Free Republic

Rick Santorum will not be elected to a third U.S. Senate term. But it's not because Pennsylvania's junior senator is "too conservative." He is anything but, as a succinct National Journal analysis shows. No, Mr. Santorum will lose his 2006 race for re-election to presumptive Democrat nominee Bob Casey Jr. because he has thumbed his nose and furiously waggled his fingers at a large cross-section of his conservative base. How can this be? Santorum is an unwavering abortion foe, right? Sure. And to him homosexual marriage is an abomination that will open the door to legally sanctioned man-canine matrimony, right?...

By the time you read this, chances are that Terri Schiavo will be dead. In a land of plenty, where her parents are more than willing to feed her, where millions of thoughtful and concerned citizens have campaigned for her continued provision of sustenance, she is nonetheless condemned to wither away, literally, by a method that would be considered cruel and unusual punishment when applied to the worst of serial rapist-murderers: starvation. Private money and time has been volunteered to support her; Bob and Mary Schindler, Ms. Schiavo’s parents, have, in a blatant display of statist intrusion, been denied the...

Yielding to my contrarian impulses, I decided to see if I could figure out a good reason for Republicans and other Conservatives to oppose the privatization of Social Security. And I did! Going to the Social Security Administration website and using the Quick Calculator there to estimate what I’m likely to receive when I retire, not too many years from now, I see that I will receive the maximum benefit, about $2,000 a month in 2005 dollars. Now, my other investments, including my PRAs (Private Retirement Accounts, but I call them my “401k” and my “Roth IRA”) will yield a...

Al-Zarqawi Said to Declare 'Fierce War' 13 minutes ago BAGHDAD, Iraq - A speaker purporting to be Iraq's most feared terror leader declared a "fierce war" on democracy and said in an audiotape posted Sunday on the Web that the Americans were using next weekend's Iraqi elections to install the Shiites in power. "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of the al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part...

Food cops who think your weight is their business are bent on slimming Americans down by any means necessary. That includes happily ignoring such commonplaces as evidence, logic, and common sense. Reaching deep into their toolbox to hammer companies that advertise food to children, they're now invoking the "precautionary principle" -- a bizarre theory that insists everything should be banned until it's proved absolutely safe. Susan Linn, two-time speaker at the obesity-lawsuit-pushing Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI) and dedicated opponent of all forms of advertising, recently told Obesity Policy Report: "I think that we need to take a leaf from...

Why I'm Voting to Re-elect George W. Bush Written by Michael Ashbury Saturday, October 30, 2004 Has George Bush been the perfect president? No. Of course, I don’t think there have been any perfect president in my lifetime. Yet George Bush, faced with extremely difficult and complex problems of an inherited recession, attack on our soil by extremists determined to destroy our way of life, and managing two wars, has done an excellent job of leading this diverse country, keeping us safe, and moving the economy in the right direction. But, let's look at the real George Bush. He is...

How to Oppose Liberal Intolerance By Lawrence Auster FrontPageMagazine.com | August 11, 2004 The double standard may well be the most characteristic feature of the leftist cultural order under which we now live. A particularly revealing instance of the double standard was the media's wall-to-wall obsession with the Abu Ghraib abuses, combined with its refusal to show the tape of the savage beheadings of innocent Americans by Islamist killers. While conservatives complain endlessly (one might even say boringly) about the double standard, however, they have signally failed to understand it. One explanation may be that today's leftists deceptively describe their...

FREEDOM, Calif. -- Traffic calming is not just physically hazardous. It harms our way of life as well. Most people have experienced nightmares at some point in their lives. One that’s quite common is to dream you are trying to get somewhere, but can't. One version of the nightmare goes like this: You are driving home from a very long day at work. The freeway is normally congested at this hour because few improvements have been made to increase traffic flow in decades even though the population of your town has grown significantly. Unfortunately for you today, the traffic is...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Press Office202-863-8614 Washington, DC-With ABC News reporting that Sen. John Kerry has commissioned "top-secret polls of various potential running mates," RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie today released the following statement: "To John Kerry, the most important criterion for a Vice President, and therefore for a potential President, is not experience, accomplishment or judgment but polling numbers. Once again with John Kerry we see politics in place of principle." "I look forward to learning soon who polled the best."

"Democrats fretting over fumbles by John Kerry's campaign have something new to agonize over — his bizarre flip-flop [Wednesday] on abortion rights," the New York Post's Deborah Orin writes. "After months of saying he'd have a litmus test as president and only pick pro-choice Supreme Court justices, Kerry did an about-face and said he might name some right-to-life justices after all. " 'I will not appoint somebody with a 5-4 [Supreme] Court who's about to undo Roe v. Wade,' Kerry told the Associated Press. " 'But that doesn't mean that if that's not the balance of the court, I wouldn't...

President Kerry? Joseph Farah Well, now that I have your attention ... Let's see, I would estimate that I have received at least 1,000 e-mails on my last column, predicting John Kerry will win the presidential election in November. Some people have mistaken my prediction as an endorsement. Obviously, these folks have not read the volumes I have written previously on the junior senator from Massachusetts. I think he's a disgrace. As I mentioned in my last column, I believe his election would be a national disaster. I think he's a traitor to his country. I wouldn't be surprised if...

Is The President So Important? By Joseph Farah Many readers took offense at my recent column skewering George W. Bush for policies that have demoralized Americans, leaving them feeling politics don't work and that they have no good options in the presidential election of 2004. I'm sorry. I call them as I see them. I didn't support Bush in 2000 because I was confident he would pay little heed to the Constitution he swore an oath to uphold and that he would cater to special interests rather than the will of the people. He exceeded even my worst expectations. Now...

Defining Moment for President Bush Defining Moment for Bush Presidency 12-9-03 Today President Bush meets with Wen Jiabao, who is referred to as the Premier of China. Wen is said to be bringing a message of warning to the US President that the President, on the behalf of China must "reign in" Taiwan and turn them away from continuing to be free and democratic. Wen makes these statements under a cloud of threat of war against Taiwan and even the US. Taiwan is a free and democratic nation. China is not. President Bush spoke eloquently in his State of...

CLEVELAND — Cosmology used to be a heartless science, all about dark matter lost in mind-bending abysses and exploding stars. But whenever physicists and astronomers gather, the subject that roils lunch, coffee breaks or renegade cigarette breaks tends to be not dark matter or the fate of the universe. Rather it is about the role and meaning of life in the cosmos. Cosmologists held an unusual debate on the question during a recent conference, "The Future of Cosmology," at Case Western Reserve University here. According to a controversial notion known as the anthropic principle, certain otherwise baffling features of the...

Last week was not kind to President Bush. On his Asia trip, Japan and China showed little enthusiasm for his economic advice. A survey by the pollster John Zogby put his job performance rating below 50 percent. He threatened to veto his own spending bill on Iraq after the Republican-controlled Senate voted to make part of the reconstruction package a loan rather than a grant. And, while the rate of economic growth continues to increase, the index of leading indicators declined for the first time in six months, reducing the likelihood of significant job growth before the November 2004 election....

<p>A long time ago, by which I mean the year 2000, conservatives didn't want to expand the size and reach of government. Today, it's plain their sentiments have changed. They still don't want Democrats to expand the size and reach of government. But when Republicans do it — well, let the good times roll.</p>

<p>Washington -- Like British soccer fans, Tom McClintock's hard-core conservative supporters sound like they would rather burn down the stadium than switch their loyalty to Arnold Schwarzenegger, even if it means losing California's governorship to someone who makes Gov. Gray Davis look like a Republican.</p>

The Least Harm Principle Suggests that Humans Should Eat Beef, Lamb, Dairy, not a Vegan Diet. The following abstract and the aforementioned title were written by S.L. Davis, Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.Wildlife Damage Control has received permission to reprint this abstract in its entirety which was "Previously published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics, 2001, pp 449-450." Again, this article was NOT written by Stephen Vantassel. See my version of this principle written long before this article at Uneasy Conscience of the Animal Rights...

'Ten Commandments' Justice Loses Again MONTGOMERY, Ala. - A federal appeals court declined Tuesday to lift an order requiring the chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building by midnight Wednesday. Chief Justice Roy Moore immediately asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider what it had just decided, until the U.S. Supreme Court can rule on a petition by Moore to intervene. Moore, who installed the 5,300-pound monument in the rotunda of the judicial building two years ago, contends it represents the moral foundation of American law and...

he news this summer has been rather bleak for conservatives. The Supreme Court first decided to write "diversity" into the Constitution. A few days later, it issued a ruling on sodomy laws that called into question its willingness to tolerate any state laws based on traditional understandings of sexual morality. In neither case was there much pretense that the Court was merely following the law. At this point it takes real blindness to deny that the Court rules us and, on emotionally charged policy issues, rules us in accord with liberal sensibilities. And while the Court issued its edicts...