Free Republic

Blaming the unvaccinated is the sharpest tool in President Joe Biden's shed, and that is not healthy for America. Consider Biden's address to the nation on COVID-19 from the White House State Dining Room Tuesday. Biden started off well enough as he offered that he shared the public's frustration and loss and commended Americans who have been vaccinated. Then he turned to vaccination shaming. "You have an obligation to yourselves, to your family and, quite frankly — I know I'll get criticized for this — to your country" to get vaccinated, Biden declared. He added, "I honest to God believe...

WASHINGTON -- Critics often accuse President Donald Trump of using dog-whistles to gin up his conservative base. But really, Trump's most effective trick is to get TV journalists to attack on demand -- as you can see in cable news coverage on the caravan of Central Americans headed toward the U.S. border. Perhaps the biggest sucker for Trump's caravan play is Joe Scarborough, the former GOP congressman who hosts MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Scarborough led his Friday show with a lecture to Americans concerned about the caravan. Voters should be concerned about the GOP tax cut that benefited the rich, and...

"Sometimes I think we're so liberal that we're OK stepping over dead people on our sidewalks," Daniel Bergerac of the Castro Merchants Association and Castro Cares told me as we discussed the state of the streets of San Francisco. As he knows, people stepping over dead people does happen in San Francisco. Baghdad by the Bay is living with two intractable problems -- a large homeless population and bands of street people who turn parts of this shining city into a menacing and grimy environment. Throwing millions of dollars a year at the homeless problem and developing well-meaning programs haven't...

Donald Trump is like a contagion who infects everyone around him. Once you've kissed, you can never wipe his saliva off your face. Consider the venerable (in its own view) NBC. This year, the network fired Trump, only to find it is Trump Lite. On June 16, when Trump was announcing his candidacy for the White House, the billionaire reality-TV star faulted Mexico for sending problem people to the United States. Quoth Trump: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists." Those comments were stupid and racist -- and they should have caused Trump to tank in the polls and...

Former San Francisco 49ers star Kermit Alexander is death penalty opponents' worst nightmare. Foes of the death penalty argue that the criminal justice system is skewed against African-Americans and that prosecutors are less likely to seek the death penalty when victims are black. Alexander is an African-American who grew up in the projects of Los Angeles. So were the four members of his family slain in a 1984 contract killing gone wrong. He has watched the three black men convicted for the murders try to escape responsibility for their crimes. In prison, Darren Williams -- the Rollin' 60s Neighborhood Crips...

"All I ask is fairness," Donald Trump has told the media. He was the only GOP presidential hopeful to raise his hand and refuse to pledge not to run as a third-party candidate at the Fox News debate. Now he faces a deadline -- Sept. 30 -- to make that pledge or forfeit the opportunity to run in South Carolina's February primary. Unfair, in Trump World, means not completely stacked in Trump's favor. Maybe he will take the pledge. "I will say that the RNC and the Republican Party -- I think I've been treated very fairly over the last period of...

"The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" isn't living up to its promise. Also known as Proposition 47, the California ballot initiative, which was approved in November 2014 with 60 percent of the vote, downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. Proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon was the rare prosecutor who pushed for its approval. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, "What we have been doing hasn't worked, frankly." Gascon spokesman Alex Bastian told me, "The voters indicated that possessing small amounts...

"Many people were inconvenienced by the Montgomery bus boycotts. Do you think Rosa Parks should pay restitution for that?" Mollie Costello hectored the Bay Area Rapid Transit board at a recent hearing. Costello is one of the Black Friday 14 -- 14 protesters arrested Nov. 28 for shutting down the West Oakland BART station and four of five transit lines for three hours to protest the killing of unarmed black men by police officers. Protesters of those arrests, with the slogan "No Business As Usual," have three demands: 1) The BART board drop criminal charges against Costello and her 13...

Carly Fiorina is gearing up to run for president. National Journal reports she already has begun hiring staff. Fiorina has run for office only once, as the Republican challenger to Sen. Barbara Boxer of California in 2010 -- and she lost. Still, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO won prime attention by running and losing. She's on "Meet the Press" all the time. She's still rich and still good-looking. (In 2010, Fiorina and husband Frank claimed a combined net worth of $30 million to $120 million.) Insiders think she's probably running for vice president; if Hillary Clinton is the Dems' nominee, the...

Who wants to be Paula Jones? Or Kathleen Willey or Anita Hill? All three women have accused political icons -- Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas -- of sexually harassing them. And what did they get for sticking out their necks? Jones squared off against skater Tonya Harding on "Celebrity Boxing." Willey and Hill wrote books. They can't prove their allegations, and for the rest of their lives, they will have to live with the consequences. They are not in an enviable position. On Sunday, Politico reported that two women had accused GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain of "inappropriate...

Perhaps one of the most dangerous sentences in the English language is: "It can't get any worse." Anyone who doesn't know that should not be trusted with sharp objects or political power. And yet there are California Republican Party convention-goers who made that claim in a city where everyone else asks what's wrong with the Republicans. On the one hand, hard-liners want to punish any GOP lawmaker who cuts a deal to put Gov. Jerry Brown's five year car-fee, income and sales tax extension on the ballot. On the other hand, few Republican lawmakers voted for spending cuts - leaving...

"America is not broke," filmmaker Michael Moore told a group protesting against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attempts to curb public employee union collective bargaining in Madison over the weekend. "Neither is Wisconsin." Forget Wisconsin's projected two-year $3.6 billion budget shortfall. Forget this year's $1.65 trillion in federal deficit spending. Any claim that Wisconsin - or Washington - is broke, Moore claimed, is "a Big Lie." "We reject anyone who tells us America is broke and broken," he explained. When President George W. Bush was in the White House, Democrats railed against deficit spending. Now they don't even seem to notice...

I have known Rush Limbaugh since his old radio days in Sacramento, before he became a GOP god. I've disagreed with him over the years. Last year I took on his bashing of Republican moderates and criticized Limbaugh and other talk-radio hosts when they were too harsh on not-yet GOP nominee John McCain. I've never apologized and we're still friends. If you've watched cable news in the last week, you've seen how the Limbaugh story is playing. Limbaugh said he hopes Obama "fails." As he explained, "I've been listening to Barack Obama for a year and a half. I know...

Of course California's prison inmates are entitled to reasonable 21st-century health care. Unfortunately for taxpayers, Clark Kelso, the federal receiver in charge of California's prison health care has, as state Attorney General Jerry Brown noted at a news conference last week, a "gold-plated wish list" for California's prison health care system. His Receivership wants to spend $8 billion to build seven new hospitals, each the size of 10 Wal-Marts, which would create "a holistic environment," with "music therapy, art therapy and other recreation therapy functions," a music room, stress-reduction room, game room and "therapy kitchen," with lots of natural light...

Gay civil rights groups -- the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force -- are calling on President-elect Barack Obama to yank his invitation to Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural prayer on Jan. 20. They demand tolerance from others, but won't spare any for those with whom they disagree. Unless of course, that person is Obama, who, like Warren, opposes same-sex marriage. Then they get real ecumenical. Not to mention, very forgetful.

For eight years, Democrats have hurled all manner of criticism at President Bush. Some of the heat was well deserved, some was not. Either way, it is about to be their turn to be held to the standards they held for Bush -- and they are not prepared. I saw a taste of the future at the Democratic convention in Denver, when Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., sat down with journalists to discuss the now President-elect Barack Obama's economic plan. In light of an anticipated $482 billion deficit -- how quaint that humble number seems today -- I asked Stabenow, how...

If ever a news story bolstered Rush Limbaugh's low opinion of the "drive-by media," it is the tawdry saga of former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. When the story about Foley's e-mails to former House pages first broke, cable news was All Foley/All the Time. The chattering classes -- this columnist included were outraged at the GOP leadership's inexcusable failure to protect vulnerable House pages from Foley. Many pundits didn't need proof, so happy were they to embrace Nancy Pelosi's charge that there had been a "cover-up of Mark Foley's outrageous behavior." When the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct...

WHEN social conservatives argue that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to legalized polygamy, same-sex marriage advocates either laugh or sneer. It's a scare tactic, they say. It'll never happen. Last year, however, as Canada legalized same-sex marriage, Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study to debunk the polygamy argument. Big mistake: The study confirmed the scare tactic by recommending that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law. It also suggested that a legal challenge to Canada's anti-polygamy laws would succeed. "Why criminalize behavior?" asked Martha Bailey, one of the study's three law-professor authors. "We don't criminalize adultery." Confession time: I am...