Free Republic

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) once told me, “There is a small group of people who believe the same things. They are Republicans. Everybody else is a Democrat.” Lately, the small group has gotten smaller, as the thought police are hunting down heretics belying President Bush’s oft-stated goal of a big-tent party. The hunting season began when then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was found dangling slowly from a tree in Washington, allegedly for endorsing a political party that had been dead for 40 years but really for failing to summon sufficient enthusiasm for the right-wing social and economic...

Under Fire, Powell Receives Support From White HouseBy STEVEN R. WEISMAN ASHINGTON, April 23 — Since the end of the war in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has come under intense fire from conservatives within the administration, in Congress and at policy institutes long favoring less diplomacy and more muscle in the American approach to the world. On issues from the Middle East to North Korea to the makeup of a postwar government in Iraq, Mr. Powell and the State Department have been battling hard-liners at the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, administration officials say.In...