Free Republic

The recent article in the magazine Foreign policy ,Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran, both quotes me and attributes things to me that are inaccurate or taken out of context. While trying to correct already published articles in widely-read publications is akin to unringing a bell, I think it important to respond to correct and clarify words and actions attributed to me. While the article is technically truthful, it is nuanced and written to portray a cavalier attitude among the participants in several foreign policy initiative and intelligence operations during the last full year of...

AFP - The United States provided Iraq with intelligence on preparations for an Iranian offensive during the Iran-Iraq war even though it knew Baghdad would respond with chemical weapons, Foreign Policy magazine reported Monday. Citing declassified CIA documents and interviews with former officials, the magazine reviewed the US record as Washington weighs military action against Syria for its alleged use of chemical weapons near Damascus last week. The magazine said the US knew in 1983 that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein would not hesitate to resort to shelling Iranian forces with sarin or mustard gas. "As Iraqi attacks continue and intensify...

We don't want to live in Ted Cruz's America. He doesn't like ours. Maybe a split really is inevitable — and right Yes, I know Michele Bachmann is from Minnesota and Steve King is from Iowa, but all this proves is that in the 150 or so years since the Civil War, the vituperative Confederate agenda of anti-Americanism has managed to spread its irresistible redneck poison into benighted pockets across the country. Kind of like Waffle House. But to deny that the current attack on the federal government isn’t part of the hidebound Confederate agenda is to ignore the people...

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., said that the Democratic budget that she proposed never balances because such a schedule would harm the economy.“Well, in fact, our budget moves us towards balance,” Murray said this morning at the Peterson Foundation, adding that the Simpson-Bowles Commission proposal also didn’t balance. “Our economy is extremely fragile today. If we were to just immediately put [out] an arbitrary date and cut trillions from our budget, we would really impact a lot. We’re actually starting to see a small part of that with the bad policy of sequestration that has been imposed on...

April 29, 2019 House Resolution: Climate Change May Push Women to ‘Sex Work’ By Eliana Johnson A House resolution sponsored by representative Barbara Lee (D, Calif.) and cosponsored by House members including Keith Ellison (D, Minn.) and Carolyn Maloney (D, N.Y.) is pushing Congress to acknowledge the “disparate impact of climate change on women” and adopt “gender-sensitive frameworks” to address environmental change. The resolution argues that climate change may have a particularly dire impact on women. Climate change, it says, exacerbates food scarcity, and “Food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work,...

Washington state's governor signed into law on Monday the final piece of a six-year effort to rewrite state laws using gender-neutral vocabulary, replacing terms such as "fisherman" and "freshman" with "fisher" and "first-year student." Lawmakers have passed a series of bills since 2007 to root out gender bias from Washington statutes, though a 1983 state mandate required that all laws be written in gender-neutral terms unless a specification of gender was intended. "This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman," said Democratic state Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle. The new gender-neutral references, for...

The "end of the world" could come from giant solar storms, a meteor barrelling toward Earth, a black out or a mysterious "Planet X" threatening widespread destruction, according to some of the possible doomsday scenarios that have proliferated for the last year. What these predictions seem to agree on is this predicted doomsday apparently will fall on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012. NASA is working to dispel fears and debunk the myth - pointing hundreds of concerned callers to the clear-cut scientific facts that promise the Earth will not end Friday. "There are so many scenarios out there, we are trying...

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer and environmental activist, told the Huffington Post that the “right-wing” controls the media in the United States and as a result has “divided our country” in a way not seen since the Civil War. … “95 percent of talk radio in our country is right-wing,” he said. “And you need—according to Pew [Research Center] survey—and so you have whole sections of our country that’s what they are hearing from when they wake up in the morning to when they go to bed at night. Twenty-two percent of Americans say their primary news source is...

Bill Maher’s HBO program might be on hiatus, but that doesn’t stop the Obama-supporter from making inflammatory remarks about other Americans. At his blog Friday, Maher wrote that the President should use the current budget crisis to implement a carbon tax as a “personal &#!@ you to the Koch brothers”. …

I told my apolitical daughter I'd interviewed Michele Bachman the day before and asked if she knew who Bachmann is. My daughter thought for a second and said, "Yeah, that crazy lady." With the exception of Sarah Palin, no one has been demonized by the media as much as the congresswoman from Minnesota. The notorious Newsweek cover picture, headlined "The Queen of Rage," epitomized scores of hit pieces by the boys and girls of the MSM. But when open-minded writers actually spoke with her, it was a different story. According to Bachmann, reporters for three major publications -- she wouldn't...

It’s comfortable living in a cocoon — associating only with those who share your views, reading journalism and watching news that only reinforces them, avoiding those on the other side of the cultural divide.Liberals have been doing this for a long time. In 1972, the movie critic Pauline Kael said it was odd that Richard Nixon was winning the election, because everyone she knew was for George McGovern.Kael wasn’t clueless about the rest of America. She was just observing that her own social circle was politically parochial.The rest of us have increasingly sought out comfortable cocoons, too. Journalist Bill...

he revolutionary chaos Occucommies promised for May Day fizzled yesterday, but they did make the most of Earth Day last week by seizing control of a farm and transforming it into a farm. Zombie reports: Before the Occupation, the Gill Tract was an agricultural research farm where twenty-somethings getting their PhDs would work the fields to grow crops, as they researched biology or how to raise better, healthier plants. But now, after this incredible revolution by Occupy, the Gill Tract has been utterly transformed into a farm where twenty-somethings work the fields to grow crops. The only difference is that...

Duluth made history last week when it became the first city in the state to pass a resolution in support of a constitutional amendment that would essentially overturn a U.S. Supreme Court decision, namely Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. The court ruled in 2010 that corporations are entitled to the same constitutional rights as individual U.S. citizens. A majority of justices also concluded that political spending was a form of free speech and that corporations should be able to spend an unlimited sum of money to influence voters, without disclosing financial details of their activities. Although Duluth is...

With wintry weather poised to swoop into the cramped outdoor quarters of Occupy Wall Street protesters, it may not be long before more campers catch what's being called "Zuccotti lung." That's what demonstrators have dubbed the sickness that seems to be spreading among them at an unpleasantly high rate these days: "It's a real thing," Willie Carey, 28, told the New York Times.

​Occupy Denver is the first of the Occupy Wall Street camps across the country to elect a leader: Shelby, a Border Collie mix seen here, who was anointed after a long meeting Sunday night, and has already requested a meeting with Governor John Hickenlooper. Beyond that, Shelby doesn't have much to say, but we're certain she appreciates Colorado's long history of real political animals. Among them: The tiny South Park town of Guffey elected as mayor a black cat, Monster, back in 1998. ​The 35 residents of Guffey also elected a golden retriever to the position. Technically, the office of...

Vancouver, WA - At least a dozen police officers and firefighters worked Sunday afternoon to get a man to come out of the Columbia River at Vancouver Landing. It took a three firefighters in the water and a fire rescue boat to finally get the man out of the river shortly after 3 p.m. The man, who police said was born in 1965, was standing river waist deep in the river with his head down. He was about 15 feet from the shore and 40 feet from the dock near the Red Lion Hotel at the Quay. Starting at about...

House Democrats took to the floor on Wednesday, characterizing a provision for disaster-relief in the GOP's short-term spending measure as “stingy” and a “disgrace.” Democrats oppose the provision for $3.7 billion in disaster relief because Republicans have offset the funds by cutting from a fuel-efficiency program, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program. Democrats say they won't support the bill because the cuts will hurt job creation. In a floor speech, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) deemed the Republican’s FEMA bill “frugal and cheap.” Criticizing the bill for its offsets from the DOE program, Ellison said the bill “is...

At the age of 21, Sergio has an undying love of politics. He has already interned for two state lawmakers and hopes to pursue a career in politics. He plans to commit himself to changing his community, but there is one catch: Sergio is in the country illegally; he can’t even vote. "It is something that I am really passionate about, but because of my position, it gets really frustrating," Sergio said. A student at San Diego State University, Sergio graduated from San Diego High School with a 4.3 GPA and entered SDSU with a full, privately funded scholarship.

"The Constitution, which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all." --George Washington, September 19, 1796 In celebration of the 235th anniversary of the signing of our Declaration of Independence, Time Magazine, the "journal of record" for the Leftist Illiterati (or as they prefer to be known, "the intelligentsia"), published a cover story featuring their errant interpretation of our Constitution. On an image of the shredding of that venerable old document Time posited this question: "Does it still matter?" The short answer is, only if Liberty still...

Barney Frank and Ron Paul unite - over weed Caroline May June 22, 2011 ... Thursday the pair plan together to unveil legislation to legalize marijuana. ... Other co-sponsors include Tennessee Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, Michigan Democratic John Conyers, Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis and California Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee.