Free Republic

After Wednesday’s meeting at the White House with President Biden and 20 congressional leaders, McConnell declared that he was done trying to placate Ukraine skeptics in Johnson’s conference. There’s roughly $110 billion on the table that would bolster Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s defense against Russia, along with helping Israel and Taiwan, and provide billions of dollars to shore up the U.S. border along Mexico.

Asia specialist and distinguished columnist David P Goldman is convinced the US and Europe stand a chance against the Red Dragon – but the clock is ticking...

ESPN has issued new political and election guidelines for its employees that, while allowing for political discussion on the network’s platforms, recommend connecting those comments to sports whenever possible. The new policies also provide separate guidelines for ESPN staffers working on news and those engaging in commentary.

Another day. And the news marches on. Runs forward almost, into the next drama. A shooting in a Fort Lauderdale airport. Carrie Fisher's ashes carried in a giant Prozac-shaped jar. Trump's 12 days from moving into the White House. We turn the pages quickly on the stories of life, anxious not to get left behind. But the real people, people whose lives only fascinated us for an instant, whose stories grabbed us for a moment, good and bad - they are still living their story, their nightmare.

Israel's Defense Ministry, long suspected of supplying arms to dictatorial regimes and illegal organizations, has refused to divulge the full list of its weapons customers despite what the one analyst calls "serious failures that have recently been revealed in its export control department." ...snip... The controversy was heightened by the surprise resignation in December of Meir Shalit, head of the ministry's Defense Export Control Agency, after a joint U.S.-Israel investigation found that a highly sensitive Israeli-produced electronic system licensed for sale to a French firm had been transferred to China

CLARKSVILLE - United Mine Workers of America officials on Thursday urged hundreds of local miners to get ready to fight for unionization at a new mine that will open on a hilltop overlooking this small, Greene County mining town....snip... Wearing red bandanas as a "call to arms," UMWA officials called on members to fight Alpha Natural Resources' plans to use non-union miners to extract coal from the Freeport Mine, which is expected to open in 2012 or 2013, or force the company to "leave it in the ground."...snip... He said neither police nor the "jailer" would stop protests against non-union...

Gavin Newsom loves Twitter. The San Francisco mayor is convinced his hometown microblogging service will change the world. How heartbreaking it must be, then, to read that a key Twitter coder can't wait to escape his "filthy... disastrous" town.

Frank Speaking: A common view of Congress members is that we need to be more financially wise. But I don’t think a lack of wisdom or financial expertise on the part of Congress caused the problem...I don’t know of a bill that said you are now entitled to money that you don’t have to pay back. I think the problem has been that we [the legislature] have lagged too much in responding and we don’t always respond well. Interviewer:"So, how did the crisis happen?" Frank: First, the rating agencies substantially overrated everything and now substantially underrate a lot of things....

Gateway High School today permitted two Muslim students to wear scarves known as kaffiyehs in school a day after they were told they couldn't go to class if they didn't remove the scarves. Ms. Zanella said that concerns had been heightened when three students recently wore T-shirts saying "RIP Israel."

The brothers want to have a sales agreement and get NFL approval for it by the end of 2008 because of the extra tax consequences they believe will be introduced retroactively to the beginning of 2009 by the new Obama presidential administration and Congress. "There's a deadline because of this big tax situation," Art Rooney Jr. said. "It has to be settled in good time. I think everybody knows the clock is ticking; it's almost like a football game."

Of all the people who said during the past eight years that they'd had it with the United States, that they were leaving the country, these are the ones who really did move to Canada. ...snip... "In Seattle, I was pretty far to the left," Kertes recalled. In Vancouver "a lot of times I'm the most conservative person in the room. I'll say something in a group and I'll be prepared for someone to say, 'You're so radical,' but (in Vancouver), it's not considered unusual. I sort of miss feeling special in that way."

Based on the prostitutes' voter registration cards, they're destined to become Obama girls in November. That's because 78 percent of them registered as Democrats.

An infestation of the Turkistan cockroach, which can carry diseases such as typhoid and dysentery, can be blamed on a handful of the insects hitching a ride with soldiers returning from the war zone, experts say. Now the fast-breeding cockroaches, which are adept at dodging pesticides, have spread from California to New Mexico, threatening mayhem further afield as they seek new territory.

looks like some frenchy likes building American Aircraft carriers out of legos! (He actually did an awesome job) More pics at the link

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama will appear at Carnegie Mellon University Thursday, hosting a round-table conversation on competitiveness and the world economy. The morning panel discussion, which will be closed to the public, includes speakers from industry, labor and the academic world.The participants are to include: Lael Brainard, vice president of the Brookings Institution; Eli Broad, founder of the Broad Foundation; Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of Harlem Children's Zone; Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution Health and former chairman and CEO of America Online; Susan Hockfield, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Federico Pe??a, former U.S....

On the day that fliers announced a registered sex offender had moved into a Puyallup neighborhood, a woman welcomed him with an aluminum baseball bat. Baldwin (Pierce County Sheriff's Office picture)The 7-foot-3 man was beaten so badly, medics transported him to a hospital. "I kept swingin' and swingin' and swingin," court documents say Tammy Gibson told police, who arrested her in Cottonwood Mobile Home Park. Gibson has been charged with second-degree assault and felony harassment

Just because the U.S. military now lacks what defense eggheads call a peer competitor — a country capable of beating us in a head-to-head confrontation — that doesn't mean it lacks for imagination in conjuring fearful foes. Sure, it was easier for John F. Kennedy to blow smoke about a non-existent "missile gap" with the Soviet Union, or for Ronald Reagan to convince us of the need for a "Star Wars" missile shield when Moscow was still our superpower rival (it may no longer be, but we're still spending $10 billion annually on missile defenses). Snip...The scientists also warn that...

A Smithfield man this morning filed a federal lawsuit against Fayette County Children and Youth Services alleging that the agency removed his children from him -- and has forbidden contact with them for nearly a year -- even though there were no allegations of any kind of abuse against them. Filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Pennsylvania, the lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order that would prohibit CYS from placing -- or threatening to place -- his children, who are staying with his parents, in foster care. The plaintiff is listed as "John Doe" in...

WICHITA, Kan. — Four Hispanic families are suing St. Anne's Catholic School over a policy that requires students to speak English at all times while at school. The lawsuit, filed Monday, calls for an end to the policy and asks for an order barring similar policies at other diocese schools. It seeks the return of one student to the school who was allegedly kicked out for refusing to sign the "English only" pledge. And it asks for court costs and unspecified damages for discrimination and emotional suffering.

It seems anyone can get a college degree these days-especially if they go to North Carolina Central University. Standards of integrity there have long been dismal: This is, after all, the school that gave violent felon Solomon Burnette a diploma in 2007. Burnette, you may recall, robbed two Duke students at gunpoint in 1997. After finishing a 13-month prison sentence, he had the audacity not only to enroll in Arabic classes on our campus in April 2007; Burnette also penned a column I and many others interpreted as inciting physical violence against white Dukies in his student newspaper. Unfortunately, however,...