Free Republic

Bring up Iraq -- and expect to end up in an argument. Conservatives are no different from liberals in rehashing the unpopular war, which has become a sort of whipping boy for all our subsequent problems. The Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently enumerated countless pathologies that followed Iraq. Yet to examine her list is to learn just how misinformed we have become in our anguish over the intervention. Noonan writes of Republicans: "It [Iraq] ruined the party's hard-earned reputation for foreign-affairs probity. They started a war and didn't win it." We can argue over whether the result...

The chairman of the nation's biggest St. Patrick's Day Parade marched Friday while sidestepping questions about remarks comparing gay Irish-American activists to neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and prostitutes. "Today is St. Patrick's Day. We celebrate our faith and heritage. Everything else is secondary," said the chairman, John Dunleavy, who wore a sash of the Irish colors. Dunleavy was blasted by the City Council's first openly gay leader for the remarks, which appeared in The Irish Times on Thursday. He told the newspaper, "If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow Neo-Nazis into their parade?...

Moscow -- It may no longer be a crime to be homosexual in Russia, but as the would-be organizers of Moscow's first gay pride parade are discovering, celebrating that fact is another matter. A group of gay activists announced in late July that they were planning to hold the parade on May 27, 2006 -- the anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia in 1993. Before they could even apply for a permit, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov declared he would never give permission for such an event. "If I receive such a request, I will refuse," Luzhkov told reporters....