Free Republic

May 15, 2008 Reid Rejects President's Reckless And Irresponsible Remarks Calls on President to Explain Inconsistency Between Administration Actions and His Words Today Washington, DC—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement today in response to President Bush’s remarks before the Israeli Knesset: “Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation’s history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round. More than seven years into his Presidency and in the sixth year of the directionless Iraq war, President Bush has yet to learn that his brand of divisive partisan rhetoric is precisely what has made...

Michael Moore is taking America's temperature again. Moore, who won the top honor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival with "Fahrenheit 9/11," plans a followup to resume his examination of the nation's status in the world in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the only documentary to top $100 million domestically at the box office, was a harsh, hilarious critique of George W. Bush and his administration in the wake of the attacks. The as-yet-untitled followup will have a longer-term approach, film executives overseeing the project said Wednesday. "That movie was about a moment in time, a...

Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.” Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and...

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday threatened to serve subpoenas on former Attorney General John Ashcroft and two others associated with the Bush administration's interrogation policies if they don't agree to testify. If the three — including John C. Yoo, the former assistant deputy attorney general, and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff — do not reply by Friday, "I will have no choice but to consider the use of compulsory process," Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote in letters to them. That's Washington-speak for issuing congressional subpoenas, tough talk that Conyers has leveled at...

A senior Senate Democrat said Tuesday that he wants to use a major defense policy bill to expand federal hate crimes laws to protect gays, bring troops home from Iraq and force Baghdad to pay more toward reconstruction costs. The effort would raise the flag on major issues favored by the party's base. But only the reconstruction provision is considered to have a chance at passing — and even that proposal's prospects would depend heavily on Republican cooperation. Slim margins in Congress, particularly in the Senate where 60 votes are needed to overcome procedural hurdles, have kept Democrats from enacting...

BAGHDAD, (AP) -- The U.S. military says it will release Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein after more than two years in custody. The statement said Hussein will be freed Wednesday now that Iraqi judicial committees have granted him amnesty for all allegations. Hussein has been in custody since April 12, 2006 when he was detained by U.S. Marines for alleged links to insurgents.

Honolulu (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered the Navy to take additional precautions when conducting sonar exercises off Hawaii that environmentalists say can seriously injure or kill marine mammals. U.S. District Judge David Ezra said Friday the Navy cannot conduct exercises within 12 nautical miles, or 13.8 miles, of the shoreline, where species that are particularly sensitive to sonar, such as the beaked whale, are found. Among other requirements, the Navy must look for marine mammals for one hour each day before using sonar, employ three lookouts exclusively to spot the animals during sonar use and stop sonar transmission...

History professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Joel Beinin, went on "extended leave" from Stanford in 2006 due to what he described as the university's "minimal institutional interest in the study and teaching of the modern Middle East." Since that time, Beinin has been serving as director of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. But was it scholarly concerns or mounting criticism that caused Beinin to leave Stanford for AUC? In a 2006 interview with Egypt Today, Beinin was portrayed as a victim of "conservative reaction" on the part of Middle...

Georgetown professor John Esposito, director of the Saudi-financed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding has a reputation as an apologist for radical Islam. And it's one he lived up to with a Stanford University speech last week titled, "Dying for God? Suicide Terrorism and Militant Islam." Esposito claimed that Islamic terrorism grows primarily out of a sense of political and economic grievance and, of course, "occupation" on the part of "neo-colonial powers." This spin allowed him to deflect responsibility for Islamic terrorism to the West while negating the need for self-reflection among Muslims.When an attendee asked him why...

San Francisco -- For the second time this week, a federal court found today that a Navy anti-submarine training program threatened to subject whales and other sea creatures to harmful blasts of sonar and ordered protective measures in several sensitive zones, including one near Monterey Bay. The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Elizabeth Laporte of San Francisco applies to the Navy's use of low-frequency sonar in submarine detection exercises conducted in large areas of the world's oceans. She said Navy officials, who had agreed to restrictions after she issued a similar ruling in 2002, failed to take adequate precautions when seeking...

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that an Islamic charity's lawsuit alleging it was illegally wiretapped by federal investigators cannot go forward because the key piece of evidence is protected as a state secret. In a near-fatal blow to the case filed by the now-defunct U.S. arm of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that a top secret call log accidentally turned over to Al-Haramain's lawyers by the U.S. Treasury Department can't be used as evidence. Al-Haramain, which was labeled by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, alleged it had been illegally...

Nobody can dispute that Barack Obama opposed the Iraq war from the start and, with striking prescience, predicted U.S. troops would be mired in a costly conflict that fanned "the flames of the Middle East." But nobody should accept at face value the Illinois senator's claim that he was a "courageous leader" who opposed the war at great political risk. The truth is that while Obama showed foreign policy savvy and an ability to keenly analyze both sides of an issue in his October 2002 warnings on Iraq, the political upside of his position rivaled any risk. And, once elected...

Invoking the war in Iraq, the chief UN nuclear inspector criticized talk of attacking Iran as "hype" Monday, saying such options should only be considered as a last resort and only if authorized by the UN Security Council. "I would not talk about any use of force," said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an indirect response to French warnings that the world had to be prepared for the possibility of war in the event that Iran obtains atomic weapons. Saying only the UN Security Council could authorize the use of force, ElBaradei urged the...

SACRAMENTO, (AP) -- A California man convicted of attending an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison Monday for supporting terrorists, concluding a case that divided a Central Valley farming community. U.S. District Court Judge Garland Burrell Jr. imposed the sentence against Hamid Hayat on his 25th birthday, saying he had "attended a terrorist training camp, returned to the United States ready and willing to wage violent jihad when directed to do so." Hayat faced up to 39 years in prison after his April 2006 conviction on one count of providing material support to terrorists...

ASHINGTON (AP) -- A Senate Democratic leader Tuesday urged a Bush-appointed judge to recuse himself from cases involving enemy combatants and requested an explanation about information that might contradict his testimony about the White House's detainee policy. "It appears that you misled me, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the nation," Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote to Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He urged Kavanaugh to remove himself from "all pending and subsequent cases involving detainees and enemy combatants." Kavanaugh's court gets more detainee cases than any other. "Your...

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- Members of the U.N.'s new human rights watchdog formally agreed Tuesday to continue their scrutiny of Israel while halting investigations into Cuba and Belarus — a move that immediately drew fire from Canada and the United States. The decision was part of a package of reforms adopted by the members of the Human Rights Council to change how it conducts its work, including how and when to launch investigations into some of the world's worst rights offenders. The council, which was formed last year to replace the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission, passed the compromise package...

Farmville, Va. (AP) -- A Palestinian man behind bars for nearly four years was released from jail Friday on orders from a federal judge who ruled that the government had taken too long to deport him. As of Friday afternoon, Majed Talat Hajbeh was still in the custody of federal immigration agents and had not been dropped off at his home in northern Virginia, said his wife Najwa Abualhija. Agents had taken Hajbeh from Piedmont Regional Jail earlier Friday, jail officials said. A call to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials was not immediately returned. Last month a federal judge in...

Hatem Bazian is a senior lecturer in the department of Near Eastern studies, a member of the faculty advisory board in the religion, politics and globalization program, and an adjunct professor at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies. Along with teaching courses in Islamic law, religious studies and Arabic, Bazian, a Palestinian native, also devotes an inordinate amount of time to pro-Palestinian activism. Unfortunately, the bulk of this activism is centered on organizations, publications, speeches, and events that demonize Israel and, at times, the United States.As documented...

Sherborn, Mass. (AP) -- Donations to a multifaith retreat center have fallen off since it sheltered a National Guard deserter, and the facility is up for sale, the founder said. Annual contributions to the Peace Abbey dropped from $80,000 to less than $30,000 since 2004, when Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia stayed there, said Lewis Randa, the center's founder and director. Mejia, from the Florida National Guard, later surrendered and served a year for desertion. "Quite frankly, we became very controversial in the eyes of many, and the funding dried up," said Randa, who was discharged from the National Guard in...

(Columbia) February 13, 2007 - When students start classes at the USC law school this fall, they could find a new and controversial figure on the faculty. He is Wadie Said, son of author and literary critic Edward Said. Before his death in 2003, Edward Said was considered a leading advocate for Palestinian issues. Some pro-Israeli groups called him an extremist - even a racist. Wadie Said has already generated headlines of his own, most recently as a candidate for a job at the law school at Wayne State University in Detroit, where his critics called him unqualified and a...

Josh Wolf, a blogger who refused to give a videotape of a San Francisco anarchist protest to a federal grand jury, achieves an unwanted distinction today, when he becomes the longest-imprisoned journalist for contempt of court in U.S. history. Wolf, 24, is spending his 169th day at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, surpassing the imprisonment of Vanessa Leggett, a Texas freelancer who defied a grand jury's subpoena in 2001 for notes from a book she was writing about a murder case. Leggett was freed when the grand jury's term expired. The grand jury in Wolf's case, which is investigating...

SAN FRANCISCO - A freelance videographer who's been imprisoned for five months for refusing to turn over his footage of a 2005 protest lost another bid for release. Joshua Wolf, 24, was held in contempt of court after being subpoenaed by a San Francisco federal grand jury investigating a G-8 summit protest where anarchists were suspected of vandalizing a police car and one city officer suffered a fractured skull. Wolf refused to hand over 30 minutes of unpublished footage of the protest and was ordered jailed in August. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge William...

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada volunteered for military service following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our country out of a desire to protect his family and compatriots. His service record has been exemplary, and he was deemed "among the best" by his superiors. All that changed on June 22, 2006, when Watada was ordered to deploy to the Middle East as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Opposed to the premise and conduct of the war in Iraq, Watada refused to comply with this order. He now faces a court martial and up to six years in...

Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday. In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants. In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe...

A lawyer for suspected al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla violated a court order by leaking his wiretapped phone conversations, a judge found Wednesday while not imposing a penalty. Instead, U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke ordered all defense lawyers in the case to sign papers indicating they understood and would follow rules barring disclosure of certain evidence. Cooke also said she might hold in contempt anyone who receives such prohibited material, and she specifically mentioned several reporters attending Wednesday's hearing. "The lash is about to fall on all," Cooke said. "We're going to have a trial, as much as possible as we...

It was Will Rogers who advised: "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." Yet the Bush administration is grabbing for every shovel it can find. Faced with his own spectacular failure in Iraq, with violence that his own CIA director termed "satanic, President Bush has chosen to escalate the very policy that catalyzed the slaughter and mayhem in the first place. The White House finds itself in a hole and, incomprehensibly, has decided to keep digging. It's long past time that we climb out of the hole. Today in the House of Representatives, I am introducing the Bring...

A day after President Bush announced an escalation of the war in Iraq by declaring he'll send 21,500 more troops to Baghdad, White House correspondent Helen Thomas says the president would have to change his mind if more people took to the streets in protest. She tells The Chronicle's Marc Sandalow that Democrats in Congress need to show some courage and take a stand. While she doesn't believe they can stop Bush, she says they at least could vote on a resolution calling for the troops to come home. Listen/Download Audio | 9:39 min : 9.29 MB A reporter for...

HERE WE GO again: A new secretary of defense and yet another call for ending the war in Iraq by escalating it. What are they smoking in the Bush White House? Even as government statistics now show marijuana is America's No. 1 cash crop, it is important to remember that militarism is the most dangerous drug threatening our sanity. Yet even formerly sober folks -- first Colin Powell and now new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -- get a contact high from cozying up to the walking hallucinogen that is our president. Succumbing to the Bush fantasy that freedom is...

The U.S. military's indefinite detention of an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, without charges, is an outrage and should be seen as such by the journalistic community, AP editors said Friday. "We are angry, and we hope you are, too," AP International Editor John Daniszewski told a gathering of the Associated Press Managing Editors. In interviews, the leaders of APME and the American Society of Newspaper Editors shared frustration with the case of Bilal Hussein and said they would urge the Pentagon to release the photographer, who has been held by the military since April, or to provide the AP...

Angelides, the (Democrat) gubernatorial candidate says he would immediately seek the Guard's withdrawal. In a move to bolster his appeal among Democrats, state Treasurer Phil Angelides said Saturday night that on his first day as governor, he would call on President Bush to withdraw California's National Guard troops from the war in Iraq. The Democratic nominee for governor said in a telephone interview that he would take court action against Bush if necessary to extract the state's National Guard members from Iraq. He said he would also urge other governors and members of Congress to join his effort. "I will...

Freelance journalist Josh Wolf has two more days to return to prison or testify and produce the outtakes of footage he shot at a violent San Francisco protest in July 2005, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said today. Wolf, 24, was to have reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin by 1 p.m. today. He received a last-minute order from the court at 11:17 a.m. giving him a 48-hour extension. At a news conference today outside the prison, Wolf said: "Really, the only effect this has -- of sending me to jail prematurely and not allowing things...

In her new book due out Sept. 19, "Peace Mom," Cindy Sheehan writes of her fantasies of killing President Bush.Sheehan, whose son Army Spc. Casey Sheehan was killed in Iraq in April, 2004, couches her desire for the murder of the President by saying she wishes she could go back in time and kill George Bush as an infant in order to prevent the Iraq war.Sheehan has been trying for over a year to meet with President Bush, but to no avail. She met with the President once in 2004 shortly after her son gave his life in Iraq. Since...

K-K-K-Katie Couric begins her transmissions this evening. I think this is the CBS video LINK.

CRAWFORD Cindy Sheehan says she’s taking a hiatus from her activist role to heal and re-energize herself after a trying and torrid summer. Most of the 100 or so anti-war demonstrators who joined her this year had left her peace camp in Crawford by the close of the Labor Day weekend. This year’s protest gathered little steam in Crawford. Bush, who usually spends the entire month of August at his nearby ranch, cut his vacation to 10 days. Sheehan looked tired and moved slowly when she granted a brief interview to the Tribune-Herald. Her son, Andy, 22, sat with her....

Like Rachel Corrie, Angelo Frammartino was an idealistic young foreign political activist who came to Israel to work on behalf of the Palestinians. And, like her, he met a violent end here. In contrast to Corrie, though, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza three years ago, it is unlikely that there will be any songs written, plays performed or documentary movies made about the 24-year-old Frammartino. But maybe there should be - because his murder in Jerusalem this week also has significance beyond the immediate circumstances of his death. Frammartino arrived here in early August as part...

Middle East professor sues conservative who linked criticism of Bush to terrorism - Stanford University's Joel Beinin is used to criticism for his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but when a conservative commentator put the professor's photo on the cover of a booklet titled "Campus Support for Terrorism,'' it started a whole new war. Beinin, a prominent Middle Eastern scholar, filed suit in March -- turning his ideological clash with FrontPageMag.com Editor in Chief David Horowitz into a legal one. Horowitz removed the photo from later printings, but Beinin said the harm had already been done and is demanding unspecified...

Syrian President Bashar Assad spoke out on Wednesday for the first time since the outbreak of the war in the North and said a cease-fire was necessary in order to stop the Israeli attacks on Lebanon. The president made the statement in a telephone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. CNN Turk reported that Assad called on Erdogan to put pressure on Israel to stop its offensive in Lebanon. According to the report, Erdogan answered him that Turkey was trying to bring about a cease-fire and would continue to do so. Meanwhile, a UN envoy who visited Israel...

Murtha says U.S. poses top threat to world peace South Florida Sun-Sentinel Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.25.2006 MIAMI — American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to an audience of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon. Murtha was the guest speaker at a town hall meeting organized by Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Miami, at Florida International University's Biscayne Bay Campus. Meek's mother, former Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, was also on the panel. War veterans, local mayors, university students and faculty were in...

Hillary redefines shameless. From the New York Post: HILL LABELS GOP TACTICS A ‘DISGRACE’ By IAN BISHOP Post Correspondent June 22, 2006 — WASHINGTON - Republicans are a "disgrace" for playing politics with the war in Iraq, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton charged yesterday as she moved to turn the spotlight away from Democratic infighting over when to withdraw U.S. troops. "They choose to tar all who disagree with an open-ended, unconditional commitment as unpatriotic, as waving the white flag of surrender. They may not have a war strategy, but they do have an election strategy," Clinton charged on the Senate...

(AP) WASHINGTON The first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress, US Representative John Murtha took pride in politicking quietly, behind the scenes, with Republicans and fellow Democrats alike. But Washington has become more deeply partisan since Murtha was swept into office more than 30 years ago. And so has Murtha, in a\ very public way. On Monday, Murtha is to be awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in Boston for his bold pronouncement that U.S. troops should be pulled out of Iraq. It's a statement many say helped change the public debate over the war, because of Murtha's...

If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in "God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer. In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement, has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia. They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their leader,...

"I need to get reacquainted with my partner Dan." - Jim Loney, freed Christian Peacemaker Team member, March 27. The Christian Peacemaker Team members have been called misguided and naive. But it's clear from here that Jim Loney is only selectively naive. He could not afford to talk about his partner while in captivity and didn't. Homosexuality in Saddam Hussein's Iraq was punishable by death. Amnesty International says the current status of gay and lesbian rights is unclear. But here are few things that are crystal clear. 1) Jim Loney only feels free to speak his mind about his sexual...

If there were poetic justice, if Hollywood or the publishing industry had true courage, the story of Rachel Corrie would be coming to a big screen or bookstore near you. For now, the streets of Seattle will have to do. Tonight marks the third anniversary of the day Rachel died. A public reading of her mature writings will be held at 5 p.m. at Westlake Plaza. Rachel was in the Middle East, trying to protect the home of a Palestinian from immoral demolition, when an Israeli soldier driving a Caterpillar bulldozer killed her. He ran her over. Maybe the young...

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham reiterated Tuesday that the Bush administration never briefed him, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about a covert domestic wiretap program -- and suggested the possibility that it grew out of ``a creep of presidential authority.'' Rather, Graham recalled being summoned to a classified briefing by Vice President Dick Cheney in late 2001 or early 2002. He was informed about a presidential directive that let the National Security Agency eavesdrop on overseas calls that moved through U.S. communications lines -- not people speaking on the phone inside the United States. President Bush said in...

Security forces arrested a British national, apparently a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who entered Israel in August with a changed name to avoid detection by Israeli border control, details released for publication on Monday revealed. The man, Andrew MacDonald, had previously visited Israel in 2003 and was expelled by the Interior Ministry after IDF soldiers arrested him while holed up in the home of a terrorist. MacDonald changed his name and sneaked back into Israel this summer. Security forces detained him in early November in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron after he assaulted a member...

Protestors Unveil Monument Honoring Sheehan By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer 27 minutes ago CRAWFORD, Texas - Anti-war demonstrators, back in Crawford to protest during President Bush's holiday vacation, unveiled a stone monument Friday with the words "Sheehan's Stand" in honor of the woman who inspired their efforts. ADVERTISEMENT Cindy Sheehan, who staged a 26-day protest outside Bush's ranch in August, cried when she saw the 2-foot-high sandstone marker. On the other side of the rectangular slab is the word "Why!" and names of more than two dozen soldiers whose families were part of the vigil. The name of...

A New Jersey woman pleaded guilty Tuesday to a plot to secure Tennessee driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. Zeneida Concepcion Rivera, 54, admitted at a hearing in U.S. District Court that she and her boyfriend ferried illegal immigrants to Knoxville bimonthly over a nine-month period. Once here, Rivera would furnish the immigrants with documents purporting to establish a local address for them and help them secure auto insurance and even fake birth certificates. She and her boyfriend, who has not been indicted, would then haul the immigrants to driver's license testing centers in either Knoxville or Maryville, where they would...

Cindy Sheehan, a fallen soldier’s mother whose pursuit of a meeting with President Bush made her a national anti-war figure this summer, will speak at the university Sept. 27 — a stop in her journey to attempt to talk with Bush. Sheehan drew national attention when she camped outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas for weeks, demanding to meet with him and discuss why his administration is still engaged in what she calls an “unjust” war in Iraq. Sheehan, along with university professor Shibley Telhami and antiwar activist Kevin Zeese, will speak at 8 p.m. next Tuesday at the Memorial...

As most of you know, Cindy Sheehan is camped out near the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanding he meet with her and answer for her son Casey’s death in Iraq. I’d like Sheehan to answer some questions herself, and since the big media isn’t taking care of business (see my first question if you doubt me) I’d like a shot. If I could interview her, this is what I’d be asking: I’d ask why, in an interview with Mark Knoller of CBS News, she said “But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open, freedom fighters...

During Saturday’s rally, Cindy Sheehan let it slip that she was a little starstruck by folk singer Joan Baez. Baez, who has been called the patron saint of the peace movement, serenaded the audience on Saturday with “Amazing Grace” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” “One thing you missed is Joan was here the other night when she proposed marriage