Free Republic

In August, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty to a felony count of making a false statement while working to secure FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) surveillance on Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page. In the early days of the Russian probe, an FBI official had asked if Page had served as a source for the government, as Page maintained; Clinesmith falsely altered a document by adding "not a source" in a fourth FISA application. Skip Clinesmith's punishment for making a false statement? Prosecutors recommended three to six months, according to Politico. Federal Judge James Boasberg instead sentenced Clinesmith...

California Rep. Pete Stark, the 20-term South Bay Democratic Congressman, raised eyebrows in a public debate last month by accusing his primary challenger of misconduct — taking “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes — without any evidence. On Tuesday, he was at it again — but this time his target was columnist Debra J. Saunders, whom he wrongly accused during a Chronicle editorial board meeting of contributing to Democratic opponent Eric Swalwell’s campaign.Stark was forced to publicly apologize to Swalwell last month after his unsubstantiated charges. On Tuesday, he had to apologize again, after he said he had documentation proving Saunders – who writes the Chronicle’s “Token Conservative” blog”...

When he unveiled his budget, the California governor boasted that he was delivering a spending plan without "gimmicks, tricks and unrealistic expectations." On the one hand, Brown presented some bold changes in his spending plan by proposing a realignment of state and local government. Also, Brown has ordered some small but symbolically important cuts, such as slashing his own office's budget and halving the number of state employee cell phones. On the other hand, it's hard to understand how Brown expects to pull off the linchpin of his spending plan -- an extension of tax increases enacted in 2009. Brown...

This is a free country. If Sarah Palin wants to run for president in 2012, she is free to try. But she will not win the GOP nomination because Republican voters are not going to choose a middle-aged version of Britney Spears -- a figure whose most evident talent is to attract attention to herself -- to challenge Barack Obama. It's this simple: Republicans are too smart to nominate a candidate with a 50 percent unfavorable rating, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll, before she has declared for office. Cue to Palin's latest video, in which she...

Once upon a time in America, when George W. Bush served as America's 43rd president, Democrats criticized the Bush tax cuts, especially for the wealthy. This month, President Obama called a measure extending all the Bush tax rates "a win for our economy" -- after excoriating liberal critics of his compromise tax package as "sanctimonious." Once upon a time, Democrats trashed Bush for pushing tax cuts during a time of war, and Democrats slammed Bush for not demanding that Americans sacrifice to win the war on terror. This month, while U.S. troops serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama added more...

There aren't a lot of walls around Carly Fiorina. While politicos have marveled at the missteps of Meg Whitman's $140 million Titanic of a campaign, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO has made herself accessible to journalists in her bid to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer. She hasn't over-parsed her positions. She didn't try to retool her take on the issues after she won the GOP primary. There's a real what-you-see-is-what-you-get feel to Fiorina. Fiorina is new to politics and has a spotty voting record. Those are points against her. But as the first woman to head a Fortune top 20 corporation, she...

No wonder skeptics consider the left's belief in man-made global warming as akin to a fad religion — last week in Italy, G8 leaders pledged to not allow the Earth's temperature to rise more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. For its next act, the G8 can part the Red Sea. The worst part is: These are the brainy swells who think of themselves as — all bow — Men of Science. The funny part is: G8 leaders can't even decide the year from which emissions must be reduced. 1990? 2005? "This question is a mystery for everyone," an aide to Russian...

I wish Sarah Palin would just go away. During the 2008 presidential campaign, I wrote about the unfair personal treatment to which the political press corps subjected Palin and her children. Now I just want her to stop milking her role as GOP martyr. Palin should stick to her day job -- by which I mean, governing Alaska, not being fodder for talk-show humor. Both parties have their umbrage industries -- thanks to true believers, who love nothing better than to see themselves as victims of a perceived double standard. Last week, comedian David Letterman's two off-color jokes about a...

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...

Here's another reason why people don't trust newspapers. When science reporters write about, say, hormone therapy or drinking red wine, they report on studies that find that hormones or red wine can be good for you, as well as studies that suggest otherwise. Any science involving complex organisms is rarely black and white. When it comes to global warming, newspapers play up stories that reinforce the prevalent the-sky-is-falling belief that global warming is human-caused and catastrophic. But if a study or scientist does not portend the end of the world as we know it, it rarely rates as news. In...

Simi Valley -- Florida was big. Florida Republicans not only went for John McCain over Mitt Romney, but also, when you add the McCain vote (36 percent) to the now-withdrawn Rudy Giuliani vote (15 percent), you see a shift: A majority of Republican voters are straying outside the ever-pure conservative base. While conservative talk show hosts and a slice of the GOP base demand all-or-nothing from GOP candidates, Republican voters in general clearly understand that, in a democracy, the all-or-nothing equation has only one sure outcome: You get nothing. Especially when your party does not represent the majority of voters....

This week, thousands of anxious Britons spent days queuing in front of bank branches to withdraw their savings from Northern Rock, a British mortgage lender caught up in a credit crunch. Many emptied their accounts, even after British Chancellor Alistair Darling announced that the government would guarantee existing savings accounts in an attempt to stop the panic. Whom did movers in U.K. financial circles blame for the bank panic? They blamed Northern Rock for high-risk investment practices. They blamed Darling for letting the situation deteriorate to the extent that it did. Then they blamed Darling for promising that the government...

For years, supporters of global warming alarmism have repeated an odd refrain: Even if we're wrong, we're right. Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, D-Colo., said it in 1988, as the National Journal reported. "What we've got to do in energy conservation is (to) try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." I regularly receive e-mails with similar arguments. Or, as one reader put...

Writing about that recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll on the number of books Americans read in the previous year, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Sauders pounced on how AP reported the findings – specifically, that "liberals read more books than conservatives": The poll found that among people polled who read at least one book in the last year, liberals read nine books and conservatives read eight.When I called Michael Gross, associate vice president of Ipsos public affairs, to find out more about the Ipsos poll, he told me the one-book difference "is within the margin of error, it's not a...

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger manages to get his universal health care package past the California Legislature, he will become a real action hero for the 4.8 million Californians who lack health care at any given moment, as well as insured residents who live in fear of losing both their jobs and their health plans. He would be a superhero if he found an honest way to pay for it. State Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe noted that Schwarzenegger believes "the opportunity is this year." There is much to like in the governor's package. Plan Schwarzenegger calls for "shared...

Last week, a lesbian filed suit against eHarmony.com because the online dating service does not fix up homosexual couples. It is ugly to watch how a group that has been asking straight Americans for tolerance and understanding can turn on a dime, as members seek to punish and shut down those with heterodox opinions. In the Bay Area, it is no secret. Here, tolerance is a one-way street. Equal rights for some mean fewer rights for others. In February, after the breakup of a 10-year relationship, San Mateo County resident Linda Carlson signed on to eHarmony. As her San Francisco...

Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," was billed as "a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it." But right after the movie won an Oscar for best documentary, America learned that Gore's crusade ends at his front door. A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, released a press release that showed the Gores spent $30,000 a year on energy for their suburban Nashville home -- and burned 221,000 kilowatt-hours last year, or 20 times the national average. The...

I don't know a single Democrat not on a political payroll who is enthusiastic about state Treasurer Phil Angelides' run for governor. In the Capitol, many Dems can't stand the guy. No one can argue with a straight face that Angelides has a serious plan to balance state finances. If Schwarzenegger is the free-lunch governor -- he won't raise taxes and has failed to slice spending to eliminate the state's $4 billion to $5 billion structural budget shortfall -- Angelides offers free lunch followed by free desert. Angelides' recipe for state finances: no new taxes, unless you're rich, and a...

PRESIDENT BUSH is making a big mistake in announcing that he wants to send up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the southern border. What a shoddy way to say thank you to troops who have seen plenty of action in Iraq and after Hurricane Katrina. It is also an insult to conservative and moderate voters, whom he apparently thinks this feckless gesture will appease. The whole focus on the border shows that Bush is not serious about curbing illegal immigration. Washington already has increased the ranks of the Border Patrol, which is good. Meanwhile, as many as one third...

The movie "United 93" depicts what David Beamer, father of United Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer, calls the first "counterattack" in the war on terror after Sept. 11, 2001. Beamer rejects the notion that the movie is coming out "too soon" after Sept. 11. He wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week that if anything is "too soon," it is "too soon for us to become complacent." You won't hear family members of the 33 passengers and seven crewmembers complain that writer-director Paul Greengrass exploited their loved ones. The film depicts the victims from a respectful distance, with no...