Free Republic

David Frum takes the Bush campaign to task on illegal immigration at NRO. http://frum.nationalreview.com/archives/08162005.asp#073241 For those who accuse critics of illegal immigration anti-immigrant tools of Pat Buchanan, how do you respond to Mr. Frum? He's a legal immigrant. Perhaps the fact that he did wait in line and had to go through the bureaucratic process is what makes him so opposed to rewarding lawbreakers (both illegals and their employers) with amnesty. It reminds me of an episode of King of the Hill I saw the other night. Hank and his friends are trapped in Mexico and attempting to get back...

Is the Able Danger story true? Notes of skepticism are being sounded, and probably the final verdict on the story will be less dramatic than the version that gripped Washington last week. That said: Isn't it odd how little zeal there seems to be to get to the bottom of this story? And no, I'm not complaining here about the Liberal Media. The Republicans in Congress are hardly roaring either. If true, Able Danger is a national security scandal, but not precisely a political scandal - that is, while it would certainly reflect very badly on the Clinton administration, it...

Toronto Sun July 10, 2005 The same sex story By DOUGLAS FISHER OTTAWA -- Two questions disturb me in my midsummer lull. First, how was the coup of legalized same-sex marriage achieved? Who shaped it, who co-ordinated it from a long-shot prospect a few years ago to a clinched deal last month? Second, how might Canada's "natural opposition party," the Conservatives, now led by Stephen Harper, respond to the fresh leadership contest shaping up within the federal Liberal party, now that we know of Michael Ignatieff's bold determination to win a seat in the next election -- on his way...

The president is going to talk about Iraq again. He's going to have to. The problem is not that his speech Tuesday night failed to quell his critics: No speech could have done that. The problem is that his speech failed to reassure his worried supporters. Those of us who support this president and this war do not need to be told how important it is to win. We get that. But that's precisely why we are worried — because every day brings terrible news that makes us fear that the war is being lost.

The problem is not that his speech Tuesday night failed to quell his critics: The problem is that his speech failed to reassure his worried supporters. Those of us who support this president and this war do not need to be told how important it is to win. That's precisely why we are worried — because every day brings terrible news that makes us fear that the war is being lost. He could have cited the capture of three of the top insurgent leaders over the last three months, including Abed Dawood Suleiman (Abu Musab Zarqawi's top military aide), Muhammad...

An editorial in Saturday's NYT denounces as "cynical" Karl Rove's observation that (in the NYT's paraphrase): "conservatives and liberals had different reactions to 9/11." It continues: "Let's be clear: Americans of every political stripe were united in their outrage and grief, united in their determination to punish those who plotted the mass murder and united behind the war in Afghanistan, which was an assault on terrorists." Oh if only that were true. But the NYT itself is daily crammed with evidence that Rove is right and that the NYT editorialists are wrong. Take for example this story, which appeared on...

An editorial in Saturday's NYT denounces as "cynical" Karl Rove's observation that (in the NYT's paraphrase): "conservatives and liberals had different reactions to 9/11." It continues: "Let's be clear: Americans of every political stripe were united in their outrage and grief, united in their determination to punish those who plotted the mass murder and united behind the war in Afghanistan, which was an assault on terrorists." Oh if only that were true. But the NYT itself is daily crammed with evidence that Rove is right and that the NYT editorialists are wrong. Take for example this story, which appeared on...

The GOP a "Christian" party? Wait a minute - I thought it was run by, ahem, "neocons." Anyway, aren't American parties supposed to "look like America"? And last time I checked, wasn't America full of Christians? Like 95%? And is the insinuation here that there's something wrong with being white or Christian? That whites and Christians are a rather unattractive and robotically single-minded bunch? (If true, by the way, that would sure have spared Europe a lot of wars over the past 2500+ years ...) Isn't that an unwise thing to say for a Dem chairman who has promised to...

Mel Brooks once offered these succinct definitions of tragedy and comedy: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall down an open manhole.” By that definition, Canadian politics these days might seem very comical indeed. But I am counting on Americans to be less callous than the mordant Brooks — and to recognize that the events now occurring in Canada are serious, even sinister. There is though one warning I’d better immediately deliver to readers: Along with at least four other public commentators, I have recently been served with libel papers by a leading figure in...

Lucca, Italy – Don't let the dateline fool you. I'm not on holiday. On Wednesday, Dutch voters finished off the unwieldy and absurd EU constitution. That afternoon I got a hasty phone call from the organizers of a conference here in Tuscany. I had just published an article arguing that the defeat of the constitution was in fact a good thing for both Europeans and Americans — could I please fly over the next day to repeat the message to a roomful of anxious Italian politicians and journalists? "Don't panic" is not a very complicated message, but it's one that...

MAY. 24, 2005: THE DEAL Put me down with those who believe that on balance the Senate deal is pretty good for conservatives. I fear that many critics of the deal under-estimate the risks of forcing a vote on ending the filibuster for judicial nominations. Let's remember please that it was not at all guaranteed that conservatives would actually win such a vote in the Senate. And even if conservatives did win, the victory would keep at a price in the court of public opinion. Would it make sense to pay so heavy a price for a marginally better outcome?...

George Bush: re-elected. Tony Blair: re-elected. John Howard: re-elected. Meanwhile the two outstanding opponents of the Anglo-American anti-terror alliance, Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac, are in the pangs of the most humiliating defeat and repudiation in recent European politics. Who says there's no justice in the universe? Schroeder's Social Democratic party this weekend suffered a crushing defeat in the state of North Rhine Westphalia, Germany's biggest and for many years a Social Democratic bastion. Chirac meanwhile is confronting a likely defeat in the May 29 referendum on the European Constitution. Schroeder had won his first election in 1998 as a...

MAY. 21, 2005: A LETTER FROM A READER A Canadian reader who works in a technical capacity with US military forces sends this letter. I have cut some sentences and phrases to protect his privacy. "I work with serving US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are, for the most part, wonderful human beings: bright, articulate, honest and possess a keen sense of morality, fair-play, and an unerring sense of honour and duty (one of my students was badly wounded in Iraq last year, but he's right back at soldiering again). "Then, I compare these soldiers to the alleged political...

A few days before George W. Bush's second inaugural, I received an urgent call from a friend. Belinda Stronach wanted to come to Washington to see the event. Could I get her tickets to the swearing-in and the balls afterward? We did get the tickets — and Belinda did the rest. Her progress through Washington was glittering. She hosted a star-spangled dinner at Washington's Palm restaurant the night after the President took the oath. The Solicitor General of the United States was there, and so was Kelly from the Apprentice, Larry King and an editor from Vanity Fair, as well...

On Friday, the battle over John Bolton's nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations ceased to be a battle about Bolton — and became a battle about the presidency. That morning, The New York Times reported on its front page that "associates of Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state, said he had expressed reservations about Mr. Bolton in conversations with at least two wavering Republican senators." The Washington Post carried a still more strongly flavored story about Powell's "private conversations" with senators on the Foreign Relations Committee: The Post quoted an anonymous Democratic staffer saying, "[Powell] has...

Fight separatism: Throw out the Liberals David Frum National Post Tuesday, April 19, 2005 Well, you have to give the Liberals marks for audacity. First they launch a scheme of embezzlement, extortion and graft in Quebec. Then, when they get caught, they warn that any attempt to hold them accountable for their wrongdoing will divide Quebec from the rest of Canada. They say that these are "dangerous times," that their opponents seek to "divide Canada" or -- in the words of the Prime Minister himself -- that any election will present Canadians with a choice between "separatists and federalists." We've...

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR I LOVE Canada: It's so clean!" Visiting Americans may be about to lose their favorite cliché about their chilly neighbor. Over the past few weeks, a judicial inquiry in Montreal has heard charges that Canada's governing Liberal Party was running a system of extortion, embezzlement, kickbacks and graft as dirty as anything Americans might expect to find in your run-of-the-mill banana republic. Just last week, for example, Canadians learned that one of the closest friends of former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was paid more than $5 million for work that was never done and on the authority of...

“You’ve been dreading this. Tony Blair has called an election. Now you are finally going to have to make up your mind: Do you hope he wins or loses?”“Why do I have to answer that? I am not a British voter. Why can’t I just say that I’m glad that both Blair and Conservative leader Michael Howard are such strong friends of America — and that the special relationship will remain special no matter which of them wins?” “What? Are you telling me that you, a right-wing Republican — that you can’t instantly choose between a socialist and a fellow...

Don't expect the Liberals to go quietly. You don't become the longest-ruling political party in the world by letting a little public disgust discourage you. While Justice John Gomery searches out the sponsorship scandal, the Liberals' best brains are searching for ways to get away with it. But how? Thus far they have tried four strategies, each of them seemingly borrowed from the handbook of a defense lawyer for the Soprano family. 1. They're out to get us. Almost as soon as Judge Gomery began exposing damaging facts, former prime minister Jean Chretien and his circle denounced the inquiry as...

Bloggers and MSMers alike are talking about Nicholas Lemann's poignantly candid piece in The New Yorker about how the MSM are stumped that anybody could challenge their fairness and reasonableness. Baffled as they are by the criticism, however, Lemann reports that the producers and editors of big media have rededicated themselves to being even more fair and reasonable in the future. "Most mainstream-media organizations, worried at being culturally and politically out of synch with many Americans, are making an effort to reach out--I frequently heard a promise to cover religion more seriously and sympathetically." How nice! But if anyone in...