Free Republic

<p>You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.</p>

Actual op-ed column, or parody of Upper West Side liberal mockery of Middle America? You be the judge of this p.p.v. opus today by Gail Collins, New York Times columnist turned Editorial Page Editor now returned to her column-writing roots. We'll begin with the title, Republicans in the Straw, and proceed to these excerpts: Today 40,000 Republicans are expected to make a pilgrimage to a large tent in Ames, Iowa, where they will eat an enormous amount of free food and vote for a presidential candidate. Mitt Romney is going to serve barbecue, and one of his sons has just...

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards acknowledged Thursday that amid his criticism of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a volunteer member of his staff asked the world's largest retailer for help obtaining a hot new Sony Playstation 3 for Edwards' family. Edwards, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told The Associated Press that the volunteer "feels terrible" about seeking the game unit at Wal-Mart while his boss claims the retailer doesn't treat its employees fairly. "My wife, Elizabeth, wanted to get a Playstation3 for my young children. She mentioned it in front of one of my staff people. That staff person mentioned it...

Twin towers no loss to architecture, says critic Richard Brooks, Arts Editor ------------------------------------------- THE World Trade Center was an “ugly box” whose loss did no architectural damage to New York, one of the world’s most outspoken art critics has said. “It was a large, scaleless lump, which completely dominated that end of Manhattan,” said Robert Hughes, best known in Britain for The Shock of the New, his 1980s BBC television series and book. “It only became iconic when it was knocked over by a bunch of Arabs.” Hughes, an Australian who has lived in New York for many years, was...

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

Cynics are right: Hercules' old-fashioned new neighborhoods are downright unreal. The houses are too pristine, the landscaping too prim. They're modeled along the lines of a bungalow-filled village of yore, yet the result looks like a pastel launching pad for commuters. No matter. I'll root for a David clad in Ralph Lauren over a bottom-line Wal-Mart Goliath any day.

WASHINGTON -- Rich, oceanfront residents of Cape Cod do not want their view of Nantucket Sound faintly obstructed by offshore protrusions of a proposed wind farm. So, they have hired high-priced lobbyists to kill Cape Wind, a project providing an environmentally sound source of energy. Their most important ally in this venture is a fellow wealthy Cape Cod landowner, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Opposition to America's first offshore wind farm seems a peculiar posture for the liberal lion of the Senate. The self-indulgent squires of Cape Cod likewise seem a strange set of friends for Teddy Kennedy. He is also...

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Leading the world's wealthiest and probably most famous university sounds like the plummiest job in academe -- with a staff, a house, and a half-million dollar salary among the many perks. But running Harvard isn't easy. Neil Rudenstine, school president from 1991 to 2001, was forced to take leave of absence for exhaustion in 1994. His successor, Lawrence Summers, announced Tuesday he would resign June 30 after a tumultuous five years, his ambitious agenda to get Harvard's territorial undergraduate and professional schools on same page done in by faculty revolts and brusque management style. Harvard-watchers inside...

There's no helping you. This site is now just a diversion -- like a train wreck. This site is inherently for and about raving egomaniacs, and Jim's site policies -- which amount to excluding reality and actual dialogue in favor of political/militaristic pornography -- is conducive to cognitive dissonance, which at the times your worldview is threatened leads you into psychotic breaks (on the political cognitive plane, that is, and just maybe in other realms too). Not to mention that your baseline politics is based in mythology about American demographics, science, economics, ethics etc. You spoonfeed each other in the...

Of all the words written about Harriet Miers, none are more disturbing than the ones she wrote herself. In the early '90s, while she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers wrote a column called "President's Opinion" for The Texas Bar Journal. It is the largest body of public writing we have from her, and sad to say, the quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian. Of course, we have to make allowances for the fact that the first job of any association president is to not offend her members. Still, nothing excuses...

The lovably irascible Beldar, the Texas trial lawyer who is one of the two people on earth hotly defending the Miers nomination (the other being our buddy Hugh Hewitt), has posted a convenient link to articles written by Harriet Miers during one of her stints as a bar association honcho. He did this in part to address a charge I made on Hugh's show that Miers shouldn't be taken seriously because over the past 30 years of hot dispute on matters of constitutional law she hadn't published so much as an op-ed on a single topic of moment. Thank you,...

Don't you remember the utter let-down when elder Bush broke the fundamental promise he made, "No new taxes"? The promise was not merely a bow to the Laffer curve, it was an emotional and pyschological statement to the many people in this country who still believe in constitutional goverment, and who knew that taxation was the means to undermine constitutional government, liberty and freedom, to put it another way. The younger Bush promised a Thomas or Scalia for the same reasons: to tell the believers in constitutional government that supporting him would mean a definitive change in the jurisprudence of...

Canadian singer Celine Dion has launched a scathing attack on President Bush's Iraq policy, while criticizing the government's slow response to the southern states devastated by Hurricane Katrina, reports IMDB.com.Dion, who has donated $1 million to victims of the storm, grew visibly emotional as she told of her frustration watching tens of thousands of survivors wait days for aid Saturday on CNN's Larry King Live show.''I open [sic] the television, there's people still there, waiting to be rescued, and for me it's not acceptable,'' she said. ``I know there's reasons for it, I'm sorry to say, I'm being rude, but...

Maureen Dowd's latest article is typical Times. Had to see the reaction here. My email response to her is also posted below.

Kerry: "...And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the president, me, and, Charlie, I'm sorry, you too." Kerry speaking in last evening's debate about his plan to raise taxes on people making 200k+ annually. So now John Kerry is prejudging people by just looking at them to determine their income?!? He decided that the only people in the room that qualified as his new tax-hike victims were himself, Bush and Charlie Gibson! Wow, a big criticism many liberals have of Bush is his supposed "arrogance",...

Best and Worst of the Debate Best Kerry Line of the Debate: "From the looks of the people in this audience, the only ones in this room who will be affected by the president's tax cut for the rich will be myself, the president, and Charles Gibson." Kerry's inner snob made an appearance last night at the debate. How could he tell the annual income of the audience? I guess no one was wearing Prada. One must have a trained eye for spotting designer clothes. Maybe there were no five hundred dollar haircuts like the one Kerry sports. There might...

John Kerry may be sinking in the polls, but even if he goes down with the ship Nov. 2, he'll still have his own little flotilla to return to back here in Massachusetts. According to a check of state and U.S. Coast Guard records, he and his ``family'' own almost as many high-end boats as they do mansions and SUVs. Since Liveshot married the Widow Heinz, he's been on a nautical buying spree. Excuse me, let me clarify that last statement: His elderly second wife's first husband's grandfather's trust fund has been on a nautical buying spree on behalf of...

Sorry for the vanity but I have to ask...has ANY Democratic candidate running this year asked Kerry to appear with him or her! If not, that fact alone is VERY telling...

You're John Kerry [related, bio], and the only liberal puke who's had a worse August than you is William Kennedy Smith. They said it was your election to lose, and you're losing it. You told 'em you were no Dukakis and you're not. As the Bush campaign pulverized him in August 1988, the Duke ran away to Tanglewood. Sixteen years later, you haven't fled to Tanglewood, you've lammed out for Nantucket. And now you're holed up in the $9 million mansion on Hulbert Avenue that your second wife's first husband's trust fund bought. You're John Kerry, and you can't help...