Free Republic

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden wanted to introduce himself to America with an ABC television interview months before al Qaeda bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa, the interviewer testified on Tuesday. Former ABC correspondent John Miller, testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial, also recalled comparing bin Laden with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt as he made small talk during filming of the May 28, 1998, interview at an Afghanistan mountain hideout. It was a rare opportunity for an American journalist, and Miller detailed a movie-thriller route to get to bin Laden, complete with...

Barack Obama may not be the Big Thinker his fans think he is, but his big-time groveling is impressive. We've never seen a presidential performance quite like his Groveling, Toadying and Apple-Polishing Tour of the Olde Countries. If this is Monday, this must be a mosque. The president is understandably eager to see whether his honeyed tongue can tease and tickle the Europeans the way it teases the libido and scratches the itch of the hoi polloi at home, but the early returns show that he gave away a lot more than he got in return, which was nothing. The...

Drag queens dressed as Republican vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin - one runs down the street and another one poses after the High Heel Drag Race near Dupont Circle in Washington October 28, 2008. A drag queen dressed as Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain poses with a drag queen dressed as McCain's running mate Alaska Governor Sarah Palin before the High Heel Drag Race near Dupont Circle in Washington October 28, 2008. Jamaican-born disco diva Grace Jones arrives at the Q music awards in London on October 6. Jones has said she was sorry Hillary Clinton had...

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...

Cuba's Fidel Castro welcomed Venezuela's Hugo Chavez to the Karl Marx Theater in Havana and signed an agreement of unity that is designed to be an alternative to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Two documents were signed that the leaders say constitute the highest expression of unity and the will of both governments to increase the range of cooperation and bilateral relations in general -- a joint declaration and a agreement for the application of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA. "ALBA is the antithesis of the annexationist Free Trade Agreement of the Americas that the United...

"Our praises are our wages" Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" Adulators often appear in countries where total political power is in the hands of a strongman. Longing for approval from the master, adulators will do or say whatever it takes. This has happened in Venezuelan history since Boves and Guzman Blanco walked our geography. The people objects of adulation do not have to be particularly distinguished, as long as they have power. They can be louts like the Monagas brothers or Cipriano Castro or Juan Vicente Gomez or Marcos Perez Jimenez, but this poses no problem for the invertebrate members of the...