than the “white woman from Wichita” mentioned in an early Los Angeles Times profile of the future president. She was the pale Kansan silhouette against whom Obama drew the vivid Kenyan figure of his absent Dad in his Bildungsroman of discovered black identity, “Dreams from My Father.” Now, thanks to Janny Scott’s remarkable “A Singular Woman,” absence has become presence. Stanley Ann Dunham, the parent who raised Obama, emerges from romanticized vagueness into contours as original as her name. Far from “floating through foreign things,” as one colleague...

Kenneth M. Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s final White House chief of staff and a former political confidant of Senator John McCain, is the latest high-profile Republican to say he will vote instead for Senator Barack Obama for president. Mr. Duberstein’s decision, confirmed in a brief interview, was not a big surprise given his close friendship with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who recently announced on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he would vote for Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, because he was disappointed that both Mr. McCain and the Republican Party have become so socially conservative and negative.

Professor Charles Fried, an advisor to John McCain's presidential campaign, has announced that he can no longer support the McCain/Palin ticket. In a letter to the general counsel to the McCain/Palin campaign, he cited McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate as too dangerous "at a time of deep national crisis", and has asked for his name to be removed from several campaign committees on which he has served. Fried also publicly stated that he had voted for Obama via absentee ballot. Fried later clarified to The New Republic that he had voted for Obama because he no...

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday about claims that the Bush administration missed a chance to kill Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks, asking him to explain the failure to 9/11 victim families. Rumsfeld was testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee about revising the military force structure when committee-member Clinton switched gears, asking him about the 9/11 Commission report. Citing a commission finding calling the Bush administration's failure to arm Predator drones a "missed opportunity" in the hunt for bin Laden, Clinton asked Rumsfeld to respond to questions from 9/11 victim families....