Free Republic

Perhaps Sen. Charles Schumer should have taken the Quiet Car. Here’s what the New York Democrat reportedly was overheard saying the other day on Amtrak: “Even William Rehnquist is more moderate than they expected. The only one that resulted how they predicted [was] Scalia. So most of the time they’ve gotten their picks wrong, and that’s what we want to do to them again.” Whether or not this quote from the Drudge Report is accurate, the sentiment is correct: The litany of conservative disappointments over Supreme Court appointments is a long one. Earl Warren. Harry Blackmun. John Paul Stevens. Anthony...

Certain seasons or events have historically spawned their own lexicons which are unique to those events and used almost exclusively to describe them. Late in the college football season, some games have what are unfailingly called, “serious bowl implications.” Likewise vice-presidential candidates must possess ''gravitas'' and Super Bowls oddly acquire roman numerals. So. too. does the Supreme Court nomination process require its own terminology, especially when the president is a Republican. Over the next several weeks there are a number of ordinary words and phrases that will be used ad nauseam in reference to whomever President Bush submits to the...

The four senators who met with President Bush at the White House Tuesday morning discussed a number of potential Supreme Court nominees, but Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said he thinks they've agreed not to name those names. "We have a long ways to go," Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters after the breakfast meeting at the White House. He said President Bush has hundreds or thousands of names to go through and "he didn't give us any names." Nevertheless, Reid added, "There were a lot of names discussed at the meeting, of which we're not going to talk about any of...

The former Senate Majority Leader, now a noted peacemaker, may be tapped to help lead the party's strategy on a new high court nominee The battle on Capitol Hill over filling one, possibly two, U.S. Supreme Court vacancies is heating up fast. Faced with a high-powered lineup of GOP tacticians and advisers, Senate Democrats are now working to assemble their own team. One key person under consideration to lead the effort, several Democratic sources tell BusinessWeek Online, is former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine, chairman of the board at Walt Disney (DIS ) and chairman of law...

In addition to the havoc wrought by the judiciary in our times, there is the havoc wrought on the judiciary itself by others. Some have blamed the murders of a judge not long ago, and the murder of another judge's family, on critics of judicial activism. But, in each of these cases, the motive seems plainly to have been personal animosity growing out of a judge's ruling against the particular individuals concerned. It is doubtful if these murderers had ever read a law journal article or a Federalist Society paper on judicial activism. It is one of many signs of...

Process for Reserve, Guard to enter regular Army has been streamlined By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, June 25, 2005 Brig. Gen. Sean Byrne, the Army’s director of personnel management, right, swears in Sgt. Maj. Terry Grezlik, the first soldier to make the reserve-to-active switch under the Army’s new policy. ARLINGTON, Va. — Army National Guard and Reserve soldiers who have been mobilized for the war on terror can use a new streamlined entry process into the regular Army. On June 17, Army officials announced that they are eliminating the long-standing practice of having mobilized reserves...

Instead of a magic wand, Harry Reid uses his mouth. And in place of fighting on the side of good, Harry readily and passionately embraces the dark forces. As Senate Minority leader, Reid has already taken the Democrat art of obstructionism far beyond that of his predecessor Tom Daschle. And in a manner similar to the infamous and ongoing Howie Dean screams, no Republican is safe from his rantings and invented falsehoods. Harry’s once quick smile has turned into a leer and his demeanor has degraded to that of a permanently enraged and deranged man. Yikes! His apprentice training is...

The contentious debate over judicial confirmations is often portrayed as a referendum on the notion of a "living Constitution." Conservatives like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia believe that judges should adhere to the original text of the Constitution as expressed in the meaning of the words and their understanding at the time the Constitution was ratified. Liberals respond that the Constitution must be adapted to reflect changes in society's values and attitudes. However, these viewpoints are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. In truth, no one seriously believes the Constitution is "dead." America's founding fathers provided a procedure for amending...

If a sentient being from a different universe were to observe and assess the cultural debate in the United States, it would likely conclude that proponents for the various sides are locked in a life and death struggle for supremacy, and the being would not be far wrong. In a recent speech, one of President' Bush's Judicial Nominations, Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court asserted that the cultural divide in the United States is as marked as anytime since the Civil War. The ACLU is reported to have severely criticized her for her "intemperate" remarks. This raises...

Hypocrite - noun, one who pretends to be what he is not or to have principles or beliefs that he does not have. The Democrats' efforts to block President Bush's qualified judicial nominees are not only hypocritical but are examples of partisan politicking at its worst. Republicans in the Senate are working to ensure that all of President Bush's judicial nominees receive a fair and final up-or-down vote. Despite Senate history and tradition, Democrats are aggressively trying to prevent qualified judges from receiving what's been afforded every judicial nominee for over 200 years. During the Clinton Administration, Democrats demanded up-or-down...

Although Terri’s case has evolved into an emotionally charged disputed issue as to what Terri’s wishes are, our legal system has been resorted to to carry out Terri’s wishes, not her husbands wishes, not he parents wishes, but Terri’s wishes. One would hope all opposing parties, and I mean all those who have strong feelings in the matter, would, at the very least, want Terri to receive the full protection and due process of law as provided for under Florida’s constitution and law. Unfortunately, due process of law has not occurred in Judge Greer’s Star Chamber Court, as I shall...

Cardinals, Conclaves and a New Pope    FR. WILLIAM SAUNDERS Recently, the media has speculated on the health and condition of Pope John Paul II, and on his death. When our Holy Father dies and goes to his heavenly reward, how will the next pope be elected? The procedure for electing the pope has evolved over the history of the Church. In the early centuries, the clergy and people of Rome elected the successor, who usually had worked very closely with the previous pope. In 1059, Pope Nicholas II further regulated the process of electing the pope, making the...

Richard Burke spent Monday in Salem, making the rounds of legislative staff to get a feel for the political climate in the Capitol while lawmakers were busy on the floor or elsewhere in the building. Burke, who heads Oregon's Libertarian Party, feels the temperature may be more or less right for a coalition of Libertarians, Republicans and other conservative activists to leave a stamp not only on the state's nearly $12 billion budget, but possibly even on the process lawmakers use to draft one every two years. "You see a little bit of the coalition creeping in there," Burke said...

Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist Counter for a day finds few bugs in recount process Lindsay McClellan is sitting across from me, sifting through a 4-inch stack of ballots, when she says the words that could change the course of state history: "We've got a smudge." I've been hired to count votes in the governor's race. We are sitting at a cramped folding table under fluorescent lights, one of 80 three-person teams that are counting, one at a time, King County's 898,574 votes. All activity at our table stops instantly. The glowering observers from the political parties loom over...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

In a petition to the Iraqi electoral commission, an array of Sunni and Kurdish political parties and individuals on November 26 called for a six-month delay in Iraq's national elections for two reasons: "To address the current security situation and to complete the necessary administrative, technical, and systematic arrangements."The interim Iraqi government, with American support, quickly rejected this appeal and a spokesman for the Shiites insisted that the planned date of January 30, 2005, is "non-negotiable." But there are good reasons to postpone the vote until Iraq is truly ready for it, even if that is months or years away.While...

Every time the writer sees, hears or reads about another American becoming a casualty in Iraq, he cannot help but see the faces of the Democrat Candidates and their cohorts rising in the plumes of smoke that invariably accompany a roadside ambush. Those candidates knew, or being smarter than the rest of us, should have known that the remains of Hussien’s defunct regime and “foreign fighters” were encouraged by their rhetoric. Of course they did, and they didn’t care! Remember, and never forget, the left, American or otherwise, and the Bathists who are latter day Marxists, have the same political...

"I think it's very important for our friends, the Israelis, to have a peaceful Palestinian state living on their border. And it's very important for the Palestinian people to have a peaceful, hopeful future." So spoke President Bush just two days after his re-election, just exactly as news reports were leaking Yasser Arafat's demise.The combination of Mr. Bush's stunning new mandate and Mr. Arafat's near-death condition will lead, I predict, to a quick revival of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy after months of relative doldrums and to massive dangers to Israel.The doldrums will cease because the Bush administration views Mr. Arafat as the...

Before the first vote was cast, Finnish Senator Kimmo Kiljunen, one of the international election monitors, asked Senator John Kerry to "work for uniform election rules for the entire country at the federal level." After the election, Konrad Olszewski, another international monitor stationed in Miami, complained that Venezuela, Republic of Georgia, and Serbia, all had a better system of voting than America does. "They have one national election law and use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system," Olszewski told the International Herald Tribune. . . . . To read the entire Canada Free Press newspaper column,...

Nearly four years have elapsed since the Oslo process (1993-2000) between Israelis and Palestinians foundered in bloodshed. Over that period, two U.S. administrations have tried to forge policies that would reduce the violence and point toward a solution to the conflict.It has not been a single-minded pursuit. Since September 11, 2001, the prime focus of Washington has been the management of unprecedented U.S. military interventions in the region, which removed regimes from power in Afghanistan and Iraq. The notion of Israeli-Palestinian peace as the key to regional stability has been replaced by the war on terror and the insistence on...