Free Republic

On 23 April I had a routine colonoscopy, and found out that I had cancer. I knew then I’d have to write this column once I knew the outcome. I had 25 days of chemotherapy, simultaneous with radiation therapy, followed by surgery on 11 August. The pathology reports came back yesterday. They were, as my surgeon said, ‘the best possible, given the circumstances.” They were clean margins and clean lymph nodes. The margins are the areas all around the site of the surgery. The lymph nodes are where cancer usually spreads first, from its original site. In laymen’s terms, I...

The 11th Congressional District Republican field has gotten a bit more crowded. John Armor, a Highlands lawyer who challenged incumbent Charles Taylor in the 2006 Republican primary, says he is gearing up for another run, this time against two others, but so far not Taylor. "We are going to have a knock-down, drag-down fight all the way to the general election," Armor said. Former Henderson County Republican Party Chairman Spence Campbell and Asheville City Councilman Carl Mumpower are also seeking the Republican nomination. Former NFL player Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, beat Taylor in 2006 and has already announced his intention to...

Because the Hamdan case was not up on my favorite research site at Cornell Law School early this morning, I read the press coverage first and the decisions afterward. The press has only a superficial understanding of the case, and missed the most important aspect of the decision. The case is Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, No. No. 05–184, June 29, 2006. Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-184.ZS.html The Christian Science Monitor gets the facial decision correctly: The court ruled 5-to-3 Thursday that Mr. Bush acted outside his authority when he ordered Al Qaeda suspects to stand trial before these specially organized military commissions. The ruling...

This is the Fifth and Final - for now - Report on the Campaign for the 11th District in NC. The eight-term Congressman, Charles Taylor, has defeated me for the nomination of the Republican Party. However, Mr. Taylor's career as a Member of Congress is now over. That paradoxical conclusion is not a matter of my opinion. It is based on observations of lifelong residents in western Carolina who've been active in politics most of their adult lives. Consider the parameters of this race: Charles Taylor is a long term incumbent who worked his way up the ladder to a...

This will be my first, and last, post on FreeRepublic for a very long time. I am an unabashed Liberal. However, I want to assure the mods that I am not here to do any trolling. In fact, I just wanted to say a few nice words about Freeper John Armor. (aka April 25, 2006 "Congressman Billybob.") If you live in NC District 11 and are a Republican, please vote for John Armor in this weeks primary race. As a yellow-dog Democrat, I will never vote for Armor; but he is a man of integrity and will not accept bribes....

Harriet Miers has now withdrawn as a nominee for the Supreme Court. No one of the attacks against her would have been sufficient to cause withdrawal. Instead, she suffered the death of a thousand cuts. Who will be the new nominee, and how will she answer the inevitable attacks against her? Yes, “her.” I expect the President to nominate another woman to replace Justice O’Connor, whose resignation is conditional on confirmation of her replacement. Here’s my prediction of the new nominee’s opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee: Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee: We have now had, in short...

The Face of a Democrat, and a Liar Written by John Armor Monday, September 26, 2005 On 26 September the Associated Press ran the photograph below on its wire service, with the titles, “Thousands Protest the Iraq War,” and “Jeb Eddy joins thousands of demonstrators to protest the war in Iraq on Saturday.” This photo was taken by Noah Berger, who presumably also obtained the information for the cut lines run with the photo. The impression of Mr. Eddy, his sign, and the AP photograph of both, is that Mr. Eddy is a disgruntled Republican. This impression is a deliberate...

Dateline, 17 September, 2005, National Capitol It is self-evident that this new constitution is fatally flawed. It is unlikely to be ratified. And even if it is, it will fail in practice. Begin with ratification. One province is so opposed that it refused to take part in the drafting. The governors of two provinces refused to sign the document and are committed to its defeat. There is a hotbed of opposition in another province. One of the leaders there walked out of the drafting, and returned home to lead the effort to defeat the constitution, taking a majority of his...

Enough has come out about the failure of the 9/11 Commission to include critical information about Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 attackers, to suggest a new Commission to investigate the original Commission. The cure may not be that drastic, but it is that important. In short, a special Army intelligence operation known as “Able Danger” identified Atta and four of his accomplices, and identified Al-Qaeda cells in Hamburg and Brooklyn and elsewhere, a year before the 9/11 attacks. They offered then to share that information with law enforcement agencies including the FBI. Those offers were cut off by Clinton Administration...

I shouldn’t repeat myself, but every rule has exceptions. The Minutemen’s efforts on the US-Mexican border have proved the accuracy of my column on 20 November, 2003. “Double Crossing at the Rio Grande” can be found hereThe gist was that the cure for the alien tide from Mexico is to change the incentives so that Mexico will control its own side of the border with its own troops. Here’s how: Total the cost to local, state and federal governments for finding, rounding up, jailing and expelling Mexican illegals. Divide that cost by the total number of truck crossings of the...

I am sick up to here with all these opera (plural of opus) from people who are quitting FreeRepublic. So, I'm stating it up front. I have quit quitting. I've quit quitting marriage. I've quit quitting civic organizations. And I've quit quitting on-line discussion groups. So, you're always gonna have Congressman Billybob to kick around. You'll know that I am officially "OUTTA HERE" when Felicity Fahrquar comes online to invite you all to an old-fashioned, cyber Irish wake. Don't try to change my mind. I won't take yes for an answer. That's my final answer. I've had it. (And by...

I heard three men speak this week with apparent passion about subjects of great interest. Each of them was trying to be accepted as honest and clear in his speech. Two of them are obvious: George Bush and John Kerry, who took part in the first Presidential Debate of 2004 in Miami on Thursday. Almost all of you either saw the debate, read the transcripts afterward, or saw coverage of it. But to my view, the most honest, the most effective speaker, was the third man, Lemony Snicket, who appeared at a book signing at a Barnes and Noble north...

“Whoa,” I hear you cry. “Why should I read anything about a ‘Pukin Dog’?” This is an honorable name, the nickname of a squadron of Navy fighter pilots who flew combat in Vietnam. Now it is the screen name of a man who flew for that unit in Central Europe. He’s currently a pilot for a major American airline. Both he and his airline will remain anonymous, because he thinks some might take offense at his words. I’ll respect his confidence. Besides, on the Internet it doesn’t matter who you are or what your background is. The only questions are:...

It was a bittersweet pleasure to go on-air Friday for two hours with my friend Jerry Agar, WPTF afternoon drivetime, from Raleigh to most of North Carolina and parts of states north and south of there. This was our last sit-down, since Jerry is moving to KMBZ in Kansas City, a larger market that wants a quick, intelligent voice from the conservative side of the spectrum. We spent 45 minutes of our time talking about the Swift Boat controversy involving John Kerry. The phones lit up, and so did the computer screen with e-mails. Both the calls and the e-mails...

(This is a Google translated excerpt from a Spiegel article regarding Freeping) Vote vote-pfuscher You need tons click "co-ordinating" Of franc Patalong Votes are a fine thing, the butter on message bread. They give a feedback to the on-line Medienmacher, how the reader sees a thing. George W. Bush regard nearly 60 per cent of the readers of MIRROR ON-line ONE for example as a Top president. We know also, why. From the guidance for the falsification of the Mirror On-line Votes: "You need tons cklick ' co-ordinating!'" The widow Vivian Freep from Midland (Texas) is "George Bush's biggest more...

This weekend the entire national media reported that due to "arm-twisting" on Republicans in the House, the Medicare bill passed in the House after an unprecedented three-hour delay between the original vote and when the vote was gaveled to a close. If everyone is saying this, it must be true, right? Wrong. You cannot necessarily trust what you read in the papers, or see on network TV. At 3 a.m., the original voting time on the bill, the tote board on C-SPAN showed that the bill would lose, 216-218. In that tally, which was not final until the gavel fell,...

The national press was all atwitter this weekend over the announcement that Howard Dean was going to skip public financing in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. However, the press was unanimous in missing one of the small but necessary elements within that decision, and they therefore missed the big picture – the real story. The real story is that this election is now over. Howard Dean (or "James Dean," as a reporterette for Fox News called him once) now owns the Democratic nomination. George Bush now owns the general election. And once you've finished reading this column,...

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor confessed last week that she has violated her oath of office in the past. That she intends to violate her oath in the future. And that she thinks this is good for America. Does that sound highly improbable? Wouldn't the national press have covered such a thing if it happened? Read on. The Constitution states the oath of office that Presidents must take before entering on their duties. Each President must swear (or affirm) that he will "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." By...

Last week I drove down Possumtrot Road, deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's in Yancey County, one of the most rural and least populated of North Carolina's 100 counties. Possumtrot Road is at an altitude of about 2,800 feet, but it is lined on both sides with rich bottom land. Much of that land lies fallow; many of the barns are falling to wrack and ruin. And thereon hangs a tale. First, a touch of geology. The Blue Ridge is the southern section of the Appalachian Chain, formed about 250 million years ago when the tectonic plate that is...