Free Republic

Most won’t say it, so I will: America has thankfully lost another war. Let’s make this the last. This is nothing here to celebrate. This should only be a monumental gut-check moment of serious reflection and a desire to seek redemption for ourselves. We don’t need to spend a single minute right now analyzing how Biden has or has not messed up while bravely handling the end of this mess he was handed — including his incredible private negotiations all this week with the Taliban leaders to ensure that not a single enemy combatant from the occupying force (that would...

RUSH: I feel like I’ve been here before. I feel like I’ve done that. I feel like this is deja vu. I feel like this thing has happened before and we’ve commented on it before and I’ll be darned if I can find anything different to say about it from previous years. I’m kind of hamstrung here. But that’s why I’m here, folks, to give you a perspective that you haven’t heard anywhere else. JOHNNY DONOVAN: And now, from sunny South Florida, it’s Open Line Friday! RUSH: And I have to tell you the easiest thing in the world would...

RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. I want to start getting some of these in. I just want to go back and get it firmly established with me on the record as being one of the early predictors of what was going to happen to Joe Biden. I want to go back to May 1st right here on this program. RUSH ARCHIVE: I’m gonna whisper this to you ’cause I don’t want — you just keep this between you and me, okay? Turn your radios up a little bit so you can hear this, ’cause I don’t want...

Joe Biden is running. The former vice president will make his candidacy official with a video announcement next Wednesday, according to people familiar with the discussions who have been told about them by top aides. Seriously, he’s actually made a decision. It’s taken two years of back-and-forth, it’ll be his third (or, depending on how you count, seventh) try for the White House, and many people thought he wouldn’t do it, but the biggest factor reshaping the 2020 Democratic-primary field is locking into place. He wants this. He really wants this. He’s wanted this since he was first elected to...

As former Vice President Joe Biden’s camp scrambles to contain any political damage over his past behavior with women, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has some words of advice: Keep your distance. “Join the straight-arm club,” Pelosi told a breakfast hour Washington event on Tuesday. In other words, keep your handshakes at arms’ length and don’t be touchy-feely. “Just pretend you have a cold and I have a cold,” Pelosi said. Pelosi, D-Calif., told the event, which was sponsored by Politico, that Biden “has to understand that in the world we are in now people’s space is important to them and...

The former vice president even set Tuesday as a likely announcement date, the paper said. Even Biden’s youngest brother, Frank, told the Palm Beach Post that he expects a run. “Now, he could surprise me,” the brother, a Palm Beach resident, told the paper. “But I know the family’s behind him 100 percent.” In an interview Saturday night with Jeanine Pirro on Fox News, Trump said he wasn’t worried. “A lot of people say Biden is doing OK, but you know, he was always a 1-percenter,” Trump taunted. “He ran two or three times, he never got above 1 percent....

Joe Biden's unique trait as a politician is -- and always has been -- his honesty. Sometimes that honesty gets him into varying degrees of trouble. Sometimes it makes it seem as though he's the closest thing to a real person you could possibly hope for in politics.

It's the Joe Biden you didn’t know — and might not want to see. Secret Service agents dread being assigned to protect the vice president, in part because Biden’s a big fan of skinny dipping, according to a new tell-all book. In “The First Family Detail,” author Ronald Kessler quotes unnamed Secret Service agents dishing about the supposedly “hidden lives” of Presidents and the other important people they protect.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Vice President Joe Biden is heading into the belly of Democrats' anti-war opposition, venturing into a politically influential heartland state for the first time since President Barack Obama publicly endorsed a possible military strike on Syria. Biden is scheduled to headline a fundraiser in Iowa Sunday for Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, an annual steak picnic for the senator who is popular with anti-war Democrats. Even if Biden sidesteps talk of Syria, the issue will be as much a part of the backdrop as the bales of hay and smoke from the grilling steaks, and in a...

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials said Monday that the U.S. is pressing Israel to scrap a contentious east Jerusalem building project whose approval has touched off the most serious diplomatic feud with Washington in years. Competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem were feeding tensions in the holy city, where Arabs and Jews maintain an uneasy coexistence and sometimes clash. Police were out in large numbers in the volatile Old City in expectation of renewed clashes. Top U.S. officials have lined up in recent days to condemn the Israeli plan to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the sector of...

Vice President Joe Biden says the Palestinians deserve a state. He has traveled to the Mideast to press the Israelis to surrender more territory more quickly to what has been termed the Palestinian Authority. The Obama administration is giving $900 million of our money to the Mahmoud Abbas regime on the West Bank of the Jordan River, supposedly for "humanitarian" causes. This administration went out of its way to avoid being seen as "meddling" with Iran, but it shows no such restraint with Israel. Meanwhile, the Palestinians go on naming schools for suicide bombers and coaching their children to emulate...

U.S. is pressing Israel to scrap a contentious east Jerusalem building project... Israeli officials said the U.S. also wants Israel to make a significant confidence-building gesture toward the Palestinians, including possibly releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners or turning over additional areas of the West Bank to Palestinian control. Washington....also has demanded that Israel officially declare that talks with the Palestinians will deal with all the conflict's big issues, including final borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes during the war around Israel's 1948 creation.

In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed "healthy relations" between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of "colonialism," and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for "a jihad" against Switzerland. When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for...

One sign of an insane foreign policy is the laser-like focus on the absurd at the expense of the important. Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a heated 45-minutes call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the announced construction of 1,600 homes in Jerusalem . . . Israel's capital. There are arguments for having delayed the announced construction of the homes until after Vice President Joe Biden left Israel. It would have been polite to wait. On the other hand, why should Israel have waited? Did Clinton give the world community a "heads up" on the...

JERUSALEM - The U.S. is pressing Israel to scrap a contentious east Jerusalem building project whose approval has touched off the most serious diplomatic feud with Washington in years, American and Israeli officials said Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, gave no indication he intended to cancel construction of the 1,600 housing units, despite condemnation from a string of U.S. officials. Netanyahu offered a defense of his country's building in the city's eastern sector, which the Palestinians want as their future capital, and noted that Israel has been building there for more than 40 years. Read more: http://www.kansas.com/2010/03/15/1225991/netanyahu-jerusalem-building-doesnt.html#ixzz0iGIkGOHo

Israeli media reported Monday that the U.S. is pressing Israel to scrap a contentious east Jerusalem building project whose approval has touched off the most serious diplomatic feud with Washington in years. Top U.S. officials have lined up in recent days to condemn the Israeli plan to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the sector of the holy city that the Palestinians claim for their future capital. The project caused a storm in Washington because it was announced during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the region last week, badly embarrassing the U.S. and complicating its efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem in the same way that it has over the last 42 years. "The building in Jerusalem - and in all other places - will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years," said Netanyahu at a Likud party meeting.

At most, the newly announced housing plan shows Israel doesn't want to give up all of E. J'lem as part of a peace agreement. Not exactly news. There’s been much nonsense written about the government announcement that 1,600 apartments would be built in east Jerusalem. The timing was stupid, of course, since US Vice President Joe Biden was in town and didn’t like the idea. Moreover, to have such an announcement just when indirect talks with the Palestinian Authority were about to start doesn’t make Israel look helpful. But that’s about it. The action, if not the timing, was neither...

JERUSALEM — Israel on Monday reopened a landmark synagogue in Jerusalem's walled Old City, saying it should symbolise religious tolerance, 62 years after the building was destroyed in fighting with Jordan. In a video message because he was unable to attend personally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the synagogue brought a message of coexistence. "We permit believers of other faiths to conserve their places of worship. We proudly protect our heritage, while at the same time allowing others freedom of religion," he said. But the rededication came against a backdrop of heightened political and religious tensions in the holy...

State Department: US does not object to Israel rededicating Hurva Synagogue U.S. Department of StatePhilip J. CrowleyAssistant SecretaryDaily Press BriefingWashington, DCMarch 15, 2010www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2010/03/138369.htmTRANSCRIPT:1:09 p.m. ESTMR. CROWLEY: Good afternoon and welcome to the Department of State. Several announcements before taking your questions:On March 18th and 19th, Secretary Clinton will participate in a meeting of the Quartet with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, European High Representative Catherine Ashton, as well as Quartet Representative Tony Blair to discuss efforts to promote Middle East peace....QUESTION: So when the Secretary spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu, did she make any...