Free Republic

Thanks to our Change.org petition (307,000-plus signatures and rising), millions of Americans have learned that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is about to allow U.S chickens to be sent to China for processing and then shipped back to the U.S. for human consumption. This arrangement is particularly alarming given China’s appalling food safety record and the fact that there will be no on-site USDA inspectors in those plants. In addition, American consumers will never know that chicken processed in China is in foods like chicken soup or chicken nuggets because there’s no requirement to label it as such. One...

.....and here’s the irony in Obama’s case — have the traditional white man’s view of that same Arab world — to wit, Arabs are crazy and primitive. (Yes, this is racist. And, in Obama’s case, undoubtedly leavened with a soupçon of anti-imperialist payback.) Ergo, pressure can only be put on Israel. This is not unique to the Obama administration. As was reported in the Jerusalem Post Monday:

WASHINGTON -- As Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flies to Washington - due to arrive on Sunday (March 2), to prepare for talks with President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday - it's clear that there are several points of friction between Israel and the United States. The two countries are allies, but their leaders often differ on the details of key issues: Israel's peace talks with the Palestinians, America's nuclear talks with Iran, how to approach political turmoil in Egypt, what might be done to limit Syria's horrible civil war, and a broader issue of whether the...

The United States is reportedly pressuring Israel to stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, a number of whom have been mysteriously killed in a campaign thought to be carried out by Mossad. According to CBS News, Obama administration officials have communicated to Israeli intelligence their wish for a cessation of the targeting of scientists in order to allow diplomatic negotiations aimed at rolling back Iran’s nuclear program to take their course.

and activist Jane Fonda has revealed that at 76 she’s become increasingly aware of her own mortality – and admits that she constantly finds herself crying over "the smallest things." In an emotional and sometimes eccentric blog entry titled "Crying" on her website, JaneFonda.com, the actress says, "How come pretty things, kind deeds, sad stories, acts of courage, good news, someone’s flax of insight, all get me crying or, at least, tearing up?" Editor’s Note: Rogue Investor Exposes Secret ‘250% Calendar’. See The Trades In the blog entry, Fonda didn't reference her political activism, including protesting the Vietnam War. She...

SNIPSoon after the attacks, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf introduced HR-36, a bill to create a House Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. Under Wolf’s bill, the special committee would have subpoena power and could force the issue of testimony and access to documents. If it did, we might yet see Obama exercise Executive Privilege just as he did in the “Fast and Furious” scandal. The bill has 177 sponsors, almost enough to pass the House today. The only problem is that House Speaker John Boehner won’t allow the bill to come to the floor. He has repeatedly blocked it...

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in...

Ukraine's western region of Lviv has reportedly declared independence from the central government.Hours after protesters seized the prosecutor's office in central Lviv and forced a surrender by interior ministry police, the executive committee of the region council - also called the People's Rada – claimed control over the region. Reuters A portrait of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich burns near the destroyed building of the security service in Lviv "The regime has begun active military action against people. Dozens of people have been killed in Kiev and hundreds have been wounded. Fulfilling the will of society, the executive committee of the...

A newly disclosed audio recording purportedly depicts a conversation between two American diplomats, in which one curses the European Union as they discuss how to handle turmoil in Ukraine. American officials were quick to suggest a Russian role in the apparent leak, which came as Russia is engaged in a tug of war with the E.U. and the United States for influence over Ukraine. The audio recording, incorporated into a video with Russian subtitles and posted on YouTube Tuesday, appears to be a conversation between the top U.S. diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey...

A high-ranking official in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bureau met with representatives of the radical, anti-Zionist Neturei Karta haredi group on International Holocaust Day last week. The official met with four members of the group in Berlin when they were protesting the existence of the State of Israel and the Zionist exploitation of the Holocaust for political reasons. Ynet revealed that the official is a department head in the chancellor’s bureau, and against convention met with them openly. Members of Neturei Karta confirmed that the purpose of the meeting was to make it clear to the Germans that Zionism doesn’t...

In their latest interview with Michelle Obama, People magazine asked if there were role models the First Lady looked at to think "When I'm 70 or 80, I want to look and live like her?" Mrs. Obama thought of actresses: Cicely Tyson, and then that "politically savvy, sharp woman" named Jane Fonda, age 76: "I just went to see Cicely Tyson on Broadway. She is in her 80s [just turned 80 in December] and did a two-hour play with stamina and passion. I told her 'I want to be you when I grow up!'" And then she added: "There's Jane...

<p>The Clintons are known for holding grudges against their political enemies. But according to a new book, their aides went so far as to build a formal spreadsheet rating their friends and foes.</p> <p>The so-called "hit list" reportedly was entered into a Microsoft Excel document at the end of Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid. In one draft, Democrats in Congress were even given a rating, from 1 to 7, with 7 being the worst.</p>

Representing the strongest nation on earth, Americans fought and died for the sake of Vietnam, a weak and distant nation, to prevent communist domination. My brother served in Vietnam, and I have worked with hundreds of Vietnam veterans. I have never spoken to one who is entirely at peace with his service, or who fully credits America's role in trying to prevent the communist takeover of southeast Asia. I am convinced that many of the few thousand people who actually watch MSNBC are Vietnam vets, understandably embittered to this day. These not so fortunate sons, who have not claimed the...

Congressional Republicans have been thinking up various clever ways to replace a cut in military pensions for under-62 military retirees with various other cuts in federal expenditures. This is a mistake. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains, the cut is modest: Among the elements of the budget deal that passed Congress last month was a small $6 billion change to the way military pensions are calculated for military retirees younger than 62. In the face of lawmakers who would roll back this change, both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal editorial boards defended the provision...

Stephen Coughlin and Frank Gaffney on Islamic subversion of the US government (video).

New U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power didn't waste her diplomatic skills on Vietnam veterans at a New York speech, praising actress Jane Fonda for "being outspoken on behalf" of her convictions. Power, 43, was speaking at the United Nations Association of the USA 2013 Global Leadership Awards in New York Wednesday, where honorees included Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived being shot in the head by Taliban thugs and is now an education advocate for girls. “Hi everybody,” Power said, according to a transcript. “You know life has changed when you’re hanging out with Jane Fonda backstage....

Boyd Marcus, the chief of staff for Cantor until 2003—who later teamed with another GOP operative Ray Allen to found the firm Marcus Allen, which Cantor employed until earlier this year—joined the McAuliffe campaign after Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, with whom Marcus campaigned, did not win the GOP nominee in Virginia. “I was looking at the candidates, and I saw Terry McAuliffe as the guy who will work with everybody to get things done,” Marcus told the Associated Press in August when he joined McAuliffe’s campaign. Cantor employed Marcus Allen until the day before Marcus left the firm to work

The Obama administration has been accused of cronyism after it was revealed the First Lady's Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company contracted to build the beleaguered Obamacare enrollment website. Toni Townes-Whitley is senior vice president at CGI Federal, the U.S. arm of a Canadian company, which won the no-bid contract for the problem-plagued website. Townes-Whitley, from the Princeton class of ’85, and Michelle Obama are members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni, according to The Daily Caller.

Half of the Senate and more than two-fifths of the members of the House of Representatives have advised the administration of their opposition to the global conventional arms trade treaty it signed last month, raising questions about its future implementation in the U.S., the world’s largest arms exporter. In a move largely overshadowed by the standoff over government funding and Obamacare, 50 senators sent a letter to President Obama on Tuesday, pledging not to consent to the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and urging him to notify its depository – the U.N. secretary-general – that the U.S. does not intend...

So, the rhetoric level rises. All of us who disagree with the Democrats are now terrorists and traitors. What next?