Free Republic

Herewith some questions about contrasts and double standards -- and how the leftists comprising the nameless "they" who rule the world would react to what Barack Obama is doing if Obama were George Bush. For instance . . . If Obama were Bush, what would their reaction be to the president's failure -- even now -- to submit a plan to salvage the nation's banks? What would they think of their president if he and his acolytes took out after the other party's leading entertainer -- Oprah Winfrey -- declaring her not only de facto head of the Democratic Party...

On precisely the day Barack Obama signed into law the most gargantuan economic measure in the nation's peacetime history (White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel termed it "the most major, sweeping, comprehensive legislation as it relates to economic activity ever") -- at almost precisely the moment of his pen-strokes -- the stock market's hope balloon went "bang!" The Dow fell to its bear-market low. In a cascade of awful economic news, the market had struggled to hold on. But the signs weren't good. It fell on the day of the inauguration of a man who had campaigned as the...

To an undiscerning and/or unsuspecting segment of the electorate, John Kerry emerged from the debates with his facade of moderation intact. Partly that is a consequence of a practiced politician who shuns the liberal label the way a cat rejects a branding. And partly it is a consequence of protection by a mainline press broadly sympathetic to Kerry as "one of us." To see the shamelessness of it all regarding the operative double standards applied to Kerry's statements, votes, and behavior, imagine if he went by another name. If John Kerry's name were, for instance, Teddy Kennedy… . Beyond Massachusetts,...

So, you've been away. What was the main story while you were out of the loop?Regarding the presidential election, for the past month there really has been only one story: the Swift Boat thing.You're not really saying that was an important story?Devastating to the Kerry campaign. Perhaps crushing. The polls are indicating Bush is back on top on the pivotal security/terror question.But the Swiftvets is a 527 group put up to it by Bush. How can anyone believe these looney tunes?They insist they are independent. Surely they and their million dollars or so of ads are as independent of the...

If you weren't around in 1980, or you were insufficiently sensitized to key world realities, you cannot know how bad things really were — hence the extent to which the nation required, the world required, a catalytic change artist like Ronald Reagan. Regarding Reagan, this is an hour of self-serving hagiography, of transmogrifying anthropomorphism — and comically by many in the press who spent seemingly their every waking hour ripping him and detesting everything he tried. Reagan was not a saint, not a god in human form. Nor was he the Lucifer of leftist desire. He was merely a man...

Down history's road, 2003 may shine brightly as marking a major improvement in how things are going abroad. The spring crushing of the Baathist regime and Saddam's capture a month ago were the top stories abroad. And look what has happened largely as a consequence: • Libya has announced it will scrap its nuclear program. • North Korea, with assistance from the Communist oligarchy in China, has declared it might do the same. • Our good friends the Saudis have begun to get serious about terrorism. • Russia has conditionally promised to forgive its Iraqi debt. • Israel has moved...

<p>In the beginning, maybe it was Adam and Bruce after all … .</p> <p>In a campaign to redefine the abnormal as normal, the expropriation of the word "gay" for behavior of a sort eminently sad. Religious denominations roiled over issues of practicing homosexuals in the clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions. Devastation of the Catholic Church by pederasty and (principally) homosexual predation. In New York, the nation's first school for homosexual youth — the city-funded Harvey Milk High.</p>

Howard Dean really put his mouth in it. The incident may mean he has kissed his sweet Democratic nomination good-bye. Dean said — he has said the same thing several times since February — he still wants to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pick-up trucks. His most recent mouthing led to ridiculous responses by his fellow Democratic wannabes. Richard Gephardt said he doesn't want to be the candidate "for guys with Confederate flags" in their pickups but "for guys with American flags." John Kerry, implicitly tying the Confederate flag issue to race and guns, said,...

Comments on various items currently in the news, with telling quotes… Heavy thinkers, longtime critics of President Bush, are taking him to task on Iraq specifically and foreign policy in general. On Iraq, the complaint is that the United States should not have taken out Saddam Hussein, that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction sustains the falsity of Bush's invasion pretext and that the rising number of American deaths proves we are hated there — as in Vietnam — and should come home. Responds Bush, "The enemy in Iraq believes America will run. That's why they're willing to...

A random walk through a snarl of items currently in the news... Add now the name Janice Brown to the lengthening list: Miguel Estrada, Priscilla Owen, William Pryor, Charles Pickering, Claude Allen, Carolyn Kuhl, Henry Saad. All are Bush nominees disapproved by Senate Democrats for the federal bench because all share a moderate view of the law and a strict constructionist interpretation of it. The Democratic left terms them right-wing extremists (part of the "vast right-wing conspiracy"?). Justice Brown is a member of the California Supreme Court nominated by President Bush for the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia....

It's clear that one of the major news stories of the generation is the developing schism within the worldwide Anglican Communion. As anyone with his or her eyes and ears open well knows, the cause is homosexuality. As homosexuality within the Catholic priesthood now is costing Roman Catholicism dearly, so (a) the imminent consecration as bishop of an openly practicing homosexual and (b) the blessing of homosexual unions are fracturing Anglicans - known in the United States as Episcopalians. The U.S. Episcopal Church is clearly losing adherents as it loses relevance in its dilution of scriptural teaching and the upholding...

In Virginia Beach they're into jury selection in the capital murder trial of John Muhammad, one of two implicated in the sniper shootings that terrorized the D.C. area south to Richmond a year ago. The trial may last two months. The trial of his alleged young accomplice, Lee Malvo, is set to begin later in nearby Chesapeake. Muhammad, who has pleaded not guilty, may be found innocent. But circumstantial evidence of his involvement abounds. In the realm of motive — if Muhammad participated in or helped plan the sniper shootings, why? — the principal piece of evidence, apparently carrying telltale...

In the beginning, they all waited for Alpha Al Gore to carry the banner once more - such a candidate was he, so close had he come, such a race had he run. Now they are 10, and Hillary has yet to declare.Over the summer, all eyes were on the fading John Kerry and the surging Howard Dean - Joe Lieberman, Gore's 2000 running-mate and the only moderate in the Democratic field, probably having maxed out at 12 percent or so, rendering him "un-nominatable" in the party of self-righteous leftism.

During Isabel, a lot of things went down besides trees. Among them … • The vaunted reputation of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has taken major hits. Long esteemed by the intellectually smug as the ultimate in electronic broadcasting objectivity, the BBC has been caught with its ideological underwear showing in the matter of Iraq intelligence and the Blair government. Broadcasts by the BBC, an entity heavily funded by the government, almost brought the government down. Now a BBC principal has admitted he failed to acknowledge errors, and the BBC's underlying leftism is being seen for what it is. •...

With this headline on its lead story Tuesday, echoed by The New York Times yesterday, The Washington Post told the troubling tale: "Reserve Tours Are Extended" - with this subhead: "Army Orders 1-Year Stay in Iraq, Nearby Nations." Conventional wisdom about Iraq and more broadly the Middle East is conventionally wrong. The conventional lines of attack against the Bush administration over the past months have gone like this... The WMDs never existed; the administration lied. (In England, the government-run BBC assault on Tony Blair has made the government-supported and way-left NPR here seem like a bunch of moderate pikers.) "Let...

With summer's last major travel weekend coming up, herewith a story about a seminal experience. Your correspondent is a rural-dwelling driver, a veteran of long road trips. A recent weekend required a Friday drive up I-95 to a wedding - with a Sunday return. The wedding was marvelous (like babies, what wedding isn't?), but the drive was close to impossible. A trip that usually requires six hours took eight going up and nine and a half coming back. It may have been the last such roadie, ever. The local habit is to trek fewer than 10 minutes to the interstate,...

A jumble of quotations - mostly about topics and people currently in the news, and mostly commendable... Hussain Haqqani, former adviser to two Pakistani prime ministers, and now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Many Islamic revivalists, or Islamists, have turned to terrorism in an effort to destroy the West's military, economic, cultural, and technological domination. Above all, they resent and resist the free flow of ideas within the Muslim community and with the West. ... Muslims have suffered a great deal from their tendency to shun discussion of ideas, especially those relating to history and...

Last pieces from the files, for a while... The mass of material after the 9/11 attacks contained this anguishing item - as phrased by a leading newspaper: "The terror network headed by Osama bin Laden has tried to develop a high-strength form of heroin that it planned to export to the United States and Western Europe. ... (The project's goal) was to create a high-potency heroin that would produce greater addiction and havoc than drugs available in Western cities." Remember steel? U.S. Steel, Bethlehem, Jones & Laughlin, Youngstown, Ling-Temco-Vought, National, Wheeling-Pittsburgh, Nucor (now the biggest): Some are with us and...

You have to love those crazy Canadians. As it used to be with all things Scandinavian, so now with much in the realm of social policy that emanates from north of the border. Welfarism was the Scandinavian - northern European - cry. Government health care - government "care" of just about everything, because government knows what's best for people better than do the people themselves. Correspondingly lofty taxes to pay for diminished service. Flight from God. Illegitimacy, easy divorce, family collapse. Diluted drug laws. Pacifism. Sloth. Lots of license without much responsibility. Government enhancement of the self-centered self - an...

Cleaning out more files... How do the national Democrats continue to draw overwhelming support from African-Americans and Hispanics, given their adamant opposition to elevating first Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and now Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Court of Appeals? The Air Force Academy, under investigation for at least 54 reported cases of sexual assault or rape during the past decade, confronts massive public outrage. This may do to the Air Force what the Tailhook convention did to the Navy in the early '90s. Awful as it is, the issue raises (among others) two questions about what so easily...