Free Republic

Fantasy time: If I had lived in the colonies 229 years ago today, would I have stayed here in harm's way, or returned to London to sip tea and nibble crumpets with Fortnum and Mason (or one of their forbears)? The temptation would have been great on the eve of the Revolution. Losers would have been traitors, to pay at the end of a British rope. Would I have had the confidence in a ragtag army of farmers who knew how to use a pitchfork, but not necessarily a gun? Would I have trusted that the sailors and fishermen, artisans...

Celebrity, high and low, is judged by double standards. We forgive the talented their sins because we appreciate their talents. Sometimes we're hypercritical (and hypocritical) for the very reason they let us down -- when what they say has little, if anything, to do with their talents. The moguls of the old studio system in Hollywood knew what they were doing when they kept the politics, if any, of their stars hidden safely away. We don't really want to know what a good actor like Sean Penn thinks about politics, overlooking his childish anti-American diatribes, because we know his views...

When President Bush addressed the Class of '05 at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, he challenged them to be "champions of change," to cut through "established ways of thinking." Think outside the box and be innovative, he told them: "Pursue possibilities others tell you do not exist." He accompanied the challenge with a warning. "The opponents of change are many, and its champions are few, but the champions of change are the ones who make history. Be champions, and you will make America safer for your children and your grandchildren, and you'll add to the character of our nation."...

You don't need a fortune cookie to learn that China isn't playing straight with the rest of the world. The men in Beijing may be taking some of their clues from the most important page of Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book: "Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'" We've been lulled into thinking the Chinese brand of "free markets" will move that country toward democracy. Maybe someday, eventually, it will. But free markets must be accompanied by personal freedoms and representative government, and that isn't happening. In fact, there are disturbing...

No matter what you think of the inaccurate Newsweek item about flushing the Koran down a Guantanamo toilet, it's a mistake to say, as the White House does, that anyone died because of it. Toilets don't kill people, fanatics do. Americans don't kill each other over burning the Bible, as reprehensible as Bible-burning would be, nor did any of us take to the streets to shout insults at Muslim "infidels" when Palestinian Muslims used pages from a Bible as toilet paper during the occupation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or when Islamic radicals beheaded Daniel Pearl, a reporter...

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the humanities in Washington "don't get no respect." Not as much as they should, anyway. We're a company town and the company makes politics. But like a blind squirrel who finds an acorn once in a while, politicians and the journalists gather occasionally with others who crave more profundity than the noise in political rhetoric to listen to the annual >Jefferson Lecture. "The training of the intellect was meant to produce an intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction but it also had practical goals of importance to the individual and the entire community, to make the humanistically trained individuals...

The most irresponsible argument in the debate over John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations -- and there are many -- was an Op-Ed in The New York Times suggesting that his brisk management style demonstrates a criminal pathology and a psychopathic personality. The piece, written by a clinical psychologist who identifies herself as a consultant on "organizational psychology," was couched in the psychobabble of psychological expertise, based on one small flabby survey, anecdotes and case studies built on innuendo drawn from "research" that illustrates what Shakespeare meant when he wrote about "the sound and the fury...

The most irresponsible argument in the debate over John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations — and there are many— was the op-ed essay in The New York Times suggesting that his brisk management style demonstrates a criminal pathology and a psychopathic personality. The piece, by a clinical psychologist who identifies herself as a consultant on "organizational psychology," was couched in the psychobabble of psychological expertise, based on one small, flabby survey, anecdotes and case studies built on innuendo drawn from "research" that illustrates what Shakespeare meant when he wrote about "the sound and the fury signifying...

If there were an Emmy category for stand-up comedy on C-SPAN, she would be this year's odds-on favorite. Cedric the Entertainer, who had expected to follow the prez for the evening's laughs, knew he was in trouble long before Laura sat down. Her sallies were stingers, with references to her husband as "Mr. Excitement," in bed by 9 o'clock, and to herself and Lynn Cheney and Karen Hughes as "desperate housewives" who sneak out to watch the Chippendales (male strippers) for post-9 o'clock thrills. "I wouldn't even mention it," she said, "except that Ruth Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor saw...

Congress is spending a lot of hot air on the question: To filibuster or not to filibuster. The Bard, as always, said it best: "Whether 'tis nobler in the minds men to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take aims against a sea of troubles/ And by opposing end them?" Whatever our worthies decide to do about the filibuster, we can count on a lot of bluster. Hamlet summed up pretty well what's rotten in the state of Congress. Would that the few senators who set their tongues to blocking judicial nominees were eloquent in understanding the issue....

Most of the debate over the cultures of death and life is about process. The debate focuses on the technology available to determine how we prolong life and how and when we end it. The generations that went before us would not understand what we're talking about. Infant mortality, death from pregnancy and childbirth, routine disease and the infirmities of old age in an earlier time were perceived to be natural and inevitable, the inexorable will of G-d. It's one of the terrible ironies of modern times — and a sobering caution — that extermination of physically healthy, able-bodied men,...

In any first draft of history, the president of the United States and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall wouldn't have much in common. But events demand a good rewrite man. George W. and Camilla, for similar but very different reasons, are winning the hearts and minds of the people who count. She's gone from being the woman the Brits love to hate to a prospective queen who has earned the grudging admiration of the fair-minded, and even some who aren't. The London Evening Standard, which once depicted Princess Di as the martyr in a sordid triangle, now tells...

There was almost an audible sigh of relief in certain precincts when "Downfall," a movie about Hitler's last days in the Berlin bunker, did not win an Academy Award for best foreign film.

George W. Bush is standing taller, he speaks with greater confidence and puts the right emphasis on his words. Only the true unbelievers mock his syntax now. This is not the man who climbed out of the fighter in a green flight suit onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln for the perfect photo op. This George W. looks older, less boyish and with authentic gravitas, and for good reason. He knows that the Kodak moment passes quickly, that good news is subject to an infinite variety of changes, both good and grim, usually unpredictable. Boffo headlines can turn...

If George W. had lost in November, the neocons and the foreign-policy initiatives they espoused, specifically taking the war on terror to Iraq, would have been blamed. Big time, as Dick Cheney would say. If the Iraqi elections had not been such a stunning success, with men and women walking through the early-morning darkness to get in line to cast their ballots with pride, excitement and disdain for the threats of mayhem by the insurgents, the neocons would have been blamed for that, too. If George W. should return home from Bratislava without giving Vladimir Putin a polite piece of...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com The green 'State of Fear'By Suzanne FieldsPublished February 3, 2005          Michael Crichton is a high-tech, science-savvy Renaissance man in the 21st century. He has sold more than a hundred million books, which have been translated into 30 languages. Twelve became high-grossing movies. Children everywhere have "Jurassic Park" nightmares.     His books are so popular in China that when the calcified remains of a species of dinosaur was discovered there, the Chinese named it Bienosaurus crichtoni in his honor. In 1992, People magazine named him one of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People." Now a new kind...

Hillary Clinton changes images with the quickness of Madonna. Like the Queen of Pop, she provokes and reacts, rethinks and reforms, pushes at hot buttons and then cools off with a dip in the mainstream. Madonna moved from "Like a Virgin" to "Married With Children," and began writing children's books. Hillary went from high-octane lawyer in Little Rock who didn't want to stay home to bake cookies to being a first lady sharing her recipe for chocolate chip cookies. She went from standing by her man in a way that Tammy Wynette might have sung about, to standing up for...

George W. Bush and the Asian tsunami have put religion back on the front page. Exit polls revealed that a majority of religious folk voted to re-elect the president; after tens of thousands died under the waves millions turned to religion for answers to the question that men and women have asked wise men for millennia. A headline in the New York Observer puts it bluntly: "Disaster Ignites Debate: 'Was God in the Tsunami?'" If so, how can such things happen? If not, how can such things happen? Some of the answers seek to exploit tragedy. Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin...

"When I first cameto fully understand what effect members of the World War II generation had on my life and the world we occupy today, I quickly resolved to tell their stories as a small gesture of personal appreciation." So writes Tom Brokaw on the first page of his book, "The Greatest Generation." Who among the young today will one day write a similar tribute to the young Americans fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who is the scribe to honor those who serve among the treacherous in the smoke and fire in a place where freedom is a stranger, where...

Tom Brokaw, like a good wine, aged nicely, and he still has the boyish looks easy on female eyes. Brian Williams, even easier on the eyes, will continue in that tradition at NBC. The reporting, however, is of diminishing importance. ...CBS could choose a not-so-pretty face, like Tim Russert of "Meet the Press," who may be the best in the television business for asking tough questions.