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WASHINGTON (AP) — One year to go until Election Day and the Republican presidential field is deeply unsettled, leaving President Barack Obama only to guess who his opponent will be. But the race's contours are starting to come into view. It's virtually certain that the campaign will be a close, grinding affair, markedly different from the 2008 race. It will play out amid widespread economic anxiety and heightened public resentment of government and politicians. Americans who were drawn to the drama of Obama's barrier-breaking battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the up-and-down fortunes of John McCain and Sarah Palin, are...

On November 16, 1990, Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, published a letter in the Harvard Law Record, an independent Harvard Law School newspaper, championing affirmative action. Although a paragraph from this letter was excerpted in David Remnick's biography of Obama, The Bridge, I had not seen the letter in its entirety before this week. Not surprisingly, it confirms everything I know about Barack Obama, the writer and thinker. Obama was prompted to write by an earlier letter from a Mr. Jim Chen that criticized Harvard Law Review's affirmative action policies. Specifically, Chen had argued that affirmative...

Police Investigating Rock Attack At Marietta Apartment By Jocelyn Connell, CBS Atlanta Reporter POSTED: 6:59 am EDT September 27, 2010 UPDATED: 5:32 pm EDT September 27, 2010 -- After fighting for his country, a World War II veteran is now fighting for his own life following a brutal attack. Cobb County police said two teens beat 94-year-old Paul Smallwood with a rock in his own home. It happened Friday night at the Crescent Square Apartments on Austell Road. Smallwood's great niece, Sandra Womack, told CBS Atlanta Smallwood has severe head injuries and is in critical condition. "He's a veteran. He...

MEXICO CITY — An anonymous, twentysomething blogger is giving Mexicans what they can't get elsewhere — an inside view of their country's raging drug war. Operating from behind a thick curtain of computer security, Blog del Narco in less than six months has become Mexico's go-to Internet site at a time when mainstream media are feeling pressure and threats to stay away from the story. Many postings, including warnings and a beheading, appear to come directly from drug traffickers. Others depict crime scenes accessible only to military or police. The undifferentiated content suggests that all sides are using the blog...

The Voice of the Martyrs - Persecution.com - A Global Perspective on the Persecution of God's Children India: Pastor Brutally Attacked On March 8, Pastor Ravi Chandran was brutally attacked by Hindu extremists in Mysore, Karnataka State, according to The Voice of the Martyrs contacts.

SEATTLE – Three unarmed security guards stood by and watched last month as a 15-year-old girl was punched, knocked to the ground, kicked in the head and robbed in a downtown Seattle bus tunnel. The guards' actions during the brutal attack — captured on surveillance video — have prompted a review of the policy that unarmed, civilian guards call police and not try to stop fights or crimes. Surveillance video first aired by Seattle's KING-TV this week shows the attack at Westlake Station on Jan. 28. The victim appears several seconds before her attackers and sidles up to the three...

Making forecasts about Iran is a foolish occupation. Few predicted the surge of support for Mir Hossein Mousavi before the June election, or the regime’s egregious rigging of the result, or the vast protests that followed. Even fewer would have predicted that six weeks later it would be the opposition rebounding and the regime in disarray. A Government that claims to be the champion of Islamic values has been hit by its own version of America’s Abu Ghraib scandal. It has been caught perpetrating some of the very horrors for which the Shah was overthrown.

The horrific crime shocked a nation. Three young boys, cub scouts, were tied up, murdered and their naked bodies dumped in a drainage ditch. As a Deep South community bayed for justice, attention focused on a group of misfit teenagers, heavy metal fans accused of killing the children in a Satanic ritual. The case became a sensation at a time when a 'Satanic panic' over cults was gripping 1990s America. All three were found guilty. Jason Baldwin, then 16, and Jessie Misskelley, 17, got life sentences. Damien Echols, 18, was put on death row, where he remains. Now evidence, including...

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan on Sunday slammed Africa's brutal regimes, sit-tight leaders and conflicts in the midst of chronic poverty and disease. "About half of the worlds's armed conflicts and some three quarters of the UN's peacekeepers are in Africa. This is because millions of Africans are still at the mercy of brutal regimes... showing no respect for human rights, or even human life," he said in a speech in South Africa for Nelson Mandela's birthday. Annan said the former South African president showed a "wonderful" example when he quit office in 1999 at...

91-Year-Old's Beating Army Veteran's Beating Caught On Tape POSTED: 8:12 am PDT May 24, 2007 DETROIT -- A 22-year-old man was ordered Wednesday to stand trial on charges that he beat and carjacked a 91-year-old Army veteran. Deonte E. Bradley was arrested May 10, six days after the attack on Leonard Sims. A convenience store surveillance videotape showing Sims being punched in the head was broadcast on news programs and Web sites. He was struck 21 times. Bradley appeared in court Wednesday for his preliminary examination. Bradley's attorney asked the judge to provide protection for Bradley, who said he fears...

If the Democrats think the Islamic Jihadists will respect them more than President Bush then read this! This is an article everyone needs to read. If you think that because you refuse to be politically incorrect and see these inhuman animals for what they are that they will somehow respect you enough not to do to you what they did to these young girls, then think again! It will get worse. Beheaded girls were Ramadan ?trophies? THREE Christian high school girls were beheaded as a Ramadan ?trophy? by Indonesian militants who conceived the idea after a visit to Philippines jihadists,...

Thousands of flag-waving Syrians greeted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Damascus on Wednesday as he began a three-day official visit, challenging what he called American "imperialism." Called the "great guest" by the Syrian news agency SANA, Chavez is receiving the red-carpet treatment. On Wednesday, Syrian President Bashar Assad hosted a reception for Chavez at the People's Palace, where he was honored with a 21-gun salute. As Assad greeted him at the airport late Tuesday, Chavez said that the two countries had the same political vision -- and that the two leaders would sign a document on Wednesday opposing what he...

Geopolitics: Jetting around the world to drum up support, Iran ally Hugo Chavez says he's winning a bid to join the U.N. Security Council. As a showdown with Iran looms, is the world crazy enough to vote him in? If this is Wednesday, it must be Angola on the Chavez world tour. Already the Venezuelan president has visited China, Malaysia and Syria, and last month he blew through seven other countries. As he goes, he splashes out cash and preferential trade deals. He has now spent more than 365 days in his seven-year presidency overseas, but nothing like this. It...

RICHMOND -- A man accused of killing a Richmond musician's family hog-tied each of his four victims, stabbed them with a knife, cut their throats and bashed them in the head with a hammer, a prosecutor said yesterday. In return for all the bloodshed, the prosecutor said, Ricky Jovan Gray and his purported accomplice made off with just three items: a computer, a wedding ring and some cookies. Gray's role in the New Year's Day slayings of musician Bryan Harvey, 49, his wife, Kathryn, 39, and daughters Stella, 9, and Ruby, 4, was not contested by Gray's defense attorney, who...

A reputed Mexican drug lord who tops the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Most Wanted List has been captured in an offshore operation in the Pacific Ocean, federal law enforcement sources said. The DEA lists rewards of $5 million each for the capture of Javier Arellano-Felix and his brother, Eduardo, who allegedly head the cartel that bears their name

Cuban Communism: Fidel Castro's slide toward death's embrace is bringing closer the island-state's day of reckoning: Either it lives free or dies a tyranny. The U.S. must now push for freedom relentlessly. The ailing dictator will probably go out the way he shouldn't — in his bed. But the legacy he leaves just 90 miles from our shores is one of the worst in the world and should be destroyed. Contrary to the media's puerile awe at the 79-year-old Castro's significance — he's often reverently called "the longest-serving" Latin American ruler or "maverick leader" — he is one of the...

JAKARTA, July 30 (UPI) -- The leader of the Indonesian Mujahedeen Council says he wants to convert Indonesia into an "Allahcracy," it was reported Sunday. Abu Bakar Bashir, 68, free after serving two years in jail for his role in a bombing of two nightclubs in Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, tells the Sunday Times of London that Islamist bombings "are reactions by Muslims to defend themselves." "The democratic system is not the Islamic way," he says. "It is forbidden. Democracy is based on people, but the state must be based on God's law. I call it Allahcracy."...

1 hour, 20 minutes ago Contact: Sharon Singh of Amnesty International USA, 202-544-0200 ext. 289 WASHINGTON, June 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, made the following statement in response to the alleged killing and torture of two U.S. soldiers in Ramadi, Iraq: "Amnesty International, first and foremost, extends its sincerest condolences to the families of Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker for their tragic loss. We are deeply disturbed by reports that these two soldiers were brutally tortured. These reports, if proven true, may rise to the level of war crimes. Amnesty International...

NEW CITY, N.Y. -- A laborer who murdered a suburban housewife in her bedroom was sentenced Monday to life in prison without parole after the widower tearfully told the court how the killer ``beat, cut, raped, sodomized and strangled the greatest love of my life.'' ``How any human being could inflict so much pain is beyond my comprehension,'' said Daniel Nagle, husband of victim Mary Nagle and father of their two children. Looking at the killer, Douglas Herrera Castellanos, he said, ``I hope that you wake up every single day and know that you ended your life on the same...

Energy: Sens. John Sununu and John McCain are right to question America's reliance on foreign fuel. If barriers to U.S. drilling and nuclear power weren't so bad, we wouldn't see such oil-fueled menaces. This must change. Right now, it's easier for big oil companies to drill in faraway places such as Nigeria, Russia and Iran than get a permit to drill in the U.S. That's why we don't have many options when an unbalanced dictator such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez taunts his No. 1 customer as a "perverse, murderous, genocidal, immoral empire" and calls on the world's leftists to "bring...

#1: America Takes Off Gloves, Puts on Brass Knuckles Author: Propaganda Department, The United States has often been called, directly or indirectly, the most brutal, repressive, and rapacious empire ever to place its yoke on the shoulders of humanity. But today, in an alarming policy shift that has the world recoiling in horror, the Bush administration, fed up with its critics, announced that the United States will immediately begin to live up to its unflattering, media-driven image. "We're damned if we do and damned if we don't," a stone-faced Vice President Dick Cheney snarled at a morning press conference. "For...

An e-mail is bouncing around the Internet with photographs of alleged Bolivarian gunmen in an area of Caracas that appears to be 23 de Enero. Many appear to be teenagers, they are wearing Bolivarian t-shirts with Che Guevara's face super-imposed on Venezuela's national colors, and they are armed with Glock 9mm semi-automatic handguns. According to Pensamiento Militar Venezolano 2005, a strategic and tactical military defense document drafted under the direction of President Hugo Chávez, the core mission of these armed youths is to turn Caracas into a kill zone where escualidos will be hunted down systematically if the Chávez regime...

An interesting Newsweek story this week – that references CT Blog among its sources – claims scoring a point against what it paints as a “questionable” Bush administration portrayal of Abu Azzam. In short, the authors of the article, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball claim the Administration’s leaders aggrandized the real importance of the killed al Qaida commander basing their conclusion on a number of non-identified U.S. counter-terrorism officials and a report posted by our colleague Evan Kohlman on the blog. The “charge” by Newsweek is about the hierarchy of the man. Was he or was he not the “number...

Demagogues: Jesse Jackson was in top form, flying into Caracas to take a cheap shot at Pat Robertson and sing the praises of Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. But amid the huzzahs, something ugly was happening outside. Seems that Chavez was in top form, too, doing what dictators like his pal Fidel Castro do. Opposition leaders say that while Jackson was visiting over the weekend, Chavez's men sent mobs to ambush about 1,000 peaceful protesters with rocks, bottles and fireworks in downtown Caracas. Venezuelan media reported nine injured, two seriously. An eyewitness said those hit hardest, and often from behind, were vocal...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Syrian President Bashar Assad will always be remembered as the leader who lost Lebanon, one of the strongest cards Syria ever held in its standoff with Israel. What was a policy coup 29 years ago for his father, the late President Hafez Assad - the dispatch of troops to a country that Syria had long coveted - turned into a disaster for the son, alienating the world's most powerful nations and threatening his own political future. On Tuesday, after the last Syrian soldiers left Lebanon, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan dispatched a team to verify the withdrawal....

ASUNCION, Paraguay - Thousands of Paraguayans chanting "Justice! Justice!" crowded a cemetery Friday to say farewell to former President Raul Cubas's daughter, who was found dead this week after being kidnapped five months ago. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Daughter of Former Paraguayan President Found Dead Hundreds more lined streets of the capital, reaching out to touch the hearse carrying the body of Cecilia Cubas. Police on motorcycles led the funeral cortege. Her father, president from August 1998 to March 1999, was driven from power by deadly street riots and turmoil set off by the assassination of his vice president.

Bogotá. The supposed assistance given by Colombian guerrillas to the kidnappers of the daughter of the Paraguayan ex-president is further proof of the international tentacles of the rebels who finance themselves through criminal activities, said Colombia’s Minister of Defense, Jorge Alberto Uribe. "This only confirms the fact that Colombian narcoterrorist groups are not merely Colombians, they have roots and presence in every country", warned Uribe, who was visiting Holland, according to AP. "I was just with the people at Europol – the European police- and I saw four or five cases which involved people from these groups, especially" from the...

A positive outlook of Venezuela's future By Aleksander Boyd London 22.01.05 | Wheels are in motion, cat’s out and shit has hit the fan big time. The stench, emanating from Caracas, can be felt here, in my London W1 cushy pad. A series of seemingly disconnected events have thrust unprecedented levels of criticism upon the Venezuelan ‘president’, which added to the evidence surfaced in each of the instances leave no room for doubt or confusion with respect to the credentials of Hugo Chavez. Allow me to enumerate them: 1) Rodrigo Granda, wanted FARC terrorist, is captured in the streets of...

London 23.01.05 | Yesterday morning I listened to what appears to be a VHF communication, although it has been reported as a telephone conversation, between FARC leaders Juan Santrich and Jorge Tivieras. Radio Caracol of Colombia reports that Tivieras is thought to be the international liaison chief of a guerrilla front with seat in Caracas, Venezuela's capital. Tivieras gives account to Santrich about 41 credentials that he has obtained for an equal number of guerrilla members to assist and participate in the officialy sponsored Bolivarian congress held in Caracas on December 6-9 2004. Furthermore Tivieras states that he is in...

... Zeta's Editor Rafael Poleo says that Chavez’ main problem ... may be that he has so many crises burning simultaneously, that he has no time to worry about ... running the state. Poleo is right and he is wrong. He is right because even if Chavez is really the night owl that he is supposed ... it will be hard for him to juggle all ... he is trying to handle today. He has conflicts about land interventions, company confiscations, the image of hero Danilo Anderson being destroyed, and now the Granda affair. But Poleo is also wrong because...

"The Government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war too." -Churchill The grotesque Granda case would seem to be the cause of our problem with Venezuela in the same way that the war of independence would have been due to the insolence with which the chapeton refused to lend the flower vase to the party to honor Antonio Villavicencio. ... From the Ministry of Interior and Justice we warned that the key to our relationship with Chavez could be found in the Sao Paulo Forum, and in the communist conspiracy that was being...

The Bush administration expects to focus much of its attention in a second term on promoting a political transformation of the Arab Middle East. But it may also have to spend some time on a parallel problem: preventing the unraveling of the democratic change the United States successfully nurtured a generation ago. As Ronald Reagan began his second term 20 years ago, the United States was struggling to foster democracy in Latin America. Amid deep skepticism in Washington, Reagan's team promoted imperfect elections in Central America while trying to train the feckless army of El Salvador to defeat insurgents. Meanwhile,...

The war to the death against big estates decreed by President Chávez in the Poliedro put paid to the illusions held by many who still believed that the government was going to act rationally and within the confines of the law. ... This Commission will have a “constitutional mandate” to incorporate the land it considers “idle, abandoned or underused” into “the productive process of the country,” according to the Decree on the Reorganization of the Ownership and Use of Land Suitable for Agricultural Use. The land so considered will be handed over to groups of the population and organized communities...

By London 09.01.05 | The link between the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and terrorism seem to be a recurring theme. Time and again denounces and cases surface, however the official propaganda apparatus of Venezuela repeatedly play down reports branding the ever useful argument of the international conspiracy against the saviour of the downtrodden, Hugo Chavez that is. However preposterous, in the eyes of Venezuelan officials, these reports may be, a few unquestionable facts point at a rather lenient stance vis-à-vis terrorism at best and at worse at a clear state policy of protecting terrorists. Allow me to point out some...

Venezuelan authorities backed by troops are on Saturday expected to seize a 32,000-acre ranch owned by Lord Vestey, an English aristocrat and meat tycoon. The move, the first in what is likely to be a number of Zimbabwe-style expropriations of big estates, appears to signal a renewed radicalisation in the leftwing government of President Hugo Chávez. Lord Vestey, known as “Spam” to friends because his family's wealth comes from the meat trade, is one of Britain's richest men and a close friend of Prince Charles. With interests that have ranged from overseas cattle ranches to a chain of butchers' shops,...

The government of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez will expropriate its first farm, taking Venezuela straight down Zimbabwe road. The grab was announced this morning and will happen Saturday. The chavistas' first target is a British-owned cattle ranch. The move is a bold beginning for the chavista communists who will roll out both military and police forces for the seizure, beginning the first in a series. The communists' mendacious rationale is that a British company, Vestey Group, did not have proper title to 3000 hectares of its 13,000-hectare cattle ranch. So they are taking it all. But the owners of the...

Minister of Interior and Justice Jesse Chacon: We do not rule out that assassinated Prosecutor was part of an extortion ring. From hero to suspected criminal in less than two months -Minister of Agriculture, Arnoldo Marquez: The British owners of the large estate El Charcote have not been able to demonstrate they own the land. The documents are not guarantee that the land is private property, but that they belong to the Agrarian Institute or the Land Institute. There goes the VP’s promise to the British Government to respect their property. -General Oswaldo Bracho: The Bolivarian Liberation front which backs...

London 03.01.05 | Undoubtedly internet is the true revolution, so much so that a bunch of assassins, otherwise known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), have their own website where they post communiqués and other stuff. During last December's meeting in Caracas of guerrilla fighters, leftist talebans and revolutionaries, Ricardo Granda a.k.a FARC's 'foreign secretary' was arrested by Colombian police forces and whisked to Colombia. FARC leaders weren't amused by the operation and have released a communiqué criticising comrade Hugo for lack of protective measures towards such honourable guests. These guerrilla fighters must truly enjoy to crack bad...

Recovering from Christmas, I look for newspapers to give me new information, but no such luck. Venezuelan newspapers at this time of the year get thinner and original content is minimal, they are basically all empty, except for sports. Most good opinion writers are away on vacation. All of the papers are full of stories about the best in 2004. News in 2004. Month by month in 2004. My Sunday ritual of reading the newspapers is reduced to a few minutes of learning about Chavez returning from his China trip early and some details about the impact of the Cojedes...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

23.11.04 | The Bush Administration and five other governments dropped the ball in the events leading up to Venezuela’s very flawed recall referendum, which allowed the OAS and Carter Center to validate the results. Now, and I cannot emphasize this point enough, Venezuela is in complete disarray. Far from solving the crisis, the OAS (which would probably accomplish more as a museum than as a hemispheric body) and the Carter Center have washed their hands of the crisis, as key events take place which threaten, not only Venezuela, but the hemisphere. Having gained complete and undeniable control of every branch...

Bush learns brutal reality By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 12 June 2003 George Bush has taken only seven days to learn for himself the brutal, unyielding realities of the Middle East. A week ago in the Jordanian resort of Aqaba, a smiling President, flanked by the Israeli and Palestinian Prime Ministers, emerged from a summit to launch his road-map to peace. That road-map now may not quite be in shreds. But after the blows of Israel's attempt to assassinate a leader of the Hamas militant group, and yesterday's devastating suicide bombing in Jerusalem, followed by deadly Israeli retaliatory strikes in...

In her exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton, journalist Barbara Walters once again proved she is a brutal, no-holds barred interviewer who is not afraid to ask the tough questions. She proves it time and time again. Knowing how tough she is, it might be interesting to ponder what she would have asked Adolph Hitler had she had the chance to do the interview. Here are the five tough questions I think Barbara would have asked: 1 - Why the funny moustache? 2 - Do you really think Germans will go for the Volkswagen? 3 - I hear you are a...

Son of Saddam Odai Hussein Brutal to Iraqis, Behind Torture of U.S. Prisoners By Brian Ross Feb. 14 — It was a father's dilemma: What to do with a wayward son? In Saddam Hussein's case, the problem was his son Odai, who has been accused of murders and rapes too numerous to count. For Saddam, the answer was to put Odai in charge of Iraq's Olympic committee. In the 16 years since, Odai Hussein has more than lived up to his reputation for capricious cruelty. One example: 20/20 uncovered evidence linking Odai with the torture and interrogation of some...

Wouldn't it be marvelous if some US Special Forces could clandestinely move into Iraq and whack not only Saddam and his body guards, but the prominent heirs of the emerging Baath Party dynasty, his two brutal, power-driven sons, Uday and Qusay? But, alas, self-preservation is paramount to this heinous clan, which is highly mobile and often utilizes body doubles to fend off assassination attempts. This is a bunch that also hides out in bunkers, and covets and invades neighboring lands, a modus operandi somewhat reminiscent of the tyrant Hitler. Saddam heads up a "rogue regime" that, by definition utilizes terrorists...

<p>It was being played as a possible racial slap -- but it turns out that the three watermelons delivered to new Police Chief Earl Sanders the other day were nothing more than a well-intentioned gift from a Vietnamese court interpreter.</p>