Free Republic

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...