Free Republic

The more I watch the news channels on TV, the madder I get. It’s almost totally driven by a Liberal agenda to defeat President Bush in November. It seems, at times, driven by an agenda to attack America as an evil country. Tonight’s news is a good example. Earlier in the day a 26-year-old American businessman, Nick Berg, was decapitated in Iraq by Al Qaida terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a video shown on an Islamist website. Berg screamed as the terrorist began sawing off his head, then the terrorist held up the severed head for the camera and...

I had an interesting encounter with a group of about a hundred U.S. Army soldiers a few days ago at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland. There were soldiers walking around and waiting at various ticket counters both to go home and to go to their duty stations. I talked with one young infantryman, Specialist Fourth Class John Rogers of the First Armored Division, who was in line in front of me at the U.S. Air counter. An infantry team leader, he was on his way back to Iraq, he said, after getting a few weeks R&R at home. “How’s it...

An acquaintance of mine from my years living in the city eats his dinners free from soup kitchens meant for the poor. He says the food is good and he saves at least $5 every time he goes there. Bill, a confirmed bachelor, has always been a penny pincher during the 30 odd years I’ve known him, so much so that he has amassed savings totaling more than one million dollars. What’s wrong here? A guy worth a million eats the free food meant for the poor so he can be worth a million five. Technically he’s not being dishonest,...

There are valuable life lessons to be learned from realizing you’re not very good at a lot of things, even at things you think are important to be good at. My lessons began in 1959, when I was 15. As a third string quarterback for Cathedral High School in Boston, I really wanted to be a great football player, but as I sat in the half time locker room of Franklin Field, with our team being massacred by powerful Matignon 50-something to nothing, things seemed bleak. Coach Tatter, who would never recognize my talents, looked down at our silent, sullen...