Free Republic

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — Sixty-seven years ago this week, U.S. and Allied forces were racing across Germany and uncovering the deepest horrors of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Liberated death camps and extermination centers where millions perished were evidence of a brutal Holocaust perpetrated in the Führer's "Final Solution." On April 28, 1945, Hitler's erstwhile ally, Benito Mussolini, was captured by Italian partisans and summarily executed as he tried to flee to Switzerland. Less than 48 hours later, Hitler, cowering in his bunker beneath Berlin, committed suicide. Eight days after that, Germany surrendered — ending the bloodiest war in European history....

WASHINGTON — My dear friend and fellow Marine Joe Foss — a Medal of Honor recipient — would ask me occasionally, "What were you thinking?" The question usually was prompted by my missed shot on a hunt or when he heard me make a confusing comment on radio or television. Given the recent revelations of bad behavior, incompetence, corruption, waste and fraud — and a deluge of mystifying and misleading explanations — the potentates of the press are asking the wrong questions. The American people need to ask our nation's leaders and the masters of the so-called mainstream media,...

WASHINGTON — Nine years ago this week, our Fox News team accompanied U.S. Marines as they swept into Baghdad and then north up the Tigris River to seize Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. It took less than three weeks to drive the tyrant from power in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it appeared then that the force of American arms could ensure a new era of tranquility in a part of the world where brutality and anti-American despots had ruled for too long. But it was not so. The Dec. 13, 2003, capture of the deposed dictator, dragged filthy and...

WASHINGTON — Passover and Easter — intrinsically linked in the Jewish and Christian traditions — are being celebrated this weekend. For observant Jews, Passover commemorates the Hebrews' liberation from slavery under Egypt's Pharaoh. For faithful Christians, Easter is a celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the grave and the fulfillment of a new covenant between God and man. Biblical passages in Exodus 12, Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20 describe these historical events and the reasons for festivities among people of faith. But this year, these holidays are a time of extraordinary anxiety for Christians and Jews...

WASHINGTON — In the summer of 1987, just before my "television debut," a true friend instructed me in a congressional hearing, "Remember, the microphone is always on — even when it's not!" It's a lesson I never have forgotten. Apparently, Barack Obama doesn't have any friends to give him similar advice, or he doesn't learn well. Either way, an open mic during this week's nuclear security summit in Seoul, South Korea, has revealed our president's extraordinary hubris and his penchant for dangerous diplomatic duplicity. The video clip of an unscripted exchange March 26 between Obama and outgoing Russian President...

WASHINGTON — Nine years ago this week, President George W. Bush ordered more than 250,000 troops in a U.S.-led coalition to cross the "berm" on the border of Kuwait and head into Iraq. Weeks later, Saddam Hussein's brutal regime was finished, and the despot was in hiding. It was a stunning victory for the force of American arms and leadership. Though it took until Dec. 13 to find the former dictator hiding in a "spider hole" near his hometown of Tikrit, Saddam eventually was tried by his own people, convicted, inter alia , of crimes against humanity and executed...

WASHINGTON — Four years ago, when then-Sen. Barack Obama was campaigning for president, he said of Afghanistan: This is "a war that we have to win." He also claimed, "The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared." But after three years of Obama's being commander in chief, it ought to be clear that he never really believed his own campaign rhetoric. Now, in the aftermath of recent setbacks, his words are further evidence of presidential ambivalence and uncertainty. None of this bodes well...

WASHINGTON — One year ago this week, I wrote a column titled "Crude Cruelty," which covered a jump in the cost of motor fuel and a corresponding spike in prices for food and rising unemployment. Government "experts" attributed the bad news to "supply disruptions" and "uncertainty" caused by unrest in Libya. Today Moammar Gadhafi is gone, but the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States is $3.79 — up 27 cents from a year ago. Unsurprisingly, mortgage defaults are up 22 percent, and orders for durable goods — cars, appliances, machinery and aircraft — are...

WASHINGTON — On Feb. 20, a NATO-Afghan security team at the Parwan Detention Center — adjacent to the U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, north of Kabul — began destroying files, books and documents from the detention facility library. The printed material was being burned because it contained handwritten coded messages being passed among Taliban and al-Qaida detainees. Afghan security personnel retrieved charred pages from several copies of the Quran and other Islamic holy texts. The following day, angry crowds rioted outside NATO installations in Kabul and elsewhere around Afghanistan. On Feb. 23, White House spokesman Jay Carney announced that President...

First in a series MOGADISHU, Somalia — There are few success stories here in this tortured country on the eastern coast of Africa. For nearly two decades, this drought-ravaged land and the long-suffering Somali people have been "off the radar" for most Americans. It might still be so if it were not for radical Islamist Somali terrorists — al-Shabab — and their financiers, the seagoing pirates who seize merchant vessels plying the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. All of that is about to change. Last week, as our two-man Fox News unit was en route, Ayman al-Zawahri,...

WASHINGTON — Twenty-three years ago this week, Iran's self-appointed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, broadcast a religious edict declaring that author Salman Rushdie and his publishers were "hereby sentenced to death." The fatwa also called for "all the intrepid Muslims in the world" to "execute them quickly, wherever they find them." The U.S. State Department acknowledged the proclamation and issued a statement "condemning this threat in the strongest possible terms." Rushdie, then living in London, did the sensible thing; he went into hiding and rarely has been seen in public since. Since 1979, when Khomeini returned to Tehran from...

Retired U.S. Marine Corps officer Oliver North told The Daily Caller that he would like to see former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as commander in chief, saying that another four years of President Barack Obama would be “a nightmare.” North told TheDC at the Conservative Political Action Conference that “two years ago, when [Gingrich] suggested he might run, he asked for my support. I pledged I would do it,” he said. (RELATED: More interviews from CPAC) “It’s time for us to hire a commander in chief who doesn’t feel necessary to run around the world apologizing for America,” said North....

WASHINGTON — "We don't need you, so shut up!" That's the message the Obama administration has sent loud and clear to America's Roman Catholics. And it's a message now being sent to U.S. military chaplains — to the detriment of our armed forces. During World War II, the War Department and the Department of the Navy urged — the operative word is "urged," not "ordered," mind you — U.S. military chaplains to encourage soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines that God was on our side in the global battle against fascists, Nazis and the godless heathens running rampant across...

blacklist (n.): a list of persons who are disapproved of or are to be punished or boycotted. The definition above, from an old Webster's dictionary, was common parlance in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee investigated subversive activity, Soviet espionage and pro-communist propaganda. The committee unearthed spies and traitors — Alger Hiss among them. But when the HUAC turned its attention to Hollywood writers, directors and actors, civil libertarians cried foul. The American Civil Liberties Union and others insist those on the "Hollywood blacklist" were unfairly persecuted for exercising their constitutionally protected...

WASHINGTON — It's an unwritten law of modern America that a political campaign speech should last no more than 30 minutes. The lecture candidate Barack Obama delivered on the evening of Jan. 24 in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol came in at just longer than one hour and six minutes. It was full of rhetoric we should expect to hear reiterated from now until Nov. 6. The president's supporters declared his economic message to be "populist." That's liberal-speak for class warfare. In the days since the State of the Union address, politicians and pundits of every stripe...

WASHINGTON — On Dec. 31, just hours before a New Year's Eve celebration, President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. Section 1245 of the law contains language providing authority to impose economic sanctions on Iran in order to deter the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons. White House efforts to have the sanctions provision stripped from the bill failed, and the measure became law with a quiet flourish of the presidential pen. Ever since, Washington and Tehran have been waging a war of words. None of this works to the advantage of the American...

WASHINGTON — Our so-called mainstream media have launched a new anti-military feeding frenzy. The furor is over a crude 39-second video showing four Marines apparently urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban combatants. In hysteric rhetoric akin to "news reports" on the 2004 Abu Ghraib photos, hordes of print and broadcast "correspondents" rushed to describe the viral video, which surfaced Jan. 11, as evidence of an "atrocity" and "desecration" that reflects the "depravity" of our military in general and the U.S. Marines in particular. As usual, the effort to denigrate our armed forces means that the potentates of...

Decorated military veteran and best-selling author Oliver North tells Newsmax that, with the recently announced cuts to the U.S. military, the Obama regime is looking like the “Jimmy Carter administration on steroids.” North also asserts that President Obama’s efforts to deal with the growing Iranian threat have been an “abysmal failure” and warns that Israel will not “sit idly by and wait to be incinerated” by Iranian nuclear weapons. North served in the U.S. Marines for 22 years and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He also served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Ronald...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military had better get ready to do a whole lot more with a whole lot less. That's the bottom line of the so-called "new strategic guidance" issued this week by President Barack Obama during a brief visit to the Pentagon. Flanked by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama proudly proclaimed to allies and adversaries alike that the United States is heading toward a much less expensive, far smaller and ultimately less capable military than we've had since before World War II. Titled "Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities...

GEORGETOWN, S.C. — A year ago, this column questioned whether the 112th Congress — with its new speaker of the House, John Boehner — could "overcome the inane policies of its predecessors" and "mend Washington's free-spending ways." We all know how that turned out. This week, as we prepare to ring out 2011 and welcome 2012, President Barack Obama asked for Congress to authorize yet another increase in our national debt — the third such rise in less than 15 months. Housing prices continue to slide; more than 13 million Americans are unemployed; government spending continues unabated; and America's...