Free Republic

he city of London was shaken by terror when three bombs exploded last week on the London subway. In the middle of the chaos, media outlets lacked professional and objective integrity by jumping to hasty conclusions and blaming Muslims for the atrocity. The words “Islam” and “terrorism” were recklessly used by media staff and political analysts on television. Not only was it difficult for professionals to differentiate between the act of terror and the faith of Islam, but the connection was made without the slightest afterthought. British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that the evidence points to al-Qaida but that...

Amnesty International investigates, documents and takes action on human rights violations around the globe using one standard – that of international human rights and humanitarian law – and strives to do so in an impartial way. Nevertheless, the annual Amnesty International Report 2005 covering human rights violations around the globe in 2004 generated criticism in this newspaper from David Forman ("We are not paranoid," May 30) and Michael Ehrlich ("Amnesty International – do your homework," June 2). Forman accuses Amnesty International (AI) of being "out to get" Israel while ignoring serious human rights violations elsewhere in the world. Most of...

<p>Thank you four allowing me to join your esteamed sight. i feel i am on the cutting edge of moderate republican progressive! i have been a life long republican. you have to believe me.</p>

'Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it. 'The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." 'Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed . . . ."

I appeal to you today to be part of a historical movement and moment that may bring an end to more than a century of colonization, occupation and dispossession of Palestinians. I appeal to you as an Israeli Jew, who for years wished, and looked, for other ways to bring an end to the evil perpetrated against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, inside Israel and in the refugee camps. I devoted all my adult life, with others, to creating a substantial peace movement inside Israel, in which, so we hoped, academia will play a leading role. But after 37...

When the White House says Democrats are trumping up accusations against John Bolton, nominated to be U.N. ambassador, it's kind of like the White House saying Martin Luther King Jr. trumped up accusations of racial bias: sad, laughable and demonstrably untrue on its face. But that's the line the Bush administration is taking on Bolton, despite an almost certainly fatal wound his nomination suffered Tuesday in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After an impassioned plea by Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said what he had heard troubled him enough that he didn't feel comfortable voting for Bolton....

Bill Clinton's remarks at Davos may end being more controversial than Eason Jordan's. Other blogs, especially Little Green Footballs, have been all over the story. Here is the latest. It is now fully evident that a gloablist left-leaning elite uses Davos as an exercise to get similarly-inclined Americans to denounce their own country and pay homage to the icons of "progressive" politics - meaning, basically, anti-Americanism. How anyone could classify the mullahs of Iran as "progressive" and keep a straight face is beyond my understanding. It demonstrates how illogical and twisted a group the global anti-Americans have become.

Jane Fonda now says she was bulimic for the past 35 years

Jan. 31 issue - Not long ago, the American dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the world. East Europeans tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square. You had only to listen to George W. Bush's Inaugural Address last week (invoking "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times) to appreciate just how deeply Americans still believe in this founding myth. For many in the world, the president's rhetoric confirmed their worst fears of an imperial America...

Give me a break — or a big glass of vodka. We've gone from shock and awe to shuck and jive, and Captain Quagmire ran the table anyway. Now he's got the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the military and a chip on his shoulder he's calling a mandate. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a Republican haircut just to blend in. For four years it's been one big all-you-can-eat buffet for the corporations, and now they're coming back for more. Go ahead, you marvelous bastards! Rip out all the trees, pave the beaches, build 12-lane...

THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world. This once-great country has pulled up its drawbridge for another four years and stuck a finger up to the billions of us forced to share the same air. And in doing so, it has shown itself to be a fearful, backward-looking and very small nation. This should have been the day when Americans finally answered their critics by raising their eyes...

I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million—my relatives are not ignorant,...

October 16, 2004 Service Members, Families Say Pentagon Sent Too Few Troops To Iraq, Stressed National Guard and Reserves, Should Allow Photos of Coffins at Dover Even though they support George W. Bush’s handling of the situation in Iraq in general, America’s military service members and their families are convinced that the Administration underestimated the number of troops it needed in Iraq and put too much of a burden on inadequately trained and equipped National Guard and reserve forces. From September 22 through October 5, Annenberg polled 655 adults who have either served on active duty between February and October...

Many Still Troubled by Reagan's Legacy By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer As one of the first physicians to confront AIDS when it began its rampage through the gay community, Dr. Marcus Conant lobbied the Reagan administration in 1982 to launch an emergency campaign to educate Americans about the disease. It took the president five more years to publicly mention the crisis. By then, almost 21,000 Americans had died and thousands more had been diagnosed. Conant, who lost scores of friends and patients to the disease, is still deeply angry — one of many Americans who view Reagan's legacy in...

Monica Lewinsky Says Her Past Has Hurt Her Love Life - Wed Nov 19, 1:46 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - Monica Lewinsky says her White House liaison is a liability on the dating scene. The intern infamous for her affair with U.S. President Bill Clinton said in the December issue of GQ magazine that she dates occasionally but her romantic relationships have been short-lived. Lewinsky, 30, said in the interview she sympathized with the men she meets, saying she, too, would be intimidated by the tales of her past. "If I were a guy and I'd heard all those...

In his now legendary interview last month with Brit Hume of Fox News, George W. Bush explained that he doesn't get his news from the news media — not even Fox. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president said, laying down his utopian curriculum for Journalism 101. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Those sources? Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card. Mr. Hume, helpfully dispensing with the "We Report" half of his network's slogan, did not ask the obvious follow-up question:...

"It's easy for people to say that if they shoot up on heroin the only people they're hurting are themselves. But that's not true. ... Drug abusers destroy their families ... If we legalize these vices, we erode the societal support for prohibitions against crimes such as murder. The erosion of the moral fabric of society is a gradual, insidious process." -- Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, pp 53-54. As I sifted through hundreds of comments from Rush Limbaugh fans over the last week, some interesting trends emerged. About 50 percent just wanted to call me names....

hate President George W. Bush. There, I said it. I think his policies rank him among the worst presidents in U.S. history. And, while I'm tempted to leave it at that, the truth is that I hate him for less substantive reasons, too. I hate the inequitable way he has come to his economic and political achievements and his utter lack of humility (disguised behind transparently false modesty) at having done so. His favorite answer to the question of nepotism--"I inherited half my father's friends and all his enemies"--conveys the laughable implication that his birth bestowed more disadvantage than...

Bands Rock Against Bush Concerts and tours to raise awareness about 2004 election Sonic Youth, the Donnas, the Liars, the Locust and Erase Errata are among the groups who have pledged their support for Bands Against Bush, a self-explanatory new artistic collective dedicated to lending its support to the "struggle against a world of perpetual fear and violence bolstered by the Bush administration." BAB has set up more than twenty regional chapters in the U.S. and abroad, with a directory of groups willing to participate in various events to raise voter awareness. Among the events planned is an October 11th...

Franken's book bravely presents the truth by Deborah Locke, Editorial Writer, St. Paul Pioneer PressAt least two sections of Al Franken's book ought to grab the attention of people from Minnesota. In "Lies: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them -- A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," Franken recounts the Paul Wellstone memorial. The chapter is a good example of the way right-wing pundits aided by their media outlets will distort the facts to the American people. A more chilling theme throughout the book is the way mainstream media organizations buy into the lies and report them as...