Free Republic

You're not the only one unhappy about the Olympic mascots, collectively known as the Fuwa. If the Beijing Olympics' five cuddly mascots go down in history as a dud, their creator wants no part of the blame. After China's Olympics organizers gave him the assignment, folk artist Han Meilin initially sketched out five children representing the traditional Chinese elements of fire, wood, water, gold and earth. Then the bureaucrats got involved. "There had to be a panda, even though you'd think the public would have had enough of them," says the 72-year-old artist. Alas, mankind will never get enough of...

Almost anything can happen in an election year, but among conservatives, almost everyone seems to agree that no matter who captures the White House in November, the movement that has ruled the Republican Party since the 1960s and mostly dominated American politics since 1980 has lost its way. Across the spectrum of the right, writers and thinkers have turned their relentless analysis inward, a kind of political EST seminar aimed at self-transformation.

Michael Goldfarb, online guru at the Weekly Standard, has taken a leave of absence from his post at the magazine to become deputy communications director for McCain. Standard chief Bill Kristol announced the move on their blog. In his new role, Goldfarb will use his grasp of the rightosphere to help drive the McCain message online and will also lend a hand in writing campaign materials. He'll focus especially on the rapid response element of a campaign that is already being fought hour by hour. A source at the magazine said that when Goldfarb announced his move at a staff...

The NOTION THAT BARACK Obama should pick Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate is crazy. She passes the first test of a veep selection: she's a plausible president. But she fails the second. She doesn't qualify as a partner on the Democratic ticket (and possibly in the White House) that Obama would be comfortable with--far from it. But there is someone who does meet these two requirements, plus a third one and maybe a fourth. That person is Democratic Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania. Yes, Rendell was the leading supporter of Clinton when she trounced Obama in the...

Thomas Joscelyn has an excellent piece on the death of Imad Mughniyeh, and his possible connections to Al Qaeda and the terror attacks of 9/11: Death by Car Bomb in Damascus. Late Tuesday night in Damascus, Imad Mugniyah, senior terrorist of Hezbollah, was killed in a car bomb explosion. It was a fitting death for a founding father of Islamic terrorism, a man who himself had built many bombs. If you had not heard of Mugniyah before, there is a good reason. Terror chieftains like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri seek the limelight with their frequent and widely...

THERE IS A LEFT-WING conspiracy at loose in the world, dedicated to undoing conservative governance, only the people who see it aren't sure what it is. John McCain is in it, of course, in fact he is the cause of it, as making him president is the ultimate goal. He is blamed for running, (and perhaps, for breathing), but beyond him the face of the threat is less clear. In fact, the faces are those of other conservative stalwarts, who were their heroes and brethren until--until, say, just after the Florida primary, when McCain emerged as a serious threat. These...

PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS the presidency is still "a joyous experience" for him. "People ask if I would do it again. I would." And one reason for his upbeat mood in talking to a dozen journalists Wednesday is progress in Iraq, including revenue sharing by the central government with the provinces. Another is the beginning of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, though Bush cautioned that the creation of a Palestinian state won't come any time soon. Reconciliation between Shia and Sunni is occurring in Iraq, Bush said, but it's "bottom up reconciliation," not top down from the central government of Nouri a-Maliki. However, the...

Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy. Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card famously remarked that the reason the White House ramped up the case for the Iraq War in September was that "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." To judge from recent developments, Americans may look back on August 2007 as the month the country again turned toward war—with Iran. The same network of think-tank analysts, media outlets, and government officials who brayed for war in Iraq have set their...

It's hard to believe that, not so long ago, neoconservative foreign policy thinking overflowed with ideas and idealism. The descent has been steep, and nowhere is it more apparent than in the pages of The Weekly Standard--particularly in William Kristol's editorials, which have come to consist of stubborn denials of any bad news, diatribes about internal enemies, and harangues against the cowardice of Republican dissenters. Kristol's sensibility is perfectly summed up in one representative passage from a recent issue. The topic was The New Republic's decision to publish an essay by Scott Beauchamp, an American soldier serving in Iraq, detailing...

The Weekly Standard has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp -- author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns -- signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods -- fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source. Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad: "An investigation has been completed and...

Mike Fumento was a guest on the Mike Rosen show on 850am KOA here in Denver Wednesday (Nov. 23rd) to talk about his recent October 2006 trip to Ramadi, Iraq. Mike talks about the REAL story from the one of the most dangerous places in the country. Rosen Replay 11/22/06 10-11AM (about 45 minutes, MP3) Guest: Mike Fumento, journalist for "The Weekly Standard" talks about his latest article, "Return to Ramadi."Click here for part one of the interview Rosen Replay 11/22/06 11-11:45AM (about 30 minutes, MP3) Mike Fumento continued. Click here for part two of the interview --- Mike Fumento's...

Surrender as 'Realism' Retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries. Foreign policy realism is ascendant these days, we are told. This would be encouraging if true, because our foreign policy must indeed be realistic. But what passes for "realism" today has very little to do with reality. Indeed, if you look at some of the "realist" proposals on the table, "realism" has come to be a kind of code word for surrendering American interests and American allies, as well as American principles, in the Middle East. Thus, the "realists" advise us to seek Syria's help in...

The Weekly Standard is bold in stating and supporting its ideology. Only it is not the traditional limited government conservatism devised by the movement's founders. The WS forthrightly informs its readers that George W. Bush is a "big spender," subheading a recent piece informing its readers that, "under Bush, the era of small government is over." Moreover, there is not much limited government conservatives can do about it. "Governing majorities can't stand still" the executive editor informs, they must spend more and more money on national problems because "that's what the public expects." Bush and the GOP Congressional leadership will...

July 18, 2006 -- 'GROTESQUE" was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's characterization of the charge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was responsible for the current Middle East conflagration. She is correct, up to a point. Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Rice called it "short-sighted" to judge the success of the administration's transformational ambitions by a "snapshot" of progress "some couple of years" into the transformation. She seems to consider today's turmoil preferable to the Middle East's "false stability" of the last 60 years, during which U.S. policy "turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces." There is,...

SHAME ON Hillary Rodham Clinton. Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing publishing mogul, is hosting a fund-raiser in July for her Senate reelection campaign. Her explanation is that Murdoch, based in New York, is an important constituent: ''I'm very gratified that he thinks I'm doing a good job." Murdoch runs Fox television, home of Bill O'Reilly and company. No far-right media enterprise has been more relentlessly dishonest in its efforts to destroy American liberalism in general and the Clintons in particular. Fox was prime cheerleader for the bogus Whitewater investigation and the impeachment campaign against Bill Clinton. Fox exists to oppose every...

The Weekly Standard turns 10. The Weekly Standard: A Reader, 1995–2005, edited by William Kristol, New York: Harper Collins, 534 pages, $27.95 When the Republicans took control of Congress in 1995, a frenzied guessing game began as to which major government program would be first to fall victim to Newt Gingrich’s merciless axe. Some observers wondered if one of the earliest casualties might be not a line item in the federal budget but rather the burgeoning conservative alternative media that aided the GOP during the previous year’s campaign. The idea was that these outlets would be victims of their own...

There's a fascinating article in the Weekly Standard which grants a glimpse into the shadow war between state-sponsored terrorists and their pursuers. The accounts, based on documents captured in Afghanistan and Iraq, describe Saddam Hussein's support for the Abu Sayyaf terror group in the Philippines. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a...

Okay. Let's not talk about substance--since the pro-immigration forces have in fact been winning that debate easily. Let's talk about ballot boxes John McCain, lead sponsor of a bill that resembles the Senate Judiciary Committee bill, has a pretty impressive electoral record in Arizona, a competitive state. George W. Bush, a pro-immigration Republican, has won two presidential elections--as did another pro-immigration Republican, Ronald Reagan. The American people are worried about immigration. In a Pew Survey released last week, 52 percent of Americans saw immigration as a burden, while 41 percent said it strengthened the country; 53 percent support sending illegals...

The Document Refuseniks There is an effort afoot to discredit any material that may undermine the narrative that "Bush lied us into war" and that Saddam's connection to al Qaeda was tenuous at best. Consider this quote from an AP wire story today: [John] Prados, an analyst with the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute, dismissed the documents: "The collection is good material for somebody who wants to do a biography of Saddam Hussein, but in terms of saying one thing or the other about weapons of mass destruction, it's not there." Prados knows "it's not there," even if...

TO ACCOMPANY the editorial in the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, we have reproduced the page with the Mohammed cartoons from the September 30 Jyllands-Posten. Readers should be able to see what this controversy is about. More important, in light of recent instances of capitulation to the threats of radical Islamists, and in response to eloquent pleas by individuals like Walid-al-Kubaisi in Norway to publish the cartoons in order to protect freedom of expression, we wanted to do our small part to stand against intimidation by extremists.--William Kristol

In discussion with a leftist friend he mentioned how badly the main stream media had done in buckling under to the pressure of the Muslim world by NOT actually reprinting the cartoons. Thus, we have another term for the Mainstream Media, the Dhimminized Press. Anyway, I was interested if people would list media who HAVE stood up to the attempted intimidation and printed the pictures.

--> Weekly Standard Prints Mohammed Cartoons The Weekly Standard has reproduced Jylland-Posten's Mohammed cartoons, accompanied by this Editor's Note from William Kristol: TO ACCOMPANY the editorial in the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, we have reproduced the page with the Mohammed cartoons from the September 30 Jyllands-Posten. Readers should be able to see what this controversy is about. More important, in light of recent instances of capitulation to the threats of radical Islamists, and in response to eloquent pleas by individuals like Walid-al-Kubaisi in Norway to publish the cartoons in order to protect freedom of expression, we wanted to...

PRESIDENT BUSH is a book reader. Last year, he read three books on George Washington and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave him a book on the peace talks after World War I entitled Paris 1919. This year, he's delved into the new biography of Mao Zedong with simple title Mao. Presumptuous though it is, I have a recommendation of another book for him to read. It's War Footing, edited and partly written by Frank Gaffney Jr., the president of the Center for Security Policy. True, Bush is already on war footing. But this book is filled with fresh ideas...

Under the editorship of Bill Kristol, the Weekly Standard has become one of the most consistently rewarding political journals. It is a place you can go for a predictably conservative view on certain issues, from the wisdom of the U.S. intervention in Iraq to sustaining the life of Terri Schiavo. But it is also on occasion a portal for the debates that are roiling the governing majority.In its 10th anniversary issue, now on the stands, Kristol invited a number of its regular contributors to answer: "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last...

The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today. To mark our 10th anniversary, we invited several of our valued contributors to reflect on the decade past and, at least indirectly, on the years ahead. More specifically, we asked them to address this question:  "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last 10...

The first issue of this magazine appeared in September 1995, part way through the Clinton administration, and less than a year after the Republican victory in the congressional elections of 1994. The pressing foreign policy issue of the day was Bosnia. The world seems a very different place today. To mark our 10th anniversary, we invited several of our valued contributors to reflect on the decade past and, at least indirectly, on the years ahead. More specifically, we asked them to address this question: "On what issue or issues (if any!) have you changed your mind in the last 10...

Notes from Under Water From the September 19, 2005 issue: The struggle to survive the disaster in New Orleans.by Matt Labash 09/26/2005, Volume 011, Issue 01 New Orleans I'M NOT A BIG SUPPORTER OF MEN CRYING. But I nearly did so while watching the flood waters roll over New Orleans, drowning it in Katrina's backwash. Not only because of the obvious human toll, but also because this Jobian plague befell the greatest city in America. Sure, New Orleans regularly leads the league in all the wrong categories. It's been the fattest city, the most corrupt city, the most murderous...

...Then the Weekly Standard arrived in 1995, and Washington was suddenly a two-magazine town. William Kristol, Fred Barnes and John Podhoretz came up with the idea and Rupert Murdoch came up with the money.... Ever since, the Standard has proudly flown the banner of conservatism from Washington each week, sometimes conservatism of the "neo" sort.... "The Weekly Standard: A Reader" offers an impressive sampling from the magazine's first 10 years. Irving Kristol, William's father, defines neoconservatism, insofar as it can be defined -- he calls it a "persuasion," not a movement or ideology. Andrew Ferguson, tired of hearing Edward R....

The Democrats fall into the national security trap again. DEMOCRATS DON'T HAVE A DEATH wish. It just seems that way. What they actually have is a habit of falling into the national security trap. They did it in 1972. They did it in 1984. They did it in 1994. They did it in 2002. And they're doing it again this year as they prepare for the 2006 midterm elections, in which they hope to produce a breakthrough as sweeping and decisive as Republicans achieved in 1994.The national security trap is simple. When faced with a choice between supporting or criticizing...

At the moment, Democrats are convinced the country has turned against the war in Iraq. So House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is quite comfortable declaring the war a "grotesque mistake" and boasting that she has thought so from the start. Senator Edward Kennedy felt confident enough last week to inform American generals home from Iraq that the war is an "intractable quagmire." This prompted a sharp rebuke from General George Casey, the top commander in Iraq. "You have an insurgency with no vision, no base, limited popular support, an elected government, committed Iraqis to the democratic process, and you have...

MY MOTHER, ROSA MILLER Barnes, was the Billy Graham of our family. With my dad's help, she converted all of us to orthodox Christianity. Her approach was not to deliver a sermon or drag everyone off to church or insist we read a religious book or tract. It wasn't that she was shy about discussing her faith. She could explain with great clarity what being a follower of Jesus Christ meant in her life. But she never pushed her faith on anyone. If she found someone wasn't receptive, she changed the subject to one of mutual interest. She was never...

PRESIDENT BUSH NEEDS AN EXIT strategy on Social Security. With luck, he may never have to use it. There's still a chance a sweeping reform bill will pass this year. But despite Bush's valiant efforts to sell Congress and the nation on the idea of modernizing Social Security, the prospects are dim. History will surely vindicate Bush for trying to solve a serious national problem before it becomes a staggering mess. What's required now, however, is that he be ready to accept defeat in a manner that saves Republicans from losses in the 2006 election and allows him to pursue...

THE MEDIA clichés are already hardening around Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, just hours after becoming Pope Benedict XVI. Will they brook any dissent from the caricature they're drawing?"German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the strict defender of Catholic orthodoxy for the past 23 years, was elected Pope on Tuesday despite a widespread assumption he was too old and divisive to win election." --Reuters"Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, the church's leading hard-liner, was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium." --William J. Kole, Associated Press"Thanks for your emails both sympathizing and telling me to leave the Church...

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM once described the American college campus as an island of repression in a sea of freedom. The report of Columbia University's ad hoc grievance committee suggests that Columbia is such an island. On its face, the report presents findings and recommendations concerning allegations by Columbia students that they were subjected to intimidation and abuse by members of the university's department of Middle East and Asian Language and Cultures (MEALAC). However, the report is better understood as a directive to Columbia students to take without protest the poisonous medicine being administered by the anti-Israel, anti-American radicals who dominate MEALAC....

IT TAKES A CERTAIN AMOUNT of chutzpah to write a book called God's Politics. But you have only to read a few pages of Jim Wallis's new bestseller by that name to discover that it isn't actually about the politics of an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful deity at all. Instead, it's 384 pages of Jim's politics, and Jim (with a couple of notable exceptions) is a pretty average, down-the-line leftist who, by the way, believes in God.Wallis is a hot property lately on the talk-show, book-tour circuit and, more important, in Democratic party backrooms. Still smarting from their rebuff by "values...

THE WASHINGTON POST'S COVERAGE of Pope John Paul II today featured on page 1, among other things, a news "analysis" by Hanna Rosin. It had a promising title, "His Legacy: A Papacy and Church Transformed." Yet by the fifth paragraph of her 2,000-word piece, one got the impression that Ms. Rosin doesn't think much of John Paul II's legacy:  For those who expected more from the modernization--American priests ordained in the 1960s, say, Catholic women who wanted to be priests or Latin American leaders who wanted a partner in revolution--the pope not only betrayed his promise but locked the church...

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER BILL FRIST never saw it. Neither did the Senate Republican whip, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. The number three Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, didn't get a copy. Nor did the senator with the closest relationship with President Bush, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire. And the senator with the familiar Republican last name, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, didn't see it or read it. The same is true of Senator Mel Martinez, the rookie Republican from Florida.Yet the infamous memo that argued Republicans stood to gain politically by saving the life of Terri Schiavo was...

My book The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History has received far more attention than I ever expected. Once the book hit number eight on the New York Times bestseller list, the Times’ editorial page condemned it without actually showing where its arguments were mistaken; several weeks later, to my surprise, the Times published a favorable profile of me. The controversy surrounding the book has reached at least two other continents: Brazil’s Folha de S. Paulo, with the highest circulation of any newspaper in Latin America, published a full interview with me, as did a major Catholic newspaper in Ireland....

PRESIDENT BUSH DID NOT INITIATE the political realignment that made Republicans a majority party. But he has helped create the current moment of opportunity for Republicans to enact a far-reaching conservative agenda. Absent Bush, Republicans might not have 55 senators--which they also had in 1997, but otherwise their greatest number since 1930--which was enough to approve oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last week and to enact bankruptcy reform the week before. Both measures had failed repeatedly in recent years.Five factors have come together to give Republicans their best chance for major legislative and foreign policy achievements in nearly...

THE SUPREME COURT OUGHT TO uphold the several displays of the Ten Commandments on government property whose constitutionality it considered last week. But how might it do that? If the Court had a sense of humor, perhaps it would sustain the displays (the cases are from Texas and Kentucky) by observing that the Decalogue is foreign law, and that foreign law is always good law, often even better than our own. Think of the opinion that could be crafted, perhaps by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who last week cited developments in foreign law in declaring that the Constitution condemns capital punishment...

The obvious man for Bush to tap as his successor in 2008 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY IS adamant about not running for president in 2008. Asked by host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday if he might change his mind, Cheney answered with a firm no. "I've got my plans laid out," he said. "I'm going to serve this president for the next four years, and then I'm out of here. . . . In 2009, I'll be 68 years old. And I've still got a lot of rivers I'd like to fish and time I'd like to spend with...

MCDONALD'S IS CELEBRATING ITS 15TH anniversary in Russia. Its sales have risen steadily, reaching $310 million in 2004. The company reports that it is serving more than 200,000 customers daily in more than a hundred Russian locations. Well, three cheers for McDonald's, but what's the big deal?Why is McDonald's such a success when all they're selling is a Russian staple, a kotlety as they call it? It was once a puzzle to me, but there's a story behind this McDonald's success story.Some years ago I was staying at one of Moscow's most luxurious hotels, just built by private German investors,...

ON THE EVENING OF FEBRUARY 10, the board of directors of WETA-FM, the only commercial-free classical music station in Washington, D.C., voted overwhelmingly to eliminate its music and arts programming. At the end of this month, someone will flick a switch and--thud!--WETA will fall to earth as just another all-news, all-talk station, and the nation's capital will be left without a public radio station devoted to beautiful and intelligent music.WETA's transformation is a blow to the cultural life of the Washington metropolitan area, of course, which despite its succulent demographics in income and education levels has always struggled to maintain...

FOR TWELVE DAYS FOLLOWING THE death of former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang, China's television and radio remained silent about his passing. A handful of newspapers mentioned it, in a government-approved two-sentence statement buried on inside pages. On the day of the cremation, January 29, China Central Television finally reported that Zhao had died.The Internet and foreign broadcasts are another story. They conveyed the news of Zhao's death within hours. China-based Internet bulletin boards filled with condolences and eulogies--soon removed by vigilant censors. Despite intensified government jamming, some foreign radio broadcasts got through.Zhao's views were very much out of favor with...

FOR MUCH OF THE PAST decade, Darik Volpa labored long and hard in the high-tech vineyards of San Jose and Boston. As an executive in the medical instrument industry, he earned good money, but could not achieve a middle class lifestyle in those pricey locales.When Volpa decided in 2003 to open his own company, Understand Surgery, he chose to do it in far-more-affordable Reno, Nevada. His reasons--embraced by scores of other fast-growing businesses--ranged from the unfriendly business climates in places like California to the high cost of houses in many prominent cities. The need for affordable housing was especially urgent,...

BENJAMIN DISRAELI--TWICE PRIME minister of Great Britain, romantic novelist, inventor of modern conservatism--was a neocon in the plain sense of the word, a "new conservative" who began his career on the left. Conservative thinking dates to the dawn of organized society, but modern conservatism--a mass movement, a philosophy not for aristocrats and the rich but for everybody--was Disraeli's creation. That modern conservatism should have been invented by a 19th-century neocon is thought provoking. More surprising:His redefinition of conservatism is still fresh, and his political philosophy has never been more apt.Conservatism is the most powerful and electric force in the American...