Free Republic

Until now, the United States certainly has had a concern over Iranian penetration in South America, and not just in Venezuela. One reason why Donald Trump adopted the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was to curtail its global ambitions against the West, especially in energy-rich areas. Most of the attention from the media fell on the immediate region around Iran, such as the “land bridge” strategy through Syria to the Mediterranean and the encirclement strategy against the Saudis with Hezbollah and the Houthis.However, Iran has long tried a similar diplomatic/economic/political encirclement strategy against the US in South America. They conducted...

Beware the Anti-American. Everything in their mind and their world is reversed. Once you understand that, you understand them I’m trying to figure out why Leftist Democrats are so desperate to return to the days of no economic growth, police being assassinated in their patrol cars by Black Lives Matter, and a President who bows to foreign leaders and abandons our embassies to terrorist attacks? Why they want to again demand bank loan mortgages to people who can’t pay them back and then bail out those banks for causing the housing market to crash? Why they want to force out...

After Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln eked out a primary win over labor-backed Lt. Gov. Bill Halter on Tuesday, an anonymous White House official snarked to Politico, "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise." Oh, snap. Organized labor was not amused. AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale fumed: "Is the lesson they are taking out of tonight that they can go after labor and anonymously trash us and we will put our tail in between our legs and slink home? That ain't happening." Other leading liberals expressed outrage and a commitment to keep...

Pittsburgh Later this month, voters in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District will go to the polls to elect a replacement for John Murtha, who passed away earlier this year. The race promises to have major implications for the November midterms. Pennsylvania’s 12th District stretches for more than 100 miles across the southwestern corner of the state. Like the rest of greater Pittsburgh, the district has been trending Republican in recent decades, but voters here are not really “Reagan Democrats.” Whereas places like Macomb County, Michigan, famously swung to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, southwestern Pennsylvania voted for Jimmy Carter, then...

For all the twists and turns of the conflict in Iraq, it’s comforting to reflect that one thing hasn’t changed: The antiwar “movement” -- that motley aggregation of Hollywood glitterati, bullhorn radicals and leftist Democrats -- remains as irresponsible and unserious as ever. As evidence, consider this weekend’s much-hyped antiwar protest in the nation’s capital. Coming on the heels of last Wednesday’s nonbinding anti-surge resolution, a cynical stunt engineered by the Democrat-dominated Senate Foreign Relations Committee to oppose the 21,500 troop increase in Iraq, the protest was a transparent attempt by a political fringe to capitalize on popular discontent over...