Free Republic

Journalist Ron Suskind is one-stop shopping for Bush administration castaways. But what if John DiIulio -- Suskind gave him a platform in Esquire magazine in 2002 to call the administration "the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis" -- and Paul O'Neill had been shopping a conservative critique of Bush? Would Suskind have cracked open his notebook? Not likely. Few events excite liberal journalists more than the inevitable defection of an "insider" from a Republican administration, provided that the defector is a liberal who is telling the media what it wants to hear. What interests the Suskinds are not conservative defectors but...

In recent years there has been an explosion in empirical research on faith-based social programs. Most studies, including the most scientifically rigorous, find that faith moves social and civic mountains. Consider the latest scientific literature on religion and crime: A 1997 study by Byron Johnson, director of the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society (CRRUCS) reports that New York state prisoners who participated intensively in Bible studies were less likely to be rearrested: Participants were only a third as likely to be arrested a year after release as otherwise comparable prisoners who did not participate. On average,...

I CAN SEE from the Daily News' Friday editorial ("A Penn professor gets a lesson from Bush") that you are puzzled, dismayed and disappointed by my statements of last Monday concerning the Esquire magazine article. You may not like or accept my reasons, but I will give them. Sixteen months ago, I left the White House after serving the half-year I publicly said I would when I took the job. I stayed just long enough to complete the only task at which I had any special skill, namely "Unlevel Playing Field," a study exploring how government discriminates against grassroots religious...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Politics and re-election concerns rule the White House at the expense of good public policy, says a former aide to President Bush. Not so, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday, dismissing comments from John J. DiIulio as ``baseless and groundless.''DiIulio issued two statements, the first generally standing by his criticism, the second - similar to Fleischer's comment - calling his own allegations ``groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples.''DiIulio, a Democrat who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives until August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: ``There is no...