Free Republic

f Iraqis were hoping that the withdrawal of U.S. forces last year would finally mean the end of war, al Qaeda and its Sunni militant allies are determined to prove otherwise. Daily bombings and shootings remain an endemic feature of life. In the past three months, al Qaeda-linked fighters have been blamed for attacks that have killed at least 250 people. In a particularly poignant reminder of militants' potency this week, gunmen in unauthorized uniforms of special commandos drove from checkpoint to checkpoint in the western town of Haditha before dawn, gunning down police. They killed 27 including two officers...

It should be clear that among the causes of the recent financial crisis was an unjustified faith in rational expectations, market efficiencies, and the techniques of modern finance. That faith was stoked in part by the huge financial rewards that enabled the extremes of borrowing, the economic imbalances, and the pretenses and assurances of the credit-rating agencies to persist so long. A relaxed approach by regulators and legislators reflected the new financial zeitgeist. All the seeming mathematical precision that was brought to investment, all the complicated new products, including the explosion of derivatives, that were intended to diffuse and minimize...

Everyone in Lebanon has been noticing how Hezbollah's rhetoric has been heating up lately. The group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made it clear in a number of speeches this week that his party would tolerate neither spies, Israeli "aggression" nor what he described as Lebanese government hypocrisy. It's volatile talk ahead of critical June 7 elections in which Hezbollah needs to sway at least some Christians to vote in its favor. On Monday, Nasrallah warned that the Islamic militant group would be on high alert as Israel prepared to conduct its largest military maneuvers since 1961, a series of armed forces...

Ex-KGB Colonel Alexander Litvinenko was investigating the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. They shared a deep hatred of President Putin. "I hate him for his cynicism, for his racism, his lies, for the massacre of the innocents that went on throughout his first term as president," she wrote. While she was traveling to cover the Beslan school massacre in 2004, she was served a poisoned cup of tea. She fell very ill but survived. She was gunned down last month. On Nov. 1, it was Litvinenko's turn to be poisoned. Protected by armed guards, he is fighting for his...

SYNOPSIS: According to proponents of the Global Climate Treaty, a consensus within the scientific community supports the view that human-caused global warming is occurring and that it threatens human health and well-being. Nothing could be further from the truth. Far from viewing the existence of global warming as “settled,” most atmospheric scientists and climate specialists hold that the global warming issue should be considered “unfinished business” requiring much further research. In HOT TALK, COLD SCIENCE: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate, astrophysicist S. Fred Singer probes the literature on climate change and lays out the scientific case against the likelihood of an...