Free Republic

During a period of study in London in the early 1980s I was making daily use of the splendid library at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies. The library is in the main SOAS premises on Malet Place, but the school also has some overflow accommodation in the fine old Georgian houses around Bedford Square. I used to walk past one of these houses on my way to the library. You could look down at basement rooms, below street level, in which were desks, shelves and filing cabinets piled high with innumerable books and folders, all behind a...

Everyone knows that prescription-drug costs are bankrupting American seniors — especially everyone in D.C. This is, after all, the premise driving the largest increase in Medicare since its 1964 birth — a prescription-drug benefit that promises to cost taxpayers at least $400 billion over the next decade. The only problem, it simply isn't true. Americans as a whole spent one percent of their income on drugs in 2001, the last time the government tabulated the data. Americans spend less on prescription drugs than they do on alcohol, tobacco, and admission fees to concerts, movies, and cultural and sporting events. The...

<p>The Rev. Al Sharpton implored Senate Democrats yesterday not to filibuster President Bush's nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the nation's second-highest federal court.</p> <p>Justice Brown, who is black, has come under intense criticism by liberal black groups, such as the NAACP, and by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel plans to vote this morning on her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.</p>

CHICAGO, Oct. 27 — Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr. said Monday that he would soon endorse Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination, telling a mostly black audience on the South Side of Chicago that Dr. Dean had "the best chance to be the next president of the United States." "I'm not wasting my time with any more non-straight-talking candidates," Mr. Jackson said in introducing Dr. Dean, a former governor of Vermont, to a group of about 150 people at Chicago State University. "I've seen him stand up for health care," he said. "I've seen him stand up for students....

<p>Senate Democrats are threatening a filibuster of the final version of the Medicare prescription-drug bill.</p> <p>The House and Senate have passed different versions of the hotly debated measure. Angered by reports that a House-Senate conference is leaning toward House Republican positions on key elements of the plan, Democrats yesterday urged President Bush to demand a more bipartisan bill.</p>