Free Republic

Flashback 2006: Dingy Reid Says Raising Debt Ceiling Will Weaken Country, Hurt The Economy… “If my Republican friends believe that increasing our debt by almost $800 billion today and more than $3 trillion over the last five years is the right thing to do, they should be upfront about it. They should explain why they think more debt is good for the economy.”

The Maoist government of Nepal has collapsed after a failed attempt to remove the country's right-wing army chief. The cabinet bid to sack Gen Rookmangud Katawal prompted the second largest party, the centrist UML, to resign from the ruling coalition. The Himalayan country is emerging from a 10 year civil war which ended with a ceasefire in 2006. Last year the former Maoist rebels won national elections and formed a coalition government. But the peace process is now stuck on the issue that sparked the latest crisis – the integration of former Maoist fighters into the traditionally conservative national army....

KATHMANDU: Battling for the removal of the controversial army chief, Gen Rookmangud Katawal, and his defender, President Ram Baran Yadav, Nepal's Maoist party walked into an ambush when an embarrassing video tape showed Maoist Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda boasting his guerrilla troops' number had been five-fold inflated during a UN count. In the same video, aired by Nepal's gleeful public television stations on Tuesday night, he was also shown as making scathing remarks about "reactionary" India and the US, saying that if they scented the constituent assembly election would lead to a Maoist victory, they would never allow...

So the chairman of Nepal's Maoist radicals brags that he and his fellow-travellers tricked United Nations officials and admits that the 2006 peace deal was a sham - and gets caught on videotape doing it. The video of the recently resigned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, was shot in January 2008 and just surfaced.

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

The CIA has come closer to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden’s top deputy than was previously known, during a nine-year hunt at the root of a devastating 2009 suicide bombing at an agency base in Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned. The CIA missed a chance to nab Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2003 in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, where he met with another senior al-Qaeda leader who was apprehended the next day, several current and former U.S. intelligence officials said. The fugitive Egyptian doctor may also have narrowly survived a bombing by Pakistani military planes in 2004, the...

Obama gets three-book deal worth $1.9 million December 17, 2004 — U.S. Sen.-elect Barack Obama, who saw a book he wrote a decade ago jump onto best seller lists after his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention this summer, has landed a three-book deal worth $1.9 million. Crown Publishing Group and Random House Children's Books, both divisions of Random House Inc., announced Friday that Obama will write two books for adults as well as a children's book he will work on with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters. "Writing is something that Senator Obama obviously enjoys as...

We are told by careful pollsters that half of the American people believe that American troops should be brought home from Iraq immediately. This news discourages supporters of our efforts there. Not me, though: I am relieved. Given press coverage of our efforts in Iraq, I am surprised that 90 percent of the public do not want us out right now. Between January 1 and September 30, 2005, nearly 1,400 stories appeared on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. More than half focused on the costs and problems of the war, four times as many as those that discussed...

Do you want Muslim Brotherhood operatives serving in the Congress? Sestak is in the pocket of Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood CAIR, and I have been reporting on this evil axis since 2007. He is lying about his ties to CAIR. What does that tell you? Art Moore over at WND: 2nd Sestak scandal days before election Unindicted terrorist co-conspirator leader claims to have hosted home fundraiser for Democrat Since his election to the House in 2006, Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak has fended off strong criticism of his relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a federally designated terrorist co-conspirator shown...

Note: Photo included. PHOTO CAPTION: "Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, in a tape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula." SNIPPET: "A videotape released by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) earlier this week says that a former Guantanamo detainee is now a commander within the terrorist organization. The former detainee, Othman Ahmed al Ghamdi, has risen to the rank of operational commander within AQAP as other senior terrorists within the organization have been killed in recent strikes. The tape, which is titled “America and the Final Trap,” confirms that three AQAP leaders were killed...

Top Al Qaeda operative taken into US custody 10 minutes ago The United States has taken into custody a top al-Qaeda operative who plotted to assassinate Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and other officials, a Pentagon spokesman said Friday. Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi, who was taken to the US navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba about a week ago, was intercepted while trying to reach Iraq to take over Al-Qaeda operations and to plot attacks from there against western targets outside Iraq, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. He is "one of Al-Qaeda's highest ranking and senior operatives at the time of...

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON — A US man has been charged after he compiled a hit list of 15 people he believed had harmed Muslim civilians and deserved to die, court documents showed Wednesday. Paul Rockwood and his wife Nadia were charged with lying to federal investigators about the compilation and content of the list, which Nadia Rockwood delivered to an unnamed individual in April at her husband's request." SNIPPET: "According to plea agreement documents obtained by AFP Wednesday, Paul Rockwood converted to Islam around late 2001 and soon "became a strict adherent to the violent jihad-promoting ideology of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki."...

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK -- The question was simple: “Would you like to die as a martyr?” The putative terrorist unhesitatingly replied yes—there was no greater way to die in Islam. The right answer put the man in the midst of a terrorist plot conceived as more devastating than the 9/11 attacks. He was soon making surveillance trips around John F. Kennedy International Airport—the “chicken farm,” as the planners dubbed their target -- and visiting the Trinidad compound of a radical Muslim group. On Saturday, the insider—a twice-convicted drug dealer—was revealed as a government informant whose surreptitious work undermined a plot...

Attacks on nuclear power stations, oil and gas terminals, Canary Wharf and Heathrow’s control tower were being considered by leaders of the plot to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-flight, a court was told yesterday. Documents found on computer memory sticks at the home of an alleged terrorist ringleader contained a list of targets across Britain – including the gas pipeline between Britain and Belgium. The man, Assad Sarwar, was said to be in contact with terrorist leaders overseas and visited Pakistan a month before his arrest as preparations for the airline attacks were being finalised. Peter Wright, QC,...

Some Milestones in Israel-Palestine1834 - 1886 - 1920 - 1922 - 1929 - 1938 - 1941 - 1948 - 1950s-1960s - 1970 1972 - 1973 - 1975 - 1976 - 1982 - 1987 - 1994 - 2000 - 2001 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2010 1834 First recorded attack on native Jews in Israel by Muslims, is the one in June 1834, Safed (the Plunder), the massacres and mass rapes went on for 33 days, (an inciter, Muhammed Damoor, a self-proclaimed prophet, ‘prophesied’ the attack for which he agitated). It was repeated in 1838. 1886 First...

Link to page with YouTube Video.(Video caption: Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) speaking at a forum on national housing policy on December 11, 2006. Three weeks after making this speech at the Treasury Department, Frank became Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Frank on Democrats taking over regulatory reform:“You will see far less difference with Democrats taking over in the Financial Services regulatory area than in virtually any other area of public policy, because we did work together on things like regulatory relief and we have more to do yet in the deregulation. One of the things we did was...

Despite a coordinated hype campaign between left-wing pro-illegal immigration activists and the mainstream media, turnout was a bust at May Day marches in two bellwether American cities where crowds were much lower than expected. In Los Angeles, the turnout was a mere tenth of the half-million that marched there four years ago.In a preview article published yestereday, Reuters said of the pending Los Angeles march:Marches across the state on Saturday will show whether Latinos are energized. The standard will be the rallies in March 2006, when some 500,000 people took over downtown Los Angeles to oppose a tough federal bill...

Obama Says U.S. Would Defend Israel Militarily Reuter, 1-Apr-2010 President Obama said yesterday the United States would defend Israel militarily if necessary against Iran, a statement that appeared to be his most explicit commitment to Israel's defense. In an interview with Reuters, Obama said he is concerned about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "menacing talk" about Israel, such as his comments denying the Holocaust and saying Israel should be wiped off the map. "Israel is a solid ally of the United States. We will rise to Israel's defense, if need be. So this kind of menacing talk is disturbing. It's not...

It looks like president-elect Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Holdren is a professor of environmental policy at Harvard and former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As Ron Bailey points out, he has been an activist on the ecological left and no friend of free markets. Perhaps more striking is his activism well beyond his own academic specialty, arguing, for instance, that scientists have a responsibility to advance the cause of the elimination of all nuclear weapons and seeking controls on population growth. And he didn’t say all this in the...

Visit Pajamas. Yesterday morning, I had an encounter on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. with Julia Tarver Mason — a lawyer who represents several accused terrorists. I found that Ms. Mason is more willing to speak with terrorists then reporters. My interest in Ms. Mason began two nights ago, when I read the investigative piece by Debra Burlingame and Thomas Joscelyn in the Wall Street Journal regarding 400 American lawyers from high priced law firms who have “volunteered” their time to personally wage “lawfare” on behalf of enemy combatants held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. One of the premier...