Free Republic

The Soviet-Afghan War destroyed Afghanistan and eventually the Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991 into 15 republics. Numerous satellite states in Europe were liberated at the same time. History may repeat as the Russia-Ukraine war weakens Moscow, financially and geopolitically. Russia’s 2022 invasion was about reoccupying a former colony, Ukraine, but there are other Russian republics that hope to become liberated... … in December 1991, Ukrainians voted for independence and Ukraine became the first of the Soviet republics to leave. The Baltic republics followed, as did Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and others. Now there is unrest across the Russian Federation…...

Dr. Anthony Fauci has once again sounded the warning bell over COVID-19, saying in an interview on Tuesday that those who are not up to date on vaccines will “get into trouble” this fall and winter. “If they don’t get vaccinated or they don’t get boosted, they’re going to get into trouble,” Fauci told Los Angeles radio station KNX-AM. A large part of the U.S. population is not up to date on the COVID-19 vaccines.

Even before the Ukraine war began, people were speculating that something was physically wrong with Putin. He looked puffy, not as if he’d gained weight, but as if he were reacting to medicines. Speculation escalated with recent videos showing him clutching a table and with a badly shaking hand. Now, The Sun, a British tabloid, is claiming that Putin is going under the knife for a cancer operation, as well as suffering from Parkinson’s. As early as January 3, Britain’s Telegraph paper was suggesting that Putin is seriously ill. The five pieces of evidence it reported were his puffy face;...

ESPN host Stephen A. Smith says he rang in the New Year hospitalized with COVID - and that doctors told him he would died if he hadn't been vaccinated. He shared details about his serious bout with the virus Monday after returning to the air on the network's First Take, saying: 'It almost took me out.' The 54-year-old began the episode by revealing he feared he might die after he was hospitalized with a 103-degree fever and double pneumonia on January 1. 'I didn't know if I was going to make it,' Smith said. 'They told me, had I not...

This wasn’t a new line of attack for De Niro, who has harshly criticized Trump since he announced his 2016 campaign. Moore asked De Niro about his past remarks about wanting to punch Trump in the face.

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona lashed out at President Donald Trump on Wednesday for Trump's recent comments about NATO's collective defense obligations. In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday evening, in response to a question by host Tucker Carlson, Trump echoed Carlson's concerns about whether the U.S. should defend a small country like Montenegro if it were to come under attack. McCain, who is known to be hawkish on Russia, accused Trump of toeing the Kremlin line. “The people of #Montenegro boldly withstood pressure from #Putin’s Russia to embrace democracy. The Senate voted 97-2 supporting its accession to...

Ok. I'm tired of John McCain lackies, i.e. Meghan McCain, trashing conservatives for trashing her father. She seems to think Daddy was the end-all/be-all for the last hundred something years. However, I seem to remember the McCain rule as something more sinister. What I remember J. McCain for is trashing Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin rescued is moribund candidacy from the grave. She infused the Republican Party with energy! But, alas, McCain couldn't follow-through. He wouldn't trash Barack Hussein Obama and he wouldn't talk bad about his politics. In the end, he wasted ALL of our time and energy for a...

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.) slammed the Trump administration on Wednesday for missing a key deadline in implementing sanctions against Russia. “The delay calls into question the Trump administration’s commitment to the sanctions bill which was signed into law more than two months ago, following months of public debate and negotiations in Congress. They’ve had plenty of time to get their act together," the pair said in a joint statement on Wednesday. By Oct. 1, the McCain and Cardin-penned sanctions bill required the administration clarify which targets would be identified and punished as part of Russia's defense...

GOP Sen. John McCain  said Tuesday the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border is so dire the military needs to be deployed to patrol the region as soon as possible. In a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson, McCain asked Johnson why he hasn’t requested help from the Department of Defense to combat drug traffickers piercing Arizona’s border. DHS has been unable to prevent the flow of heroin and other narcotics flooding in from Mexico.

Medical costs for enrollees in the health-care law’s high-risk insurance pools are expected to more than double initial predictions, the Obama administration said Thursday in a report on the new program. The health-care law set aside $5 billion for a Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, meant to provide health insurance to those who had been declined coverage by private carriers. Since its launch last summer, nearly 50,000 Americans have enrolled in the program. The PCIP program will phase out in 2014, when insurers will be required to accept all applicants regardless of their health-care status.Those who have enrolled in the program...

It's been two weeks since George Soros bought himself a major economic conference designed to remake the entire global economy. Just because the event received little major news attention, it still had an impact Americans might be reeling from for years. When the anti-American Soros spent $50 million creating the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), he set in motion a major move against the dollar. The billionaire who once crushed the British pound through currency trading openly declared his plans to 'reform the currency system.' In the Machiavellian mind of Soros, the dollar needed to take...

The House health-care reform bill proposes to decrease hospital visits by establishing a “medical home pilot program” for elderly and disabled Americans. Such a medical home would not require a physician to be on the staff, and therefore could be run solely by nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Medical homes also would practice “evidence-based” medicine, which advocates only the use of medical treatments that are supported by effectiveness research. But physicians’ groups say the legislation could lead to restrictions on which treatments may be used for certain conditions, despite the fact that some patients might require a unique or unconventional...

WASHINGTON -- It’s unlikely that the United States will ever live down the shame of torture during the Bush-Cheney administration. It’s history now and all the piety and wit of those former U.S. officials responsible for this horrendous chapter cannot wipe out a word of it. Mark Danner published in the New York Review of Books excerpts of a leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on CIA interrogation techniques used at secret U.S. "black site" prisons abroad and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Red Cross report is based on Red Cross interviews in 2006 with 14 "high...

Rumors about the death of Cuban President, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, are nothing new and have circulated many times before, but many Cuban exiles in Miami believe this one is for real. With no word from Fidel Castro on his birthday (August 13), speculation about his “departure” have increased. If Castro is not already dead, it is probably safe to say that, from a political point of view, he longer exists. Fidel transferred his presidential powers to his brother (and successor) Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz earlier this year (although this happened provisionally in July 2006), while receiving surgery to repair...

Every theater-style seat in the White House briefing room, now closed for renovation, had a brass plaque inscribed with the name of a news organization. Only one, in the middle of the front row, had a name: “HELEN THOMAS,” it said. The unique assigned seat between the chairs for CBS News and ABC News was reserved for the legendary United Press International correspondent who is now a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. The press corps is scheduled to move from temporary facilities back into the spiffed-up, rewired briefing room in May or June. Thomas, who has been questioning presidents and press...

America Radio, the liberal news and talk radio network headlined by the comedian Al Franken, has another week to find a buyer. A lawyer for the network, Tracy Klestadt, told a bankruptcy hearing Monday that the company was in "advanced negotiations with a few parties" about a sale, and expected to have more definitive news on a deal in a week. Under its financing agreement, the network had faced a deadline of this Wednesday to have a deal in place for a buyer, but Klestadt said the network's lender had informally agreed to extend the deadline by about a week....

Because I think it's important to know what they're saying, I was listening to Air Amerika tonight and one of the young Kennedy's was doing a commercial urging a Democratic Vote. He was railing on the Diebolds and how they were sure to skew the votes in favor of the Republicans. He then said that the votes were tampered in the 2000 elections, the 2004 elections, the 2006 elections and we must be sure they don't do it in the 2008 elections. He said the 2006 votes were tampered with and we haven't even gone to the polls! Sounds like...

HOLLYWOOD - Movie star and activist Jane Fonda has blasted President George W. Bush on national TV because his international politics make her worry for the safety of her grandchildren. Speaking on advertising mogul Donnie Deutsch's nightly chat show on Thursday, the actress got angry when she was asked to explain her feelings for Bush. She fumed, "I am so frightened for this country and if we don't see change in the mid-term elections... I have grandchildren and I have never in my 68 years been so frightened for what's happening to our country. "We're turning the world against us....

A Kurdish villager testified Tuesday he left behind his mother and two sisters as he fled a 1988 attack by Saddam Hussein's forces. Years later, his relatives' identity cards were found in a mass grave, he said. "Congratulations! You are in a cage, Saddam," witness Ghafour Hassan Abdullah said as he stared at the ousted president. Saddam listened silently but lost his temper when a lawyer described Iraqi Kurdish rebels as freedom fighters. "You are agents of Iran and Zionism! We will crush your heads!" he shouted. Saddam and six others are on trial for their roles in the 1987-88...