Free Republic

Rep. Justin Amash, an outspoken opponent of U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war, has taken to Twitter to voice his opposition to military intervention. Concurrently, the Michigan Republican warns the American people of misleading claims being made by the Obama administration.Amash noted that he attended a classified briefing in which evidence for the limited attack on Bashar al-Assad’s Baathist dictatorship was presented to legislators who are now debating a war vote. Though Obama administration officials hope to win congressional support, Amash indicated the briefing had the opposite effect on him.Amash also suggested the administration is putting out inconsistent information...

"Let Allah sort it out." That is Sarah Palin's succinct argument against U.S. intervention into Syria. And I have to be honest: I'm impressed with Palin on this one. Not with her horribly callous recommendation, made via Facebook late last week, but because she appears to speak some Arabic. I'm not saying Palin is fluent in the language, but she did use the Arabic word "Allah." She could've simply used the word "God" instead of Allah since it has the identical meaning. (Christian Arabs use the word Allah when speaking of God in Arabic.) I think deep down she wanted...

SUFFERN, N.Y. (CNS) -- Maria Amman is still smiling. Paralyzed for half her life, 13-year-old Maria, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, recently underwent a procedure to regain the ability to breathe on her own, thanks to the kindness and skill of a Jewish surgeon on the staff at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Suffern, N.Y. Dr. Mark Ginsburg, chief of thoracic surgery at Good Samaritan, was assisted by Israeli surgeons at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem in successfully implanting a phrenic nerve pacemaker in Maria. She has been paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe without...

A group of Israeli families whose relatives were killed by Palestinian terrorists protested in front of the Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday in an attempt to block the release of some two dozen terrorists who have “blood on their hands.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed at the urging of the United States earlier this month to release 104 imprisoned terrorists in a bid to woo the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. More than two dozen of these terrorists are scheduled to be released later this week, prompting an Israeli-based group called Bereaved Families for Peace and Justice to...

The front page of the Monday New York Times featured a story on a popular “hobby” among young Palestinian boys: throwing rocks at Israelis. The Times’ Jodi Rudoren refers to the “hobby” as a game and describes it as “an act of defiance and a rite of passage” that can be seen as a caricature “of Palestinian pushback against Israel.” Rudoren touches on the amount of jail time served by a boy caught throwing rocks, even charting the years spent in jail from members of a Palestinian family on which the article focuses. She complains of the treatment of arrested...

Those who get their news from the mainstream media (or the Guardian) could be forgiven for believing that there are nearly 5 million Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War. So often is that figure bandied around that most don’t understand that it only reflects the number of Palestinians qualifying for “refugee” benefits under the bizarre formula of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency by which the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (ad infinitum) of actual refugees continue to inherit this status. This designation is even bestowed upon those Palestinians who are already citizens of other countries. (Using such demographic...

On Friday, July 19, on the House floor, Majority Leader Eric Cantor pulled Representative Justin Amash aside, ushering him into a meeting with whip Kevin McCarthy and three of Amash’s congressional allies. Cantor pressed Amash to withdraw his amendment to stop the National Security Agency from collecting logs of every American’s phone calls and said he would work to provide a vote on the issue in a future bill. But several of Cantor’s top aides, who were also present, gave what Amash thought was a more threatening overture: There’s bound to be a procedural technicality we can use to...

Yesterday, the House failed to pass the Amash amendment, which would have cut off funding for the NSA’s program collecting information about all Americans’ phone calls. There was quite a bit of talk about how bipartisan the vote was on both sides, with Democratic and Republican civil libertarians finding common cause on one side, and Democratic and Republican national security hawks on the other. So here are two maps you can compare: The first is a simple map of the U.S. by Congressional District, with Republican seats in red and Democratic ones in blue. The second map — which is...

The fact that a majority of Republicans voted against and a majority of Democrats voted in favor of the Amash amendment demonstrates that the Establishment draws support from both major parties. Vote on Amash Amendment Reveals Ruse of Two-Party System The New American 25 July 2013 For all those who still believe that Republican=Constitutionalist and Democrat=Liberty-hating liberal, something happened on Capitol Hill that might change your mind. As was reported by The New American, the House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment to the defense appropriations sponsored by Republican Congressman Justin Amash (shown) of Michigan and Democratic Congressman John...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to have flubbed his lines on Thursday, when he referred to areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority as a country, reported AFP. Speaking at the United Nations ahead of talks with UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Kerry praised the "courageous decision" by Israeli and PA leaders to try to resume direct negotiations. He then told reporters, "It's my hope that that will be able to happen as procedures are put in place by both countries in order to empower that.” The final status of the areas controlled by the PA has yet to be...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to continue the collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records in the fight against terrorism. The chamber rejected a measure to end the program's authority. The vote was 217-205 on Wednesday. Republican Rep. Justin Amash had challenged the program as an indiscriminate collection of phone records. His measure, if approved by the full House and Senate and signed by the president, would have ended the program's statutory authority. The White House, national security experts in Congress and the Republican establishment had lobbied hard against Amash's effort. Libertarian-leaning conservatives and...

Members of the House of Representatives will vote this week on Rep. Justin Amash's amendment to defund the National Security Agency. Amash, R-Mich., announced the news on his Facebook page, writing, "I want to thank Speaker Boehner for working diligently toward resolving significant concerns over the amendment process with respect to NSA." Amash's amendment would defund the NSA if the agency collected data and records from individuals who were not under official investigation. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would be required to provide a statement confirming that the data being collected by the NSA is from a person under investigation....

What do you do if you’re a liberal who supports a woman’s Gosnellian right to abortion on demand after 20 weeks performed by a doctor who’s failed to secure admitting privileges at the local hospital? MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry has the obvious answer: Wear tampons on your ears. http://conservatives4palin.com/2013/07/msnbc-host-dons-tampon-earrings-to-demonstrate-solidarity-with-late-term-abortion-fans.html

WASHINGTON, July 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. House Wednesday narrowly defeated Rep. Justin Amash's attempt to severely restrict the National Security Agency's telephone data mining. The Michigan Republican's measure, opposed by the White House and congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, was voted down 205-217, Roll Call reported.

The director of the National Intelligence says an effort in the House to rein in the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance program would dismantle a critical tool in the fight against terrorism. James Clapper issued the statement just hours ahead of a House vote on an amendment by Republican Rep. Justin Amash that would end the statutory authority under the USA PATRIOT Act for the NSA to collect hundreds of millions of phone records. …

Secretary of State John Kerry is currently in Jordan for talks with area leaders and a meeting of the Arab Peace Initiative Follow-Up Committee. After a meeting with Jordanian foreign minister Nasser Judeh, Kerry made some rather sweeping remarks about the role the Palestinian-Israeli conflict plays in not only regional but global stability [emphasis added]: Peace is in the common interest of everybody in this region. And as many ministers said to me today in the meeting that we had – many of them – they said that the core issue of instability in this region and in many other...

Oday Aboushi has been touted as being the first Palestinian-American player in the National Football League (NFL), but his radical behavior since being drafted by the New York Jets less than three months ago could get him sent home early. His latest infraction was made as he gave a speech at a radical Muslim conference sponsored by a group denying Israel’s right to exist and associated with blatantly anti-Semitic and terrorist propaganda. ... Only weeks after the draft, Aboushi tweeted the following: “65th anniversary of the Nakba and palestinians all across the world are still thriving.” For persons unaware of...

'Palestinian' refugees from Syria who are staying in the Ain el-Hilweh 'refugee camp' near Sidon have burned aid that was provided to them by Hezbullah, and told Hezbullah to stay out of Syrian affairs. The refugees at the Palestinian Ain el-Hilweh camp in Sidon called on Hizbullah to withdraw its fighters from Syria and not to interfere in Syrian affairs, NNA said. The military support of Hizbullah has helped Syrian regime forces gain the upper hand in the battle for control of Qusayr, a key town for both the regime and the insurgents, where a fierce army assault began 12...

A video has emerged which seems to show Palestinian terrorists throwing stones and fire bombs at Israeli soldiers while hiding behind journalists

TORONTO — Canadian immigration authorities tried to deport the Toronto VIA Rail terror suspect nine years ago but never did so because, as a stateless Palestinian, he could not be sent to any other country, documents obtained by the National Post show. Raed Jaser was allegedly working illegally under several aliases when he was arrested in August 2004 on an outstanding immigration warrant. Officials wanted to deport him because he had a string of criminal convictions but were forced to set him free after two days. The government’s failure to deport Mr. Jaser allegedly proved costly for Canada: He and...