Free Republic

I had never heard about this story before, but a clever and competent reader shared it on our Facebook page, and I thought some of y’all might enjoy it too. Back in 1989, card-carrying Communist and Politburo member in the Soviet Union Boris Yeltsin visited Johnson Space Center, and then took a tour of a grocery store in Clear Lake, Texas. According to a Houston Chronicle reporter, Yelstin was far more affected by the grocery store visit than he was the space center. He apparently was stunned by the aisles and aisles of supermarket products, and told the other Russians...

The Associated Press has uncovered what may become a vast new scandal for the Obama administration: the possibly widespread use of covert email accounts by political appointees, enabling evasion of sunshine laws designed to protect the public. Jack Gillium of AP reports: Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery:...

History often repeats itself, and if you have lived two lives, as I have done, you have a good chance of seeing the reenactment with your own eyes. Liberation theology, of which not much has been heard for two decades, is back in the news. But what is not being mentioned is its origins. It was not invented by Latin American Catholics. It was developed by the KGB. The man who is now the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov” and spent four decades promoting liberation theology, which...

Honestly, it may be their best remaining play. They can’t claim that private e-mail is good practice when the State Department itself is on record as saying it isn’t. They can’t claim that it’s basically as secure as government e-mail when even lefty sites are reporting that that’s wildly untrue. On the merits, in terms of national security and as evidence of the creepy lengths to which President Claire Underwood will go in the name of evading accountability, it’s a total disaster. The only move left on this chessboard is to ignore all that and simply insist that voters won’t...

Add the National Republican Congressional Committee to the list of conservative groups capitalizing on former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina’s secret meetings with lobbyists at a Caribou Coffee near the White House. President Obama has repeatedly promised that his would be “the most transparent administration in history,” but the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report yesterday showing that high-ranking Obama staffers, including Messina, used private email addresses to bypass these rules and meet with industry lobbyists. “I will roll Pelosi to get the 4 billion,” Messina wrote Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America lobbyist Jeffrey...

This didn't get much play in the media because this is one "outreach" item to Iran Obama would just as soon not be widely circulated; his release of 5 Revolutionary Guard commanders belonging to the elite Quds Force who planned dozens of attacks on Americans in Iraq and who George Bush refused to release. Andrew McCarthy in NRO has the sickening details: There are a few things you need to know about President Obama's shameful release on Thursday of the "Irbil Five" - Quds Force commanders from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq...

A Boston.com associate editor was fired for a story disparaging threats against U.S. House Speaker John Boehner. Victor Paul Alvarez told The Associated Press in an email he was fired Thursday. He said he apologized to his bosses for the “terrible mistake.” A former bartender is charged with threatening to kill Boehner with a gun or by poisoning his drink. Alvarez’s story suggested Boehner had a drinking problem and questioned whether Boehner's “pickled liver could have filtered out the toxins.” …

The Democracy Alliance is not a famous organization, but it deserves to be. The Alliance consists of approximately 100 rich liberals who have taken upon themselves the task of coordinating America’s many left-wing organizations to promote a single radical agenda. The Alliance does not publicize the names of its members, but it held a conference for its “partners” and membership prospects in April, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel (naturally) in Chicago. Someone who attended the conference unfortunately (heh) left his or her copy of the documents passed out by the Democracy Alliance behind, and they eventually fell into the wrong...

Kelly Parker was thrilled when she landed her dream job in 2012 providing tech support for Harley-Davidson's Tomahawk, Wisconsin, plants. The divorced mother of three hoped it was the beginning of a new career with the motorcycle company. The dream didn't last long. Parker claims she was laid off one year later after she trained her replacement, a newly arrived worker from India. Now she has joined a federal lawsuit alleging the global staffing firm that ran Harley-Davidson's tech support discriminated against American workers — in part by replacing them with temporary workers from South Asia. The firm, India-based Infosys...

They included Defense Minister Douangchay Phichit and his wife. Douangchay was also one of the country's deputy prime ministers and a high-ranking member of its Politburo, the main decision-making body for the country's all-powerful Communist Party, which has ruled the single-party state since 1975. The economically poor, landlocked country has a population of seven million. Others killed included Minister of Public Security Thongbane Sengaphone, Vientiane Governor Sukhan Mahalad and at least one other senior ruling party official. Information about the crash, and those on board, came from Foreign Ministry spokesman Sek Wannamethee in neighboring Thailand. Lao National Television showed images...

The European Commission should be slimmed down, with only a handful of commissioners handling the bloc’s main portfolios, according to a plan put forward by the Dutch foreign minister. Speaking with reporters after Monday’s (18 November) meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Brussels, Frans Timmermans explained that governments should create a division of a and b-level boards for the EU executive. Eight “a-board” members would take the lead on Brussels’ biggest portfolios, such as the internal market, economic affairs and justice and home affairs. They would also be solely responsible for initiating new legislation. Meanwhile, the remaining “b-board members” would...

European citizens are more inclined to vote if they are given the chance to choose who will be the next president of the European Commission, according to a survey released today (6 September). A new Eurobarometer report, published by European Parliament today (6 September), polled some 27,600 European citizens on their views on the EU, one year before the European Parliament elections in May 2014. … Some 70% of people polled … said that they favored the direct election of the Commission president in the future. Of the respondents, 31% said this was because “EU decisions would seem more legitimate”...

Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington and a group of other CEOs and former world leaders have formed a group whose goal is to end capitalism as we know it. The nonprofit, known as “The B Team,” was created to help promote a “better version of capitalism, one that prioritizes people and planet over profit.” This ignores the fact that capitalism is, by definition, motivated by profit. The team, led by Branson and German businessman Jochen Zeitz, calls for drastic changes in how the economy works. These include “new rules and models for the future of business – not incremental ‘change as...

Institutions Worthy of Our Parties: Should the U.S. Switch to a Parliamentary System? Efforts to curb legislative partisanship have weak track records, so maybe we should consider changing the other side of the equation in order to establish a government that can actually get things done. Rick Hasen has a really interesting paper up discussing partisan polarization and the possibility of changing the Constitution to deal with it. (And you should really read Jonathan Bernstein’s response, too.) Hasen starts off by asking whether we should be considering moving toward a more parliamentary style of government. It’s a fair question. We...

Cuban leader Raul Castro announced on Sunday he would step down from power after his second term as president ends in 2018, and the new parliament named a 52-year-old rising star to become his first vice president and most visible successor. Castro, 81, made the announcement in a nationally broadcast speech shortly after the Cuban National Assembly elected him to a second five-year term in the opening session of the new parliament. "This will be my last term," Castro said. In a surprise move, the new parliament named as his first vice president Miguel Diaz-Canel, a member of the political...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is speaking out against a cut in congressional pay because she says it will undermine the dignity of their positions. "I think we should respect the work we do," Pelosi said. "I think it's necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded."

European commission President Jose Manuel Barroso should stand for an unprecedented third term in office, one of his senior colleagues has said. "With Jose Manuel Barroso, we have a very good and active President, who I admire for his strength, his legal mind, his patience and his wisdom in managing the current crisis," Viviane Reding, in charge of justice, told EurActiv Italy. "My personal wish would be that Jose Manuel stays on for a third term. Because I am sure that we need continuity and stability at the helm of governments in the years to come to continue to make...

President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout. Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout...

First lady Michelle Obama took her inspirational family story on the road over the weekend, telling the graduating class of Oregon State University that having a corner corporate office and a big paycheck isn’t the prize it looks like when entering the job market. “Success isn’t about how your life looks to others, it’s about how it feels to you,” Obama said Sunday, retelling how she and her brother, Oregon men’s basketball coach Craig Robinson, grew up in a small Chicago home pushed by parents who said “be true to ourselves.” For both, she said, that meant throwing away their...

When asked if average Americans should receive the same quality health insurance as that of their elected officials, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told a group of South Florida healthcare workers that she “earned” her benefits, implying that her constituents had not. “Yes, she really said that,” related Dr. Norman Palgon, a Hallandale Beach-based internist who was in attendance at a forum the Congresswoman conducted last year to garner support for ObamaCare. The good doctor was non-too-pleased with what he clearly felt was the congresswoman’s imperious attitude. Wasserman Schultz, 45, who also is Chair of the Democratic National Committee, is...