Free Republic

SYDNEY: The mother of Australian-born WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today expressed fear for her son's safety, saying the forces he was challenging had become "too big". Christine Assange said her "highly intelligent" and curious son had been raised as a strongly ethical "seeker of truth". But Assange said her son, now subject to a global Interpol arrest demand over rape charges in Sweden, had become "too smart for himself" and she now feared for his safety.

In the wake of National Public Radio firing Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page Thursday afternoon to call for NPR’s defunding. “National Public Radio is a public institution that directly or indirectly exists because the taxpayers fund it,” she wrote. “And what do we, the taxpayers, get for this? We get to witness Juan Williams being fired from NPR for merely speaking frankly about the very real threat this country faces from radical Islam.” Palin acknowledged Williams’ past criticism of her, but asserted her devotion to free...

China's Korea crisis Monday, May 31, 2010 CHINA HAS BEEN treating its neighbors, and the world, to a demonstration of why its rising power is not necessarily to be welcomed. Though it has become undeniable that its neighbor and client, North Korea, committed an act of war by sinking a South Korean warship in March, Beijing continues to shield the loathsome regime of Kim Jong Il. An authoritative investigation by a multinational commission has produced fragments of the torpedo fired by the North's submarine, yet Chinese officials continue to pretend they don't know the facts of what happened. Their public...

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated? The fierce reaction to my column has been both bracing and enlightening. After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced...

While the campaigns go about their business of calling each other lying bags of dog excrement, and the left wing media (who actually are lying bags of dog excrement) go about trying to smear Sarah Palin, her daughters, her husband, Alaska, mayors, small towns, bitter clingers, and anyone who disagrees with Barack Obama on principle; A word of caution. The voters are watching. Listen to the frustrated rage of this woman at McCain's townhall.

Switzerland: Ethnic Albanians keep a grip on heroin supplyEthnic Albanian criminal gangs continue to pose a serious security threat, dominating the transit and supply of heroin to Switzerland, warns a federal police expert. By Simon Bradley for swissinfo (27/08/08) Three members of the same Kosovo family are currently on trial in Switzerland accused of operating one of Europe's largest heroin wholesale operations. Prosecutors say the 69-year-old father and his two sons, aged 42 and 28, used their base in the southeast European country to import 1.5 tons of heroin from Turkey for sale elsewhere. "[The clan] has been one of...

The eruption of outrage, shock and fear that is flowing over Barack Obama’s campaign like hot lava because his pastor has preached some strident sermons tells us one thing for certain: Many white people don’t know black people at all. If they did, they would know that Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago is hardly the only black minister who uses the pulpit to rant against racial duplicity and injustice. The black church has always been the place for letting our hair down and speaking our peace -- a safe haven from the criminations outside. It’s how and why the black...

As media digest the recent John McCain sex scandal allegations by the New York Times, one side of the story seems destined to get ignored: one of the four co-authors took money from a liberal activist group to fund a hit piece about Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) in 2006. Before becoming an investigative reporter for the Times, Pulitzer Prize winner Marilyn W. Thompson was editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky... when she was editor of one of the leading newspapers in Kentucky, took money from a liberal activist group to hire a Democrat Congressional Fellow for a hit piece...

AUSTIN — The ability of the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee to raise national party money for the general election campaign in Texas may be hindered if Hillary Rodham Clinton is the party's presidential nominee, one-time senatorial candidate Mikal Watts said Tuesday. "If Hillary is the nominee, that will have an effect on whether the national Democrats will play in Texas," Watts said. "The prevailing thought is the Republicans don't have anybody who will motivate their base to get out. There are some who think Hillary will do that," he said. Watts said he has seen Texas polling that shows "right-wing...

“BLOWBACK” is an intelligence term for adverse, unintended consequences of secret operations. The CIA first used it in a report on the 1953 operation that overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Some in the intelligence community have been working with liberal journalists and Democrats on Capitol Hill to embarrass President Bush and to stymie his foreign policy initiatives. The most successful of these covert operations was the Valerie Plame affair, in which White House officials were falsely blamed for “outing” a CIA undercover officer who was not in fact undercover. (It was then Deputy Secretary of State Richard...

The following is a conclusion of a long article by a philosopher Lee Harris where he is deconstructing a frequently heard lately charge of "blowback" to US actions in the world (i.e. that 9/11 was a "blowback" for the United States' foreign policy toward the Muslim world over the past half century or so, going back to the CIA engineered coup in 1953 that ousted Iranian leader Mossadegh, and that  "we had it coming" as a response to "American imperialism") ...This conclusion, however, poses a radical dilemma. A libertarian can plausibly argue that politicians should not interfere with domestic affairs,...

Vandalism at Westboro Baptist Church Friday November 2 2007 9:44 TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Topeka police are investigating vandalism at the Westboro Baptist Church, known for its protests at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. Police said graffiti spray-painted on the church read, "God hates intolerance'' and "God hates the Phelps,'' an apparent reference to the church's belief that God is punishing the United States for its support of homosexuals. The vandalism was discovered on the day after a Baltimore jury awarded 11 million dollars to the father of a fallen Marine who sued the church over its protest...

Waxman Denies Investigation of Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin By Nathan Burchfiel CNSNews.com Staff Writer October 10, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) on Wednesday denied that he is conducting or ever planned to conduct a congressional investigation of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin and called on a conservative magazine to retract its report that he asked investigators to compile information on the popular conservative talk radio hosts. "The American Spectator report about a congressional investigation into talk radio is completely false," Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement to Cybercast News...

Huge mosque stirs protests in Cologne By Harry de Quetteville in Cologne Last Updated: 12:39am BST 25/06/2007 The construction of one of Europe's biggest mosques near to a globally famous Christian landmark has sparked a furious row in Germany. Immigration and integration are hugely sensitive questions in Germany, which is home to a Turkish community of several million. But almost within the shadow of Cologne Cathedral, political correctness has now been replaced by bitter confrontation as the city's Muslims begin to build a 2,000-capacity mosque with twin minarets that will reach 170ft. "Muslims have been here for 40 years, yet...

George W. Bush's 2004 campaign fund-raisers and contributors are being bombarded with appeals for money by Sen. John McCain's heavy-spending, money-short 2008 campaign. McCain is concentrating heavily on the rich target of lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, D.C. They have been invited to multiple McCain fund-raising events held in the nation's capital, currently a $1,000-a-ticket reception June 26 at the Capitol Hill Club with a potential "event co-chair" asked to raise $50,000. A large percentage of the Bush fund-raising team remains uncommitted, a signal that the Republican establishment is not satisfied with the present field seeking the party's nomination. McCain's...

Afghan Warlord Says He Helped Bin Laden Escape Tora Bora Thursday, January 11, 2007 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in a television interview broadcast Thursday that his fighters helped Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden escape intense U.S. bombing in the Tora Bora mountains in 2001. Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister and leader of the Hezb-e-Islami militant group, told Pakistan's private Geo TV network that when the United States began its assault on the rugged Afghan mountains five years ago, some of his fighters moved bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and other associates to...

Jon Stewart, the sage of Comedy Central, is one of the few to be honest about it. "What if Bush ... has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may ... implode." Daniel Schorr, another critic of the Bush foreign policy, ventured, a bit more grudgingly, that Bush "may have had it right." Right on what? That America, using power harnessed to democratic ideals, could begin a transformation of the Arab world from endless tyranny and intolerance to decent governance and democratization. Two years ago, shortly before the invasion...

AS THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SPIDERWEB OF LIES SPUN BY former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV unravels, the media has gone out of its way to question the credibility of…Karl Rove. Despite Rove’s demonstrable non-leak of Valerie Plame’s non-secret identity, the dogs continue to gather, hungry for a second term scandal, while the Wilsons’ blatant self-promotion erodes whatever basis they had for a story in the first place. Perhaps Joe Wilson’s two biggest whoppers were his claim to have spoken out because of his deep, non-partisan commitment to “truth,” and his inconsolable remorse that his wife’s closely guarded anonymity had become...

AS THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS SPIDERWEB OF LIES SPUN BY former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV unravels, the media has gone out of its way to question the credibility of…Karl Rove. Despite Rove’s demonstrable non-leak of Valerie Plame’s non-secret identity, the dogs continue to gather, hungry for a second term scandal, while the Wilsons’ blatant self-promotion erodes whatever basis they had for a story in the first place. Perhaps Joe Wilson’s two biggest whoppers were his claim to have spoken out because of his deep, non-partisan commitment to “truth,” and his inconsolable remorse that his wife’s closely guarded anonymity had become...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., revealed Friday that two years ago he discussed the blown cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame with then CIA director George Tenet and that Tenet "was furious." Tenet promptly called the Justice Department to demand an investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak, Schumer said at a hearing held by House and Senate Democrats. Novak revealed Plame's identity in July 2003 in a column in which he said she played a key role in having her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sent to Niger to investigate...