Free Republic

IT'S not just Republicans who are livid at how Democrats have ripped into Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — so are plenty of black Democrats, who say their party now risks alienating its most loyal supporters. It doesn't help that Howard Dean — front-runner to be the new Democratic national chairman — cheered the anti-Rice crowd. Dean, after all, had to apologize last year for vowing to court guys with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. Nor does it help that Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who voted for Rice, nevertheless used the battle to send out a fund-raising e-mail for...

OVER-PLAYING THE HAND [Andy McCarthy] Just read yeasterday's WSJ editorial and heard some talk-radio railing about the same thing earlier today -- the purported "outing" of the Veep's daughter. I hate to say this, but I think this is really dumb. What Kerry did was utterly obnoxious, transparently pre-meditated, and worthy of being talked about at length. It goes to his judgment and character. In a close election, it could even be a decisive gaffe. But what he decidedly did not do is "out" Mary Cheney, and some of our folks are going way overboard by saying otherwise. That term...

<p>Republicans believe that Democrats, who have used reports of Iraqi prisoner abuse as an avenue to attack President Bush on the war, might be overplaying their hand — especially in light of the videotaped slaughter of an American businessman by al Qaeda terrorists.</p>

CNSNews.com) - A U.S. Muslim group has joined various Democrats in demanding the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which describes itself as a national Islamic civil rights group, said Rumsfeld "bears ultimate responsibility for the brutal and humiliating actions of American troops and for the poor handling of the (Abu Ghraib prisoner) scandal by the military establishment. "He must also take responsibility for fostering an atmosphere in which the traditional rules of war and norms of international law are treated as excess baggage," CAIR said in a press release. If Rumsfeld...

<p>Democrats -- through overreach, overkill, and character assassination, are in the process of converting what should be a political ace into a joker.</p> <p>As a swift boat commander in Vietnam, Lt. j.g. John F. Kerry behaved admirably and heroically. He was awarded the Bronze Star and the Silver Star, and received three Purple Hearts for wounds sustained in combat.</p>

<p>February 10, 2004 -- Democratic front-runner John Kerry yesterday escalated his attacks on President Bush's Vietnam-era military record and suggested Bush isn't fit to be a wartime commander in chief because he never served in battle overseas. "I remember what it was like to carry an M-16 in another country thousands of miles away and to not be able to tell the difference between who was trying to kill me and who wasn't, who was my friend and who was my foe," Kerry said.</p>

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Iraqi weapons inspector David Kay said he blames U.S. intelligence for telling President George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction prior to going to war last spring. Kay, who was appointed by the Bush administration to look for chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, concluded on Friday that there were no stockpiles of weapons. Some of the Democrat presidential candidates used this news from Kay to lambaste Bush as well as Vice President Dick Cheney. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the new front-runner for the Democrat nomination for president, said that Bush, Cheney and...

LACONIA, N.H. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards called on Saturday for an independent commission to investigate if the Bush administration misled the U.S. Congress in making its case for war with Iraq and demanded an end to "war profiteering." The senator from North Carolina was responding to remarks by former chief U.S. arms hunter David Kay, who told Reuters after stepping down on Friday that he had concluded there were no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons to be found. "It's a serious issue and it's why I have called for an independent commission to investigate the discrepancy...

Vice President Dick Cheney complained late Wednesday that the recent spate of ugly attacks from several Democratic presidential candidates have been "beyond the pale." "I really think some of the comments have been beyond the pale, over the line," Cheney told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity. "The level of debate and dialogue in the political arena this year has fallen to a pretty distinctive low." Cheney said the Democratic rhetoric "says a lot more about those who are launching those attacks than it says about the president or this administration," adding, "I think it's too bad that they...

Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo charged Wednesday that President Bush made Saddam Hussein the U.S.'s number one target in the war on terror in part because his family had business dealings with relatives of Osama bin Laden. On hand to discuss the 2004 presidential election at a 21 Club breakfast with a panel of guests that included "60 Minutes" correspondent Leslie Stahl, radio host Monica Crowley, Democratic consultant Robert Zimmerman and commentator Bay Buchanan, Cuomo excoriated Bush for mishandling both the economy and the war on terror, complaining at one point: "Who's winning the war on terrorism? The...

There is civil discourse and there are always legitimate differences over policy in American politics, and then there is the jihad launched by Sen. Ted Kennedy against President Bush. Kennedy charged in a speech yesterday that the Iraq war was a ``political product'' dreamed up by the Bush administration with the express purpose of winning elections. It wasn't the first time he had advanced that notion. After all, he had told the Associated Press as early as last September that the war was a fraud ``made up in Texas.'' Apparently Kennedy is now really warming to the theme, and his...

Tuesday January 13, 2004; 8:28 p.m. EST Clark Questions Bush's Patriotism Democratic presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark has opened up a particularly noxious line of attack against President Bush, blatantly questioning the president's patriotism during several speeches in New Hampshire this week. Reports the National Review Online's Rich Lowry, at two recent town-hall meetings in Concord, Clark repeatedly charged that Bush was unpatriotic. "I don't think it's patriotic to put on a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier looking for a photo op," he railed. "We have a president of the United States who...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of more than two dozen House of Representatives Democrats on Monday said they had introduced a resolution urging President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "This resolution would make official what so many members of Congress already believe -- that the soldiers in Iraq and America's foreign policy would be helped greatly if Donald Rumsfeld would leave," Rep. Charles Rangel of New York said in a statement. Rangel said he so far had 25 co-sponsors to the resolution who were "willing to stand up and say what so many policy makers know, that the...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Charles Rangel, a caustic critic of the military effort in Iraq, labeled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “an embarrassment” on Wednesday and called for his resignation. “It’s time that he does the American people a service by resigning,” Rangel said, arguing that Rumsfeld has shown he has no strategy for securing postwar Iraq. “He has no plan,” said Rangel, D-N.Y., a Korean War veteran. “When you have a problem as we do in Iraq,” Rangel said, “you want somebody that does better than acknowledging there’s a problem. Heck, anybody can do that. I can get a kid...

Memo to Sen. Ted Kennedy: To your credit, you were among the minority of Senate Democrats who had the backbone to actually vote against the Iraq war resolution one year ago. In doing so, you gave voice to millions of Americans with the best interests of the United States at heart. You distinguished yourself from many of your feckless colleagues, including fellow Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who voted for the resolution authorizing war and later said they didn't really mean it. Your criticism of U.S. policy has been consistent. Well done. But when you talk about the war to depose...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the pace of Iraq's reconstruction Thursday, saying it is going faster in some cases than rebuilding in Germany and Japan after World War II. "We are on track," he told about 500 people attending the Dwight D. Eisenhower National Security Conference, an annual gathering of national security, foreign affairs and military experts. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on television Thursday night that Rumsfeld should resign over Iraq. In answer to a question from CNN's Paula Zahn, the Massachusetts senator accused Rumsfeld of rushing to war without proper planning. "Our military is weaker today,"...

An open letter to France's Jacques Chirac: Dear Jacques: Don't overplay your hand. The opening of the U.N. session gives you leverage for concessions from President Bush in exchange for a resolution blessing international help in Iraq. Given the toll — in money and men — that the postwar period there is taking on the United States, he has asked for help from those who were unwilling to help topple Saddam Hussein. As the leader of the pre-war effort to deny U.N. certification for that war, you can be forgiven for smirking. You did predict a messier postwar cleanup than...

Republicans are for a change fighting back at obstructionist Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, who didn't fret over Bill Clinton's wag-the-dog wars but claims "this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war." But it's Little Tommy who's the miserable failure, according to Republican National Chairman Marc Racicot, who denounced the South Dakota leftist's "divisive and brazen political posturing." White House spokesman Ari Fleischer today noted the hypocrisy of Daschle, who said in September, after President Bush pointed out that Democrats were putting politics ahead of national security, that "we ought not politicize this war."...

US President George Bush is nothing but a “miserable failure”, according to Democratic presidential hopeful Richard Gephardt, who participated in a live televised debate. Though the seven Democrats present at the debate, all of whom are vying for the right to fight George Bush in next year’s presidential election, differed on trade and taxation issues they were united in their most vociferous condemnation yet of the current president. "We have young men and women in a shooting gallery right now, and the primary reason for that is because this president had no plan," said North Carolina Senator John Edwards in...

"This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy and on the economy and he's got to be replaced." - Dick Gephardt.... (check out the site: link above)