Free Republic

In an interview with Harry Smith on CBS' "Early Show" Friday morning, President Obama called out Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as purveyors of "vitriol" - creating a climate in which he's called a "socialist" and even a "Nazi." Smith asked the president if he was "aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves and that people have made part of their daily conversation about you." Obama replied, "When you've listened to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck it's pretty apparent." The rancor is "troublesome," he said, but he acknowledged it's also a recurring phenomenon. "Keep in mind that...

WASHINGTON – Vitriol and invective stain American political history, but falsehoods, half-truths and innuendo now spread with the speed of light across partisan airwaves and the Internet — the din drowning out the country's moderate political center. Countless Internet blogs have taken on the administration of the first African-American president, claiming — falsely — that Barack Obama isn't an American citizen, is a secret Muslim, is a socialist, wants to establish death panels to decide when elderly Americans would no longer receive medical care and be allowed to die. The list is long. Most recently, a partisan furor blew up...

(2006-10-28) — On the very day that the New York Times featured a major investigative piece about the use of hand sanitizer by politicians on the campaign trail, the makers of the popular brand Purell announced release of a new product made specifically for politicians and people like them — Purell Mouth Sanitizer. While the hand gel is shown to kill 99.9 percent of germs and bacteria which are often spread by human contact, the new mouth sanitizer was formulated to prevent the viral spread of dirty, bitter and vitriolic political speech. According to a news release from the company,...

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him. The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days. Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle....

Yes, the election is behind us, but it is not yet time to heal the wounds. We cannot let the Democrats forget the vitriol they spewed during the campaign. Their ugly tactics are part of history. Forget history and we repeat our mistakes. Remember Bob Woodward’s charge that President Bush and the Saudis had a secret “deal” to keep oil prices low in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election? (See also here). There is no documentation showing that such a deal was ever made. Historical oil and gas prices in 2004 provide empirical evidence that no such deal was...

Democratic Party dismay has been mounting since Kerry ____ (fill in the blank with your favorite of any of a dozen things). Stoked by a constant barrage of well documented inconvenient facts coming out about Kerry's background and the ever-increasing popularity of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the heated arguments between the Kerry campaign and the DNC leadership increase. Add in, too, the rousing success of the GOP convention and it appears we can stick a fork in the Democratic Party now because that goose is just about fully cooked. Another good barometer, of course, is the mania displayed...

Bush makes sure gun lobby gets what it wants By TOM TEEPENAtlanta Journal-Constitution 5/20/2003 “Bush and the people around him are National Rifle Association finger puppets. The NRA twitches, they bow.” When President Bush announced a couple of weeks ago that he wouldn't oppose renewal next year of the ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, you knew something fishy was up. And sure enough, here it is: Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) says that not only will the House refuse to renew the legislation. The leadership won't even let the matter come up. End of issue. Thus Bush escapes any blame...

Doubting Thomas offers her press veteran’s take on state of presidency As veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas signed my program Thursday evening at the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual awards banquet, I said, “First time I ever asked a reporter for an autograph.” “Thank you, dear,” she said, patting my arm. “Don’t lose heart.” Those are words that should be engraved at the bottom of every journalism degree. That’s because I’m not sure that any business can cause a heart to be lost or broken faster than this. And Thomas probably knows this better than anyone because she began...