Free Republic

In our long newspaper life, we have covered a lot of brands of conservative — paleo-conservatism, neo-conservatism, supply-side-conservatism, Christian-conservatism, social conservatism, libertarian conservatism, compassionate conservatism. Even as we've been more enthusiastic about some than others, all of them have made important contributions. At the end of the day, though, we have yet to sense a more open and civil way for resolving our differences than in the idea of repairing for guidance to the constitutional contract that established our republic. This is what we sometimes call Sarah Palin’s gift to the GOP. By branding as her own the phrase constitutional...

The New York Sun has an article today called “Sarah Palin for the Fed?” in which they discuss how the former governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential candidate has been running rings around all of Barack Obama’s high-priced, high-powered, ideologically impeccable financial men: “The big question as Chairman Bernanke gets set for his first quarterly press conference is how Sarah Palin was able to figure out sooner than everyone else that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of quantitative easing wouldn’t work. Disappointment in the Fed’s policies is being reported this morning at the top of page one of the New York...

Over the weekend, the New York Sun took a shot at Ben Bernanke and a whole host of economists that ridiculed Sarah Palin for her immediate criticism of the Fed’s second round of quantitative easing as inflationary and damaging to the US dollar. At the time, even the Wall Street Journal’s pages could barely contain their derision for Palin’s warning of inflation impacting food prices and eroding consumer buying power just when they were most needed for economic recovery. With the dollar tumbling and gas and food prices soaring, the Sun wonders whether we could do worse than to put...

The Economist is out with an editorial this week called “What’s Wrong With America’s Right.” It starts out rowing back from its endorsement of Barack Obama in 2008, explaining that he has done “little to fix the deficit,” shown “a zeal for big government,” and “all too often” has “given the impression that capitalism is something unpleasant he found on the sole of his sneaker.” So it asserts their endorsee needs to be “pegged back.” Then editors John Mickelthwait and Co. take out their humiliation on those American Republicans and conservatives who have stood most steadily on principle from the...

Following are excerpts of remarks by the Editor of the Sun, Seth Lipsky, to the newspaper's staff: It is my duty to report today that Ira Stoll and I and our partners have concluded that the Sun will cease publication. Our last number will be the issue dated September 30, the first day of Rosh Hashanah. I want you to know that Ira and I, and our partners, explored every possible way to avoid having to cease publication. We have spoken with every individual who seemed to be a prospective partner, and everywhere we were received with courtesy and respect....

Dear Readers of the Sun: This morning I write to you about the future of The New York Sun, which is in circumstances that may require us to cease publication at the end of September unless we succeed in our efforts to find additional financial backing. The managing editor, Ira Stoll, who is one of the founding partners in the paper, and I have shared this news with our colleagues, and we would like our readers as well to be aware of the situation.

There seems to be a view that teenage births are somehow a bad thing. But it seems to us that it's not the births that are the problem. It's the environment that marginalizes teen motherhood, encourages our youth to delay marriage, provides too few incentives for family-building, and too few jobs for the fathers and mothers. What is needed is not scolding from the government but lower taxes, fewer regulations, and overall pro-growth policies. ... We're happy to have women and men decide for themselves when to have children. But when a trend develops like the drop in the birth...

Students Know Less After 4 College Years Harvard Gets D+ on Civics Quiz By ANNIE KARNI Staff Reporter of the Sun September 19, 2007 Students at many of the country's most prestigious colleges and universities are graduating with less knowledge of American history, government, and economics than they had as incoming freshmen, with Harvard University seniors scoring a "D+" average on a 60-question multiple-choice exam about civic literacy. According to a report released yesterday by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the average college senior at the 50 colleges and universities polled did not earn a passing grade. "At the most expensive...

Come September, an Arabic-language public secondary school is slated to open its doors in Brooklyn. The New York City Department of Education says the Khalil Gibran International Academy, serving grades six through 12, will boast a "multicultural curriculum and intensive Arabic language instruction." This appears to be a marvelous idea, for New York and the country need native-born Arabic speakers. They have a role in the military, diplomacy, intelligence, the courts, the press, the academy, and many other institutions — and teaching languages to the young is the ideal route to polyglotism. As someone who spent years learning Arabic, I...

Outside Santorum's Sanctum By JERRY BOWYER October 10, 2006 Rick Santorum is in big trouble. He had already been on the ropes for the past year, but last week it got a lot worse. Carl Romenelli, a Green Party candidate for Senate lost — lost his last legal hope for ballot access. Not enough signatures. The Greens would have siphoned votes away from the Democrats, and now they won't. The national press corrps is already rehearsing its soliloquies on the meaning of the loss by Senator Santorum. They are all about President Bush, Iraq, the economy, and an alleged backlash...

Democrats plan a race-based campaign against a candidate who aims to be Maryland's first black man elected to the U. S. Senate, according to a confidential Democratic Party campaign document obtained by The New York Sun. The target of the emerging smear campaign is Michael Steele, the Republican nominee for a seat vacated by Paul Sarbanes, a liberal Democrat who has represented Maryland in the Senate for 30 years. With the help of life-size cardboard silhouettes of Mr. Steele and the slogan "Make History," Mr. Steele became Maryland's lieutenant governor in 2002 - the first black man ever elected to...

The editorial staff of the New York independent weekly NY Press have quit their jobs en masse after the paper's PTB decided that they were not going to publish the Danish cartoons which sparked the Global Cartoon Riots. Editor Harry Siegel, e-mailed the publishers on behalf of the staff, writing in part: New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons...

David Lombino's much-anticipated New York Sun piece on former Air America Exec/Clinton Administration official David Goodfriend has now been published, with interesting insights. Continuing a pattern where current and former network officials look to protect their interests against potential criminal and civil liabilities, it's the ultimate in corporate CYA. When it comes to fallout over the apparent transfer of $875,000 in taxpayer funds from an inner-city community center to the liberal radio network, nobody seems to want to take responsibility. Goodfriend here is quick to pin the blame on everyone around him, particularly former college friend Evan Montvel-Cohen.

THE HEADLINES out of Tehran concern the predictable failure of yet another round of farcical negotiations designed to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, a much more dramatic story is unfolding with much less attention. Investigative journalist Akbar Ganji has been on a hunger strike since June 11 to protest his unwarranted imprisonment over the last five years for the crime of criticizing the theocratic thugs who have hijacked his country. Recently, he has been moved from prison to a hospital, where he is said to be at death's door. His condition is so perilous that even his advocate —...

When it comes time for the inevitable legal challenge to the latest iteration of the First Amendment-trampling legislation known as campaign finance "reform," we hope the Supreme Court takes a careful look at a dispatch in yesterday's issue of Roll Call, a newspaper that covers Capitol Hill. Dating back to their egregious 1976 error in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo, the justices have held that the public interest in preventing corruption is adequate to allow limits on campaign contributions, that is, restrictions on political speech that would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment. Since then, the slope...

On April first, many bewildered Americans woke to find headlines including “Columbia Cleared of Anti-Semitism” and “Columbia Panel Clears Professors Of Anti-Semitism”. Many must have thought this an April Fools joke. How could there even be a question of anti-Semitism at Columbia, long known as “the Jewish Ivy?” Sadly, these news stories were little more that a tool for a cover up the problem at Columbia. For the last three years, Columbia has been a battleground between supporters of aggrieved students and professors throwing around allegations of Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, intimidation, outside influence, “McCarthyism”, and “a pattern of discrimination”. The campus...

As Washington officials questioned the reliability of an Iraqi official who reported that 377 tons of explosives went missing after the war, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged yesterday that his agency is in no position to know what exactly happened. IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei confirmed in an interview yesterday that the sole source for the story that dominated the news last week was a letter sent to the agency on October 10 from an Iraqi official, Mohammed Abbas. "All we know (is that) the Iraqis reported to us the material is missing," Mr. ElBaradei told The...

A former officer in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve has built a case that Senator Kerry was other than honorably discharged from the Navy by 1975, The New York Sun has learned. The "honorable discharge" on the Kerry Web site appears to be a Carter administration substitute for an original action expunged from Mr. Kerry's record, according to Mark Sullivan, who retired as a captain in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps Reserve in 2003 after 33 years of service as a judge advocate. Mr. Sullivan served in the office of the Secretary of the Navy between 1975...

It's not quite Michael Dukakis on a tank, but John Kerry does look out of place in his flat-billed baseball cap. In the run-up to election day, the senator has seized on the victory of the New York Times-owned Red Sox as a symbol of his campaign. "I've been rooting for this day since I was a kid," Mr. Kerry said Wednesday night. "This Red Sox team came back against all odds and showed America what heart is. In 2004,the Red Sox are America's team." --snip-- You would think Mr. Kerry actually watched the games, given the emotional investment he...

Nine years ago, U.N. weapons inspectors urgently called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to demolish powerful plastic explosives in a facility that Iraq's interim government said this month was looted due to poor security. The chief American weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, told The New York Sun yesterday that in 1995, when he was a member of the U.N. inspections team in Iraq, he urged the United Nations' atomic watchdog to remove tons of explosives that have since been declared missing. Mr. Duelfer said he was rebuffed at the time by the Vienna-based agency because its officials were not convinced...