Free Republic

A blind Chinese legal activist who was at the center of a diplomatic tussle between Washington and Beijing left the U.S. Embassy Wednesday to receive medical care in Beijing and be reunited with this family. Guangcheng said via his lawyer that he is free and has received "clear assurances" from the Chinese government. A U.S. official said Chen did not ask for asylum and is staying in China after receiving assurances that he will be treated as a normal citizen. The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that Chinese authorities promised that Chen would be relocated to...

Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist slammed for radicalizing Washington Washington is more dysfunctional than it has been in 40 years, and while Democrats have deserved their share of the blame over the years, today "the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party," write Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein in the Washington Post. What makes their column particularly interesting is that Ornstein is not liberal, but a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Together, they call the GOP an "insurgent outlier in American politics" because of the...

EGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Former President Manuel Zelaya has arrived in Honduras, ending a long political crisis caused by his ouster in a military-backed coup almost two years ago. Zelaya's flight from Nicaragua landed on Saturday at Tegucigalpa's airport where he was greet by thousands of supporters who had set up a tent camp nearby. Zelaya's comeback paves the way for Honduras to re-enter the international community, which rejected the June 2009 coup that forced him from office and out of the country.

Welcome to the latest use of taxpayer dollars to shove Obama propaganda down your throat, on your dime. The White House has moved a staffer from the White House New Media Department into a position of "rapid media response," with a goal of squashing, or cleaning up negative stories about President Obama on the internet. The Obama administration has created and staffed a new position tucked inside their communications shop for helping coordinate rapid response to unfavorable stories and fostering and improving relations with the progressive online community. "This week, Jesse Lee will move from the new media department into...

On Sunday I was honored to be a speaker at the rally against building the mosque at ground zero put on by the Coalition to Honor Ground Zero. As the rally concluded, thousands of the participants marched the one block from the rally site to the actual site of Ground Zero. I noticed a man in black shirt with a phone camera aggressively questioning and haranguing a gentleman with the sign, “No Sharia Here.” He was very aggressive, disrespectful and condescending; apparently, he did not like the man’s answers about Shariah and pushed the point: “Why do you feel threatened?...

What's up with that mono-brow lady on Google today? Anyone have any idea who that is?

There's something about former Vice President Dick Cheney that's been struggling to get out like a rare bald eagle chick ready to hatch. After listening to his remarks this weekend about Rush Limbaugh (loves him) and Colin Powell (doesn't), and his jut-jawed "I don't regret anything" moment on CBS, I know what it is: Mr. Cheney is now replacing Richard Nixon in the national political and cultural consciousness as the Gorgeous George of our era, the guy whose very existence makes some people furious and who brings to the surface all those intense and complex emotions about power and the...

Americans have watched in horror as President Bush has trampled on the Bill of Rights and the balance of power. The list of abuses that President-elect Barack Obama must address is long: once again require the government to get warrants to eavesdrop on Americans; undo scores of executive orders and bill-signing statements that have undermined the powers of Congress; strip out the unnecessary invasions of privacy embedded in the Patriot Act; block new F.B.I. investigative guidelines straight out of J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook. Those are not the only disasters Mr. Obama will inherit. He will have to rescue a drowning...

It seems many people are afraid of socialism. But following the outcome of the election, I've found many are ill-informed about what socialism is, so I'd like to clear things up and show people there is nothing to fear. Socialism is a social organization in which the government owns and operates the means of production. Its opposite is capitalism, where private companies and individuals control the economy. Socialism contends that capitalist societies unjustly concentrate wealth and power within a small group; thus, socialism is an attempt to create a more equal society to live in. That's the technical definition. For...