Free Republic

It is the opposite of the pantsuit: the free-flowing, form-swallowing caftan. Yet there was Hillary Clinton talking to Laurene Powell Jobs about President Trump, Russia and the midterm elections at OZY Fest in July, having not so much walked as wafted onstage in a baby-blue linen caftan dotted with white cloudlike shapes. The former Democratic nominee for president has repeatedly turned to these boxy, ankle-length robes since her 2016 loss, a self-actualized silhouette that seems the equivalent of the beard Al Gore grew after his own defeat in 2000.

Now that President Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, thousands of American lives that were previously protected by provisions of the Affordable Care Act are in danger. For more than 30 years, we have studied how death rates are affected by changes in health-care coverage, and we're convinced that an ACA repeal could cause tens of thousands of deaths annually. The story is in the data: The biggest and most definitive study of what happens to death rates when Medicaid coverage is expanded, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that for every 455 people who gained...

Comic-book movies have had a woman problem for, oh, forever. But this past week has been a particularly notable low for Marvel, which seems incapable of understanding that its superhero movies are laughably sexist. Let’s take a look back at the week of the studio’s tone-deafness: Marvel released the sequel “Avengers: Age of Ultron” last Friday to criticism over its portrayal of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. She was seen by many as overly domesticated and feminized — and grossly underrepresented in the movie’s action figures, a fact noted by “Avengers” star Mark Ruffalo on Twitter. "@Marvel we need more #BlackWidow...

On Tuesday, the Kansas House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure designed to bring anti-gay segregation — under the guise of “religious liberty” — to the already deep-red state. The bill, written out of fear that the state may soon face an Oklahoma-style gay marriage ruling, will now easily pass the Republican Senate and be signed into law by the Republican governor. The result will mark Kansas as the first state, though certainly not the last, to legalize segregation of gay and straight people in virtually every arena of life.

A speaker at the National Rifle Association convention advised parents to keep an extra gun safe in their children’s room — a suggestion that quickly made its way around the liberal blogosphere. Rob Pincus, the owner of self-defense training company I.C.E., told the audience at his seminar on home defense Saturday that if they hear an intruder, their first instinct will be to run to their kids. Therefore, that’s where their gun should be as well. “In the middle of the night, if I’m in the bathroom or getting a glass of water or I’m in the bedroom or watching...

The boy, a fifth-grader at Douglas MacArthur Elementary School whose name is not being released, was charged as a juvenile with brandishing a weapon, police said. He was also suspended from school, and Alexandria City Public Schools Superintendent Morton Sherman said further action is being considered, including expulsion. On Monday, the boy showed the plastic gun to at least one other student during a bus ride home from the school. The 10-year-old did not point it at anyone or threaten to shoot it, but he neglected to mention that the weapon was fake, said Alexandria police spokeswoman Ashley Hildebrandt. School...

'Little Red Book' story gets wide publicity By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer NEW BEDFORD -- A Standard-Times story about a UMass Dartmouth student who was visited by federal agents for requesting a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" has received worldwide attention, thanks to the Internet. The story, which appeared Saturday, discussed a student's claim that he was visited by federal agents after requesting the book through an interlibrary loan. The account was immediately picked up by numerous Web logs and chat rooms, and by Monday had reached a world-wide audience. The newspaper was contacted by several large...

<p>WASHINGTON — In the 1950s, the right wing attacked liberals for being communists. In 2005, Karl Rove has attacked liberals for being therapists. Thus is born a kinder and gentler form of McCarthyism.</p> <p>Named after the late Sen. Joe McCarthy, who never let the facts get in the way of his lust to charge liberals with sedition, McCarthyism has come to mean "guilt by association."</p>

The Army says about half of 24 suspicious deaths of detainees had insufficient evidence to prove foul play or were justified homicides. Spokesmen released the breakdown after a spate of news stories appeared this week on the death toll of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. Army officials say some stories left the impression that all the deaths were still the subject of suspected foul play by soldiers, when they were not.

Posted on Tue, Jun. 10, 2003 In post-Sept. 11 world, threat of Iraqi weapons had to be defusedBy E. THOMAS McCLANAHANThe Kansas City Star So now we're told President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, not to mention a host of officials in both governments, hyped the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.It's instructive to turn back the clock a bit. Last year about this time, the hysteria du jour was a CBS report saying Bush had been told -- before Sept. 11 -- that al-Qaida planned to hijack several airliners.He wasn't told the terrorists intended to fly the...

Bush's political use of war images is shameless Special photo ops By Paul Krugman (NYT) Wednesday, May 7, 2003 PRINCETON, New Jersey: General Georges Boulanger cut a fine figure; he looked splendid in uniform, and magnificent on horseback. So his handlers made sure that he appeared in uniform, astride a horse, as often as possible. It worked: Boulanger became immensely popular. If he hadn't lost his nerve on the night of the attempted putsch, French democracy might have ended in 1889. We do things differently here in America - or we used to. Has "man on horseback" politics come to...