Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — All these years later, the scene still is almost too bizarre to imagine: a tearful president and his perplexed aide, neither very religious, kneeling in prayer on the floor of a White House bedroom in the waning hours of a shattered presidency. Until the embittered end, Henry Kissinger was one of the trusted few of a distrusting Richard Nixon. That trust, combined with Kissinger’s intellectual heft and deft manipulation of power, made him a pivotal player in a tense period in American history, a giant of U.S. foreign policy and a fixture in international relations for decades...

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez's political mentor — who once persuaded the fiery leader to seek power through elections after he led a failed coup — now says the regime has "all the characteristics of a dictatorial government." Luis Miquilena, who helped guide Chavez to his initial 1998 election win and later was his interior minister, spoke out Tuesday five years after he left Chavez's Cabinet, while hundreds of government opponents held a separate protest over a congressional measure that would grant Chavez broad powers to pass laws by decree. "This is a government with a hypocritical authoritarianism that...