Free Republic

The drumbeat. It's always there. Day and night. Rain or shine. Winter or Summer. Sunday or Monday. It comes at you from every direction. It comes over the TV, the radio, at work, at school, in music, in the newspapers, from the politicians, in conversation with others, even in church. It wears you down. It robs you of the will to resist its message. Even short-lived victories, which stop it briefly, leave you with the knowledge that it will return; each minor victory bound to be lost to the redoubled efforts of this patient and persistent force. You can't escape...

Democrats add a new C to corruption By Josephine Hearn As Democrats mull when and how to introduce an election-year agenda, some party leaders have already begun to broaden the now-familiar Democratic refrain of a “culture of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and cover-up” to add a new alliterative element: costs. The shift in language reflects some frustration among Democrats that their steady drumbeat on corruption isn’t connecting with voters as much as they’d like. The new phrase allows them to segue from ethical abuses to pocketbook issues such as prescriptions drugs, energy prices and tuition costs, where they contend that Republicans...

Drumbeat Of all places I could expect to see a “drumbeat” for raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, (Drumbeat Grows Louder For Fuel Efficiency, Patrice Hill, Monday, August 22, 2005.), the last was the front page of the Washington Times. As a matter of fact, it should have been on the op-ed page, as the first paragraph of the article clearly shows: The recently approved energy legislation excluded the biggest item that would have cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil as well as help lower record-high oil and gasoline prices: higher fuel efficiency standards for cars and sport utility vehicles.What...