Free Republic

TORONTO - Iran has ordered Canada's ambassador to leave the country, the Canadian foreign minister said late Monday, calling the move unjustifiable. Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier suggested the expulsion of Ambassador John Mundy, who was recently appointed but has not yet had his credentials accepted, was a tit-for-tat move by the government in Tehran. Canada and Iran have tried to come to an agreement on an exchange of ambassadors for some time. "Unfortunately, we have as yet been unable to accept the candidates Tehran has submitted," Bernier said in a statement. "We believe that the expulsion of our ambassador...

Just over a week ago it was hard to imagine how the international reputation of the Sudanese government could sink any lower. Accused of sponsoring the killing and rape of hundreds of thousands of its own people in Darfur and then of blocking the peacekeepers who might protect them - barely a week passed without a threat of sanctions or a new UN resolution. But thanks to the Gillian Gibbons saga, Sudan has managed to transform its public image from pariah state to something approaching a laughing stock. If Khartoum was hoping to turn the teddy bear into a rallying...

Question: If success in Iraq isn't reported, does that mean it's not news? Last month saw the trickle of positive news from Iraq turn into a flood. Our troops, our allies and the people of Iraq are winning the war against fanatical jihadists murderers. By any measure. But curiously, the American media, the same media that gave 24/7 coverage of Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and the "quagmire" in Iraq, has suddenly gone silent. Here's a sampling of the astonishing good news out of Iraq in just this last week. News our American media either overlooked or relegated to a couple paragraphs...

BAGHDAD - The number of Iraqis killed last month fell to 718, an Associated Press tally showed, the lowest monthly death toll since just before the 2006 bombing of a Shiite shrine provoked a vicious cycle of retaliatory sectarian violence. The figures come as the military says violence has fallen to levels not seen in nearly two years, while acknowledging that Iraqis are still dying in unacceptable numbers. An expert on the effect of conflicts on civilians agreed,...

While the world obsesses this week over whether the ill-fated Annapolis conference will result in the ultimate Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, the real political drama is taking place in Lebanon. In Beirut, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a renowned Syrian stooge, has stepped down, creating a political vacuum large enough to send the country back to its dark days of civil war. Hezbollah ("the Party of God") stands in the middle of this political battle, aiming to expand its power, ensure its long-term survival as a militant movement and serve Damascus' interests in selecting Lebanon's new president. Hezbollah intends to meet these...

The Annapolis peace summit is just days old, but already it is having an adverse impact on Israel’s security. In agreeing to move toward a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians, Israeli negotiators have left the Jewish state between a rock and hard place. On the one hand, they must attempt to build momentum in the peace process. At the same time, they must brace for a series of terror attacks and attempts to sabotage the peace process. In keeping with commitments made at the summit, Israel is aborting a military operation in the Gaza Strip. Meant to undermine the...

The very day after Canada's Defense Minister warned of a dirty bomb or nuclear device entering North American ports in a cargo container, Slovakian police thwarted the sale of enough weapons grade uranium to prove him right. On Wednesday, Peter Mackay told an Ottawa conference of transportation security experts that the greatest threat facing North America is international terrorists detonating, "a crude radioactive dispersal device or a conventional nuclear bomb after smuggling it in one of the millions of cargo containers arriving annually on foreign ships." As reported by Canwest News service: "His assessment of the maritime threat is the...

LONDON - It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard shift might increase your cancer risk. Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will classify shift work as a "probable" carcinogen. That will put shift work in the same category as cancer-causing agents like anabolic steroids, ultraviolet radiation, and diesel engine exhaust. If the shift work theory proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of...

Who would assess the Christian response to the letter from Muslim leaders, "A Common Word between Us and You," in the following words: This is an initiative that I think has some traction. And I know, there's a desire on the part of a critical mass of Muslims who want to move forward, but to be quite frank, I'm concerned about the Christian leadership, and it's how the Christian leadership responds that will affect how this moves forward. a. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose $20 million donation to Georgetown bought him an eponymous Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding; b. Sheik...

...The last such meeting, the Camp David summit between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak, sponsored by then-President Bill Clinton, was followed by massive violence. Therefore, the most we have learned to hope for from such meetings is nothing. This one will either be meaningless or catastrophic. There is an interesting twist to this meeting, however. The Arab League voted to encourage Arab foreign ministers to attend. The Saudis have announced they will be present, along with the Egyptians and Jordanians who were expected there. Even the Syrians said they will attend, as long as the future of the Golan Heights...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A Republican group that backs abortion rights will start an ad campaign this weekend in Iowa and New Hampshire portraying Mitt Romney as a flip-flopper and drawing attention to a questionnaire he filled out in 2002 endorsing legal abortions. The ads by the Republican Majority for Choice suggest Romney's current anti-abortion stance is politically motivated. The group will spend more than $100,000 to air a 30-second television spot in Iowa and New Hampshire and run full page ads Sunday in the Des Moines Register, the Concord Monitor and the New Hampshire Union Leader. "He's an opportunist," Jennifer...

They don't call themselves feminists. They don't belong to any groups or organisations. They don't claim victim status, and they aren't members of NOW or CodePink. They don't have big bucks or political backing. They don't have the ear of the media or the establishment press. They most assuredly don't have the backing of the plethora of established human rights, civil rights or women's rights groups who claim to be the voice of the underdogs and the champions of the oppressed. All they have is their own experiences, their passion and their voices, which are raised in unison against the...

If you need a good idea of what government-run healthcare would mean to you and your family, look no further than Medicare, or the wrangling taking place in Washington surrounding Medicare funding. With much of the media focused on the Democrats' efforts to expand eligibility and funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), much less publicity has been given to Congressional deliberations on Medicare. While SCHIP is a backdoor effort to grow government-run healthcare, the Medicare funding process is a good example of what happens once politicians get to decide how much and what sort of healthcare participants...

While I was a teenager and still enthralled with my own generation, the Boomers, I truly believed that we were heralding a new and better human nature. We were going to stamp out prejudice, discrimination, and every other foul practice in the hemisphere. No more bashing folks of color. No more negative stereotyping for females. No more blonde jokes, fat jokes, handicap jokes, divorce jokes, gay jokes or Polish jokes. Human nature be damned. We could all be nice to each other if we tried hard enough, if we just had enough determination. Here we are forty years later, and...

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama intensified the bickering Sunday over their competing health plans, reflecting the crucial stakes as Iowa's leadoff caucuses in early January approach. Clinton said Obama's proposal was "crafted for politics" and the latest example of his shifting policy positions. Obama said much the same of her approach. "Senator Obama and I have been having a debate about health care for a couple of days and it's a very important debate," Clinton said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "The difference is my health care plan covers every American and...

A recent e-mail from Norman Finkelstein, which was forwarded to Dean Elana Kagan of the Harvard Law School, indicates that Finkelstein’s name-calling has now turned sexist. Using his mother’s voice, Finkelstein describes Dean Kagan as “a whore” and says that if his mother were still around she would come up to Cambridge and call her that demeaning, sexist term “to her face and then throttle her.” (This sounds very similar to the threat made by Finkelstein admirer Robert Trivers when he threatened to come to Cambridge and perpetrate violence on me.) Finkelstein’s apparent complaint about Dean Kagan -- who he...

President Bush gave the following speech on Monday at the Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, Virginia. We reproduce it here as part of our holiday issue to celebrate this historical American observance and share his thanks for those who sacrifice their own holiday respite in service of our nation and liberty. -- The Editors.. Berkeley also claims to be the site of America's first official Thanksgiving. (Applause.) The good folks here say that the founders of Berkeley held their celebration before the Pilgrims had even left port. (Applause.) As you can imagine, this version of events is not very popular...

My mother is a feminist. A die-hard, take no prisoners, true-blue feminist. Armed with a hard-won PhD., she has made her life's work the counselling of the transgendered, the gay and the sexually confused. Honest work in which she is passionately invested. The only fly in the ointment is me, her conservative daughter. I am as passionate a conservative as my mother is a feminist. It's hard to imagine two more diametrically opposing viewpoints. I view the current state of feminism as doing more harm than good. As undermining the traditional and family values that I consider the backbone of...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Robert Zubrin, the president of Pioneer Astronautics and also president of the Mars Society. For many years he worked as a senior engineer for Lockheed Martin. In addition, he is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction books The Case for Mars, Entering Space, Mars on Earth; the science fiction novels The Holy Land and First Landing; and articles in Scientific American, The New Atlantis, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mechanical Engineering, and The American Enterprise. He has appeared on major media including CNN, CSPAN, the BBC, the Discovery Channel, NBC, ABC, and...

Republicans in the Senate and House are in such deep trouble that they may not only see their numbers decrease in next year's election, they may even find the Democrats with a veto-proof majority in the Senate, a Newsmax survey finds. One year after voters routed Republicans in the midterms, many in the GOP have all but abandoned the goal of re-claiming majority status. Privately, insiders concede, they’d be happy just to hold their ground. “We’re completely realistic over here. We see the mountain in front of us,” said Rebecca Fisher, communications director for the Senate GOP’s campaign committee, which...