Free Republic

We believe that the United States has a powerful national interest in Afghanistan, in depriving Al Qaeda of a safe haven on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. This country would also do enormous damage to its moral and strategic standing if it now simply abandoned the Afghan people to the Taliban’s brutalities. But like many Americans, we are increasingly confused and anxious about the strategy in Afghanistan and wonder whether, at this late date, there is a chance of even minimal success. ... But reports from the ground have been so relentlessly grim — July’s death toll of 66...

Government Bails Out Bank CEO After He Expenses Mansion, Jaguar, And Porsche Courtney Comstock Aug. 12, 2010, 1:16 PM Inside the Maxine Waters' ethics trial case comes the story of the government bailing out a corrupt Boston bank that Waters' husband owned stock in and sat on the board of. When Kevin Cohee, the CEO and Chairman of OneUnited, asked the government to loan the bank $50 million in TARP funds, it was discovered that Cohee had expensed quite a lifestyle to the bank's account. According to the Boston Herald, Cohee's car collection (a Porsche, a Jaguar, and more) and...

On July 22, the Defense Business Board task force recommended that the Secretary of Defense reduce the DoD civilian workforce by more than 111,000, and laid the groundwork for potential future recommendations to cut spending on military retirement, health care, family support, and other programs. Additionally, the task force recommended drastic reductions in combatant command staffing, hiring freezes, and elimination of organizational duplication. These preliminary recommendations will be followed in October by additional cost-cutting proposals. For the last year, the Defense Business Board has predicted major problems for the Defense budget as the nation deals with deficit reduction efforts, the...

But the bill also requires that $12 billion be stripped from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, to help fund the new bill, prompting some Democrats to cringe at the notion of cutting back on one necessity to pay for another. Arguably one of the most outspoken opponents on the Democratic side is Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who has blasted the move as “a bitter pill to swallow” but still voted yes. “I fought very hard for the food assistance money in the Recovery Act, and the fact is that participation in the food stamps program...

Red Eye’s Greg Gutfeld popped up at the very end of Glenn Beck tonight to expound on his plans to open a Muslim Gay bar next door to the proposed Muslim Ground Zero Mosque (which, just for clarity’s sake, is not actually a mosque). I’m not even going to bother explaining the exchange for you because it’s short and more fun for you just to watch. Suffice to say, Beck and Gutfeld go over proposed names (Suspicious Packages merely being the catchiest of the bunch) and talk about how Gutfeld is…trying to open up the dialogue. Watch below.

Leading gay blogger John Aravosis, writing today at his Americablog about White House spokesman Robert Gibbs attacking inside the beltway progressive critics of Barack Obama, like Aravosis, let slip that he performed surreptitious "dirty work" for Obama at the behest of his 2008 presidential campaign:Joe and I are upset with Obama, and we, for example, raised nearly $43,000 for the man, According to the White House, our money now doesn't count. Great, would they like to give it back? I for one, would love the $1000 back that I personally donated to the Obama campaign. Joe gave even more. I...

Charlie Rangel is live on Fox news speaking on the House floor.

President Barack Obama sits in the driver's seat of a 2011 Ford Explorer as he tours the Ford Motor Company Chicago Assembly Plant August 5, 2010. U.S. President Barack Obama greets employees as he tours the Ford Motor Company Chicago Assembly Plant August 5, 2010. Obama used the visit to highlight the turnaround in the U.S. motor vehicle manufacturing sector in the past year U.S. President Barack Obama sits takes a look at electric cars as he attends the groundbreaking of a factory for Compact Power Inc. in Holland, Michigan July 15, 2010. The completed factory will employ more than...

It's time to abandon Earth, warned the world's most famous theoretical physicist. In an interview with website Big Think, Stephen Hawking warned that the long-term future of the planet is in outer space. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet," he said. "I see great dangers for the human race," Hawking said. "There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question...

A week ago, as is well enough known, Omar Thornton shot and killed eight of his coworkers while being escorted out of the building after having been terminated by his employer, a Connecticut beer distributor. As I write this, President Barack Obama has yet to address this subject in any public way. He is not alone in his restraint. The media have soft-pedaled the motive -- the whole shooting, for that matter. Four days after the fact, my wife, who watches CNN and listens to NPR, had not heard about it. Unlike, say, Oklahoma City or even Columbine, the tragedy...

With thanks and credit to Brugmansian, it's looking like all the LSM fuss about Michelle's extravagant vacation in Spain, just might be a distraction to cover up a much more sinister reason for her trip. Brugmansian uncovered the following article in EL MUNDO and the last paragraph is of specific importance. Varias casas reales árabes también pasan sus veranos en Marbella desde hace años. Así, habrá un encuentro entre Michelle Obama y el príncipe Salman bin Abdelaziz, gobernador de Riad y hermano del fallecido Rey Fahd de Arabia Saudí; mientras que se baraja otra reunión de la primera dama con...

Editorial Reviews Review James Keena has done a superb job of reconstructing Barack Obama's carefully obscured past and documenting his network of radical connections. The result is an unsettling, detailed portrait of the first anti-American President. --Scott Sweet, Author of To Set the Record Straight: How Swift Boat Veterans, POWs and the New Media Defeated John Kerry This book will awaken those outside of the 20 percent far-left demographic who still somehow believe the narrative that Barack Obama is a post-partisan, post-racial, all-American politician. James leaves hardly a stone unturned exposing the true identity of the man behind the lofty...

HOLIYAH SOETORO SABAH, “LIA”, OBAMA’S ADOPTED SISTER What information was taken to her grave? You haven’t heard of Lia? Neither had we. The unknown, until now, adopted sister of Barack Hussein Obama died unexpectedly February 26, 1910. The USA media didn’t cover the story of this woman nor was her name found until the last few days. A competent WTPOTUS sleuth, Leza, and other researchers uncovered an article about an adopted “brother” in Indonesia, named Lia or Lee. Following up on a tidbit of information and other clues, more information was uncovered. Lia was an adopted sister, not a brother....

<p>WASHINGTON -- The U.S. economy shed more jobs than expected in July while the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%, a further sign the economic recovery may be losing momentum. Nonfarm payrolls fell by 131,000 last month as the rise in private-sector employment was not enough to make up for the government jobs lost, the U.S. Labor Department said Friday. Only 71,000 private-sector jobs were added last month while 143,000 temporary workers on the 2010 census were let go.</p>

LONDON – Online whistle-blower WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named "Insurance" to its website, sparking speculation that those behind the organization may be prepared to release more classified information if authorities interfere with them. At 1.4 gigabytes, the file is 20 times larger than the batch of 77,000 secret U.S. military documents about Afghanistan that WikiLeaks dumped onto the Web last month, and cryptographers say that the file is virtually impossible to crack — unless WikiLeaks releases the key used to encode the material.

Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help....

MANCHESTER, Conn. — Omar Thornton sat calmly in a meeting with union representative and his supervisors as they showed a video of him stealing beer from the distributor where he worked. Busted, he didn't put up a fight, company officials said. He quietly signed a letter of resignation and was headed for the door when he pulled out a gun and started firing — "cold as ice," as one survivor described it. In the end, Thornton killed eight people and wounded two, then turned the gun on himself in a rampage Tuesday at Hartford Distributors where at least some of...

Obama/Holder’s Seeds Already Bearing Fruit The Obama Administration and its Attorney General, Eric Holder, have sent a series of strong, unmistakable messages to America’s Black Community: ‘Commit crimes against whites, and you can just hide behind the accusation of racism. We may not even prosecute you.’ The message has been heard loud and clear, and is already bearing fruit. On August 3, 2010, a black man was called into his employers’ offices to face disciplinary action. His name was Omar Thornton. He had been videotaped stealing from his company. The video was shown, and Omar was asked to resign his...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama has signed a bill to reduce the disparity between federal mandatory sentences for convictions for crack cocaine and the powder form of the drug. Obama’s signing of the bill in the Oval Office was open only to news photographers but not the rest of the media. He made no remarks. But as a longtime thorn for the black community, the matter is important to a key Obama constituency. The quarter-century-old law that Congress changed with the new bill has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while...

Every political movement needs a manifesto. The Tea Party surely needs one. So do other grassroots political resistance organizations. They don't have it yet, but they now have its preliminary foundation, Angelo Codevilla's essay, "America's Ruling Class -- And the Perils of Revolution." http://GaryNorth.com/snip/997.htm I have long regarded Dr. Codevilla as America's smartest conservative political analyst. He has been unknown to the conservative public until last week, when Rush Limbaugh began promoting the best essay of Codevilla's career. I regard this essay as the finest statement on the two-fold division in American political life written in my lifetime -- more...