Free Republic

Terry Waite has met the leadership of Hizbollah, the militant group accused of kidnapping and holding him for five years, in an extraordinary gesture of “reconciliation”.The former hostage spoke for two hours to one of its most senior figures at their stronghold in Beirut, his first encounter with the organisation held responsible for masterminding his kidnapping 25 years ago. Accompanied by The Sunday Telegraph, he travelled to Lebanon to highlight the plight of Christians who have fled the Syrian civil war. Mr Waite offered the reconciliation to Hizbollah to help with the Christians’ plight at a secretly arranged, late night...

Globalization guru Tom Friedman called Lou Dobbs, "a blithering idiot" in a lecture at Yale Law School last week... Friedman, three time Pulitzer Prize winner and author of bestsellers "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" and more recently "The World is Flat" (which sold a million and a half copies, far more than Dobbs' viewership), begins his answer. "One of the problems", he begins, explaining that we need leaders who can explain the complexity, not who will just stir the pot, "is we have politicians that are making us stupid, who are throwing sand in our eyes." But then he...