Free Republic

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

To understand what went so badly wrong at the CIA under Porter Goss, it's worth examining the career of his executive director, the onomatopoetic Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. His rise illustrates the conservative cronyism, leak paranoia and political vendettas that undermined Goss's tenure. -- snip -- The chronic mismanagement of the CIA under Goss and Murray has been an open secret for many months, and the real question is why it took the Bush White House so long to fix it. When I posed this question a few weeks ago to a senior administration official, he repeated the line that the...

SPOKANE, WA--According to a recent survey, every white person in America is secretly rooting for the Gonzaga Bulldogs, a predominantly white NCAA basketball team. In the past few years, the Bulldogs have overcome tremendous odds to become a nationally ranked team. Their surprising success has earned them a devoted following of every white person in America. “There are a lot of closet Gonzaga fans out there,” said Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who has been with the team seven years. “Many of them care very little about NCAA basketball but they still have a soft spot in their heart for the...

by Mark Finkelstein March 20, 2006 On the third anniversary of the Iraq war, the Today show ran a generally predictable segment assessing successes and failures and looking to the future. To be sure, former Clinton administration official Wendy Sherman insisted that the President needs to start "telling the truth." And Gen. Barry McCaffrey thought that not deploying what he considered to be an adequate number of troops was a huge mistake. And yes, former Bush admin spokesman Dan Seymour was more sanguine. But when it came to revealing Today's bias, most telling were the three man-in-the-street interviews. The first...

The Homeland Security Department today took the wraps off its ambitious plan to quickly gain control of the U.S. northern and southern borders by hiring a systems integration contract team to carry out the Secure Border Initiative (SBI). DHS plans to request proposals in March and award a contract by Sept. 30 to deploy new technology as part of a comprehensive overhaul of security between ports of entry along the land borders. SBI.net replaces the America’s Shield Initiative (ASI), the Border Patrol’s more limited and now canceled plan to modernize the sensor networks along the borders. The fiscal 2006 budget...

IT'S OFFICIAL: 2005 WILL BE the newspaper industry's worst year since the last ad industry recession. And things aren't looking much better for next year either, according to a top Wall Street firm's report on newspaper publishing. "Sadly, 2005 is shaping up as the industry's worst year from a revenue growth perspective since the recession impacted 2001-2002 period," says the report from Goldman Sachs, adding a warning that meaningful growth in 2006 is "very unlikely."

Mexican Police Intercept “Illegals” ! Mexico City: Police who stopped a bus at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mexico City heard odd sounds coming from the luggage compartment. Inside the compartment, they found boxes containing : 1 eagle, 2 toucans,41 mockingbirds,3 iguanas ,14 parrots,15 snakes,55 tortoises,and 1 tarantula. Officials are puzzling over what to to with these “undocumented visitors”. Minot,ND – A mechanic has found a way to fight back against high gasoline prices: he has been riding his horse to work. I realize this statement will raise certain questions, which I shall try to answer. 1. For PETA...

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Horses are crucial to the U.S. Border Patrol's enforcement efforts, especially in remote and rugged terrain. But what goes into the animals also comes out. And their droppings if they're eating hay can introduce alfalfa and unfamiliar weeds into the environmentally sensitive desert. That's why the agency is feeding its horses a fortified, commercially prepared pellet so their waste does not disrupt nature's delicate balance. Much of the Arizona border includes sensitive land -- for example, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument; the Cabeza Prieta, Buenos Aires, San Bernardino and Leslie Canyon National Wildlife refuges; the Coronado National...

WASHINGTON — One day after retracting a story that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran (search), a top Newsweek editor acknowledged the magazine made "serious mistakes" but suggested to FOX News that no one would be fired over the incident.

Thirty years ago Saigon fell. I was a company commander in the 2 nd Battalion, 508 th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82 nd Airborne Division. When our Vietnam veterans cursed the war, I remembered one of the greatest speeches I ever heard - the day the Vietnam peace was announced to my Winter Ranger class in ’73. The senior Ranger Sergeant cursed everything about the Vietnam War and everyone involved, friend or foe, in a poetic rant of imaginative, sincere, foul-mouthed hatred. He swore most passionately about the waste of his buddies’ lives. He blamed everyone and everything he knew to...

Venom over Schiavo case imperils GOP solidarity By Dara Kam Special to The Palm Beach Post Saturday, March 19, 2005 TALLAHASSEE — The pressure on lawmakers grappling with the fate of a severely brain-damaged woman caused an eruption inside the state Senate chambers just hours before Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed Friday, showing potential fracture lines in the Senate GOP caucus. "Some of us have been getting threatening phone calls and threatening e-mails, calling us very nasty names," said a weeping Sen. Nancy Argenziano, one of nine Republicans who voted Thursday to kill an amendment that other Republicans hoped...

A prime piece of evidence linking human activity to climate change turns out to be an artifact of poor mathematics. Progress in science is sometimes made by great discoveries. But science also advances when we learn that something we believed to be true isn't. When solving a jigsaw puzzle, the solution can sometimes be stymied by the fact that a wrong piece has been wedged in a key place. In the scientific and political debate over global warming, the latest wrong piece may be the "hockey stick," the famous plot (prominently displayed by the IPCC report, 2001), published by University...

President Bush is facing increasing dissent among leading conservative politicians and pundits in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq. The war has become the long slog that some Republicans feared. Since Sunday, 32 Americans have been killed in fighting across Iraq. American body bags are on the front page of major U.S. newspapers. The Washington Post and The New York Times brandished images of charred U.S. civilian remains last week. The networks are leading their nightly news broadcasts with stories of dead Americans. "If we have two or three more weeks of this you are going to start...

Mary Jo Melone, a columnist for the left-wing St. Petersburg Times, says it's impossible to compare Bill Clinton the rapist to Arnold Schwarzenegger the groper because "Clinton's women wanted him." In a hysterical 627-word tantrum denouncing the male and female voters who "elected a serial groper," Melone rages, "Whatever were they thinking?" As the campaign ended, we heard Schwarzenegger compared to the illustrious and sexually industrious Bill Clinton. You know what followed. If Clinton could be forgiven, why not Schwarzenegger? There was a difference, if not in their conduct than in their choices. Clinton's women wanted him. Will Melone...

Abu Dhabi, Alittihad Daily, 3/26/2003 -- The UAE leading semi-official daily newspaper, Alittihad, reported today that a US government delegation has arrived in Amman, Jordan, yesterday in its way to Baghdad for negotiations with the Iraqi government about an immediate ceasefire A diplomatic source told Alittihad that the US government delegation included four leading members of Congress as well as Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the US Vice President Dick Cheney, representing the US Department of State, where she works as an Assistant to the Deputy of the Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs.

Sun Mar 23, 9:04 AM ET An Iraqi soldier fires his AK-47 rifle into reeds on the banks of the Tigris river in Baghdad, March 23, 2003 after reports that U.S. or British pilots may have ejected over the city. Television reports showed Iraqi soldiers shooting into the Tigris river and in boats, apparently searching the water for pilots. Smoke rose from a fire on the riverbank as hundreds of Baghdad residents looked on. 'Central Command denies any coalition aircraft were shot down over Baghdad,' the spokesman at Central Command forward headquarters outside Qatar told Reuters. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic Sun...

Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that poverty has increased for the first time in nearly a decade. But President Bush has not mentioned it. Indeed, Bush has said little of late about a sagging economy that refuses to pick up steam. In a remarkable course reversal, the president has not spoken much about the nation's financial health since his poorly received economic forum in August.Throughout the summer, the president had sounded a lot like his father, who, waging a doomed re-election campaign, desperately tried to convince Americans he cared about their economic struggles -- "Message: I care." But...

Al Gore. State election officials ultimately declared George W. Bush the winner by a margin of 537 votes, but during and after the election dispute, questions remained about the uncounted ballots of 175,010 voters, ballots that had been rejected by error-prone tabulating machines employed in many Florida counties. Confusion and conflict, much of it generated by partisan intrigue, prevented these ballots from being counted during the election controversy. However, in 2001 every uncounted ballot was carefully examined in a scientific study by the University of Chicago, which concluded that when all the votes were counted, more votes had been cast...

Ramallah May 8th 2002 Wafa; A Palestinian Leadership spokesman stated:The Palestinian Leadership strongly condemns the violent operation in Rishon Letsiyon that targeted civilians; saying that the timing of such an operation only serves the Israeli Prime Minister who is hosted by the USA administration where this operation supports his allegations of the impossibility of making peace with the Palestinians, and staining our nation with terrorism, acquitting him and his Government from the massacres and the atrocities they have committed against our people, especially while our blood is still shed in our camps, villages and cities.The Palestinian Leadership, facing the dangerous...