Free Republic

RIP old cowboy: Don Imus signed off for good yesterday. Love him or hate him he was pure Americana, a man who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps more than once. He fought and lost many battles with his twin demons vodka and cocaine before finally cleaning up. He was an equal opportunity offender and despite the fact that President Clinton was a regular call-in to his show, he took the opportunity of the 1996 annual White House Correspondence Dinner to make fun of Bubba’s womanizing - before the Monica shoe had ever dropped - and called him “a...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is warning of a looming worldwide political threat. In her new book, "Fascism: A Warning," she argues contemporary world leaders are turning to the same tactics used by fascists like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini nearly a century ago. "We should be awake to the assault on democratic values that has gathered strength in many countries abroad and that is dividing America at home," she writes. Albright pointed to politics in countries like Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, Poland and Venezuela. She also addresses President Trump in her book, writing: "If we think of fascism...

The Two Faces of Feisal RaufWhat's wrong with What's Right With Islam. This is part two of a two-part series. You can read part one here.The problems with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s book What’s Right with Islam begin with the title. As Andrew McCarthy noted on National Review Online, the book, whose full title is now What’s Right with Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West, was previously called What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America; before that, it was published in Malaysia as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of...

Fresno (Los Angles Times) -- Gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown tangled in a blistering dispute Saturday over Whitman's employment of an illegal immigrant housekeeper as they met for the campaign’s first and only Spanish-language debate. The most intense exchange of the debate, held at Cal State Fresno, came when the moderator asked Whitman about the revelations earlier this week that she had employed Nicandra Diaz Santillan for nine years before firing her in 2009. Whitman has denied knowing that Diaz Santillan was undocumented until just before the dismissal. Whitman turned to face Brown and accused Brown of being...

THE THRESHOLD question in any war is: What are we fighting for? Our troops, especially, deserve a convincing answer. In Iraq, the list of missions that were tried on but didn't fit includes: protection from weapons of mass destruction, creating a model democracy in the Arab world, punishing those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks and stopping terrorists from catching the next plane to New York. The latest mission, linked to the "surge" of troops this year, was to give Iraqi leaders the security and maneuvering room needed to make stabilizing political arrangements -- which they have thus far shown...

MIAMI - "A clean sweep" is needed at the White House because President Bush has fostered "a culture of cronyism, corruption and incompetence," Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday. The Democratic presidential candidate told nearly 1,000 women at a fundraiser that she would have much work to do at the White House if she won election in 2008. "After eight years of the Bush administration, we are going to be shocked by what we find," the New York senator and former first lady said. "Somebody said to me the other day if there was ever a time for a woman president...

LITTLE ROCK In an appearance in Little Rock today, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the Bush administration's foreign policy as a "mess." Albright says the White House is ignoring other international problems by focusing solely on the Middle East. About 12-hundred people turned out at the Statehouse Convention Center to hear Albright speak. She served as Secretary of State and as Ambassador to the United Nations under President Bill Clinton. Today's appearance was sponsored by the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and the Clinton Foundation. In her speech, Albright criticized Bush's foreign policy team and...

Make Me a Sandwich, Madeleine Albright By Julia Gorin FrontPageMagazine.com | September 30, 2002 Because the woman belongs behind a deli counter. Not speaking before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and accusing the Bush administration of an "irrational exuberance" for the conflict with Iraq. Or employing psychobabble to accuse the administration of having a "split personality" and "bipolar disorder" on global issues and overseas conflicts, as she did at Tufts University in May. Asked by journalists to comment, the Bush Administration had better things to do than bother with yesterday’s ham on toast. But I don’t. Lest anyone think...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying Monday it had encouraged Iran and North Korea to push ahead with their nuclear programs. Albright, who served under President Clinton, said "the message out of Iraq is the wrong one." "The message out of Iraq is that if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get invaded. If you do have nuclear weapons, you don't get invaded," she said after an investors' conference in Moscow. Albright visited North Korea in October 2000, becoming the highest-level American official ever to travel to the country. The two nations do...

Albright: Iraq invasion encouraged others By ALEX NICHOLSON, Associated Press Writer 14 minutes ago Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying Monday it had encouraged Iran and North Korea to push ahead with their nuclear programs. Albright, who served under President Clinton, said "the message out of Iraq is the wrong one." "The message out of Iraq is that if you don't have nuclear weapons, you get invaded. If you do have nuclear weapons, you don't get invaded," she said after an investors' conference in Moscow. Albright visited North Korea in October 2000, becoming...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright insisted Tuesday that Sudan never offered to round up Osama bin Laden and extradite him to the U.S. - saying President Clinton's claim to the contrary was "a misstatement." Asked about Clinton's 2002 admission that six years earlier he had turned down Sudan's offer to extradite bin Laden because "he had commited no crime against America," Albright told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes": "He was not [offered]. He was not." "If you look at the people who were saying that, there were many people who were lobbying for Sudan," she claimed. But in...

Q: In your new book, "The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs," you admit to having underestimated the role that religion would come to play in foreign affairs. People were unprepared for it. I was unprepared for it. What I grew up with was the "rational actor" model of foreign policy — the idea that you're dealing with someone who is going through a rational process and not a spiritual process. One could argue that it's wholly rational to be spiritual. No. Rational is logical, and not faith-based. A rational actor calculates the cost-benefit ratios...

NEW YORK In an interview in the The New York Times Magazine that will appear this coming Sunday, Madeleine Albright reveals, among other things, that even at 68, she works out three times a week "and I can leg-press up to 400 pounds." This follows a discussion of how she does not expect to re-marry, partly because, as she says, "I'm intimidating, don't you think?"

In an interview posted on the Democratic National Committee's web site, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says she doesn't like the way President Bush "repeatedly" talks about achieving victory in the Iraq war. "I was very troubled recently, particularly by [Bush's] first speech to the Naval Academy," the former top Clinton diplomat complains in a DNC audio webcast. "They clearly had some kind of a new pollster in the White House tell them that the word 'victory' had to be repeated endlessly," Albright griped. "Plus, [there was] the backdrop that said 'victory' and then there was 'victory' on the...

AMBASSADOR ALBRIGHT: Mr. President, I am deeply honored by your decision to nominate me for Secretary of State. During the past four years, under your leadership and that of Vice President Gore, we have had a skilled and successful foreign policy team. I am confident, as I look at my colleagues today, that you have assembled a first-rate team for the next four. To Secretary Christopher, I want to express my gratitude on behalf of all of us who have worked with you for your steady nerves, prudent judgment and great wisdom. I can only hope that my heels can...

"It´s a very simple issue. Bill Clinton lied, but nobody died," Albright said when asked, during a rally for Democratic candidate John Kerry, about her support for Clinton during his impeachment."

Albright to get Duke degree The Herald-Sun Apr 8, 2004 : 7:01 pm ET DURHAM -- Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is among four people who will receive honorary degrees from Duke at the university's May 9 commencement exercise, Duke President Nan Keohane announced. Albright, who became the nation's first female secretary of state in 1997 during President Bill Clinton's administration, also will deliver Duke's commencement address. The event will begin at 10 a.m. in Wallace Wade Stadium and is open to the public.Other honorary degree recipients include South African court justice Richard J. Goldstone, mathematician Phillip A....

The lovely Madeleine Albright ... what got cut at today's Senate 9/11 hearings...

In just 12 weeks the world will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. That somber thought was on my mind as my friend, the distinguished African-American journalist Peter Noel, took me the other night for a tour of Harlem. We passed by Bill Clinton's office, and Peter told me how significant crowds, nearly all African-Americans, await the arrival most mornings of the man dubbed "America's first black president." That description – coined in 1998 by African-American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison – as well as the African-American rapture for Bill Clinton, is nothing short of astonishing. Calling Clinton...

Morton Kondracke just said that Madeline Albright, former US Secretary of State, said to him in a holding room before an interview "I wonder when George Bush will drag Osama bin Laden out of hiding? Just before the election?"Kondracke said he was stunned. He said "You can't be serious!" He said that Albright was not laughing when she said what she said.