Free Republic

K.T. McFarland, conservative politico, pundit, analyst and a former national security figure in President Donald Trump’s administration, told a rapt radio audience just recently that Robert Mueller’s thuggish investigators treated her so poorly, so viciously and so unfairly — trying to get her to cop to crimes she didn’t commit and accuse others of crimes they didn’t commit, either — that she and her husband, minus hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, fled to Scotland to recover and reflect on the New America: the place where civil rights are routinely violated by entrenched, smug bureaucrats.Her story is eye-opening...

FEBRUARY'S COMMENTARY has one of the most frightening essays of recent years, in which James Q. Wilson makes the case that Americans are polarized to an unprecedented extent; bitterly divided. Responsible conservatives should confront this problem and show the country how to solve it. Not to solve it is to invite catastrophe. Why does the burden fall on conservatives? Because they are running the federal government and it is their duty to lead.Wilson lists several causes of today's profound polarization. He mentions the divided, politicized press, one-issue pressure groups, the polarizing effects of higher education, and the rise of ideological...

 THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS THE authority to stop Oregon physicians from using prescription drugs to implement that state's unique program of physician-assisted suicide. But the administration's effort to use an ambiguous federal drug statute to undermine Oregon's assisted suicide law is a betrayal of conservative legal principles. Gonzales v. Oregon, argued before the Supreme Court earlier this month, may give an early signal about the commitment of the emerging Roberts Court to those principles. And the Court's decision could have unexpected implications for a range of other issues, including future policies about abortion.Like the administration, I believe that the people...

Last December, during my oral argument in the medical marijuana case of Gonzales v. Raich, the center chair normally occupied by Chief Justice William Rehnquist was empty. Without the towering, and sometimes glowering, visage of the chief, with his no-nonsense demeanor and questioning, there was a palpable void in the courtroom that day. Now, with his passing, there is a void in the Supreme Court itself. Today we mourn the death of William Rehnquist. One day soon we may mourn the death of his legacy--the jurisprudence of the Rehnquist court. Even before becoming chief justice, often in lonely dissents, it...

Nation & World Reordering the court Bush may have the opportunity to name several new justices By Angie Cannon There may be little George W. Bush does in his second term that will have a more lasting legacy than his likely appointments to the Supreme Court. Two of the current justices are in their 80s; two are in their 70s; only one is under 65. And last week Chief Justice William Rehnquist was absent from the bench because of aggressive thyroid cancer (story, Page 60), leading to speculation that he might have to step down. Add it all up, and...