Free Republic

Remember when the Senate could come to a unanimous, bipartisan approach to rules governing an impeachment trial? Good times, good times. In fact, those were such good times that Mitch McConnell wants to bring them back. Rather than keep having his counterpart Chuck Schumer negotiate via MSNBC, the Senate Majority Leader announced that he’ll simply reinstate the rules package that governed Bill Clinton’s impeachment twenty years ago.By the way, that also includes a dismissal option: Over the weekend, my colleague the Democratic Leader began asking the Senate to break from precedent, break with the unanimous template from 1999, and...

Before John Richie directed "Shell Shocked," a film focused on young New Orleanians' depressing adaptation to gun violence, he assumed that just about everybody falling dead was a casualty in a fight over drugs and turf. Many are. However, after interviewing young people who've seen loved ones killed, Richie came to see that drugs aren't always a factor.Young men and boys in New Orleans, he discovered, fight over the same things that provoke fights everywhere - girls, perceived disrespect, petty rivalries. But whereas people the world over might settle scores with their fists or less lethal weapons, young New Orleanians...

Wednesday was a day of soul-searching, wound-licking and head- scratching in the spiritual home of the nation's progressives, as many Bay Area supporters of John Kerry pondered whether the liberal island they live on is shrinking. "It's so frustrating that there's going to be no voice for progressive issues right now," Stanford University sophomore Becca Miller, 18, said as she participated in one of two demonstrations Wednesday in San Francisco. "But it's important not to give up hope." Miller spent the last two months working swing-state phone banks and campaigning for Kerry, and Tuesday she cast her first vote for...

LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) - British police revealed on Saturday that a scientist at the center of a row over the government's justification for war in Iraq had died of a slit wrist, leaving little doubt he had taken his own life. A haggard Prime Minister Tony Blair urged the media on a visit to Tokyo to "set aside the speculation and the claims and the counter-claims" over the death of Dr David Kelly, a Defense Ministry weapons expert. Kelly was named as a possible "mole" for a news story saying aides to Blair -- who has staked his career on his...

Best of Baghdad: What Tunes Reporters Listened To 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' Was Favorite By Craig Nelson Some people have their favorite "desert island discs." Reporters in Baghdad had music-to-listen-to-bombs-by. Music was a major diversion for the 300-odd foreign reporters covering the war in Iraq from the capital city. At the Palestine Hotel we played it using mini-speakers, disc-players and 20-gigabyte Apple iPods bought during layovers at Heathrow or in Dubai's glistening shopping malls. We played it while we wrote and filed pictures. We also played it at deadline, as we decided whether to throw ourselves or our insubordinate laptops...