Free Republic

We wise heads in the Washington press corps have pretty much decided that Rudy Giuliani is leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination because of ignorance. Republicans obviously know very little about him. And when they wake up and smell his stands on social issues, he will sink like a rock. But ... maybe not. Maybe Republican voters are not so ignorant after all. Maybe they figure that after losing both houses of Congress in 2006, after Katrina, after Iraq, after the current veterans' care scandal, and taking into account a natural desire for change, the Republican presidential...

Chuck Hagel for president By ROBERT SCHEER Published Sunday, January 21, 2007 Chuck Hagel for president! If it ever narrows down to a choice between him and some Democratic hack who hasn’t the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote. Yes, the war is that important, and the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic candidate, still can’t or won’t take a clear stand on the occupation is insulting to the vast majority of voters who have. Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet who...

For just a minute or two, step into my life. I am an American soldier in the Army Special Forces. I have just returned from a one-year tour of duty in Iraq, where I lived, shared meals, slept and fought beside my Iraqi counterpart as we battled insurgents in the center of a thousand-year-old city. I am a conflicted man, and I want you to read the story of that experience as I lived it. In the interest of security, I have omitted some identifying details, but every word is true. Routine and Ritual I wake in the cold and...

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in...