Free Republic

There are situations in my life when it doesn’t matter to me how competent a person is. For instance, if I’m at a fast food place, the criterion for competency is simply knowing that mustard is yellow, ketchup is red, and the ability to make the correct amount of change. I admit that the money part baffles a lot of the young workers at these places, but that’s another story. Simply put, the mass-produced food at these places is hard to mess up, so lack of skill on the part of the worker isn’t usually an issue. Then there are...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 8 — They were a father and son shopping for a car for the young man, a family ritual as common as any in the United States. It was unfolding on a recent evening here, though, to the cadence of distant gunfire and explosions. Aadel Kadhem, 43, and his 23-year-old son, Mohammed, walked around a pair of black BMW's, opening the doors, staring through the windows. Aadel Kadhem paints automobiles for a living, and his income has risen tenfold since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, he said, allowing him to squirrel away $3,000 for a car...

A famous American once dreamed all men might someday be judged by their character, not by the color of their skin. In the case of federal appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada, it seems that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream happened. But some Senate Republicans don't want to believe it. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia often decides cases dealing with the federal government's powers. So its decrees can ripple out, casting broad ramifications for all of America. Also, the court is often a steppingstone to the Supreme Court. Estrada, President Bush's appointee to this court,...

Misinterpreting the Pew International Survey:  Yesterday's USA Today article on the Pew Survey of opinions in 20 nations began with this lead paragraph: As President Bush plunges into Middle East diplomacy, a survey of 20 nations and the Palestinian Authority shows widespread distrust of his leadership, skepticism in the region about his plan for peace and less regard for the United States around the world. This is, at the very best, misleadingly incomplete.  Suppose a weatherman was reporting temperatures and had the following four daily highs (in Fahrenheit), 83, 75, 48, and 70.  Would you think it a fair summary...

Readers have asked why I haven't written anything on the war against Iraq. Suffice to say I've been too shocked and awed to even speak about it much. I will venture this: Call me a "traitor" if it makes you feel more red, white and blue. I am one American who loves her country but finds this latest example of American imperialism, shocking, awful and downright unforgivable. What's most shocking is how the masses have bought the "liberation" angle hook, line and sinker. They saw a statue being toppled in classic photo-op form and next day read "Saddam's Regime Ousted"...

It was a spectacular performance, and by the time Colin Powell was finished, I was a complete convert. But what, exactly, have I been converted from and to? It's a question I've been turning over in my mind ever since last Wednesday's tour de force before members of the U.N. Security Council. I am, for one thing, converted to the idea that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is in "material breach" of the U.N. mandate he was required to carry out. Before the Powell show, the analogy in my head was of sheriff's deputies executing a search warrant. It was an...

African talk radio could teach Washington a thing or two In his recent tour of interviews, Al Gore lamented the increasing power of vitriolic conservative broadcasters like Bill O'Reilly of the Fox News Channel, who, he says, are tilting the media to the right. Soon after, Democratic strategists began musing publically about creating a cable network of their own and launching a campaign to cultivate more "powerful" (read: louder) voices from the left. It doesn't take much reading between the lines to understand that after years of greeting the rising influence of caustic conservatives like Rush Limbaugh with scorn and...

One of the definitions of slick is "deftly executed; adroit." Synonyms include "sly, shrewd, slippery, wily." These words came to mind as I watched the Republican Party's remarkable off-year election triumph last week. Give credit where it's due. Bill Clinton at his most devious was never as sly or as cunning (or as politically effective) as the Republican Party has become. I think of the G.O.P. as the costume party. It wears a sunny mask, which conceals a reality that is far more ideological, far more extreme, than most Americans realize. Among the less meaningful questions being asked in Washington...

WASHINGTON (GNS) - First, it was Timothy McVeigh. Now, a second Persian Gulf War veteran may be connected with another home-grown act of terrorism. For a country that struggled for years confronting the emotional and physical toll on people who fought in Vietnam, the new information potentially linking Gulf War vet John Allen Muhammad to the sniper killings in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., will undoubtedly increase the focus on the experiences of the veterans of that 1991 war. As law enforcement investigates whether Muhammad was responsible for terrorizing the capital region since Oct. 2, Gulf War veterans' advocates attempted...

Just as the crisis with Iraq is heating up, the United States is on the verge of a serious confrontation with another member of the "axis of evil," North Korea. The recent visit of James A. Kelley, an assistant secretary of state, to Pyongyang ended with North Korea admitting that it is conducting a secret program to produce nuclear bomb-making material. As a result, the stage could be set for a repeat of the 1994 crisis with North Korea over a previous effort to build such weapons, a crisis that brought us close to a second Korean War. A nuclear-armed...

P-I sends reporter, photographer to Iraq for inside report In recent weeks, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, like almost all newspapers, has been replete with stories analyzing the policies and politics -- national and global -- surrounding the expected U.S. attack to force a "regime change" in Baghdad. In the cavalcade of coverage, one significant gap stands out: the lack of news from inside Iraq. How are the Iraqi people faring? They have been torn by years of military dictatorship, war and more than a decade of economic privation from international sanctions. Now, add to that list of woes the renewed threat...