Free Republic

(Note: be sure to read Alex K.'s illuminating response to the points I raise below.)Just a passing question. The Wall Street Journal is opposed to statism, yes? Has the Journal raised jeremiads against, warned about, opposed, criticized, or even mildly questioned Europe's steady march toward a quasi-totalitarian superstate subsuming the ancient states of Europe? Offhand, I'm not aware that the Journal or of any mainstream "conservative" publication have stood against this impending horror. In the same way, the "conservatives" are evidently going along with John "Patriot" McCain's newly minted internationalism, including his support for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of...

Schoolmate, 6, and brother, 4, are alleged victims Tuesday, April 1, 2008 3:12 AM BY RANDY LUDLOW THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH A 10-year-old Marion County boy has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial on delinquency counts of rape and gross sexual imposition. Marion County officials declined to provide details about the case, but a Prospect-area woman says the boy molested her 4- and 6-year-old sons last summer. The woman is upset that the 10-year-old continues to attend the same Prospect school, South Elgin Elementary, as her 6-year-old first-grader. "I'm furious, but my hands are tied," the woman said yesterday. She...

SCOTTSBORO - Jackson County Circuit Judge John Graham today ordered the Scottsboro City Board of Education to allow a gay couple to attend Scottsboro High School's senior-junior prom tonight. Chelsea Overstreet, 17, a junior at the high school, and her date Lauren Martin, 16, a sophomore at the school, were initially told by school officials they could not attend because the school board does not allow students of the same sex to attend the prom together, their lawyer Parker Edmiston of Scottsboro said in a press conference this afternoon. Because there is no state law specific to the issue, Graham...

When it comes to teachers and students, there is no such thing as consensual sex, experts said yesterday. The power differential is too exploitative in those sexual encounters, said Charol Shakeshaft, a former Hofstra University professor who now teaches educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University and is an expert on sexual abuse in schools. "It's a violation of trust and professional boundaries," Shakeshaft said of the March 20 encounter Nassau police say happened between Heather Kennedy, 25, a math teacher at Wantagh High School, and a 16-year-old boy who is a student at the school. Kennedy was arraigned yesterday on...

The southern end of the San Andreas fault near Los Angeles, which has been still for more than two centuries, is under immense stress and could produce a massive earthquake at any moment, a scientist said on Wednesday. Yuri Fialko, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, said that given average annual movement rates in other areas of the fault, there could be enough pent-up energy in the southern end to trigger a cataclysmic jolt of up to 10 metres (32 ft). "The observed strain rates confirm that the southern section of the San Andreas fault may...

by Mark Finkelstein June 19, 2006 The Bush administration takes terror threats too darn seriously. That's what Ron Suskind says in his recently-released book, 'The One Percent Doctrine'. Suskind, who was on the Today show this morning to discuss the book with Matt Lauer, is a former Wall Street Journal reporter. Those who might think that would indicate a conservative bent should be aware that, perhaps more than at any other paper in America, there is a remarkable contrast in the political leanings of the news and the editorial operations of the WSJ. Yes, the editorial page is keenly free-market...

June 15, 2006 -- WHO'D have thought it possible even a month ago? President Bush is getting his mojo back. The president just had the best week of his second term, perhaps of his entire presidency - and the end of the investigation of Karl Rove, which would have been the headline grabber not long ago, had little to do with it. Instead, the president's brilliantly conceived and executed trip to Baghdad - giving exactly the right boost at the right time to new Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki - capped off seven days that included the forming of a...