Free Republic

American victory in the Cold War looks inevitable in hindsight. It didn't seem that way in the Seventies. And, as Iran reminds us, the enduring legacy of the retreat from Vietnam was the emboldening of other enemies. The forces loosed in the Middle East bedevil to this day, in Iran, and in Lebanon, which Syria invaded shortly after the fall of Saigon and after its dictator had sneeringly told Henry Kissinger, "You've betrayed Vietnam. Someday you're going to sell out Taiwan. And we're going to be around when you get tired of Israel." President Assad understood something that too many...

California has more than 36 million residents and is expected by some projections to have 60 million by 2050. People keep moving here, and yet the state government is doing everything it can to make it harder to build the homes necessary to house everyone. It's already incredibly costly and difficult to get government approvals to build housing developments, as cities micromanage pretty much everything a builder does. People will need to live somewhere. If other counties embrace Marin's overall approach toward development, the newcomers will have nowhere to live – even as Marin officials bask in their moral superiority....

One could, I suppose, regard this as one of those unforeseen incremental consequences that happens in the darkest shadows of society. But that doesn't extend to Newark's official status as an illegal-immigrant "sanctuary city." Like Los Angeles, New York and untold others, Newark has formally erased the distinction between U.S. citizens and the armies of the undocumented. This is the active collusion by multiple cities and states in the subversion of U.S. sovereignty. In Newark, N.J., it means an illegal-immigrant child rapist is free to murder on a Saturday night. In Somerville, Mass., it means two deaf girls are raped...

It came suddenly and I don’t think anyone expected it, but it happened. I was surprised. More to the point, I was deeply saddened by the result. As I was typing my notes into the computer, I was oblivious about what was going on around me. I was too caught up in my own work to even notice. But then I saw her crying and embracing her former co-workers. I already knew what happened. Her work area is now empty. The stacks of papers, files and stationery that found a home on her desk are gone. The news clips and...

I don't know whether this sham of an immigration bill is dead or just resting "in the shadows" like a fine upstanding member of the Vampiric-American community About five years or so back, I started making references in columns to "fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community." But from the lame Steyn joke of yesteryear to the reality of tomorrow is a mere hop and a skip. A few days ago, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, declared: "This week we will vote on cloture and final passage of a comprehensive bill that will strengthen border security, bring the 12...

This is an unfortunate trend with Angelides. He has proposed a number of spending plans along the campaign trail but never answered the question, "How will you pay for it?" He wants to dramatically increase school funding, supports state-run single-payer health care, says he will close the budget deficit and advocates immediate universal health care for California children, among other spending. His only on-the-record plan to pay for these things: raising taxes on the "wealthy" and closing "corporate tax loopholes." He has failed to detail these "loopholes" and how much more money he would bring in from them. And he...

Likewise, I've been reading the imaginative arguments from the "No on 90" committee. Proposition 90, slated for the November ballot, would ban the use of eminent domain for private uses – i.e., the transfer of your home to Costco – and would make governments pay compensation when they use regulations to steal property – i.e., the city of Brea's theft of millions of dollars in property by downzoning it so virtually nothing can be built on the land. Most Californians, liberal and conservative, would no doubt agree with the fundamental principles here. Yet a coalition of organizations in the anti-90...

Freedom Communications Inc., one of the nation's last family owned media companies, has agreed to a partnership with two private equity firms that will keep control of the company in family hands. The agreement satisfies the concerns of some family members who had sought to sell their shares of the privately held company, which operates The Orange County Register, 27 other daily newspapers, 37 weeklies and eight television stations. Other major media companies had offered bids for the company, including Gannett Co. Inc., publisher of USA Today, and Denver-based Media News Group Inc., which last week teamed up to offer...