Free Republic

Mike Allen reported over the weekend that "Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton's impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by resident-elect Barack Obama". Believe it or not, the time Craig spent shilling for Clinton may have been his most honorable days of work ... In the early 1980s, [Craig] was an attorney for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Reagan and three others. Craig helped put together an insanity defense that led to Hinckley's acquittal. Nine years later, he advised Ted Kennedy in the Palm Beach rape case involving the senator...

The logical flaw in the indictment of a looming “very bad” nuclear deal with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered before Congress this month was his claim that we could secure a “good deal” by calling Iran’s bluff and imposing tougher sanctions. The Iranian regime that Netanyahu described so vividly — violent, rapacious, devious and redolent with hatred for Israel and the United States — is bound to continue its quest for nuclear weapons by refusing any “good deal” or by cheating. This gives force to the Obama administration’s taunting rejoinder: What is Netanyahu’s alternative? War? But the...

    France was the capital of the Enlightenment, an eighteenth-century intellectual movement spearheaded by writers who called themselves philosphes. They had waged a campaign of relentless criticism of the church and revealed religion, which their leader Voltaire called "The infamous thing." The crusade was so effective that by 1778, when an eighty-three year old Voltaire returned to Paris after decades away, he was received like a "victorious general," as Peter Gray describes it.  The Jesuit order had been suppressed, and various indicators showed a decline in devotion among the public. The effects were most profound in the ranks of the...

Have America’s troubles in Iraq sounded the death knell of neoconservatism, the political ideology that is said to be behind our presence there? Over the past year, there has been no shortage of voices saying so, many with undisguised glee. Abroad, the Times of London heralded “the end of an ideological era in Washington,” while the Toronto Globe and Mail reported with satisfaction that neoconservatism has been “decisively wiped out.” Observers here at home have agreed. To the historian Douglas Brinkley, Democratic electoral victories in November 2006 spelled “the death of the neoconservative movement,” while at National Review Online John...

It’s time to declare victory and go home. That was the formula that Senator George Aiken famously suggested for Vietnam in 1966. Today, it bears relevance to Iraq. No, not to the U. S. military presence in that country, but to the Democrats in Congress. Since November, the Pelosi-Reid Democrats have demonstrated shocking disdain for the well-being of our country. Their only concern has been to defeat or embarrass George W. Bush. Once, one of the noblest American traditions held that politics stops at the water’s edge. But, for the Pelosi-Reid Democrats, it seems that the inverse is true: namely,...

The application for a visa to Saudi Arabia asked for my religion. In inviting me to give some lectures and interviews, the American embassy in Riyadh had already suggested I answer "non-Muslim"--its standard advice to American visitors, I was told. But I did not feel comfortable with this evasion, so I put "Jewish." My visa came through nonetheless. I was under the impression that Jews were or had been barred from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and once there I asked several Saudis if this was true. Some agreed that the ban had once applied to all Jews, but most...

The most shocking outcome of last week's U.N. summit was the failure, once again, of the world organization to take a definitive stand against terrorism. It was scarcely surprising that the 191 member-states could not come to agreement on adding members to the Security Council or on sweeping management reforms or on foreign aid, however disappointing these failures were to some. But a long-overdue declaration on terrorism had seemed well within reach.

Apparently PBS has turned Joshua Muravchik's book Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism into a 3 hour documentary. They showed it in July but PBS in NYC is rerunning it late at night and other PBS stations may do so, as well. His book does a good job of explaining why socialism and democracy don't miss. I didn't hear about it so I thought a posting here might be useful to anyone who is interested.

Wouldn't. Couldn't. Shouldn't. These were the refrains of the cognoscenti in response to President Bush's inaugural address. Many conceded that the speech had moments of eloquence. But as a framework for U.S. policy, they found it had no hope of success and could lead to a passel of troubles. They took comfort only in the thought that the president did not really mean what he said. Peggy Noonan, writing on this page, reminded the president that "this is not heaven, it's earth." In a similar vein, Mark Helprin called the president's advocacy of "evangelical democracy" a "manic idea." "Will we...

There are 22 Arab countries. Of the world's 170 other governments, 121, or 71 percent, are elected. The number of Arab countries with freely elected governments: 0.In The End of History, Francis Fukuyama likened the nations of the world to wagon trains carrying American pioneers west. Their speeds and routes varied, but they were all headed in the same direction. Are the Arab states the last wagon train to democracy? Or is there something that sets them apart? Are they headed in another direction? Or have their wheels come off, leaving them forever stuck in place?These are questions to which...

Washington bookstore Politics & Prose -- which two years ago refused to host a reading for cybergossip Matt Drudge because, in the words of co-owner Carla Cohen, "he's a rumormonger and a troublemaker" -- is once again ruffling conservative feathers. This time, American Enterprise Institute scholar Joshua Muravchik says the independent bookstore agreed to sponsor a signing for "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism." But then, the author complains, the store's events coordinator withdrew the invitation when he belatedly realized that the book is critical, not laudatory, of the leftist ideology.[...]