Free Republic

Ellen Lee Zhou, a San Francisco social worker running for Mayor of San Francisco, paid for a billboard that is raising controversy in the SoMa district. "I think it's interesting. I live in this area so hopefully, it doesn't cause too much controversy," said SoMa resident David Pham. The billboard located on Dore Street shows a cartoon of a woman with her feet up, smoking, and holding a stack of money. A man can be seen carrying a young girl with a quote under it: "Stop slavery and human trafficking in SF" and "Vote Ellen Zhou Nov 5th for Mayor."...

Hillary Clinton today defended her daughter's attacks against her Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan, despite criticism the remark was inaccurate. "You know, I adore my daughter and I know what she was saying," Clinton told "Good Morning America" about Chelsea Clinton. "Because if you look at Senator Sanders' proposals going back nine times in the Congress, that’s exactly what he’s proposed. To take everything we currently know as health care, Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP Program, private insurance, now of the Affordable Care Act, and roll it together." Chelsea Clinton Tuesday joined in on her mother's jabs against...

A federal judge says he'll decide soon on whether the Chicago Transit Authority must let employees distribute campaign leaflets in break rooms that oppose Mayor Rahm Emanuel's re-election bid. U.S. District Judge Robert Dow began hearing testimony Wednesday on a temporary restraining order that would force the transportation agency to allow the materials in advance of the April 7 runoff election. Dow told attorneys he hopes to rule by noon Thursday. The Amalgamated Transit Union filed a lawsuit in Chicago federal court Tuesday accusing the CTA of violating its members' free-speech rights. It claims the CTA allowed the distribution of...

The liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org is demanding that Democratic Kentucky Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes take down an ad that uses the term “illegal aliens.” “This latest TV ad from Alison Lundergan Grimes is deeply upsetting. Grimes seems to be forgetting that we are a nation of immigrants that has continually strived to honor all the hard-working people who aspire to the American Dream,” Ilya Sheyman, MoveOn.org’s executive director, said in a statement. “It’s deeply troubling that Grimes would stoop this low in order to try to defeat [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell, and she needs to take this offensive...

Media Matters employees are furious that their bosses are trying to keep them from unionizing. A union-organizing committee at the liberal group released a statement Monday slamming their employers for “the unexpected and unexplained path our leadership has taken in response to our efforts to unionize,” adding that “the actions of Media Matters executives have placed employees in the impossible position of continuing to produce content espousing pro-labor values for an employer who is challenging our right to unionize.”

It appears that the Huffington Post isn’t just upsetting people for its often uncouth and liberal take on the day’s news. Now people are getting irritated with its willingness to reprint other outlet’s content with offering minimal credit. And so goes the view of former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr., author of “The Rules of the Game” During his remarks at the James Cameron Memorial Lecture at London’s City University on Sept. 22, Downie gave his view of “the new news” and offered a harsh critique of the Huffington Post. He explained operations like HuffPo operate on the cheap....

While everyone is watching events unfold in Libya, Syria and the rest of the Arab world, Iran is watching, too. And the leaders in Tehran may decide that this is the time to rush for the bomb. Moammar Gadhafi gave it up. Bashar al-Assad fell short of getting it. Would they be next? The mullahs probably ask themselves a fair number of "what if" questions. What if Gadhafi had had the bomb? Would NATO have dared to bomb Libya? Would the Europeans even have thought to take Gadhafi on if he had had nuclear-armed missiles aimed at Italy and France?...

Finally, we have evidence that Islamists and even al-Qaeda supporters will play a central role in Libya’s new regime. Up to now there has been reasonable speculation that the U.S. government and NATO might be installing an anti-Western, Islamist government in Libya. Now there’s proof that this is so. The actual government remains in the hands of non-Islamists, technocrats, ex-regime officials, and moderates. But the armed rebels who actually made the revolution have voted and their idol is…an al-Qaeda guy. Political power, said Mao Zedong, grows out of the barrel of a gun and in Libya’s case this seems a...

Libya's interim government said it plans to begin bringing irregular rebel militias under government control, either disbanding them or incorporating them into regular police and military forces, said Ali Tarhouni, the deputy chairman of the rebels' executive board, speaking at a news conference here yesterday. Tarhouni, the highest-ranking rebel official in Tripoli, the capital, so far, announced the formation of a Supreme Security Committee of civilian officials and militia leaders, which would take control of all security matters in Tripoli. He said he had been appointed its chairman.

Moammar Gadhafi bankrolled and championed the vision of a United States of Africa, with himself as the continental president. As Libya struggles to find its equilibrium on the cusp of what appears to be the post-Gadhafi era, one question is its future as part of Africa. The African Union has not officially recognized the rebel leadership in Libya, saying "regime change" and outside intervention were wrong... More than a dozen African countries have unilaterally recognized Libya's rebel leadership, though not some of the continent's heavyweights -- or the African Union. This has prompted a furious response from the transitional administration....

A human rights groups has called on the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) to stop what it says are "the arbitrary arrests and abuse" of African migrant workers and black Libyans assumed to be mercenaries. Human Rights Watch said Sunday the NTC should release those detained as mercenaries "solely due to their dark skin color." The rights organization said the NTC should provide "prompt judicial review" to any detainees for whom there is evidence of criminal activity. Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East and North Africa director, says "it's a dangerous time to be dark-skinned in Tripoli." She said the...

The battle for Libya is far from over as brigades of NTC fighters close in on two major cities and move to control thousands of square kilometres of desert believed to be occupied by pockets of African mercenaries and Qaddafi loyalists, said one of the Libyan rebels top military commanders. Fawzi Bukatif, the head of the Union of Revolutionary Forces on the eastern side, the director of the rebel army control room and top commander with the powerful February 17 brigade, spoke during an interview late on Saturday. "Ours is a big country," he said. "We have information about a...

Behind the high walls of a family compound in Libya's eastern capital, a giant photo of the late revolutionary commander General Abdul Fatah Younis smiles down on the dozens of men from his tribe who visit in a large tent after ending the Ramadan fast on a summer night. Ali Senussi, a leader of the Obeidi tribe that Younis belonged to, sips tea in a plastic chair, looking grandfatherly in his traditional robe and vest. But as he speaks about the murky circumstances of the assassination of one of the tribe's own, he doesn't mince his words. The tribe will...

A cold war is brewing between Nigeria and South Africa over the fate of the embattled Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi. While Nigeria is backing the rebel-controlled Transitional National Council (TNC) in Libya, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa is supporting Gaddafi. But the Federal Government has been trying to manage the situation to avoid it degenerating into a major crisis. There was however concern and panic over the likely release of Henry Okah, who is standing trial as a mastermind of the October 1, 2010 bomb blast in Abuja. Investigation by our correspondent revealed that the administration of President Goodluck...

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi still has a few friends left in Latin America. We know that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's charismatic president, supports him because he can't stop talking about it. With the Libyan rebels firing celebration guns in Tripoli, Chavez came out with a second statement that said he refused to acknowledge any government in Libya but that of his friend. "Without a doubt, we're facing imperal madness," Chavez said in his televised address, according to the Associated Press. And now, Nicaragua has chimed in. President Daniel Ortega has been a longtime ally of Gaddafi. In February, he said he...

President Hugo Chavez has warned that the Venezuelan opposition seeks to create favorable conditions for a foreign intervention as it has occurred in Libya that has been bombed by the western powers with the pretext of supporting insurgent groups. "Some people think that the case of Libya will be repeated here. They are conniving and plotting for an invasion of Venezuela, and we have to be on the alert to prevent that madness from taking place," said Chavez at the Miraflores presidential palace after concluding his third period of chemotherapy. The president said that the attacks of the right wing...

Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba continue to be the staunchest supporters of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega have both declared that they will not abandon Gaddafi in this time of crisis. Chavez has actually stated that he will continue to recognize only his friend Gaddafi as the legitimate leader of Libya, whereas Ortega has already offered him asylum... According to the Venezuelan paper, El Universal, the fall of Gaddafi's mean the defeat of Chavez. "At a time when even the Arab League has expressed its full support to the Libyan Transitional National...

(AGI) Havana -- Together with Hugo Chavez' Venezuela, Cuba is one of the few countries that supports Muammar Gaddafi. Havana announced that Cuba will not recognize the NTC and has decided to withdraw all its diplomatic personnel from Libya. According to a communique' of the Cuban Foreign ministry, that country "does not recognize any NTC authority and will wait for the formation of a legitimate government, without foreign interventions" before restoring diplomatic ties. . .

Chavez said he has received word that the Venezuelan Embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli "was assaulted and totally looted" by hordes of people. He didn't give details or say whether anyone was injured in the incident, which occurred during rebel assaults on government and other buildings. Chavez has been a staunch defender of Muammar Gaddafi throughout the conflict.

President Robert Mugabe's government on Tuesday said the Libyan ambassador to Zimbabwe must leave the country because he has switched his allegiance to the Libyan rebels' National Transitional Council... "Once you renounce the authority that gave you the letter of credence and then proceed to pledge allegiance to another authority ... it means that act deprives you of your diplomatic standing," Mumbengegwi said... Asked about speculation that longtime Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is in Zimbabwe after fleeing as the rebels took over Tripoli, Mumbengegwi said, "I refuse to answer hypothetical questions." On Wednesday of last week, El Magrahi lowered the...