Free Republic

President Bush appointed a longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday to be his top domestic policy adviser, a post that has been vacant since February, when Claude A. Allen stepped down after being charged with stealing more than $5,000 in a phony refund scheme. Karl Zinsmeister, who has worked the past 12 years as editor in chief of the American Enterprise magazine, is slated to assume his White House post June 12. At the institute, he focused on examining cultural issues, as well as social and economic trends. His columns for the magazine included pieces praising Wal-Mart's efficiency...

I’m talking today about the use of foreign law in American judicial opinions, and most of what I have to say is unfavorable, so I feel I should begin by pointing out that I am not a xenophobe. I don’t mind foreign law. In fact, in my years as a law professor, I used to teach foreign law. You don’t understand your own language until you’ve taken some foreign language, and I think you do not understand your own legal system—its distinctiveness, and what drives it—until you examine some other system. I do not take the position that foreign law...

Live with TAE: Robert Kaplan Born in Brooklyn 53 years ago, Robert Kaplan was raised in a working-class section of Queens where his father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker. Recruited as a swimmer, he attended the University of Connecticut, where he took not a single history, economics, or political science course, but learned to write. He started in journalism at the Daily Herald of Rutland, Vermont, and commenced to energetically educate himself in world affairs. A vagabond investigator of some of the world’s most troubled regions, he has written a host of books on places like...

Blame Bush By Alan W. Dowd "The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies." -German Environment Minister Jurgen Trittin "Watching helplessly from afar, many citizens wondered whether rescue operations were hampered because almost one-third of the men and women of the Louisiana National Guard, and an even higher percentage of the Mississippi National Guard, were 7,000 miles away, fighting in Iraq." -The New York Times "A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study...

In Campaign 2004, liberal activists mobilized to an unprecedented degree, creating brand-new behemoth political action organizations and injecting more money into liberal candidacies and causes than had ever been spent before in any election. These developments are analyzed in a readable new book by National Review White House correspondent Byron York titled The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President—and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time. TAE’s Karlyn Bowman recently sat down with York. Following are excerpts from their conversation. TAE: When...

"Live" with TAE Frederick Smith He founded one of America’s iconic companies: FedEx. He’s also the self-described Forrest Gump of American politics—wounded in Vietnam after spending his college years as a pal of both George W. Bush and John Kerry. A voracious reader, he’s a businessman who can roam effortlessly over subjects ranging from history to technology. While attending Yale in the mid 1960s, Fred Smith wrote a paper on the computerized era’s need for reliable overnight delivery. He received a C grade, but the idea remained with him. He went on to serve for four years in the...

With summer starting and November virtually around the corner, the time has come for John Kerry to finally choose his running mate. A lot of suggestions for possible choices are being bandied about. Some Democrats are pushing for Senator John "there goes tort reform" Edwards. Others, who were apparently comatose or heavily medicated throughout the entire Democratic nomination battle, are high on General Wesley Clark. Personally, though, I think everyone's missing the freshest and most intriguing choice of all: former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry. Now, I know Barry's not exactly a conventional choice. Most presidential candidates favor running mates...

Thanksgiving has just passed, and the first American troops to deploy for the Iraq War are nearing their one-year anniversary overseas. That makes it a good time to remember some families in this country to whom the rest of us owe a great deal. Take, for example, the family of Sean Shields, the young American I photographed in combat for the cover of my new book Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq. Lieutenant Shields, currently stationed near Baghdad, is the third generation of his clan to serve in the U.S. Army...