Free Republic

The Republican National Convention, running tomorrow through Thursday on Broadway, will feature a famous movie star, a decorated war hero, "America's mayor" and a conservative Democrat whose heart has left his party. All will be speaking in prime time in New York City on behalf of the re-election of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, giving the convention the most political star power since Ronald Reagan's immense popularity sparked the rise of the Republican Party to a governing majority in the 1980s. Yet all those prime-time speakers — except for rogue conservative Democrat Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia —...

Press coverage of liberal political activist groups attacking President Bush has been less intense and less critical than current coverage of a group questioning Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry's service in the Vietnam War. [snip] According to a Lexis-Nexis search, major U.S. newspapers, magazines and television networks filed nearly 400 stories in the past 10 days about the anti-Kerry ads put forward by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Most of those stories have run since last Thursday, when Mr. Kerry accused the group of being a "front" for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, and the articles have explored that...

August 16, 2004 Grass roots seen key in 2004 By James G. Lakely THE WASHINGTON TIMES The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign is convinced that it has sufficiently outflanked John Kerry in grass-roots political organization in key battleground states, a tactic that is traditionally the deciding factor for Democrats. The Republicans say that they have worked to organize not only down to the county level, but to the individual voting precinct — a specialty of the Democrats' union-driven get-out-the-vote efforts. As of last week, the Bush team has put campaign chairmen in place in 94 percent of targeted precincts around the country....

Republicans are proud of producing the most racially diverse convention in the party's history this year, with the number of minority participants increasing 70 percent since 2000.     More than 800 of the 4,853 delegates at the GOP convention later this month in New York City, or about 17 percent, will be minorities, with Hispanics -- a group the Bush campaign has tried hard to woo this year -- making up the largest part of the group.     "Under the steady leadership and optimistic vision of President Bush, the Republican Party is celebrating a milestone achievement in our party's connection with America's...

President Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, rejected four plans to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, worrying once that if the plans failed and al Qaeda launched a counterattack, "we're blamed." According to the September 11 commission's 567-page report, released Thursday, Mr. Berger was told in June 1999 that U.S. intelligence agents were confident about bin Laden's presence in a terrorist training camp called Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan. Mr. Berger's "hand-written notes on the meeting paper," the report says, showed that Mr. Berger was worried about injuring or killing civilians located near the camp. Additionally, "If [bin Laden]...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com GOP calls Kerry adviser 'a liar'By James G. LakelyTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished July 16, 2004 Republicans are calling a Kerry presidential adviser who insisted the president misled the country about Iraq's nuclear weapons program "a liar" after intelligence reports released the past week showed his contentions were false.     Former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV caused a media splash a year ago by saying his investigation turned up no proof that Iraq tried to acquire nuclear materials from Niger.     But that contention was debunked by official intelligence reports issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the British government. Both...

President Bush, who campaigned gently for much of the spring by leaning on the prestige of his office, has dramatically sharpened his rhetoric against Sen. John Kerry since the presumptive Democratic nominee chose his running mate a week ago.     Mr. Bush took his first swipe at Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards at a campaign rally in York, Pa., last Friday -- only hours after a sober speech on the war on terrorism.     Saying he looks forward to "a spirited debate," Mr. Bush noted that a nonpartisan magazine rated Mr. Kerry, of Massachusetts, the most liberal member of the...

The Bush campaign has refused to speak at the NAACP's convention, but sent out Lynne V. Cheney yesterday to reach out to Hispanics, a minority group that could be key to President Bush's re-election.     The vice president's wife, long active in politics, delivered the keynote address at the National Hispanic Leadership Summit, saying she was "proud to campaign" for Mr. Bush.     "[Mr. Bush] has a clear vision for the future of the nation," Mrs. Cheney told an audience of more than 300 Hispanic business and political leaders in Washington. "Abroad, he will use America's great power to serve great purposes:...

<p>SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Organizers of the protests of the Group of Eight summit, as well as local law enforcement, had planned for 5,000 sign-waving and shouting opponents of globalization and the war in Iraq to pack this quaint and historic Southern city's public squares.</p>

<p>ISTANBUL -- The first meeting of the NATO summit had just begun yesterday morning when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld passed a note over the shoulder of President Bush, who was sitting along the line of world leaders at the table in front of him.</p>

<p>Bush repeats vow to strike terrorists By James G. Lakely THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published June 19, 2004 FORT LEWIS, Wash. -- President Bush, under fire from critics who say he exaggerated ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, yesterday reiterated his post-September 11 doctrine that warns states harboring terrorists that they are subject to attack.     "I laid out a new doctrine which said if you harbor a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorists," Mr. Bush said to hundreds of enthusiastic soldiers at this base near Seattle. "When the president of the United States speaks, he must mean what he says."     Mr. Bush also pointed out that Abu Musab Zarqawi, an associate of Osama bin Laden's responsible for the deaths of hundreds in post-Saddam Iraq, was given safe haven and medical treatment in Iraq before the war began.     Zarqawi also is believed to be responsible for the beheading of American contractor Nicholas Berg in May.     "By the way, he was the fellow who was in Baghdad at times, prior to our arrival," Mr. Bush said. "He was operating out of Iraq. He was an al Qaeda associate."     The president's critics, including Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, have accused the Bush administration of having "misled" the country about the justifications for the Iraq war.     The Bush administration also contended that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons that could be passed on to terrorists for strikes in the United States but, so far, large caches of such weapons have not been discovered.     Mr. Bush had a strong ally on the stage with him to help defend the war -- Arizona Sen. John McCain, who Mr. Bush defeated in a hotly contested presidential primary in 2000.     Mr. McCain, a Vietnam War veteran who the Kerry campaign tried to woo to the vice president's slot on the Democratic ticket, stood by Mr. Bush on the threat posed by Saddam and his overall execution of the war on terror.     "The events of September 11, 2001, beyond the immeasurable grief and suffering it caused for thousands of American families, was a battle cry that summoned America to a war we vaguely knew was going on but hadn't really comprehended how near the threat was and how atrocious were the purposes and plans of our enemies," Mr. McCain said.     Many news media outlets reported the findings of the commission examining the September 11 attacks as debunking links between Saddam and al Qaeda, but the commission's two chairmen said that coverage was wrong.     "I must say I have trouble understanding the flap over this," commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, said Thursday. "The vice president is saying, I think, that there were connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. We don't disagree with that."     The fresh political assault on Mr. Bush's handling of the war on terror comes at a time when the president's poll numbers are on the rise.     A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press showed Mr. Bush received a boost in public opinion in the wake of the death of President Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon. His personal approval rating, taken during the weeklong state funeral, rose from 44 percent to 50 percent.</p>

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (June 7) - Ronald Reagan was remembered with jelly beans, flowers and American flags on Sunday at memorials in his hometown and outside the mortuary where the former president's body lay. Reagan will be memorialized at the first presidential state funeral in more than three decades, a ritual rich in traditions from the country's earliest days. His remains will be flown to Washington on Wednesday to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. The funeral, undoubtedly attended by world leaders, will be at Washington National Cathedral on Friday. President Bush will speak at the funeral. Tokens of...

<p>Ronald Reagan -- who endured an alcoholic father, a poor childhood, uncertain college prospects, a failed marriage, political isolation in Hollywood, a declining movie career, a failed presidential bid and an assassination attempt -- found solace to help him endure life's trials.</p> <p>It was his faith.</p>

<p>Australian Prime Minister John Howard yesterday voiced his support for President Bush's leadership in Iraq and the war on terror and told fellow allies that this is the "worst time imaginable" to waver in their support of U.S. foreign policy.</p>

<p>Wartime presidents have always been the target of criticism from their political opponents, especially in election years. But many observers say the level of invective lobbed at President Bush has escalated to a new and dangerous level.</p> <p>Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry used the normally politics-free holiday of Memorial Day to attack Mr. Bush as a man who "didn't learn the lessons of our generation in Vietnam" and is "putting our troops at greater risk."</p>

<p>Republicans believe that Democrats, who have used reports of Iraqi prisoner abuse as an avenue to attack President Bush on the war, might be overplaying their hand — especially in light of the videotaped slaughter of an American businessman by al Qaeda terrorists.</p>

<p>The political fires around the race for the White House have been stoked recently, with Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry on the defensive about his anti-Vietnam War activities and President Bush's appearance before the September 11 commission.</p> <p>But Mr. Bush, so far, has let his surrogates engage in the daily hand-to-hand political combat.</p>

<p>Pressure is growing for Jamie S. Gorelick to resign from the September 11 commission for what the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has called "an inherent conflict of interest."</p> <p>Ms. Gorelick, who served in the No. 2 position in the Clinton Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno, was the author of a 1995 directive to the FBI, which repeatedly has been cited in testimony as a major hindrance to antiterrorism efforts prior to the 2001 attacks.</p>

<p>National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the September 11 commission yesterday that the White House completed work on its first major national-security policy directive on Sept. 4, 2001, and that the topic was "not Russia, not missile defense, not Iraq, but the elimination of al Qaeda."</p>

The final policy paper on national security that President Clinton submitted to Congress — 45,000 words long — makes no mention of al Qaeda and refers to Osama bin Laden by name just four times.  The scarce references to bin Laden and his terror network undercut claims by former White House terrorism analyst Richard A. Clarke that the Clinton administration considered al Qaeda an "urgent" threat, while President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "ignored" it. The Clinton document, titled "A National Security Strategy for a Global Age," is dated December 2000 and is the final official assessment of national security...