Free Republic

I AM AS HAPPY as anyone at signs of an economic recovery. But I confess to having mixed feelings about the resurgence of the wing-nut industry. We now have “The Birthers’’ manufacturing myths that President Obama was not born in the United States and therefore is serving illegally. They are following the business plan of those earlier entrepreneurs selling the idea that Obama had killed his grandma. Consider the scare-biz Internet scribe who penned the memorable line: “Obama flies to Hawaii to visit his grandmother and just a few days later she winds up dead. Coincidence?

My guess is that she really doesn't know what she wants, or who she really is. It's probably dangerous to admit to a moment of empathy. I'll either get disqualified from ever becoming being a Supreme Court justice or asked to turn in my press card. But after watching reruns of Gov. Sarah Palin's resignation from the governorship, after hearing every grammatically challenged sentence and inconsistent paragraph dissected by some talk show host, I started to (blush) feel her pain. There was the frozen smile, the vulnerability, the odd grab bag of unfiltered, unedited, unintelligible un-reasons scattered across the lawn....

Home / Globe / Opinion / Op-ed Ellen Goodman IT IS believed that the shooter acted alone. Surely, that's true. No one else was standing beside suspect Scott Roeder when it is believed he murdered Dr. George Tiller in the sanctuary of his church. But Michael Griffin also acted alone when he killed David Gunn in 1993. Paul Hill acted alone when he killed John Britton in 1994. John Salvi acted alone and so did Eric Rudolph and James Kopp. This suspect is hardly lonely in this murderous cast of lone actors.

In her last column, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote: "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers . . . " This is worthy of some analysis. First, it reflects a major difference between the way in which the Left and Right tend to view each other. With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad. Those who deny...

Don't Ruin Economy Over Tiny Temp Rise February 11, 2007 BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist Our Thought For The Week comes from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." That would be yours truly: the climate holocaust denier. I wrote last week about "global warming," or "cooling," or "climate change," or (the latest term) "climate disruption" -- for...

Any man who has ever spent a night in a room with a woman knows that they are prone to certain kinds of irrational fears. Standard disclaimer: this does not mean to suggest men don’t have their own irrational fears - the plethora of Natural Male Enhancement Ads on TV proves it. But in this case The Beast is talking about a fear specifc to the other gender: That Noise Out In The Dark. The Beast cannot count the number of times he was rousted out of a warm bed in the wee hours of the night to pad into...

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - Winston Churchill In the course of a Boston Globe column today in which she calls for a referendum in Iraq as to whether the US stays or goes, Ellen Goodman writes:"Today we have nearly 3,000 American deaths, and by one estimate 650,000 Iraqi deaths."Ever the environmentalist, Goodman is dutifully recycling the findings of a report published in the Lancet magazine on civilian deaths in Iraq. This study, prepared by two anti-war partisans, has - as I noted here back in...

I was just beginning my read of Ellen Goodman's Boston Globe column today, which argues that Nancy Pelosi is being "demonized" and "used to frighten voters everywhere." Goodman gripes that, among other things, Pelosi is being depicted as a Michael Moore clone. By superb serendipity, at that very moment, Rush Limbaugh began a systematic catologuing of Pelosi's votes over the years proving that the possible Speaker-to-be is, well, a Michael Moore clone.Rush cited this Washington Times editorial, noting that Pelosi: Consistently voted against welfare reform, including the 1996 bill signed by President Clinton Opposed a constitutional amendment to permit school...

St. Petersburg, FL -- Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, says a recent nationally syndicated editorial written by columnist Ellen Goodman is misguided and inaccurate. The following is a copy of his letter to the editor to the Boston Globe newspaper reaction to her opinion piece, “Playing vegetative mind games.” Ms. Goodman: I read your recent column, "Playing vegetative mind games". The lengths that you and many of your colleagues continue to go to in order to somehow justify the barbaric killing of my sister, Terri, are truly sad and in my opinion a tragic reflection of how you and those...

SOME YEARS AGO, Rolling Stone magazine published a survey on the attitudes of baby boomer parents. The gist of it was that the people who had gone through the sexual revolution did everything, regretted nothing, and wanted their children to do none of it. This didn't surprise me. Nothing changes your perspective as much as becoming a parent, and the first order of child-raising is protection. I remember Hillary Clinton's wry sexual advice back when she was first lady and the mother of a teenager: ''My theory is don't do it before you're 21, and then don't tell me about...

There are substantial revisions to our lineup and schedule of syndicated national columnists: Six columnists from our current lineup - Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, Maureen Dowd, Leonard Pitts, David Broder and Ellen Goodman - are continuing, but their work will appear on different days of the week. We're adding five new columnists to the page - three conservative, two liberal - with an eye toward freshening up the mix and upgrading the quality of the writing and advocacy. Conservative Michael Barone, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and principal co-writer of the "Almanac of American Politics," has...

Ellen Goodman is a lot like conservative pundit Ann Coulter – except that she lacks Coulter’s wit, style and discernment. Okay, the liberal columnist is nothing like Coulter. Still, Goodman is among the best the opposition has to offer. And, if nothing else, her misconceptions usually make an amusing starting point for an exploration of reality. On December 5, Goodman warned her readers of a dangerous development: Conservatives have turned their fanatical gaze on the college campus. "While many of us assume that the right is busily targeting the highest court as their last unoccupied power base, a whole subset...

Copyright © 2004 The Quad-City Times | www.QCTimes.com Flu shot shortage shows the need to reform Toward the end of the campaign, President Bush offered his small variation on JFK’s famous line: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can not do for your country.“My call to our fellow Americans is, if you’re healthy, if you’re younger, don’t get a flu shot this year.”I have followed the patriotic edict to go unarmed into this flu season. In fact, unlike certain members of the Congress who shall remain nameless, I have no choice but to follow...

SOMETIMES I wonder what it must be like when the presidential son comes to Kennebunkport for a visit. Does George the Younger tell George the Elder what he tells the country? Does he say that we are safer with Saddam in prison than in power? Does he insist that we are better off having overthrown the dictator rather than containing him? I suspect it might be just a splash awkward. After all, it was dad who decided not to topple the Iraqi when he was on the run. It was George the 41st who believed that the chaos might be...

DOES THIS mean that I have to rise to the defense of Arlen Specter? If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, is the target of my enemy my hero? Do I have to rally whole paragraphs around the senior senator from Pennsylvania? Puh-leeze. In the aftermath of the election, the ayatollah wing of the Republican Party has insisted that their opposition to issues like same-sex marriage and abortion put the president back in office. That's their story, and they're sticking to it. Now it's payback time, and the folks who already own the White House and Congress are...

<p>BOSTON -- So it's come to this. The presidential campaign took off in New Hampshire, where the state motto is "Live Free or Die." Now it's heading into the home stretch, and the Republican motto is "Vote for Us or Die." In the days leading up to 9-11 anniversary, the vice president finally raised the alert -- color it crimson -- that a vote for Kerry was a vote for terrorism. If voters make "the wrong choice," he said, "then the danger is that we'll get hit again, and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating."</p>

This is the sort of argument over religion and patriotism the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid, Ellen Goodman says. BOSTON -- You gotta love Michael Newdow. No, actually you don't gotta love him. You don't even gotta like the combative zealot fighting to take two little words -- “under God” -- out of the Pledge of Allegiance. Newdow is your worst fantasy in a custody dispute. The atheist has not only kept up a running custody battle with his daughter's born-again Christian mother, he's kept up a running battle with his daughter's school, his state and his government. Every morning...