Free Republic

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin came out strongly in favor of continued U.S. foreign aid to Israel in a Sunday interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro on Foxnews. "You know I'm sure that there's some waste and fraud in our foreign aid we need to find efficiencies and not give to any regime that would seek to harm Americans in any sense of the word 'harm,'" Palin said, "I don't support that kind of foreign aid at all. but when it comes to Israel - NO... I stand strong with Israel and unapologetically I say that America should keep this strong...

Two American airmen were shot dead and another left fighting for his life today after a Kosovo Albanian gunman stormed their bus before opening fire at Germany’s busiest airport where he allegedly worked. Officials said the gunman, identified as Arid Uka, 21, shouted out 'Islamic slogans' before opening fire. He gunned down his first victim as the soldier stood in front of the vehicle at Terminal 2 before turning his weapon on the driver as he sat behind the wheel. A fourth man was lightly injured and both he and the gravely wounded man are now being treated at the...

Leadership: For years, Barack Obama called Iraq "a dumb war." But considering how that conflict undeniably scared Libya's Moammar Gadhafi into ending his WMD program, the 2003 invasion has never looked smarter. 'I don't oppose all wars," future President Barack Obama told Chicagoans Against War in Iraq during a 2002 rally. "What I am opposed to is a dumb war ... a rash war ... the cynical attempt by ... armchair, weekend warriors in this (Bush) administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." Obama called the...

Some activists want wealthy Jane Harman to pay for special election voteBy Sean J. Miller - 02/21/11 06:08 PM ET A grass-roots movement fueled by anger over the cost of a special election for Rep. Jane Harman’s (D-Calif.) seat has sprung up in the coastal towns surrounding Los Angeles. Harman announced Feb. 7 that she was stepping down as the representative for California’s 36th district to become head of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, a Washington-based research institution. She’s set to remain in the House until Feb. 28, according to her office. Her departure only two months into...

Let’s Blame Israel by Ari Bussel I am reminded that many thought (and some still do) that the United States went to war in Iraq on Israel’s request and for her sole benefit. President Bush, close with the Saudis, apparently cared so much more about Israel that, notwithstanding any threat to his friends the Saudis, he mobilized the entire US military to protect and defend Israel against an enemy she knew well how to handle. We can use as an example Israel’s 1981 bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. For the past two weeks, our series “Postcards from America –...

Glenn Beck's epic takedown of George Soros left out something interesting. One of Sarah Palin's top aids, Randy Scheunemann, has been on Soros' payroll for years. From Salon: Given Soros' alleged role plotting to destroy the United States, Beck and his Fox viewership might be surprised to learn that one of Sarah Palin's top aides, [Scheunemann], has been on Soros' payroll for years.

Last Friday the WikiLeaks organization again published previously classified Defense Department documents. From their reporting, and from my own scant review of just a few of the documents, they appear to illustrate the inherent -- and forseeeable -- problems with the nation-building strategy we pursued in Iraq and are still pursuing in Afghanistan. The Post goes along with the WikiLeaks claim that the new documents show "…that U.S. soldiers killed at least 700 Iraqi civilians in situations where troops felt threatened." That claim may well be true. But how else can troops act -- in accordance with the rules of...

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in his weekly Saturday night sermon said that non-Jews exist to serve Jews. “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,” he said during a public discussion of what kind of work non-Jews are allowed to perform on Shabbat. "Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat," he said to some laughter. Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party and the former...

The Great Recession has done wonders for the Republican Party. Two years after being tossed out of power at every level, it's about to waltz right back in, kicking aside the corpses of Democrats foolish enough to go along with the designs of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This is good news for most conservatives. It's slightly worse news for a smaller group of conservatives—namely, the ones who spent the end of the '00s explaining why a Republican comeback like this was not really possible. Take, for example, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, whose 2005 Weekly Standard cover story, "The...

WASHINGTON - Sarah Palin, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate, has paid tens of thousands of dollars for foreign policy advice to a U.S. firm that represents three overseas governments, campaign finance documents show. While legal, the adviser’s work as an agent for other countries raises questions about whether Palin is receiving impartial information about foreign relations and could be become a subject of debate if she runs for president or another elected office. Financial reports filed by the former Alaska governor’s fundraising committee known as SarahPAC, show that between December 2009 and the end of May 2010, it...

[Ed. note: In what easily ranks as the high point in my blogging career, and the low point of the entire neoconservative movement, I was somehow invited to attend the 80th Birthday Roast of Norman Podhoretz at the Park Plaza in New York last night where I got to rub elbows with, among others, Charles Krauthammer, William Bennett, Lucianne Goldberg, Paul Gigot, Mark Steyn, Henry Kissinger and the whole Podhoretz family. What follows is my small contribution to the roast, an edited version of which was wonderfully performed in character by the great Orson Bean. Many thanks to Commentary editor John Podhoretz for including me in...

For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.” Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.” Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms....

Last September, the don of neconservatism was put to rest. Irving Kristol's funeral represented, to some, the end of not only the man but also his ideas. The obituary for neoconservatism proved premature, however. A younger generation of neocons, and aligned hawks, wrote President Obama that same month. "We congratulate you on the [wartime] leadership" the letter read. They urged the president to ignore antiwar pressure. It was the most public statement of support–albeit qualified–for what was now Obama's war.

Over the past decade, “neocon” has become an all-purpose term of abuse among critics of the right. Yet few of these critics appear to realize that from the beginning there have been two very different branches of neoconservative thinking. The first aimed to bring sober, dispassionate analysis and a skeptical temper to questions of domestic policy; the second specialized in devising cogent, often highly polemical arguments in favor of a militarily aggressive foreign policy. The first exercised its greatest political influence during the 1990s with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s crime-fighting policies and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. The second peaked...

Jews. Everywhere, there are Jews. They have penetrated the highest ranks of government, control vast swaths of the economy, and bend nations to their demonic will. But not to worry: Chris Matthews is on the case. The host of "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on radical-left MSNBC has become a modern-day Paul Revere. But instead of the British, he gallops each weekday into a few (very few, with first-quarter ratings down 46% compared to last year) homes and warns the nation of the threat of this international circumcision cult that wants to serve up a heaping helping of world domination along...

"…The more terrifying the occasion for defense, the closer will become the organization and the more coercive the influence upon each member of the herd. War sends the current of purpose and activity flowing down to the lowest level of the herd, and to its most remote branches. All the activities of society are linked together as fast as possible to this central purpose of making a military offensive or a military defense, and the State becomes what in peacetimes it has vainly struggled to become—the inexorable arbiter and determinant of men’s business and attitudes and opinions…" -Randolph Bourne Dear...

Last December, when President Obama launched his second escalation of the Afghan war, he did so with the unflinching support of the Republicans, the right, and neoconservativies. But a small group of conservatives, libertarians and assorted contrarians on the right has opposed the war, and yesterday I journeyed to the Cato Institute to find out whether that nucleus of anti-war opposition is significant or not. The answer: maybe, but probably not. The Cato conference was entitled "Escalate or Withdraw? Conservatives and the War in Afghanistan," and it brought together several ultra conservative members of Congress: Tom McClintock (R-CA); Dana Rohrabacher...

Picking Apart Washington’s Scumby Paul Gottfried on January 12, 2010 As everyone and his cousin know, the neocons are my least favorite “Washington insiders” and they divide generally into two categories, the ill-mannered, touchy Jews and their groveling or adulatory Christian assistants. David Frum, the Kagan boys, Norman and John Podhoretz, and Michael Ledeen are the house-owners; while Bill Bennett, Fred Barnes, Michael Novak, Cal Thomas, Linda Chavez, and Rich Lowry all live in the servants’ quarters. Although I’ve suffered more at the hands of the Podhoretz-types than from the machinations of their servants, I’ve always felt a grudging admiration...

Justin Raimondo detects yet another death of neoconservatism and yet another resurgence of non-interventionism on the right. As usual, he takes isolated examples, misinterprets them and then grossly exaggerates their importance. It is great news that many Tea Party protesters support something like a non-interventionist foreign policy. As many of them were originally Ron Paul supporters, just as I was, it makes sense that quite a few of them do support this. It would be even better news if there were any reason to believe that most of the Republican Party and conservative movement shared their foreign policy views. The...

For eight long years under George W. Bush, conservatives endorsed a don’t ask, don’t tell foreign policy–they did not really ask why their country was at war and Republican leaders did not tell, or bother, Americans with any of the gory details. Missions were accomplished, we fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them here and troops were supported by simply supporting the wars they fought, with little to no dissent. But why were we fighting? What was “victory?” How many had to die? What was the cost? Conservatives did not ask-Republican politicians did not tell. But...