Free Republic

Beacon of democracy’ cracks down on dissent.. Ukrainian authorities have banned the country’s main opposition party and seized all its assets, once again undermining the narrative that President Zelensky is presiding over a beacon of democracy. The country’s Ministry of Justice announced the move via Facebook, revealing that the Opposition Platform — For Life had been shut down and its assets, money and property transferred to the state. The party had previously had its operations suspended in March after it was accused of being complicit with Russia and being “anti-Ukrainian.” The ban means that Zelensky’s main political opposition has been...

Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both. Kennedy's message to Moscow and his fellow Americans: "If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity." As George Beebe writes in his essay, "It's a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy," in the July National Interest, Kennedy later elaborated: "We must recognize that we cannot...

Biden's lifting the sanctions on Iran will not lift the Iranian people out of poverty. It's corruption, not sanctions, that keeps them down. Even if all international sanctions and any other economic barriers are lifted and Iran can export the 2.3 million barrels per day outlined in its 2021 budget, it will still have economic challenges. That’s because the mullahs have let all production other than oil waste away. Iran’s economic problems are internal and structural, resulting from institutionalized corruption and bribery that have destroyed the country from within. Iranian officials blame international sanctions for Iran’s economic problems and the...

Health Secretary Rachel Levine said Tuesday that she had removed her 95-year-old mother from a personal care home amid a statewide coronavirus outbreak that has been particularly devastating to facilities that house elderly populations. “My mother requested and my sister and I as her children comply to move her to another location,” Levine said at a press conference, responding to a question from ABC27. “During the COVID-19 outbreak. My mother is 95 years old. She is very intelligent and more than competent to make her own decisions.” Department of Health spokeswoman April Hutcheson declined to name the facility but said...

Earlier this month, Putin said the constitution is “not some fossilized legal construct but a living, developing organism.” The speaker of Russia’s parliament raised the possibility of changing the constitution as speculation grows that the Kremlin is considering ways to allow President Vladimir Putin to remain in power beyond the end of his current term, when current law requires him to step down. “This is about the transfer of power,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin aide. “Putin encourages this game, dropping ambiguous hints. The comments from Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma and a top...

Pope Francis was elected with a mandate to undertake institutional reform of the Vatican. But as curial reform has proved difficult, Francis seems to have made it a lower priority. Meanwhile, the corruption and inefficiency of the Curia have not prevented him from pursuing his higher priorities. Increasingly, when he has his own ends in view, Francis simply goes around the Curia—for good and ill. In four years as pope, Francis has instituted a deeply personal (some might say autocratic) regime that is without precedent in living memory. While the popes have always been absolute monarchs—at least theoretically—during the last...

The difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama amounts only to whatever difference may exist between each emperor’s set of cronies.The Obama years have brought America to the brink of transformation from constitutional republic into an empire ruled by secret deals promulgated by edicts. Civics classes used to teach: “Congress makes the laws, the president carries them out, judges decide controversies, and we citizens may be penalized only by a jury of our peers.” Nobody believes that anymore, because no part of it has been true for a long time. Barack Obama stopped pretending that it is. During the twentieth...

BOCA RATON, Fla. A flood of early ballots from Republican voters, has already exceeded the turnout in the contests in Iowa, NH and Nevada. As of Friday night, nearly 400,000 party Republicans had cast early votes, either in person or by mail......There were 3.8 million Republicans qualified to vote Tuesday. That offers a glimmer of hope to Giuliani's calculated effort to get his supporters to vote early hoping to bank a substantial number of votes before losses in other early states raised questions about his viability and his competitors arrived in the state, driving down his numbers in the polls....

Rudolph W. Giuliani likens himself to a boxer who never takes a punch without swinging back. As mayor, he made the vengeful roundhouse an instrument of government, clipping anyone who crossed him. In August 1997, James Schillaci, a rough-hewn chauffeur from the Bronx, dialed Mayor Giuliani’s radio program on WABC-AM to complain about a red-light sting run by the police near the Bronx Zoo. ...That morning, police officers appeared on Mr. Schillaci’s doorstep. What are you going to do, Mr. Schillaci asked, arrest me? He was joking, but the officers were not. They slapped on handcuffs and took him to...

Rudy Giuliani may have made a great mistake by not campaigning in New Hampshire, Nevada, Iowa and South Carolina. But between Rudy Giuliani (and, for that matter, Mitt Romney) on the one hand and John McCain on the other, there is little question as to who more embodies mainstream conservative and Republican principles. But Giuliani is not merely more of a conservative than John McCain. In fact, if it is Ronald Reagan that Republicans want, Giuliani is extraordinarily close to that venerated man. Ronald Reagan stood for two great beliefs: that big government is a big problem for a free...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is trailing in the race for the Republican presidential nomination even on his home turf of New York state, a new poll showed on Monday. The WNBC/Marist poll ahead of the February 5 primaries in New York showed 34 percent of registered Republicans support John McCain, compared to 23 percent for Giuliani. Among Republicans likely to vote, McCain kept his 34 percent support, while Giuliani was tied in second place with Mitt Romney at 19 percent. McCain's campaign has been boosted by wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina...

About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are foregoing their January paychecks, aides said Friday, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate. "We have enough money, but we could always use more money,'' contended Mike DuHaime, Giuliani's campaign manager and one of those who now is working for free. "We want to make sure we have enough to win.'' At the end of December, he said the campaign had $11.5 million cash on hand, $7 million of which can be used for the primary. He disputed the notion of a cash-strapped campaign, and said...

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa - Giuliani's support here has plummeted into single digits....according to new surveys released yesterday. A Reuters poll shows the ex-mayor capturing just 8% of the vote - tied for fourth place with Thompson and Ron Paul. An MSNBC poll shows Giuliani tied with Paul for fifth place with a measly 5% of the vote - near the bottom of the pack. "Where has he been? He stopped showing up," said conservative activist Jamie Johnson, who runs a radio station. Giuliani did not air a single TV ad in Iowa, and his 15 trips here were far...

HAMPTON, N.H. — Rudolph W. Giuliani has entered a turbulent period in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, marked by what his aides acknowledge are missteps, sharp shifts in strategy and evidence that reports about his personal life have hurt his national standing. A $3 million investment in radio and television advertising in New Hampshire, a belated effort to become competitive in this state, is now viewed by the campaign as a largely wasted expenditure. A Boston Globe poll published Sunday found that support for Mr. Giuliani had dropped in New Hampshire over the past month, even before any...

Here's why I support Giuliani, and it has nothing to do with his response to September 11: Rudy Giuliani eliminated street crime in New York City. The conventional wisdom said it couldn't be done, and the reasons are suspiciously similar to what the same bloviators say about the war against Islamofascism today: 1. There actually isn't a problem; if you think it's a problem, you're a racist. 2. Okay, there is a problem, but it's because of white racism; to try to eradicate the problem using barbaric force without solving the root causes is useless. 3. Okay, force can in...

--SNIP--Giuliani is finally suffering from the natural gravitational pull of his messy personal life (as mayor, he financed a security detail for his mistress) and his ideological heterodoxy (especially on social issues).......it has dragged him down to a level where it is no longer an invisible force. His supporters thought that he'd bump up in the NH polls once he started advertising. But since Nov 10 he's spent more than Romney and McCain, and Giuliani's numbers have, if anything, declined slightly. Pundits speculated that the WOT was the new social issue, more important to Republicans than abortion or gay marriage.........over...

A few years back, a man named Russell Harding held a City Hall patronage job that came with a government credit card, which he used to steal more than $250,000. Crooks happen. What kept Mr. Harding in thievery for three years was that the city government, led by his patron, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, slammed the door on the one person who sought the Harding credit card records, a reporter with The Village Voice who filed freedom of information requests. These requests were stalled until the next mayor took office and released the documents. Before long, Mr. Harding was packed...

Giuliani stammered his way through a defense of tax dollars spent on a security detail for his girlfriend when he was New York's married mayor. "There were threats; they had to be responded to," Giuliani told NBC's "Meet the Press"....."Judith didn't particularly want it, but it was done because they took the view that it was serious and it had to be done this way." Giuliani has been dogged about how much his extramarital affair cost the city.

A group of 9/11 firefighters and victims' family members with eyes on derailing Republican Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is close to a decision on forming an entity that would run issue ads in key early nominating states. "TV made him a hero, and we'll use TV to take him down," New York Fire Chief Jim Riches told ABC News. The final decision about the formation of an outside entity will happen sometime within the next few weeks after the group finalizes its plans at a meeting scheduled for after Thanksgiving. So far, though, under Riches' leadership, the group has sought...

Okay, so I'm not perfect. But I get results. That's the soft-selling pitch of Rudy Giuliani's first presidential TV ad, which will begin airing in New Hampshire Thursday, weeks after some of his Republican rivals hit Granite State airwaves. The 60-second spot dwells on Giuliani's pre-9/11 success in driving down crime and welfare rolls as mayor. But in a veiled nod to 9/11 - as well as, perhaps, his messy personal life - Giuliani argues he has faced countless trials and still gotten results. "I've been tested in a way in which the American people can look to me," Giuliani...