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Barack Obama is to reject all of the options outlined for increasing troop numbers in Afghanistan in favour of revised plans which include a clear exit strategy, it has been claimed. The report came from a senior administration official close to the high-level deliberations Mr Obama is holding with his war cabinet over the refocusing of the Afghan war effort. The President is said to have raised questions at a meeting on Wednesday that could alter both the size of any possible troop increase and the length of time they are in the country before they can hand over to...

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry. This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year's election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but...

Accusations and responses from Liberal Kook to Rational Conservative:. You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.[ Damn straight! - The US Supreme Court said, "No Cherry Picking Vote Recounts from Democrat Counties....It's UnConstitutional ] You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.[ That's Right - Its like NOT having Politicians pretending to be Health Care Providers ] You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.[ Plame was not "covert" -- she was a political HACK that needed to be outed.....her and her...

Alain Ribaut does not speak English, claims to hate American food and has few personal connections with the United States. But he thought Mirande, his sleepy hometown in southwestern France, needed a little something, perhaps even a glimpse of the American dream. So in 1992 he set out to organize the “festival de country music de Mirande,” which has grown into an annual event that now attracts more than 160,000 people, 40 times the population of Mirande.... Harley-Davidson motorcycles fill the parking lots, and speakers blare country music. Some people are transformed, too. Mr. Ribaut described how in this year’s...

The abduction and murder in Paris of a young Jewish man by a gang of Muslim immigrants calling themselves the Barbarians shocked the whole of France in 2006. But now that the accused are on trial - silence. A French judge has ordered the latest issue of the magazine Choc ("shock") removed from the shelves. The cover showed a man with duct tape completely covering his head, except for a small opening around his nostrils. His nose is bloody. His hands are also bound with duct tape. It was a photo of Ilan Halimi, the 23-year-old Parisian Jew who was...

May 13, 2009 | In John Frankenheimer's taut 1964 film, "Seven Days in May," the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appalled at a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, plot a coup d'état to remove the president whom they regard as too soft and naive about the evil of America's enemies. The screenplay by Rod Serling (based on a 1962 novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II) is filled with passionate lines that seem right out of today's talk radio -- "intellectual dilettantes" versus patriotism; America's loss of "greatness"; the superiority of military experience to civilian judgment and governance.

(snip) "To say this complicates the Obama administration's diplomatic outreach is to put it mildly. This administration -- in fairness, not unlike the last few years of the Bush administration -- seems prepared to make an endless series of concessions to Tehran in order to secure a peaceful resolution of the nuclear issue. Yet despite these repeated overtures, the Iranians refuse to budge even an inch and instead make announcements of more centrifuges and new missiles. Now they're launching airstrikes in Iraq."

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said ahead of a meeting at the White House Thursday that Obama and Republicans ... ... on Capitol Hill have gotten off on the wrong foot. "The first 100 days have not been the best days for bipartisanship," Cantor said during an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We've got some very serious issues, and I do think now that we can come together," he said. "We can do better." Cantor added that he wants to tell the president later today that "we want to work with you."

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice. Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets...

Defense Department officials said the American sea captain held by Somali pirates made a desperate escape attempt but was recaptured, escalating a dramatic Indian Ocean standoff.

In the brief "Closing Arguments" segment on Wednesday's "Nightline," ABC's Terry Moran credulously repeated the White House contention that Barack Obama didn't bow to the King of Saudi Arabia last week at the G-20 summit. As video of the incident played, Moran narrated, "He sees King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Goes in for the hello. There's a hand shake. Obama bends at the waist. But was it a bow?" [Audio available here.] He then recited, "The White House called it a lean, pointing out the King's shorter than the President." Inviting people to respond on his Twitter page, Moran wondered,...

WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - [snip] Obama was asked to comment on the situation several times by reporters at a White House event on refinancing for homeowners. Obama, however, stuck closely to the script and replied that he wanted to remain focused on housing.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a major departure from previous policy, the United States will join direct talks between U.N. and European powers and Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, the State Department announced Wednesday. The Obama administration has asked the European Union's international policy chief, Javier Solana, to invite Iran to new talks with the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, State Department spokesman Robert Wood said. Washington, which does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, has stayed out of those talks to date. "If Iran accepts, we hope this will be an occasion to seriously engage Iran...

There is a reason we call Muslim mau-mau-ers the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. They will never give up until you give in. Three years after the Mohammed Cartoon conflagration, the grievance-mongers are still trying to extract contrition out of the Danes and others who stood up for the West and for free speech. Unfortunately, the ROPO bullies squeezed conciliatory remarks from Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry,” but he might as well have tattooed it on his forehead: New NATO chief pledges conciliation with Muslims Former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh...

Chuck Todd at First Read flags up some fascinating comments from Vice-President Biden on his visit to Nato: “5 percent of the Taliban is incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated. Another 25 percent or so are not quite sure, in my view, the intensity of their commitment to the insurgency. And roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money, because of them being -- getting paid.” Biden goes onto say that the “idea of what concessions would be made is well beyond the scope of my being able to answer, except to say that whatever is...

In the March 9, 2009 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 2), "Radical Islam is A Fact of Life. How To Live With it" Fareed Zakaria makes the case for why the West needs to adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward Radical Islam. Plus: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman discuss the country's future in their first foreign media interview since winning in the recent election. Lastly: A review of the latest comic book inspired movie, "Watchmen."

For all of his lavish new spending plans, President Obama is making one major exception: defense.

The troop surge in Iraq has been more successful than anyone could have imagined, Barack Obama conceded Thursday in his first-ever interview on FOX News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” As recently as July, the Democratic presidential candidate declined to rate the surge a success, but said it had helped reduce violence in the country. On Thursday, Obama acknowledged the 2007 increase in U.S. troops has benefited the Iraqi people. “I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,” Obama said while refusing to retract his initial opposition to the surge. “I’ve already said it’s succeeded beyond our wildest...

Guess elephants have some serious short-term memory issues! Everyone knows singer Jackson Browne is a serious liberal, everyone except, apparently, John McCain. Now Browne is fighting mad and has filed suit against McCain and his party, alleging they falsely suggested he was on their side. Browne claims the GOP used his epic hit "Running on Empty" in an ad for McCain without his permission, adding that the ad mocks Barack Obama, which Browne ain't none too happy about. The suit wants the ad to stop running -- STAT -- and is seeking damages. Browne's lawyer Lawrence Iser says this ain't...

July 31, 2008 Where in the World is Obama's Missing Thesis? Ed Lasky Barack Obama wrote his senior thesis at Columbia University on Soviet nuclear disarmament. Inquiring people have sought a copy of this thesis to no avail. Columbia says it cannot be found; Barack Obama says he lost it. How likely is that a person so impressed with himself that he writes an autobiography just a few years later would "lose" his senior thesis? After all, a Presidential Library must be filled. And as Jim Geraghty at National Review and others have noted there are a lot of blank...

Breibart has a story about a bride who lied about her virginity and her husband who wanted the marriage annulled when he found out she was not. The big deal? They were both Muslims and that particular religion sets great store by women's virginity before marriage. In fact, it sets great store by virginity, period. Men who die during jihad are promised 72 virgins in the afterlife. Apparently, in the Muslim afterlife the 72 virgins have their virginity restored so that the supply of virgins never runs dry. The French are now in an uproar and demanding to have the...

Vimy's new enemy: no uniform, no clothes, no respect Exhibitionism Veterans minister deterring public sex at memorial Rob Linke TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL Published Wednesday January 30th, 2008 Appeared on page A1 OTTAWA - More than 90 years after Canadian soldiers seized Vimy Ridge, Veterans Affairs Minister Greg Thompson is still part of a battle - this one to protect Canada's iconic memorial from kinky French couples. Vimy's new enemy are exhibitionists who pose nude or have sex at the First World War memorial, then post pictures of their activities online. Some images have the names of thousands of Canadian war dead, carved...

CHICAGO, (AP) -- French officials are refusing to extradite an American suspected of killing a dermatologist last year because he recently became a French citizen, prosecutors said. Hans Peterson, 29, turned himself in to French authorities Aug. 6 on the Caribbean island of St. Martin after an arrest warrant was issued for him in Chicago. He is accused of fatally stabbing Dr. David Cornbleet in the dermatologist's downtown Chicago office in October. Peterson, a U.S. citizen whose mother is French, obtained French citizenship in May while living on St. Martin, the Chicago Tribune reported. Peterson is being held in French-controlled...

Turf-conscious bloggers in Paris' rundown, mostly Muslim, suburban immigrant housing estates rival in violent messages threatening to beat senseless and even kill any intruder caught in "our ghetto." Almost every word is misspelled, in both argot slang and pidgin French. These are not empty threats. An average of 14 policemen a day are injured in bloody clashes with jobless youths. France's Interior Ministry said 2,500 police officers had been "wounded" this year. The head of the hard-line trade union "Action Police" Michel Thooris wrote to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy to describe conditions in housing developments turned slums as "intifada." Police...

It's an epidemic of caricature and vilification, and the slurs are, for the most part, neither subtle nor gentle. As one French critic noted recently, "Hollywood hasn't engaged in this kind of wholesale nationality-bashing since Pearl Harbor." What's going on? It's a debatable issue, but it doesn't take a sociology degree to see that it mostly stems from two factors: American anger over the lack of French support for the Iraq invasion, and the absence of politically correct movie villains since the end of the Cold War. Since 2003, a wave of anti-French sentiment in America has resulted in boycotts...

Nicolas Sarkozy is campaigning hard to be the next president of France on the jogging trails of Central Park and in the corridors of the White House. On a four-day trip to the United States, the 51-year-old minister of the interior, France’s leading presidential hopeful on the right, pinned the Legion of Honor on the police commissioner of New York, honored firefighters in Midtown Manhattan for their losses on 9/11 and signed hundreds of copies of his new best-selling book on France’s future. He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free...

PARIS -- "We are all Americans," France's Le Monde newspaper proclaimed on Sept. 12, 2001, speaking for millions worldwide in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the United States. Five years later, the respected daily carried a very different message Monday: Its lead editorial was titled "Bush's Mistakes." The paper's assessment five years ago reflected a collective shock and sympathy felt in France and many nations that has given way to a much more complex view of the United States since then, particularly after the war in Iraq. In its issue Monday, Le Monde called the war in Afghanistan...

House Votes To Ban Horse Slaughter WASHINGTON -- The House voted on Thursday to ban the slaughter of horses for meat, a practice that lawmakers thought they already had ended. Instead of banning it outright, Congress last year yanked the salaries and expenses of federal inspectors. But the Bush administration simply started charging plants for inspections, and the slaughter has continued. The House vote was 263-146 to outlaw the killing of horses for human consumption. Opponents of the practice showed photographs of horses with bloodied and lacerated faces, the result of being crammed into trailers that would carry the animals...

UN force put in doubt as French reveal militia fear From Charles Bremner in Paris PLANS for a 15,000-strong United Nations force in Lebanon were cast into doubt yesterday when France demanded guarantees that Hezbollah forces would first be disarmed and Germany said it would not send combat troops. President Chirac’s office announced that France would add immediately 200 troops to its contingent of 200 serving with the existing UN force in south Lebanon (Unifil), which France commands. The statement, after a telephone conversation between M Chirac and Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, dismayed UN officials, who had hoped...

PARIS - Brigitte Bardot, angered over what she called France's insensitivity to the plight of minks, has threatened to move to Sweden. The French film star, who runs a foundation for animal rights, wrote a letter Wednesday to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson calling his nation one of only a few countries "that takes into consideration animal well-being." Bardot also contacted the French Finance Ministry to criticize France for attacking Sweden's proposal for new European Commission rules on conditions for raising minks in Sweden. "The intervention of my government makes me ashamed, ashamed to be French," she wrote. While Bardot...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Lance Armstrong renewed his verbal attack on the French, bashing their World Cup team during an American awards show and using a derogatory word to describe the players. "All their players (France) tested positive ... for being a** holes," the seven-time Tour de France winner Armstrong was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Daily News on Friday. The American cycling hero Armstrong made his comments in his opening monologue as the host of ESPY Awards, an annual televised event produced by ESPN. The show was taped on Wednesday at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre and is scheduled...

Google has a tool that allows you to track the popularity of certain searches on that site. There have been plenty of stories on who pops up when you type in 'miserable failure,' and plenty of derision heaped on Google for allowing its site to be 'bombed' in this way. I occasionally take a peek to see if conservatives have managed to overcome the bombers yet by linking the term properly more often. However, no one seems to have pointed out that, with this tool, you can track who most often searches for that term, which I think tells you...

PARIS — About 70 percent of French people are dissatisfied with President Jacques Chirac's performance, an all-time low popularity rating, according to poll published Sunday. Only 27 percent of French people are satisfied with Chirac, compared to 70 percent who say they disapprove, said the poll by the Ifop agency published in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper. Chirac's popularity figures tied his record low — also the record for any president in the Fifth Republic that began in 1958, the paper said. Chirac's second term ends next year, and he is unlikely to seek re-election. The poll figures were even...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Independent Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the Austin, Texas, cyclist. More.....

Eric Julien, a former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, has completed a study of the comet 73P Schwassmann- Wachmann and declared that a fragment is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around May 25, 2006. Comet Schwassman-Wachmann follows a five-year orbit that crosses the solar system's ecliptic plane. It has followed its five year orbit intact for centuries; but, in 1995, mysteriously fragmented. According to Julien, this is the same year that a crop circle appeared showing the inner solar system with the Earth missing from its orbit. He argues the "Missing Earth" crop...

PARIS (AFP) - The French navy made a red-faced admission that it had lost a multi-million dollar sonar navigation device after its cable ripped in stormy waters. Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie confirmed a report in the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine, and said an investigation had been launched into how the three-million-euro (3.7-million-dollars) device was mislaid. "An inquiry is underway to determine whether a technical or a human error is at the origin of this problem," she told reporters. Le Canard Enchaine reported that the captain of the De Grasse frigate, decided against his lieutenants' advice to try out the...

Dear Viewer, Thank you for your correspondence regarding the "South Park" episodes entitled "Cartoon Wars." We appreciate your concerns about censorship and the destructive influence of outside groups on the media, entertainment industry and particularly Comedy Central. To reiterate, as satirists, we believe that it is our First Amendment right to poke fun at any and all people, groups, organizations and religions and we will continue to defend that right. Our goal is to make people laugh and perhaps, if we're lucky, even make them think in the process. Comedy Central's belief in the First Amendment has not wavered, despite...

PARIS - President Jacques Chirac on Monday scrapped a controversial part of a youth labor law that triggered massive protests and strikes, bowing to intense pressure from students and unions and dealing a blow to his loyal premier in a bid to end the crisis. Unions celebrated what they called "a great victory," and also were deciding whether to keep up the protests. The top two student union UNEF and FIDL said they would press on with demonstrations Tuesday across France. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who devised the law, had faced down protesters for weeks, insisting that its most...

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Bowing to pressure from students and unions, French President Jacques Chirac on Monday unveiled plans to scrap a controversial youth-labor contract that spawned weeks of strikes and led to a complete political stalemate. The first-job contract, also known as CPE, will be replaced by an initiative focused on youths from troubled backgrounds. "The president of the republic has decided to replace Article 8 of the law on equal opportunities with measures in favor of the professional insertion of young people in difficulty," a statement from Chirac's office said. The move comes as a terrible blow to Prime...

World soccer's governing body has raised concerns with the Israeli government after the IDF targeted the main soccer stadium in the Gaza Strip with artillery fire. The shells, which reportedly left a large crater in the center of the field, were fired early last Friday morning in response to Kassam rocket attacks. Those attacks included one rocket that landed on a soccer field at Kibbutz Karmiya, south of Ashkelon, the day before. The IDF has acknowledged that the stadium was specifically targeted to "send a strong message to the Palestinian people against terrorism." "Knowing the stadium was unpopulated, artillery fire...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi joked about declaring war on France on Friday and pretended to massage President Jacques Chirac, making light of a clash between their two countries over energy mergers. Leaving for the second day of European Union summit, Berlusconi told reporters: "There is no news, unless you journalists want us to declare war on France." Inside the conference room, the Italian leader walked up to the seated Chirac and put his hands on the French president's shoulders in what looked like a neck-rub, prompting a startled laugh. Tension between France and Italy has risen...

Bberg reports car bomb explodes in Paris. One known dead.

LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union may try to draw up a media code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furor caused by the publication across Europe of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, an EU commissioner said on Thursday. In an interview with Britain's Daily Telegraph, EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said the charter would encourage the media to show "prudence" when covering religion. "The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression," he told the newspaper. "We can and we are ready...

In this war freedom should come first not after! In New Hampshire the Motto is Live free or Die! I don't need Bush spying on law abiding americans and taking our freedoms. Anyone who surrenders a square inch of freedom to the government in the name of saftey is a traitor and should be treated like one! Let the Bush Fashists all drop dead! Filthy Commys! LET FREEDOM RING!

After getting kudos from free-speech activists for its courage, the French magazine Soir reversed itself and sacked its managing editor for publishing Danish caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. The owner fired his editor in order to placate the rage of French Muslims: France Soir and Germany's Die Welt were among the leading papers to reprint the cartoons, which first appeared in Denmark last September. The caricatures include drawings of Muhammad wearing a headdress shaped like a bomb, while another shows him saying that paradise was running short of virgins for suicide bombers. France Soir originally said it had published the...

Angus Reid Global Scan) – French president Jacques Chirac begins the year with poor numbers, according to a poll by TNS-Sofres published in Le Figaro. Only 21 per cent of respondents express confidence in Chirac to face the country’s problems, down five points in a month. Chirac won the presidential election in 1995, and was re-elected in a run-off over Jean-Marie Le Pen in May 2002. Following a defeat in last May’s referendum on the European Constitution, Chirac named Dominique de Villepin as the country’s new prime minister. 43 per cent of respondents express confidence in de Villepin, down two...

PARIS, Jan 5 (AFP) - French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy was Thursday to see one of several passengers who were terrorised by a gang of youths on a New Year's Day train on the French Riviera, the newspaper Le Monde reported. The passenger, a 20-year-old woman identified as Charlotte N., was sexually molested and robbed on the train by the youths, according to a police complaint she lodged and an interview she gave to the daily. After being cornered by some of the group, she was robbed of her wallet and cheque-book, and then one of the men groped her...

TEHRAN – Following the designation of a day as "Holocaust Day" by the United Nations, the Mehr News Agency conducted an interview with French professor Robert Faurisson on November 2 about the motivations behind this move. In the interview, the professor says that Zionists will not tolerate any questioning of the "Holocaust" and argues that the more the Western public believes in the "Holocaust" the more Muslims will be killed. Following is the text of the interview: Q: As you know the UN General Assembly on Tuesday (November 1) passed a resolution designating January 27 as an international day of...