Free Republic

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Friday that the “current approach is not working” in Gaza as he called to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into the besieged strip and provide only defensive weapons to Israel going forward. Kaine said he remains “deeply distressed” by the more than 33,000 Palestinians who have died as Israel fights against the militant group Hamas, along with the tens of thousands of displaced Israeli citizens in northern Israel and the roughly 100 Israeli hostages still believed to be held alive in Gaza. The senator, who sits on both the Armed Services and Foreign Relations...

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that former President Donald Trump had a dangerous “authoritarian approach.” Romney said, “I do think you can look at his record as president and particularly in the last months of his presidency and say, ‘This is a dangerous approach. It’s an authoritarian approach.’ That gives me far more concern than him playing to the crowd as he did.” He continued, “I think if you can look at the last few months of his presidency, you’d suggest that that’s the kind of thing you might see. That he would not...

Hindsight is 20/20. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who took considerable heat from constituents and a recall attempt over the state’s tough Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine rollout, acknowledges the criticism was valid. In a taped interview which aired on Sunday’s NBC news magazine Meet The Press, Newsom said given what he knows now, “I think we would’ve done everything differently.” Later in the interview Newsom responded to criticism of his state’s decisions saying: “All of it’s legitimate in terms of reflection.” “I think all of us in terms of our collective wisdom, we’ve evolved,” Newsom added. “We didn’t know what we...

Researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a novel method for producing new antibiotics to combat resistant bacteria. Through an approach that would target bacteria with an antibiotic that is masked by a prodrug, which the bacteria would themselves remove, the researchers identified a method that would allow for development of new, effective antibiotics that could overcome issues of resistance. The findings were published today in eLife. "We've created a sort of 'Trojan Horse' that would allow antibiotics to reach desired tissues undisturbed, until the bacteria itself activates the drug, effectively releasing an 'army' of antibiotics," said senior...

NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea indicated Tuesday shootings in New York City are on track to be at their highest level in 14 years. The New York Post quoted Shea saying, “I wish I had better news on gun violence specifically… we’re looking to close out the year on a 14-year high.”

Peter Newell, 77, has been sentenced to prison Victim was 12 years old at the time Newell was a top official at the Association for the Protection of All Children charity, which was funded in part by the United Nations

If Martians exist, they'll be closer to Earth on Memorial Day than they have been in 11 years. This Monday, around 5:34 p.m. EDT, when many Americans may be enjoying a holiday barbecue, the Red Planet will be the closest it has been to Earth in more than a decade, coming within 46.8 million miles, according to NASA. The relatively close encounter with Earth comes a week after the Martian opposition, when Mars and the sun lined up on exact opposite sides of the Earth.

Nine months into his tenure, the patterns of President Barack Obama's style of governing are becoming clear. Obama had no executive experience when he took the presidential oath last ­winter — but he did come in with a particular idea of what politics and government are for, and how they ought to work. It is a view grounded in Progressive politics, and shared by a number of Democratic chief executives in recent decades. But Obama has articulated it, and his administration has embodied it, more fully than most. Perhaps the most distinctive political characteristic of the Obama administration thus far...

Powell rebutted saying Obama's racial background had little to do with his vote, and it was the economic crisis engulfing the United States that had made up his mind, in addition to McCain's choice of Alaska Governor Palin as his vice presidential nominee, who he thought was not ready to be president of the United States. In a stinging rebuff to Republican candidate John McCain, Powell said the Republican nominee was a little unsure as to how to deal with the economic problems that the U.S is facing. Powell said Obama, in contrast, had come out of recent weeks looking...

DES MOINES - On the eve of the final Iowa debate before the Jan. 3 caucuses, Clinton campaign insiders are increasingly questioning the cautious, poll-driven approach taken by Mark Penn, Hillary Rodham Clinton's top political aide, sources familiar with the situation say. With Clinton barely holding her own against Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa, dissatisfaction is growing with Penn, who some say has mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent. "There are two people who have come up with this strategy -- one Hillary Clinton and one Mark Penn," said a top Clinton ally, speaking on condition...

HEMET - Months after clashing with California's firefighters, Gov. Schwarzenegger started wooing them Thursday with a mass e-mail of gratitude for their hard work and with a photo opportunity at an Inland airport. Schwarzenegger, who drew the ire of firefighter unions and others in last fall's special election, sent the laudatory e-mail to firefighter organizations across the state early Thursday, asking them to distribute it to their members. Later, he met with a few-dozen firefighters at Hemet-Ryan Airport, where he signed an executive order for additional staffing and resources for firefighters. He heaped more praise on fire personnel there and...

WASHINGTON, March 30, 2006 – The old concept of mutually assured destruction -- the idea that a nuclear attack would have such devastating consequences that neither the United States nor its foes would dare launch one -- isn't enough of a deterrent in today's strategic environment, a senior defense official told Congress yesterday. "The new strategic environment requires new approaches to deterrence and defense," Peter Flory, assistant secretary for international security policy, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee's strategic forces subcommittee. The country's strategic deterrence no longer rests simply on its ability to inflict devastating consequences on...

US foreign policy takes 'neo-realist' approach By Alec Russell in Washington (Filed: 09/02/2006) A shift in the Bush administration's approach to the world from "with us or against us" to diplomacy has led to the coinage of a new phrase - "neo-realism" - to describe the philosophy of the key figures behind the president's foreign policy. Neo-realism is intended as a play on neo-conservatism, the belief in a muscular foreign policy that dominated the administration's thinking after the September 11 attacks. Dick Cheney: 'We are obviously pursuing a diplomatic road' The neo-realists are seen as pragmatists who seek aggressively to...

DALLAS - Carrie Rodgers is so engrossed by cable-television news shows that her husband calls her a news addict, but lately she has found another source to balance the onslaught of stories about war, crime and natural disasters. Two or three times a day, the 28-year-old insurance agent in Columbia, S.C., turns to a Web site called HappyNews.com. She often clicks first to a section called "Heroes," which recently featured stories about U.S. troops rescuing two cheetah cubs in Ethiopia and the induction of 12 people into the Hall of Fame for Caring Americans. "There's so much going on in...

WASHINGTON - Attempting to loosen decades-old restrictions, the Pentagon is asking Congress to allow its intelligence agents to go undercover when they approach Americans who may have useful national-security information, rather than identifying themselves as intelligence operatives. The provision found in a wide-ranging intelligence bill would give the Defense Intelligence Agency new latitude to meet U.S. citizens without pulling out their DIA badges and later sending a formal notice of their rights under the landmark 1974 Privacy Act. The regulations were imposed to prevent recurrence of the intelligence scandals of the 1960s and 1970s, when the Defense Department was caught...

HOUSTON – Hurricane Rita closed in on the Texas Gulf Coast and the heart of the U.S. oil-refining industry with howling 145 mph winds Thursday, but a sharper-than-expected turn to the right set it on a course that could spare Houston and nearby Galveston a direct hit. The storm's march toward land sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the nation's fourth-largest city in a frustratingly slow, bumper-to-bumper exodus. "This is the worst planning I've ever seen," said Judie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte....

As the Spirit and Opportunity rovers continue their extended studies of Mars, NASA's Mars program appears headed for change. The shift will be driven by a variety of factors including technical and budget issues, as well as a "rebalancing" of science objectives. NASA has been engaged since last year in what the agency calls a road-mapping effort to flesh out the details of a Mars master plan that would lead to an expeditionary crew landing on that remote world. One scenario that has been under active discussion is slipping the mission of the mobile, nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) from...

Thirty years ago Saigon fell. I was a company commander in the 2 nd Battalion, 508 th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82 nd Airborne Division. When our Vietnam veterans cursed the war, I remembered one of the greatest speeches I ever heard - the day the Vietnam peace was announced to my Winter Ranger class in ’73. The senior Ranger Sergeant cursed everything about the Vietnam War and everyone involved, friend or foe, in a poetic rant of imaginative, sincere, foul-mouthed hatred. He swore most passionately about the waste of his buddies’ lives. He blamed everyone and everything he knew to...

NEW IPSWICH - In the latest twist of his public battle against illegal immigrants, Police Chief Garrett Chamberlain has taken what may be a unique legal approach: He has charged a man from Mexico with criminal trespass because he was in town without legal documents. As defined in state law (RSA 635:2), a person is guilty of criminal trespass “if, knowing that he is not licensed or privileged to do so, he enters or remains in any place.” “If we’re going to have immigration, it needs to be controlled and we need to know what’s happening on our borders. Nobody...