Free Republic

Listening to right-wing talk radio on the day after Congress passed health care reform, Bill O'Reilly was stunned. To him, the hosts and the callers sounded "crazed" as they shrieked about "the end of the world, we're socialist now, we have to take the country back." Bill Hemmer, another Fox host who probably needs medication, has suggested that the legislation will send Americans who don't have health insurance to prison. On the radio, Rush Limbaugh, the past master of extremist chatter, told his listeners that the bill is an "utter disaster" that represents "the destruction of America as founded." Over...

Sept. 18, 2009 | For many years the combined forces of the far right and the Republican Party have sought to ruin ACORN, the largest organization of poor and working families in America. Owing to the idiocy of a few ACORN employees, notoriously caught in a videotape "sting" sponsored by a conservative Web site and publicized by Fox News, that campaign has scored significant victories on Capitol Hill and in the media. Both the Senate and the House have voted over the past few days to curtail any federal funding of ACORN's activities. While that congressional action probably won't destroy...

Republicans want Obama to fail. He needs to stop seeking consensus, because it makes him look weak From the earliest moments of Barack Obama's presidency, the most perplexing question was how he would fulfill his promise to change Washington's partisan standoff – and whether that promise was ever more than a rhetorical and political campaign gambit. More than once, observers have suggested that he always knew he couldn't rely on Republicans to act in good faith, to negotiate reasonable compromises, or even to speak honestly in debate. According to that theory, Obama's commitment to bipartisan solutions was and is theater...

In his struggle to change the nation's health care system, Barack Obama again faces certain obstacles that almost stopped his amazing march to the presidency. Aside from the Washington chattering class and the right-wing media, which always oppose progressive reform, Mr. Obama is losing his grip on the middle class and working families in swing states. He is losing Democratic senators and members of Congress in places like Florida and Arkansas. He is losing the propaganda war with his professorial style of explanation. So perhaps he should stop trying to walk this treacherous path alone. Perhaps the time has come,...

It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Having served as governor of Alaska for less than two years -- and as mayor of a small town before that -- her qualifications for national office are minimal. Palin is the epitome of tokenism, exactly what conservative Republicans have always claimed to scorn, until today, as the politics of quotas and political correctness. Even Rush Limbaugh is a feminazi now (at least until Election Day). But if Palin's résumé is limited, to...

Disturbed by troubling connections and unflattering publicity, John McCain has just purged several prominent Washington lobbyists from his presidential campaign. Surely his intentions are laudable, but if Sen. McCain is consistent in ridding his campaign of such compromised people, he will find himself riding lonesome on the Straight Talk Express. That's because nearly all of his advisers, fundraisers and top staffers have worked on K Street, starting with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his senior adviser and spokesman, Charles Black. From the beginning, the McCain team has been thoroughly infested with representatives of corporate special interests, from the campaign's...

Doubts about Barack Obama's presidential credentials have crystallized during the past two weeks over his stewardship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on European Affairs, which has convened no policy hearings since he took over as its chairman last January. That startling fact, first uncovered by Steve Clemons, who blogs on the Washington Note, prompted acid comment in Europe about the Illinois senator's failure to visit the continent since assuming the committee post, and even speculation that he had never traveled there except for a short stopover in London. But why should those questions matter to Americans who consider...

** EXCERPT ** Two State Department employees were fired recently and a third disciplined for improperly accessing electronic personal data on Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, Bush administration officials said yesterday. ~snip~ A similar data breach took place in 1992 when State Department officials looked up data on presidential candidate Bill Clinton, in an attempt to find out information from the late 1960s, amid unfounded political campaign rumors that Mr. Clinton had sought to renounce his citizenship to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. That incident triggered a three-year investigation by a...

A Republican victory in 2008 could sink America's reputation in the world even lower. Even if George W. Bush is the most awful American president in modern times, as many historians believe, and even though he has brought the United States into unprecedented disrepute around the world, as opinion polls indicate, the bombastic tone of the candidates seeking to succeed him from his own party raises a disturbing possibility. If the next president is a Republican, this truly bad situation could become still worse. Concerning the Iraq war, of course, there is no discernible difference between the current president and...

Karl Rove Under the harsh but savvy tutelage of Karl Rove, Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated their adherence to a venerable cliché: In politics, as in sports and warfare, the best defense is always a good offense—and the more offensive, the better. It’s an effective strategy, as John Kerry and many other hapless victims have learned, and at this point also a highly predictable one. Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the White House exposure...

The Miller Crusade Diminishes the Press By Joe Conason Very few of the journalists rallying behind New York Times reporter Judith Miller seem thrilled about defending her, no matter how strongly they believe in shielding sources. While they may admire her guts in going to jail, their lack of enthusiasm for her case is understandable. She leaves much to be desired as a martyr for the First Amendment. Based on both past performance and present circumstance, she actually symbolizes a terrible betrayal of the public trust by the national media. And whatever she and her employers think they’re achieving in...

Journalists typically condemn attempts to force their colleagues to disclose anonymous sources, saying that subpoenaing reporters will discourage efforts to expose government wrongdoing. But such warnings seem like mere self-congratulation when clear evidence of wrongdoing emerges, with no anonymous sources required-- and major news outlets virtually ignore it. A leaked document that appeared in a British newspaper offered clear new evidence that U.S. intelligence was shaped to support the drive for war. Though the information rocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair's re-election campaign when it was revealed, it has received little attention in the U.S. press. The document, first revealed...

Rummy the Genius Forgot About Nukes by Joe Conason The genius of Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies in the Defense Department is currently among the mainstream media’s favorite themes. According to the conventional viewpoint, their military strategy in Iraq was practically flawless, their political instincts are masterful, and their philosophical grounding is deep. (Some of them have even read Leo Strauss.) They’re just undeniably brilliant. To Americans who read and worry about the most recent developments in Iraq, this ceaseless chorus of praise for the Pentagon hierarchy can only be reassuring. Because otherwise, the facts on the ground might hint...

I just noticed that if you type in swiftboatvets.com instead of the proper swiftvets.com you get directed to a pro-Kerry Salon piece by Joe Conason. Cute. Now how bout those medical records, Senator Kerry, and by the way, where were you on Christmas Day 1968?

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansans turned out Tuesday night for the world premiere of "The Hunting of the President," a film claiming to expose "the 10-year campaign to destroy Bill Clinton." The 90-minute documentary re-creates interviews done for the New York Times best-selling book by the same name written by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons. Rough versions have already played at four film festivals. The first public showing, at $50 a ticket — going to a couple of Arkansas-based charities — drew a little more than a thousand people to a ballroom at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The death of former President Reagan has prompted a one-week delay for the release of a Bill Clinton documentary based on the best seller "The Hunting of the President." The movie had been scheduled for release Friday, but Regent Entertainment postponed it until June 18. The movie's red-carpet premiere in New York City also was put off from Wednesday to June 16. "Our film celebrates the presidency and is a film all about respect for the presidency," Paul Colichman, a partner in Regent, said Tuesday. "We decided it was wholly inappropriate during a week of...

The "swift boat" veterans attacking John Kerry's war record are led by veteran right-wing operatives using the same vicious techniques they used against John McCain four years ago. The latest conservative outfit to fire an angry broadside against John Kerry's heroic war record is "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" , which today launches a campaign to brand the Democrat "unfit to serve as commander in chief." Billing itself as representing the "other 97 percent of veterans" from Kerry's Navy unit who don't support his presidential candidacy, the group insists that all presidential candidates must be "totally honest and forthcoming" about...

Liberal pundit Joe Conason worked himself into quite a lather Friday over the rampant rumors concerning Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry. "Is American politics suddenly returning to the bad old days, when Washington journalism became frenzied with sheet sniffing and keyhole peeping?" the Bill Clinton loyalist demanded indignantly on Salon.com. Unfortunately for Conason, Internet commentator Mickey Kaus promptly discovered that, in 1992, Conason had engaged in just such "sheet sniffing and keyhole peeping" - a long, rumor-filled piece about Clinton's campaign opponent, the first President Bush, in Spy magazine. "He Cheats on His Wife," blared the headline over the article,...

There he goes again!Matt Drudge and the GOP smear machine are back in the Democrats' pants. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Joe ConasonFeb. 13, 2004  | Is American politics suddenly returning to the bad old days, when Washington journalism became frenzied with sheet sniffing and keyhole peeping? That seems to be the default program of the right-wing media machine whenever Republican poll numbers sink into the red zone. Late Thursday morning -- with George W. Bush's credibility damaged on several fronts as reporters demanded answers to questions about his National Guard service that...

Hot Springs is a haven for serious movie goers this weekend, as the 12th Annual Documentary Film Festival kicks off.  Friday's featured film was titled "Hunting The President," it's based on a book by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons.  The film's producer, Harry Thomason, is an Arkansas native. He was on hand, along with the authors, for a question and answer session Friday night. Channel 7's Michelle Rupp reports: Movie goers only saw pieces of the film.  Thomason tells me it will be finished by the first of the year and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. ...