Free Republic

Hypocrisy is only bad when it is improperly used. —George Bernard Shaw I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when the Republican presidential candidate would cite membership in the PTA as evidence of executive experience, when the far right would laud the full-time working mothers of newborns, when social conservatives would stare down teenage pregnancy and replace their pursed-lip accusations of promiscuity with hosannas about choosing life. The Republican Party has undergone a surprising metamorphosis since Sarah Palin was chosen as its vice presidential candidate. In Palin I recognize a fellow traveler, a woman whose...

Politics: Trying to figure out why their man doesn't poll better, liberals are starting to fall back on an old excuse — that Republicans win only by appealing to voters' worst instincts."Much of America's political conversation is couched in code," says Anna Quindlen, writing earlier this month in Newsweek. And what's the code telling us? That the campaign of John McCain is playing a "Caucasian card," Quindlen's way of saying that it's appealing to white racism. We're hearing more and more such talk as the summer drags on and Barack Obama struggles to put McCain away. Obama leads in the...

THE LAST WORD Anna Quindlen How Old Is Too Old? Race, gender—they're both up for grabs in this presidential election. It's age that has become the new taboo in a vitality culture.Here's my unscientific theory about the presidency: it ages a person in dog years. Each year in office is roughly equivalent to seven years in the life of an ordinary citizen. I base this on before-and-after photographs of the occupants of the Oval Office, who frequently look as though they've spent their time in captivity, being beaten with sticks. Which may help explain why 71-year-old John McCain, who actually...

Buried among prairie dogs and amateur animation shorts on YouTube is a curious little mini-documentary shot in front of an abortion clinic in Libertyville, Ill. The man behind the camera is asking demonstrators who want abortion criminalized what the penalty should be for a woman who has one nonetheless. You have rarely seen people look more gobsmacked. It's as though the guy has asked them to solve quadratic equations. Here are a range of responses: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them." You have to hand it...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a recent news article, Newsweek writer Anna Quindlen tried to paint pro-life advocates in a negative light by asking abortion facility protesters whether they would put women in prison who had abortions. The article generated a myriad of answers but Quindlen never talked to pro-life women who had abortions themselves. Georgette Forney, who heads the pro-life group Anglicans for Life and had an abortion herself decades ago, told LifeNews.com that Quindlen's article misses the point. Forney, who also directs the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, says the Newsweek reporter should have focused on the millions...

In theory, access to the drug called Plan B should be a no-brainer. It's safe, it's effective, it's easily available in dozens of countries. But Plan B is a drug used to prevent pregnancy, and nothing about preventing pregnancy in America is simple, except for the fact that so many women do it as a matter of course. Plan B is an emergency contraceptive that works by inhibiting ovulation, fertilization or implantation. It won't work if you're already pregnant, but it will stop you from becoming pregnant if your everyday contraceptive failed or you've had unprotected sex. But because it...

After years of free-floating propaganda, her colleagues are astonished to discover that she is collaborative and congenial.

Please, I imagine myself saying to the editor, don't put that picture of her on the cover. Use the picture from years ago,... It is a shame that anyone released those images. She should have been remembered for what she was, not what's left of her. We all know the story now. A raft of doctors said over the years that Terri's reactions were purely reflexive, that she would not recover, that she would never be more than the vessel in which her spirit once lived, like a music box that no longer plays. The courts ruled over and over...

Suddenly they were gone, all 7,532 of them, vanished completely. But for a little more than two weeks visitors to Central Park were welcomed as though by bevies of long-legged bridesmaids, their gaudy skirts rippling in a winter wind.

If you're going to write Anna Quindlen to attack the liberal stance she often takes in her biweekly Newsweek columns, please don't quote Leviticus. Quindlen, a lifelong practicing Catholic who opposes the death penalty but supports abortion rights, gun control laws and the ordination of women as priests, has received enough hate mail to memorize large chunks of the Bible during three decades as a reporter, Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist and novelist.

With a No. 2 Pencil, Delete The destruction of literature in the name of children NEWSWEEK June 17 issue — You can imagine how honored I was to learn that my work was going to be mangled for the sake of standardized testing just after a vigilant parent had discovered that statewide English tests in New York had included excerpts from literary writers edited so nonsensically that the work had essentially lost all meaning. Isaac Bashevis Singer, Annie Dillard, even Chekhov—the pool of those singled out for red-penciling by bureaucrats was a distinguished one, and I found myself a little...