Free Republic

Russia plans to invest up to $625 billion over the next two decades to raise oil production by about 10 per cent and a further $590 billion to add at least 33 per cent to its gas output, the Energy Ministry said on Thursday. The oil and gas investment, part of a $2-trillion-plus plan to develop the Russian energy sector by 2030, also envisages Asian markets taking a much larger share of Russia's exports as the country develops resource fields in Siberia and the Far East. "This will allow the Russian energy sector to lower its risk of being dependent...

I don't typically watch Oprah. But I won't miss Monday's interview with Sarah Palin. The appearance is supposed to be about Ms. Palin's new memoir, but a lot more will be riding on the encounter than book sales. After last year's brutal presidential campaign, Ms. Palin is now reintroducing herself to the American public. Nothing less than her future in American politics—and a possible run for the White House in 2012—hangs in the balance. Ms. Palin has two problems. The first is that she's become one of the most polarizing figures in the country. The second is that voters continue...

All the talk in Washington is surrounding a government health insurance plan, but there’s a little discussed insurance plan in the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade bill that’s worth some attention. The Senate version of the cap and trade bill includes a section that grants the President the authority to “direct relevant federal agencies” to impose additional greenhouse gas regulations. Senators David Vitter (R-LA) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have been working assiduously to uncover the true costs of cap and trade legislation. Greenhouse gas concentrations are measured in parts per million (ppm). Many global warming alarmists believe that upper limit on...

For all that's transpired since his election as president, public opinion has not moved on the big issue, the current economy. The question a year later is how long Obama's got until it goes up, or he goes down – possibly with his party in tow. Health care reform draws a divided public response as well, with support for a variety of initiatives coupled with significant concern that they could do more harm than good. Some of Obama's best ratings lately have been in handling international affairs, contrary to questions during the 2008 campaign about his readiness for the global...

WASHINGTON – Ignoring a Republican boycott, Senate Democrats pushed a precedent-setting climate bill through a key committee Thursday. Rep. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, had delayed the crucial vote for days because of a Republican protest over whether the cost of the legislation had been fully examined. But the California Democrat moved quickly to pass the bill, which for the first time would set mandatory limits on heat-trapping gases, without any of the seven GOP senators on the panel present. The measure cleared the panel on a 11-1 vote. Boxer said the Republican demand...

“The Revolt of the Admirals” is a name given to an episode that took place in the late 1940s in which several US Navy admirals and high-ranking civilian officials publicly disagreed with the president and the Secretary of Defense’s plans to disband the US Marine Corps and most of the US Navy and give their missions to the new US Air Force, which proposed preserving the peace strictly with its new strategic international bomber force of B-36 bombers carrying nuclear weapons (which were still huge, the average fission bomb weighing 10,000 pounds). This decision climaxed in 1949 when many officers,...

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal. Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

I admit to being confused.

Even-Handed Idiocy By: P. David Hornik FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, May 21, 2009 A mist of verbiage arises from the reports on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s meetings with President Barack Obama and other officials in Washington. Stock words and phrases are used ritualistically that may have little connection to realities on the ground in Israel and the region. Among the more mindlessly repeated and least reality-linked are “two-state solution” and “regional peace.” 1. “Two-state solution.” At present, in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, three political entities already exist. One, Israel, is sovereign except for its partial or...

MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will put the first regiment of new-generation RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles into service in late 2009, the Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) commander said on Thursday. "We plan to put the first regiment of mobile [RS-24] missile systems equipped with multiple re-entry vehicle warheads into service by the end of this year," Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov said. The RS-24 ICBM, which will replace the older SS-18 and SS-19 missiles by 2050, is expected to greatly strengthen the SMF's strike capability, as well as that of its allies until the mid-21st century, Solovtsov said. The...

The Cold War's Most Dangerous Legacy [Mark Steyn] Jonah, I couldn't agree more on the Soviets' "psychological contamination." I think the Obama response to the North Korean test is a good example of that: The wish for "a world without nuclear weapons" is not merely a pacifist delusion but one that obliquely subscribes to the false equivalence so assiduously promoted during the Cold War. I wouldn't lose a moment's sleep if I read in the paper that New Zealand and Switzerland had decided to become nuclear powers. It's not the technology (which can't be un-invented, any more than the rifle...