Free Republic

OSLO, Norway - Simmering tension between the U.S. and Russia over European missile defense boiled over Thursday at a meeting of NATO diplomats after President Vladimir Putin threatened to freeze Russia's compliance with an arms control treaty. Hours after Putin and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traded long-distance barbs on the growing divide between the former Cold War foes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added to the fire in a lengthy diatribe against the United States and NATO. Like Putin, Lavrov spoke of suspending participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which regulates deployment of military aircraft, tanks and...

WEIRD BUT TRUE By MARSHA KRANES, Wire Services December 7, 2006 -- An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - but a cell for a cell? A woman in Sterling Heights, Mich., was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation for letting a party guest use a cellphone on her front porch at 4 a.m. Carmen Granata, 23, was cited for violating the city noise ordinance. Her guest, who reportedly stepped outside the house to avoid waking others sleeping inside, apparently wasn't thinking of the neighbors.

BEARS killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors. Several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned. It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death. Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident, including photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear tried unsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on the structure, built of crossing horizontal and vertical poles. Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed...

WASHINGTON – Congress sent President Bush a ban on harsh treatment of foreign terrorism suspects in U.S. custody and directed him to send lawmakers quarterly reports on Iraq as it completed a voluminous bill Wednesday that rebuffed some of his war policies. The Senate approved the measure on a voice vote and Bush was considered certain to sign it. That would be a reversal for a White House that initially threatened to veto any bill limiting how the United States detains, interrogates or prosecutes terror suspects. Bush reluctantly endorsed the ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign detainees...

Dean has said Republicans never made an honest living in their lives and House majority leader Tom DeLay ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence. DeLay has not been accused of any crime. Dean ''doesn't speak for me with that kind of rhetoric, and I don't think he speaks for the majority of Democrats," Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday on ABC's ''This Week." While discussing the hardship of working Americans standing in long lines to vote, Dean said Thursday, ''Republicans, I guess, can do that because a...

I think that it has been well established that "conservatives" or whatever it is they call themselves these days (e.g., storm troopers) in matters concerning politics value little more than the state's power in which they imagine themselves to participate and the supposed glory that war and domestic national securitism brings to them. Now strictly speaking this is a delusion, because their only access to power lies in the accidental agreement of their opinions with those of the managers of the state. This access will evaporate as soon as the state does something that displeases our conservatives. It is always...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (Reuters) - The Democratic presidential hopefuls differed on trade and taxes at their second debate on Thursday, but saved their harshest attacks for President Bush (news - web sites)'s leadership in Iraq (news - web sites) and on the economy. Rather than putting the surging Howard Dean (news - web sites) on the hot seat, the Democrats vying for the right to challenge Bush in 2004 spent the bulk of their time condemning the president's leadership and touting their own proposals. "This president is a miserable failure," said Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt (news, bio, voting record), using a...