Free Republic

In respect of the candidacy of Hillary Clinton to be president of the World Bank, let us just say that it’s a terrible idea. This is not a quarrel with Mrs. Clinton per se; had we been endorsing in the Democratic primary for president in 2008, we’d have put in a word for her, even if by our lights Barack Obama has a more presidential personality. It happens, though, that we’ve followed the World Bank for decades, and the key feature of the whole World Bank system is the conditionality it imposes on its lending. Its presidency is a pulpit...

If one doubted Sarah Palin wields great power by virtue of her charisma and persona, that notion was laid to rest during her speech at the CPAC convention when she had the overflow audience on their feet numerous times. None of the presidential candidates, least of all front-runner Mitt Romney, got anywhere near that warm of reception. Newt Gingrich, who delivered a classic speech filled with ideas, came closest. But Gingrich has faltered somewhat in his presidential run. Romney still won the CPAC straw poll, likely because he filled the venue with enough of his supporters to pull off a...

War Drums

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are entering negotiations over — or seeking ratification of — five treaties that could radically limit our national sovereignty and the reach of our democratic institutions. Particularly scary is that the treaties, once signed and ratified, have the same status as constitutional law and cannot be altered or eclipsed by Congress or state legislatures. And their provisions must be enforced by U.S. courts. Those who wish to preserve our sovereignty and democratic control over our future must rally to block these treaties, either by pressing Obama and

More taxation for Islamization as we told you about here in 2010. Gadi Adelman writing at Family Security Matters has more disturbing waste of taxpayer money via U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize Overseas Mosques.The story of the U.S. State Department funding mosques overseas was uncovered in July 2010 when reporter Justin Farmer from ABC affiliate WSBTV Channel 2 in Atlanta Georgia did an investigative report. Farmers’ story focused on how the U.S. was spending its tax payer dollars while supposedly trying to cut the budget. The U.S. budget is so bad that we need to cut $487 billion in defense spending, but...

During his testimony about Operation Fast and Furious before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last week, Attorney General Eric Holder said that he still hasn’t discussed the deadly scandal with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano or President Barack Obama. Holder’s admission that he hasn’t taken the initiative to discuss how the government should handle this scandal came during an exchange he had with Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz. “I had an opportunity in the Judiciary Committee to ask you questions on Dec. 8, 2011,” Chaffetz said when questioning Holder on Thursday. “I...

Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee today was, in the main, a re-run of past appearances before Congress. He kept the stone wall firm and tight, while angrily denying he was running a cover-up, and accusing investigators of running “political gotcha games.” Here’s Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) cutting to the chase, and asking Holder how many more U.S. Border Patrol agents would have had to die as part of Operation Fast and Furious before the Attorney General would finally take responsibility: Holder continued his “incompetence defense” of insisting that he really doesn’t know anything that...

The Supreme Court's midwinter break is often used by justices to fly off to sunny vacation spots or European capitals where they address an audience or two on someone else's tab. But this year, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is on a different sort of visit to two North African countries where popular uprisings helped topple longtime leaders. Ginsburg wrapped up a State Department-sponsored visit to Egypt on Wednesday with a public seminar at the Cairo University law school. The 78-year-old Ginsburg told students she was inspired by last year's protests that led to the end of Hosni Mubarak's regime. "This...

Obama the Chicken is Being Plucked by Mark McGrew January 29 through the 31st, 5% of the sheriffs in America are in Las Vegas Nevada, learning how to tell the Federal government agents to pack sand and get out of town. 20% of the 50 United States of America have been presented with lawsuits and or legal filings challenging the eligibility of Barack Obama to be on the ballot for the 2012 election... Read all 3 parts here: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/30-01-2012/120356-obama_the_chicken-0/

The attorney general's claim regarding when he knew about Operation Fast and Furious conflicts with the released communications.The Department of Justice released hundreds of documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious late Friday afternoon, including a series of emails that strongly suggests that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself in congressional testimony. The crucial email exchange began at 2:31 a.m. on December 15, 2010, with a message from an unidentified DOJ source to “OIOC SIT� and “SITROOM�: On December 14, 2010, BORTAC agent working in the Nogales, AZ AOR was shot. The agent was conducting Border Patrol Operations 18...

One future presidential nominee needs someone with a totally different ethnic and social background. The incumbent needs someone who doesn't trip over their tongue and has star power to rekindle his fading one. The future looks bright for a showdown of major proportions this November. The stakes have never been higher and both sides will send their biggest players to the sandbox for the tournament that produces just one winner. Hillary Clinton is tired of traveling the world as this country's Secretary of State (who can blame her) and she's ready to park it for four years. Where better than...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told State Department employees Thursday that she will not stay on in the job if President Obama wins re-election, saying that she is ready to step off "the high wire of American politics," according to the AP. A State Department official confirmed Clinton's comment, writing to Yahoo News: "Yes, she did [say that]. She said she would stay on until Obama nominates another Secretary of State."

House Republicans have called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify as early as next week on the Obama administration’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton formally sent a request to Clinton to come and testify at a hearing as early as next Wednesday, the day after President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. Upton is required to give members of his panel a week’s notice before a hearing occurs. “So as much as I’d like to do it tomorrow, or Friday or...

Recognizing that Iran and its leaders are a grave danger to the world, why would anyone be distressed at the killing of an Iranian scientist who was working to create a nuclear bomb? Iran now has ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe. Long ago, Iran developed the rockets needed to reach Israel, with which it is in a declared state of war. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated many times the he intends to destroy the state of Israel. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, believing his country also is in danger of being nuclear bombed by Iran, according to a Reuters...

Despite the US vice president having the dubious, if undeserved bad rap as the most useless position in US politics, the choice of vice presidential running mate is one of the clearest signposts of what kind of president a candidate, Republican or Democrat, may be. Let’s assume Romney stays on a roll towards the Republican Party nomination after victories in the still-upcoming South Carolina, Florida, Nevada and Maine primaries. It won’t give him an actual majority needed for the nomination, but it will be a powerful message to other Republicans to get behind one candidate before they do enough damage...

Now that the 2008 idea to "make history by voting for the first African-American president" is yesterday's news, what will be done to spice up the current election season? Two more white guys running on the Republican side? Not a chance. But a woman as a running mate for the Democrats? Now, that could do it. And not just any woman, but the woman who was left high and dry the last time around. The woman currently ranked more popular than Oprah. Yes, a "reluctant," hope-we-can-convince-her Hillary Clinton. And, best of all, having Hillary replace Joe Biden on the ticket...

Four years hasn't been long enough to forget. Some supporters of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid, including Texans, remain bitter over how the last primary turned out, and they want their candidate back on the ballot this year, one way or another. Petitions are being circulated to encourage Clinton to resign as secretary of state and run for president; write-in efforts are under way to put her name at the top of the ballot. Some say they wouldn't mind if President Barack Obama did what has long been whispered: swap the jobs of Clinton and Joe Biden, making Clinton the...

During Thursday's radio show, Rush Limbaugh lost it after seeing a picture of Hillary Clinton on TV. We'll just let Rush take it from here (via Daily Rushbo): (NOTE: short audio of Rush, then video of Hillary. Takes a VERY short amount of time)

Group considered close to Obama administration concedes bias against Israel in e-mail. A senior employee of the US think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) appears to have admitted in an e-mail sent from his CAP account that a blogger for the policy organization used anti-Semitic language to attack supporters of the Jewish state. CAP advises the Democratic Party on Middle East policy and is an important source of ideas for the Obama administration.

Mexico allowed US agents to launder drug money Mexico's government allowed a group of undercover U.S. anti-drug agents and their Colombian informant to launder millions in cash for a powerful Mexican drug trafficker and his Colombian cocaine supplier, according to documents made public Monday. The Mexican magazine Emeequis published portions of documents that describe how Drug Enforcement Administration agents, a Colombian trafficker-turned-informant and Mexican federal police officers in 2007 infiltrated the Beltran Leyva drug cartel and a cell of money launderers for Colombia's Valle del Norte cartel in Mexico. The group of officials conducted at least 15 wire transfers to...

Link only, due to copyright issues: http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20120107/OPINION01/301070021/Predicting-Obama-Clinton-squeaks-by-Romney-Ryan?odyssey=nav%7Chead

The pressure is on. Four years ago, I picked Barack Obama to win 353 electoral votes and, twice, I correctly tabbed George W. Bush as a winner, including a 2000 forecast he’d beat Al Gore by four electoral votes. Here is a preview of the road to Nov. 6: January: Texas Rep. Ron Paul edges Mitt Romney in Iowa caucuses, and fast-closing Texas Gov. Rick Perry nips Newt Gingrich for third. Romney rebounds to beat Paul in New Hampshire, but Perry edges former Massachusetts governor in South Carolina, driving Gingrich from the race, and also wins Florida. In his State...

Zetas may be smuggling weapons using State Dept. program - Chaparral, Columbus & southern NM roads The brutally violent Zetas drug organization may be smuggling military-grade weapons through El Paso and Columbus, N.M., to feed its ongoing battles against other cartels and to possibly disrupt the 2012 elections in Mexico. Phil Jordan, a former director of the DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center and a former CIA operative, said the Zetas have shipped large amounts of weapons through the El Paso area. "They are purchasing weapons in the Dallas area and are flying them to El Paso, and then they are...

Finnish police and customs authorities in the port of Kotka have discovered a large cargo of weapons and explosives on board a Danish-owned vessel arriving from Germany and bound for South kroea and China. The Isle of Man-registered, Danish-owned Thor Liberty, which was packing 69 patriot missiles and 160 tonnes of explosives According to reports from Kotka, which is close to the Russian border, officers found 69 Patriot missiles and 160 tonnes of explosives on the Isle of Man-registered, Thor Liberty which is owned by Thorco Shipping, headquartered in Svendborg, Denmark. The Swedish news agency TT reports Thorco’s CEO Thomas...

HILLARY CLINTON for president? It is the clearest sign yet of desperation setting in among the smarter subset of politically-conscious Americans that a 'Draft Hillary' campaign has been launched in hopes of persuading the female half of Bill-and-Hill to make one last shot at the White House next year. Washington's establishment is steaming confidently towards the iceberg with a ship of fools for the Republican nomination merrily aboard, and as of yesterday, even has-been Sarah Palin is again coyly teasing Fox News that she may yet declare a candidacy. On the bridge, meanwhile, President Obama doffs his cap and regardless...

The Finnish authorities have impounded an Isle of Man-flagged ship bound for China with undeclared missiles and explosives, officials say. Police are questioning the crew of the MS Thor Liberty after what were described as 69 Patriot anti-missile missiles were found aboard. Interior Minister Paivi Rasanen said the missiles were marked "fireworks". The MS Thor Liberty had docked in the Finnish port of Kotka after leaving Germany last week. Dock workers became suspicious after finding explosives poorly stored on open pallets, and the missiles were then found in containers marked "fireworks". The managing director of the ship's owner, Thorco Shipping,...

Egypt's foreign minister has criticised foreign "interference" following impassioned comments by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the stripping and beating of a female protester. "Egypt will not accept any interference in its domestic affairs," Mohammed Amr told reporters. He said Cairo was seeking "clarifications over any statements by any foreign official regarding internal Egyptian matters." (Snip) On Tuesday, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces which took power when Mubarak was ousted, apologised to "the great women of Egypt over transgressions that occurred during recent incidents in the protests outside parliament and cabinet."

Essay: Are we witnessing the U.S. empire head into its final decline? Obama is drifting. Republican candidates inspire little confidence. But viewed from Europe, which is more skeptical than ever, it’s worth taking a closer look at a nation with the Peter Pan gift of never growing up. ******** BERLIN -- When it’s not busy with its own problems, Europe looks across the Atlantic and shakes its head. America would appear to be on an unstoppable downward spiral. While neo-conservative dreams of the “unipolar moment” disperse, troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, the ups and the downs of the...

What Obama administration officials, including the president, knew or didn't know about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives' 2009 Operation Fast and Furious has little to do with what they should have known. Attorney General Holder, Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and Secretary Napolitano each declared that he or she did not know about Fast and Furious until 2011. But what should they have known about a federal program that eventually led to mass murder? In a 1999 web article on leadership, writer and attorney Jonathan Wallace examined the question of when to hold those in power accountable. He...

Michele Bachmann may be the only woman officially in the presidential 2012 race, but that may not be the case for long. Speculation is mounting that one former and the current female secretaries of state- Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton- will inject some estrogen into the race, though in different positions. Conservative columnist Joseph Curl wrote today that Mrs Rice could provide a much needed addition to the Republican race, strongly suggesting that she is the silver bullet for the vice presidential slot. This comes amid reports that an anonymous group has arranged robocalls pushing Hillary Clinton as a spoiler...

Hillary Clinton’s promise on this matter has been out there for months, but a virtually unadvertised conference in Washington, D.C. this week has resurrected the Clinton quote from July 2011. Back in July, at a conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Clinton pledged that the US would take action against “religious intolerance” in America. It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on that. Clinton said, in her remarks, “No country, including my own, has a monopoly on truth or a secret formula for ethnic and religious harmony.” But if any country comes close to having such...

Sascha Meinrath's "Internet in a Suitcase" project gets a test-drive in Occupy D.C. and a write-up on Wired.com. The project's goal, funded with the help of an investment from the U.S. State Department, is to develop the hardware and software combination necessary to run a "mesh network" — a network of computers that collectively do the work of routing traffic for one another rather than relying on an Internet service provider to do it for them and is flexible in how it manages traffic flowing to and from the broader Internet. Such a network could keep protesters connected, for example,...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican authorities said Tuesday that an alleged founder of the Zetas drug cartel had an arsenal of 169 guns when he was captured Monday, and may have been linked to the abduction of nine Mexican marines. Navy spokesman Jose Luis Vergara said suspect Raul Lucio Hernandez Lechuga oversaw Zeta operations around the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, where nine marines disappeared earlier this year. Vergara said a suspect was killed and a marine wounded in a firefight that erupted during Hernandez Lechuga's capture Monday in the Veracruz state city of Cordoba. The bust was the result of...

From an apparently impromptu remark on Monday, the United States has elevated the Russian parliamentary election held on December 5 to a core issue of US-Russia ties. The dramatic escalation of rhetoric scatters the continued pretences over the Barack Obama administration's "reset" of relations. In a swift move, Beijing has also stepped forward to express understanding for Moscow. The faultlines will impact on the regional and international situation on a host of issues in the coming period. To recap, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost no time to offer comment on the Russian parliamentary election when speaking on the...

SNIP Six years later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to host OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Washington, DC in mid-December 2011 to discuss how the United States can implement the OIC agenda to criminalize criticism of Islam. Cloaked in the sanctimonious language of “Resolution 16/18,” that was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2011, the WDC three-day experts meeting is billed as a working session to discuss legal mechanisms to combat religious discrimination (but the only religion the Human Rights Council has ever mentioned in any previous resolution is Islam). The UN Human Rights...

Now that Americans and Israelis may have finished arguing about the campaign to bring emigrants back home, they are in full tilt about comments made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. At a "closed" but thoroughly leaked meeting of Israeli and Americans concerned with public affairs, she expressed deep concern over what she termed a wave of anti-democratic legislation, and Israeli treatment of women. She is said to have taken special aim at a Knesset bill meant to limit overseas donations to human rights organizations. She is also shocked by the fact that some Jerusalem buses have separate seating areas...

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News has posted a bombshell article detailing how the Obama administration has greatly increased gun sales to the Mexican military. But further investigation into Attkisson’s discovery points toward the padding of a gun-control statistic — one frequently mentioned by the Obama administration — as the motive behind the increased sales. Writes Attkisson: One weapon — an AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle — tells the story. In 2006, this same kind of rifle — tracked by serial number — is legally sold by a U.S. manufacturer to the Mexican military. Three years later — it’s found in a criminal...

Hillary, our dear friend. A few days ago, you expressed your deep concern about harm to the status of women in Israel, which you said reminds you of the events in Iran. The truth is you surprised us. Really. We did not think that in the midst of a range of international disputes, along with the reversal of the Arab Spring that now turns out to be winter, Iran’s development of nuclear weapons and other real and tangible threats, you would still manage to find time to deal with the status of women. But we certainly agree with you –...

(CNN) -- Islamist parties that appeared to make significant inroads in Egypt's first round of parliamentary elections last week should "embrace democratic norms and rules" by creating a government that respects the full range of human rights, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday. "Transitions require fair and inclusive elections, but they also demand that those who are elected embrace democratic norms and rules," Clinton said in a speech to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, meeting in Lithuania. "We therefore expect all democratic actors and elected officials to uphold universal human rights, including women's rights, to...

The Fast and Furious Scandal gets worse for AG Eric Holder and his Department of Justice. The Watergate adage that it is not the crime, it's the cover-up that matters comes to mind, with the reservation that the crime in F&F -- supplying thousands of sophisticated firearms to a drug cartel -- dwarfs a third rate burglary in gravity. Hundreds of Mexicans have been slaughtered, and two US sworn agents murdered. The fact that the Department of Justice has now acknowledged that it has lied to Congress, covering up its involvement, should make this a headline-grabber of a case, dominating...

Selling weapons to Mexico - where cartel violence is out of control - is controversial because so many guns fall into the wrong hands due to incompetence and corruption. The Mexican military recently reported nearly 9,000 police weapons "missing." Yet the U.S. has approved the sale of more guns to Mexico in recent years than ever before through a program called "direct commercial sales." It's a program that some say is worse than the highly-criticized "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal, where U.S. agents allowed thousands of weapons to pass from the U.S. to Mexican drug cartels. CBS News investigative correspondent...

Here is what the election next year is about: the fence-sitters, the independent voters. At this point, there is not much President Barack Obama can say that will win over conservatives, and given the current GOP field, he doesn't have to worry too much about losing liberals. But what can he say to convince the middle to give him four more years? Well, he could start by, to paraphrase Bonnie Raitt, giving them something to talk about. Vice President Hillary Clinton? --snip-- Would the move be characterized by critics as an obvious ploy to attract women? Well, yeah. And to...

As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred. I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to...

Since the December 2010 shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and its Department of Justice masters have represented the tragedy as a chance encounter between Terry’s patrol unit and armed, illegal alien drug runners in the Arizona desert. But new information makes it clear that Attorney General Eric Holder’s DOJ has labored for the past year to hide the fact that the heavily armed gang which exchanged fire with the bean-bag equipped members of Terry’s border patrol unit that night was in the Peck Canyon, Arizona location thanks to a tip...

A White House spokesman pointed Friday to an account published by the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America in its denial of three online claims that President Barack Obama was briefed about the failed “Operation Fast and Furious” gun-walking program in 2010. According to recently released White House visitor logs, then-Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler was admitted to the White House four times in 2010 between May 7 and May 19. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program was at its peak during May 2010.

The Fast & Furious scandal pot may be reaching the boiling point.  Attorney General Eric Holder has maintained he knew nothing about the “gun walking” operation on the southern border that put thousands of high powered weapons into the hands of the Mexican gun cartel and led to the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and increased the mayhem on both sides of the border.    He would have us believe that the operation was simply a misguided adventure involving a couple of rouge officers behaving badly way out west.  Holder contends that even after Agent Terry’s murder in...

The furor over Operation Fast and Furious has already put a shadow over the political future of prominent Arizona Democrat and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, as POLITICO reported back in August when he resigned the prosecutor's post under pressure. That shadow grew significantly darker and longer on Friday with the release of internal Justice Department documents in which Burke excoriated the "Gun Lobby" (presumably, the National Rifle Association) as well as its "stooges," among whom he counted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Here's one of Burke's e-mails on the subject, included in my story last night on the latest Fast and Furious document dump:...

See the memo itself in the sidebar media player, obtained by Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars and posted exclusively on Gun Rights Examiner. [snip] [Of significance in the Styers memo Lajeunesse references but does not detail...] “The most important observation of Styers is that the ATF end of this operation was by all law enforcement standards set up to fail,” Vanderboegh said in a phone conversation with this reporter moments ago. “Indeed, it seems Styers’ opinion was that this was designed to be a necessary fail. “Styers describes an ATF operation that is deliberately incomplete, seeming to shield the...

Under fire for losing track of weapons that turned up at crime scenes along the Southwest border, the Justice Department has taken the extraordinary step of formally withdrawing an inaccurate letter about the episode that it sent to Congress earlier this year. Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole sent nearly 1,400 pages of emails and other documents to Capitol Hill late Friday afternoon that lay bare the raw and sometimes cringe-worthy process by which the letter was drafted. The materials contain clues into how misleading information about the botched gun trafficking operation made it into a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to...