Free Republic

June 2, 2009 It’s Not Fair Casually to Call People Racist Remember Judge Charles Pickering? By Mona Charen The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has already achieved a boon for our political culture: It has helped leading liberals and Democrats to discover that being tarred as a racist on flimsy grounds is unfair and deeply unpleasant. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D., Calif.) for example, when asked on Face the Nation to respond to Rush Limbaugh’s and Newt Gingrich’s comments about Sotomayor, said, “That’s an absolutely terrible thing to throw around. Based on that statement — that one...

A statewide canvass of the Nov. 7 election results shows Democrat Jim Webb beat Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen by 9,329 votes, the State Board of Elections said Thursday. The results will not be official until they are certified by the board Nov. 27, but the statewide canvass is complete. Barbara Cockrell, the board's deputy secretary, said the official results may differ slightly from those posted Tuesday. Webb received 1,175,606 votes to Allen's 1,166,277 - a difference of 0.39 percent out of 2,370,445 votes cast, the canvass showed. Independent Green candidate Glenda Gail Parker received 26,102 votes, and there were...

Heather Mills is accusing her estranged husband Paul McCartney of repeated violence against her. Explosive court papers lodged by her lawyers in their £1billion divorce battle portray him as a 'vindictive' man who once tried to choke her and even attacked her while she was pregnant. Last night, Sir Paul's spokesman refused to comment on the allegations, but it is understood he denies them and that they will be fiercely contested in court. In an extraordinary escalation of their dispute, Miss Mills claims in the documents that the ex-Beatle: Subjected her to four violent attacks, including one in which he...

(AP) Washington, DC 09-27-2006 [revised, witness added]George Allen's pediatrician says he heard the then-toddler Allen utter the "N word" in an 1956 office visit when an African-American nurse administered a tetanus shot. Dr. Peter Moore, 97, said he clearly heard Allen say the epithet and wrote it in his notes in case Allen would someday run for office. Earlier claims that the young Allen was asking for his "Tigger" doll for comfort have been refuted by testimony from other toddlers who were there at the time. Joan Madsen, now a staffer to Sen, Barbara Boxer (D-CA), "swears" that she heard...