Free Republic

The inevitable confirmation of Samuel Alito for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court may seem to many to be one of those routine transactions between branches of government. In fact, it is part of a larger picture that ought to frighten and outrage Americans of every political stripe. President Bush has, in recent years, asserted "inherent powers" and "exclusive authority" regardless of laws passed by Congress and language in the U.S. Constitution - and has used the purported powers as a reason to withhold information and exclude Congress from decisions. On occasion, the court, with the support of outgoing...

ANCHORAGE VISIT: Ex-president slams Bush, Alaska senators for environmental policies. Congress should not spoil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with drilling rigs, but the most serious environmental issue facing Alaska these days is global warming, former President Jimmy Carter told an Anchorage audience Wednesday. "Alaska is in the global forefront of the adverse effects of global warming," Carter said, describing shrinking protective ice caps, melting glaciers and villages threatened by erosion. He criticized the Bush administration, saying the U.S. government is failing to take serious steps to reduce atmosphere-warming emissions. At a press conference before his speech, Carter said Alaska's...

Now that Electronic Jim-Crow has officially stolen the 2004 presidential and congressional elections it can be officially declared that the South has finally won the civil war. It took a 150 years for the proslavery, segregationist, white supremacist movement in America to accomplish the task but they finally did it.

As the whole world watches, American democracy may be hanging by a thread in Ohio. Monday, December 13, saw a triple play that will live in electoral infamy. But every new day brings still more stunning revelations -- this time from Toledo -- of vote theft and fraud and a towering wall of resistance and sabotage against a fair recount of the votes that allegedly gave George W. Bush four more years in the White House. Three major events made December 13 a monument to electoral theft: a lawsuit filed in the morning at the Ohio State Supreme Court demanding...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - As it has done for 200 years, Ohio's delegation to the Electoral College (news - web sites) is to meet Monday to cast ballots for president and vice president — but this time, there are demands that the electors wait until after a recount. A demonstration was held Sunday as about 100 people gathered outside the Ohio Statehouse to protest the delegation's vote. The Electoral College's vote in the Ohio Senate chamber is expected to be accompanied by demonstrations outside the Capitol sponsored by groups who don't accept that President Bush (news - web sites) won the...

Flexing their new muscles, Congressional Republicans seem intent on reigning as a dissent-smothering monolith. First, House G.O.P. members slavishly obeyed the maneuver by Tom DeLay, the majority leader, to render his control of the caucus ethics-proof by making it possible for a party leader to keep his post even if he is under indictment. His counterpart in the Senate, Bill Frist, was more discreet but no less ham-handed. He has engineered a rules change designed to cow the few Republican moderates who may still be willing to nip back at demands for party fealty. The rule undercuts members' independence by...

I went to see the magical "Pericles'' at the Shakespeare Theater the other night. In ancient Greece, the prince of Tyre tires of all the yes men around him. He chooses to trust the one courtier who intrepidly tells him: "They do abuse the king that flatter him. ... Whereas reproof, obedient and in order, fits kings, as they are men, for they may err.'' Not flatter the king? Listen to dissenting viewpoints? Rulers who admit they've erred? It's all so B.C. (Before Cheney). Now, in the 21st-century reign of King George II, flattery is mandatory, dissent is forbidden, and...

Singer Linda Ronstadt, who made headlines during this year's presidential campaign by expressing solidarity with filmmaker Michael Moore, is now comparing current U.S. political trends with events in Nazi Germany. Linda Ronstadt "People don't realize that by voting Republican, they voted against themselves," Ronstadt told USA Today regarding the race for the White House. On the issue of the ongoing battle in Iraq, Ronstadt added, "I worry that some people are entertained by the idea of this war. They don't know anything about the Iraqis, but they're angry and frustrated in their own lives. It's like Germany, before Hitler took...

This, too, shall pass. The United States will muddle through, as it's muddled through before, because the idea of America, and the system that sustains it, is bigger and braver and more enduring than any single subpar president or collective brain cramp of the populace. But it's so damn sad anyway. Once again, as Franklin Roosevelt put it, the only thing to fear was fear itself, only this time fear won. Bombast won, the Big Lie won. And of course George W. Bush won, with his staunch certainties in a scary world and his skilled retailing of "moral values" to...

MILITANTS who are convinced Israel poisoned Yasser Arafat have vowed revenge attacks on the Jewish state. Suspicions of poisoning were also widespread at mosques and rallies, despite assurances to the contrary from Mr Arafat's successors, a reflection of the popular trust they lack and the rejection by many Palestinians of a soft line on Israel. Calls for attacks also clouded hopes of a revival in Middle-East peacemaking now Mr Arafat has left the scene. "We will respond to the assassination of the leader and symbol by striking the depth of the Israeli entity," said a statement from a newly named...

Paul Krugman addressing Miami Book Fair International live.

NEW YORK Leave it to syndicated columnist/cartoonist Ted Rall. While others on the left wonder if, and how, they should reach out to those in the "red states" to try to win more elections, the acerbic Rall is sticking to his guns as a proud blue stater. In his latest column, "Confessions of a Cultural Elitist," Rall declared, among much else, that "living in the sticks doesn't make you more American" and "by any objective standard, you had to be spectacularly stupid to support Bush." Rall, who grew up in what he calls "flyover" Ohio, adds, "if militant Christianist Republicans...

Clearly, those of us in the thinking part of the country are at odds with the red(neck) states. Why not formalise the irreconcilable differences between us by having a go at sovereignty? That way, we can rejoin the civilised world, and you can create your Taliban-style theocracy that you so obviously desire.

President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind. In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.” Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in...