Free Republic

President Obama's highly publicized revival of the left's Cold War mantra of creating a nuclear free world by creating complex arms agreements provided an excellent cover for the testing of a far more practical and immediate strategic policy change. When the White House wanted to launch a policy trial balloon in the past it would drift a few suggestions in the direction of the Washington Post or the New York Times. The Obama administration under the guidance of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, however, has introduced a little misdirection into that old political device. For Obama the new water carrier...

US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much – but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice. ... Mr Obama is most disappointing on trade. He pandered to protectionists during the primaries, and has not rowed back. He may be sincere, which is troubling. Should he win the election, a Democratic Congress will...

The Belgian government stepped in for the second time in 24 hours to rescue a bank as it led a €6.4bn ($9.2bn, £5bn) cash injection for Dexia, the world’s biggest lender to local governments. Axel Miller, chief executive and Pierre Richard, chairman, are to step down once replacements are found at the bank, which is quoted on the Brussels and Paris stock exchanges. The government in Brussels announced early on Tuesday that Belgium and Belgian stakeholders in Dexia, including three regions and three institutional shareholders, would invest €3bn in the bank. The French government would contribute €1bn while French state-controlled...

It was the loudest and most prolonged cheer since Barack Obama appeared on the podium last week in Denver. Very few people had heard of Sarah Palin when Mr Obama delivered his acceptance speech eight days ago. One vice-presidential announcement, several news cycles and countless debates about sexism later, Ms Palin had been catapulted into starring role at a rejuvenated Republican Convention. Given the fluid nature of this presidential race, most analysts say it is much too early to pronounce whether Ms Palin's widely praised acceptance speech was the "game changer" that some Republicans claimed on Wednesday night. But in...

Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, grabbed European headlines on Thursday with the focus either on her ideology or her gender. “The Republicans hope to have found their Obama,” opined Le Monde, the left-of-centre French daily, following the mother of five’s rousing speech to the Republican convention on Wednesday. In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung greeted ”the rage from Wasilla [her home town]” as a woman who presented ”herself as a ”herself as a pugnacious and self-confident politician” The French media provided full coverage of the pregnancy of her teenage daughter (treatment they would be reluctant to apply to their...

Ihad been thinking for some time that more attention should be paid to Rush Limbaugh – not to what he says, because it is pretty much the same old rightwing bombast he has been selling for 25 years, but to what he has been urging his legion of 20m similarly inclined radio listeners to do. This is, wherever state laws allows, that they should register in a Democratic party primary and cast a vote for Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama, the front-runner to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He calls it “operation chaos” and he has been revelling in its...

Sean Hannity, the conservative Republican commentator who takes on such controversial issues as Hillary Clinton's legal work in a communist law firm, could be on his way out of the Fox News Channel as a result of Rupert Murdoch's decision to turn the company over to his liberal son James. James Murdoch, 34, who buys into global warming hysteria, has in recent days been labeled the "News Corporation Heir" and "Son King" because of changes in the company that have dramatically increased his power. The Fox News Channel is one part of Murdoch's News Corporation. While James Murdoch is based...

'Financial Times' Names Most Influential Journalists, With Some Surprises By Mark Fitzgerald Published: May 20, 2006 9:00 PM ET CHICAGO In its weekend edition Saturday, the Financial Times named New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman the nation's "most influential" commentator -- but the nation isn't the United States. In the U.S., the FT declared, Friedman is "runner-up" to the most influential commentator, the Washington Post's syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Friedman is the most influential commentator, the FT said, in India. New Delhi correspondent Jo Johnson said only three Indian English-language commentators can "come close" to claiming genuine national influence. "Strangely,...

On the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, the US capital’s historic protest venues were surprisingly serene on Sunday. Outside the White House tourists had their pictures taken next to a cardboard cut-out of the president, families enjoyed the sun on the Mall and several bored-looking policemen stood guard outside the vice-president’s DC home. Not a placard in sight or a chant to be heard. Americans may have turned decisively against the war in Iraq in recent months, but their change of heart has been largely expressed quietly to pollsters rather than in loud public protests. The micro-protests...

In the race for emissions regulation, journalists are in the lead. CNN and USA Today have already declared the global warming debate over, and they’re not alone. Media coverage leading up to the G-8 Summit, beginning July 6, has been based on the assumptions that human-caused global warming is occurring and it must be curbed. The Group of Eight major economic powers meets annually to discuss global issues and map out plans for the year. The United Kingdom took the rotating presidency of the G8 in January 2005, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has said Africa and climate change are...

<p>WASHINGTON — A senior Defense official placed under investigation by the FBI (news - web sites) on allegations that he tried to steer Iraqi reconstruction contracts toward friends has been removed from office, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials confirmed Friday.</p>

LAST YEAR at this time, the media were in full scandal mode over 16 words that President Bush had spoken nearly six months earlier. "The British government has learned," Bush had said in his State of the Union address in January, "that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." A furor erupted over that statement when a CIA consultant and ex-diplomat named Joseph Wilson, who had gone to Niger in 2002 to look into the matter, publicly claimed that the charge wasn't true. The White House agreed that the line shouldn't have been in Bush's speech, but...

When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions. The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines. The break-in is one of the murkier elements surrounding the claim - made by the US and UK governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war...

WASHINGTON — How fares the multination cover-up of the richest rip-off in world history? Obstruction of justice has never had it so good. Last month, after some badgering in this space and elsewhere, the House International Relations Committee announced it would look into the $5 billion kickback scandal in the United Nations' six-year Iraqi oil-for-food program, the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken. Our State Department, eager for U.N. help in Iraq, wants no revelations of U.N. ineptitude and corruption. It waltzed the committee staff around. Senate Foreign Relations, however, not wanting to be upstaged by its House counterpart, called...

US capitalism is as dynamic as ever. Unfortunately most of that effort has recently been directed towards bilking as many ordinary citizens as is humanly possible.

Hold on to your hats and prepare to be amazed: Milton Friedman has changed his mind. "The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success," concedes the grand old man of conservative economics. "I'm not sure I would as of today push it as hard as I once did." Granted, this is hardly a conversion of Damascene significance. But, heck, it's a start. It also shows that, at the age of 91, Friedman still has his critical faculties intact. The man once described as "the most consequential public intellectual of the post-war era" is still...

On May 29, London’s Financial Times reported some startling news about the U.S. national debt. Instead of being about $3.5 trillion, as commonly understood, it was actually $44 trillion, according to a suppressed Treasury Department report by economists Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale. This was an odd story to put on page one, since it mostly just repeated information that had been in the public record for a while. Smetters revealed the $44 trillion number during congressional testimony on March 6. On May 9, the supposedly suppressed report was the object of a conference at the American Enterprise Institute and...

"EVEN CONSERVATIVE ANDREW SULLIVAN NOW ADMITS..." It's disappointing to see Andrew Sullivan sounding so much like Paul Krugman. Andrew has been worrying for a while about increasing deficits and increasing government spending under a supposedly conservative administration -- and that's fine, I worry about all that too. But that's no excuse for uncritically passing on slanted and inaccurate scare stories in the media that claim the Bush administration is responsible for -- or worse, is trying to conceal -- some cataclysmic new fiscal threat to American civilization. And, disappointingly, that's just what Andrew is doing today. I'll betcha anything that...

"EVEN CONSERVATIVE ANDREW SULLIVAN NOW ADMITS..." It's disappointing to see Andrew Sullivan sounding so much like Paul Krugman. Andrew has been worrying for a while about increasing deficits and increasing government spending under a supposedly conservative administration -- and that's fine, I worry about all that too. But that's no excuse for uncritically passing on slanted and inaccurate scare stories in the media that claim the Bush administration is responsible for -- or worse, is trying to conceal -- some cataclysmic new fiscal threat to American civilization. And, disappointingly, that's just what Andrew is doing today. I'll betcha anything that...

The Daily Star talks of our "brave heroes" - the SAS. The paper claims that members of the elite group of troops are already on the streets of Baghdad. Oh and there is a picture of a girl in a bikini.The Sun shows a British tank poised to attck Baghdad with the Allied army set to do battle with Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard. It uses the headline: "Saddam's Last Stand."The Daily Express is also looking at the main push towards Baghdad. It uses a picture of allied troops ready to go over the top.US and British warplanes, guided by...

The Daily Star claims Iraq executed a number of American prisoners of war in "cold blood". It also advertises its "Oscars Special" with a picture of Carmen Elektra."God Help Them" is the headline on the front of the Daily Express. It refers to the American prisoners of war that Iraq paraded on TV. It also claims a number of prisoners who were killed were shot in the head.The Sun also looks at the plight of the US prisoners of war being held in Iraq. It says they are being "Held At The Mercy Of Savages".The Daily Mirror continues with its...

Dramatic pictures have been coming out of Iraq since the bombing campaign began. The Sun carries perhaps the most dramatic yet - capturing the moment the "shock and awe" campaign began.The anti-war Mirror puts it another way. It describes last night's attack, which was beamed across the world as it happened, as "America's night of shame".The cruise missile blitz is captured in the two detailed pictures by the Daily Mail, which shows smoke pouring out of one large building.The Daily Express opts to carry a picture of Iraqi troops surrendering in southern Iraq, although the paper's picture desk has ignored...

The Sun reports on what it calls the "Battle For Basra". It says 10,000 British troops stormed into action to seize the key city in southern Iraq.The Mirror carries a full-page picture of smoke rising from a missile strike in Baghdad with the headline "Mass Destruction".The Star also leads with a picture of a burning Baghdad and says allies have blitzed Saddam's palaces and troops have warned: "You ain't seen nothing yet".The Express says 10,000 British troops have spearheaded a full-blown invasion of Iraq and says they have come under fire from "the missiles Saddam the liar said he never...

The Sun leads with the words of an army commander who told British troops to "Show Them No Pity... They Have Stains On Their Souls".The Mirror carries a nightime picture of a RAF Harrier over Iraqi oilfields.The Star claims that British SAS troops have already exchanged fire with Iraqi troops in what were the first shots of the "war against evil tyrant Sadddam Hussein".The Mail quotes from speech from a British commander to his troops - it says the impassioned speech brought tough infantrymen to tears and prepared them for the horror and the tragedy of war.The Express reports that...

The Sun is in no doubt that Tony Blair's passionate Commons performance carried the day against the "war wobblers". It says the Prime Minister delivered the speech of his life in a "brilliant, blistering offensive".The Mirror focuses on Cabinet minister Clare Short and claims she is now a political pariah after ditching her pledge to quit over war with Iraq.Under the headline "We're Gonna Get You Saddam", the Star says the most powerful invasion force in history is preparing to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.The Mail hails Tony Blair's "thunderous call to arms" and says his most powerful commons...

Having bought the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times is rumoured to want to acquire the FT. Richard Siklos reports from New YorkWhen the chairman of the New York Times and the publisher of the Wall Street Journal shared the dais on a media panel last week, it was inevitable that the discussion would turn to the Times' burgeoning global ambitions. Karen Elliott House had overseen the launches of the Journal's European and Asian editions, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr. last month began a bold push to internationalise the Times by taking full control of the International Herald Tribune. The...

LONDON'S Financial Times, read by more and more American businessmen, does not have a reputation for remoteness from the facts. But it is in the process of acquiring one. On March 28, the FT published a piece of terrorist propaganda under the guise of news. In an article entitled "US Muslims see their American dreams die," reporter Nancy Dunne attacked the U.S. Customs Service's Operation Green Quest, a four-month-old investigation into the financing of terrorism. Since its launch in November, Green Quest has, according to Dunne, "seized about $10.3m in smuggled US currency and $4.3m in other assets. Its work...