Free Republic

The rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria -- fueled by ratings-hungry cable-television hotheads and leading Republican presidential hopefuls -- is a dangerous trend: It may lead to a Hispanic intifada that may rock this nation in the not-so-distant future.

Right-wing media machine coming off tracks Gene Lyons With the 2008 presidential election a year away, Republicans are running on empty. Polls show President Bush sinking to historic lows. Fewer than one-quarter of Americans (25 percent in a recent survey) approve of his performance. Most wouldn’t mind if Bush would simply go away, provided he’d take that snarling misanthrope Dick Cheney with him.

You have to wonder if the whole conservative movement in the U.S. is living in a weird alternate reality in which the only thing that matters is what you say, and facts, consistency and honor mean nothing. The recent remarks by Rush Limbaugh in which he called military men who opposed the Iraq war "phony soldiers" is another example of the strange world in which he (and a lot of neocons) exist. The reason: Limbaugh could be the poster boy of a group of war cheerleaders (including Dick Cheney, Mike Medved, Sean Hannity, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Mike Savage, et...

Income disparity reaches highest since 1920s, paper reports, with recent Wall Street boom partly to blame. The income gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans grew to its widest level since the 1920s, according to a report published Friday. Citing Internal Revenue Service data, the Wall Street Journal reported that the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans earned 21.2 percent of all the nation's income in 2005, up from the previous high of 20.8 percent in 2000. Conversely, the bottom half of working Americans earned just 12.8 percent of all the nation's income, down from 13.4 percent in 2004 and...

Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost? SNIP The kids were treated, thanks to S-CHIP. The Frosts spoke out so the public would know that real people lie behind the acronym. Their reward was to be trashed on right-wing blogs and talk radio as if they were multimillionaires ripping off the system. The assault on the Frosts apparently began on the Free Republic website and quickly spread to National Review Online, Power...

The presidential candidates are offering prescriptions for everything from Iraq to healthcare, but listen closely. Their fixes are situational and incremental. Meanwhile, the underlying structural problems in American politics and government are systemic and prevent us from solving our most intractable challenges. If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention. Sound radical? If so, then the founders were radicals. They would be amazed and disappointed that after 220 years, the...

A nationally syndicated columnist has recently urged that Americans forget about 9/11, become adults, and "get back our groove." Thomas Friedman is the senior columnist at the New York Times and hence de facto the most important columnist in the United States. That he disapproves of the 9/11 cult makes it official. As America's uber wise man, he has certified that the national obsession with the World Trade Center attack is a sign of weakness and fear. Yet in the marvelous Yiddish phrase, "Already, all right, enough!" The attack was a great evil, a terrible blow to the whole nation,...

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran "requests the pleasure" of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel — with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There's Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a...

I applaud the thousands of people, many of them poor, who traveled from around the country to protest in Jena, La., last week. But what I’d really like to see is a million angry protesters marching on the headquarters of the National Republican Party in Washington. Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is. The G.O.P. has spent the last 40 years insulting, disenfranchising and otherwise stomping on the interests of black Americans. Last week, the residents of Washington, D.C., with its majority black population, came remarkably close to realizing a...

vThis morning's column by James Carroll, the Boston Globe's resident gushy liberal, is so predictable you wonder whether it might have been written by a liberal-column generator software program. You know the kind: insert issue, names of political players, a few factoids, and let the program spit out the boilerplate of a standard leftist diatribe. I mean, as soon as you knew that Carroll was writing a column about Ahmadinejad's visit to the U.S., could there be any doubt as to where he'd come down on the controversy surrounding the Iranian president's desire to visit Ground Zero? And Carroll doesn't...

As the Army’s suicide rate hits record levels in the Iraq war, there’s small wonder practically everyone in Congress wants to deal with the parallel emerging crisis of depressed veterans tempted to take their own lives. Everyone, that is, except Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma. He stands alone in blocking final passage of a suicide prevention bill in fear that the government’s record-keeping on troubled vets might somehow crimp their ability to purchase handguns. snip... It is an eminently good thing that the anti-suicide measure would require medical specialists to keep track of veterans found to be high risks...

Bush's inaction leaves New Orleans mired Dear President Bush, don't be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty when you address New Orleans today. You might be shocked by what you don't see. Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Big Easy two years ago today, wiped out whole neighborhoods, killed 1,800 in the region and threatened the spirit of a city that made its mark by its improvised music -- and its laid-back way of life. But much of that has changed. Federal spending on Gulf Coast repairs has exceeded $114 billion, and we hear you're seeking...

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine -- Even though President George W. Bush wasn't in town, more than 1,000 anti-war protesters marched by his family compound Saturday in Kennebunkport.Activists from all over the country arrived by bus, bicycle and foot at a local school to begin a two-mile march to the Bush summer home at Walker's Point.Along the way they pounded drums, chanted and carried signs and banners with slogans such as "Don't Pay for this War" and "Care for Vets." Some protesters called for Bush's impeachment, but others had more moderate messages of support for the troops but opposition to the war. Democratic...

Terrorist Propaganda Picture of the Week. An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.

Bill Plante's Having None of This Garden Party As Karl Rove embraced President Bush today following an emotional farewell announcement on the South Lawn, the solemnity of the moment was shattered by Bill Plante of CBS, who bellowed to Bush: "If he's so smart, how come you lost Congress?"

Lucia Sebastian Diego left northern Guatemala with her 10-year-old son in early July hoping to reunite with her husband, who lives illegally in Indiana. She never made it — her journey and life coming to an abrupt end on July 19 on the desert floor on the Tohono O'odham Reservation. The 41-year-old mother of four became one of the latest victims in a grim trend among illegal border crossers attempting to traverse the Arizona desert: Twice as many women, often traveling with children, die in July as in any other month of the year. They are more susceptible to the...

The same type of gun commonly used by Iraqi security forces is legally being sold to civilians in Rock Hill. Surprised? Don't be. It's been happening for years in York County, and more stores are offering AK-47 assault rifles as their popularity grows among collectors since federal restrictions on their sales were lifted in 2004. But law enforcement officials say they've found shell casings at crime scenes recently, and gun-control advocates claim the guns weren't designed for retail sale. Take a drive along Cherry Road, and you'll see David's Pawn Shop advertising the weapons on its marquee, "AK-47s Now In...

While governor of Texas, George W. Bush reviewed 153 writs of execution. He let executions proceed 152 times.How lucky for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby that Bush has suddenly discovered his mercy gene.On Monday, Bush commuted the 30-month prison sentence that Libby, former top aide to Vice President Cheney, received for perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to FBI agents in the strange case of the outed CIA agent.In a half-a-loaf gambit, Bush let stand the conviction, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. Bush said that the sentence, while within guidelines for the crimes, was "harsh."He also opined -...

The crimes were serious, the jurors unanimous, the sentencing judge plainly perturbed at the defendant's felonious behavior. And so, four weeks ago, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, got what he had coming: 30 months in a federal slammer.

I. Lewis Libby, the former top aide to Dick Cheney who was convicted in March of lying to a Grand Jury and obstructing justice will have to go to jail during his appeal. A three judge federal appellate panel decided that Libby stands little chance of winning an appeal, so he will have to go to jail. Master bloviator Rush Limbaugh, obviously a man who respects the rule of law and the US Constitution, is doing the Texas George two-step in calling for George W. Bush to pardon Libby. Today Limbaugh, who himself escaped jail, then spent a couple of...