Free Republic

For decades the American left has done its best to convince us that Cuba is a benign, progressive paradise that just needs to be unshackled from our tyranny. But the record is clear: The Castros are running a murderous dictatorship 90 miles south of Key West that has exported violence around the world. Enter Barack Obama. Yesterday he took to the White House Rose Garden to celebrate normalized relations with the most despotic regime in the Western Hemisphere. It is meant to be his crowning foreign policy accomplishment, which is appropriate, because it’s every bit as ill-conceived as everything else...

Active Shooter, Navy Yard, Washington Campus on lockdown.

Evil has a friend… Barack Obama blocks support to the Kurds to fight the Islamic State. ** It’s bad enough that he pulled US troops from Iraq. ** It’s bad enough he created the vacuum that allowed ISIS to flourish. ** It’s bad enough he is unable to comprehend true evil. ** It’s bad enough he lacks the will and courage to battle evil. But now he won’t support the people who are battling ISIS on the ground. Telegraph UK reported: The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds...

--snip-- Reviled by law enforcement and revered by Fidel Castro, who granted her political asylum, Shakur embodies America's commitment to retrieve its fugitives and Cuba's commitment to grant sanctuary to people it deems persecuted dissidents. "Cuba not only is refusing to hand her over; it is refusing, at least publicly, to make the topic of extradition part of these negotiations," said Teishan Latner, a former fellow at New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War, where he researched the relationship between Cuba and left wing groups in America for a forthcoming book.

A SHEPHERD was found dead after having sex with a scarecrow that he had put a wig and lipstick on. Neighbours led police to the Argentinian man’s body after they rang the local council about a foul smell coming from Jose Alberto’s home in San Jose de Balcare, the International Business Times reports. Police later found Alberto, 58, whose rotting remains were found next to the scarecrow. The scarecrow also had a strap-on sex toy attached to it. “During a first visual inspection it appeared that there were two dead bodies. Then it was found that actually one of the...

A bold-faced political hatchet job, a mysterious memo, a bad pun and a predictable dig at Fox News. Those are just some of the enlightening tidbits contained in the 3,000 pages of Hillary Clinton emails released late Tuesday. The exchanges, which span the period between March 2009 and December 2009, show that Clinton maintained a relatively tight-knit circle of State Department aides who worked to plan schedules, arrange secure phone calls and draft speeches. They also show that Clinton corresponded more frequently than previously known with her longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal. Here are 11 of the most interesting snippets from...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — The world’s Jewish population has almost rebounded to pre-Holocaust numbers, according to a new report.

Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated. Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public. For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were "well aware" of which "major oil companies and international banks" supported them during the rebellion, information they would "factor into decisions" about about...

Strict legislative and security measures against extremist groups, even if they have not committed violent acts, is in the interest of Islam and Muslims in the West. This is the only way to save millions of Muslims and protect Islam from Muslims who distort the religion. When Western governments expel extremist preachers, shut down suspicious institutions or pursue religious groups, they are protecting Muslims from extremists among them, and from the anger of the non-Muslim majority. We must not look at such measures as racist, despite the presence of racism in the West. We must also not underestimate the magnitude...

The mosque in Sandnessjøen starts with call to prayer using outside loudspeakers. It is met with very mixed reactions among the citizens, NRK reports. The Muslim Association in Sandnessjøen begins with outdoors call to prayer in connection with Friday prayers. A loudspeaker will be placed outside the premises of the mosque and the call to prayer will be heard over the entire neighborhood. The municipality has given the permission, but that this will become a weekly fixture in the town center, has created harsh reactions among people in the municipality. - We are not in Mecca - It is unusual...

Egypt at War Michael Rubin | @mrubin1971 07.01.2015 - 3:00 PM Over the last few days, Egypt has faced a terrorist wave. First, there was the assassination of Hisham Barakat, Egypt’s state prosecutor, the equivalent of the Attorney General. Barakat was the target of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist animus for his role prosecuting thousands of Islamists since Gen Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated president Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Now, today, a wave of attacks has killed at least 50 soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula. Ominously, several Egyptian security sources are pointing the finger at Turkey, Qatar, and...

What Will the West’s Many Concessions to Iran Produce? Rick Richman | @jpundit 07.01.2015 - 11:00 AM It has been hard to keep up with the cascade of U.S. concessions in the negotiations with Iran, because there has been no natural stopping point. If you think virtually any deal is better than no deal, you need to keep making the concessions necessary to get it. If you have allowed Iran to get within a few months of a bomb and think extending the breakout period a few more months is a good deal, the concessions have to come. If you...

The Iranian regime is still holding American hostages. These include the Washington Post’s Tehran correspondent, Jason Rezaian, and Amir Hekmati, an Iranian-American U.S. Marine sentenced to death in 2012 on bogus spying charges and still languishing in the mullahs’ hellish prisons. American flags are burned, and cries of “Death to America!” still ring out at Friday prayers across Iran. The Tehran regime continues to arm and fund Hezbollah, and Iranian forces and proxies now encircle the Arab lands. And the mullahs have in the intervening years raced to develop nuclear weapons. Their centrifuges still churn in defiance of five United...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) slammed Obama's decision to reopen the U.S. embassy in Cuba, suggesting that it was a "slap in the face" to Israel. The administration announced on Wednesday that it has told lawmakers that a deal has been reached to re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba and reopen embassies. Cruz, who is running for president, called Obama's announcement "unacceptable and a slap in the face of a close ally that the United States will have an embassy in Havana before one in Jerusalem."

The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds fighting Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, The Telegraph has learnt. Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades. They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad. High level officials from Gulf...

The terrorism that threatens Egypt today is because of Obama and Hillary The fate of Egypt hangs in the balance. A series of terrorist attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS threaten the government of President Abdel El-Sisi, a true Islamic reformer. If Egypt falls into chaos like its neighbor, Libya, there will be no single person who deserves more blame that Barack Hussein Obama. Every action taken by his administration has destabilized the Middle East by supporting terrorists and the nations that sponsor them. This insane policy began in 2011 with Egypt, the most populous Arab country. It was...

It was in August 2014 that the real danger began, and that we heard the first warnings of war. That month, unmarked Russian troops covertly invaded eastern Ukraine, where the separatist conflict had grown out of its control. The Russian air force began harassing the neighboring Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which are members of NATO. The US pledged that it would uphold its commitment to defend those countries as if they were American soil, and later staged military exercises a few hundred yards from Russia's border.Both sides came to believe that the other had more drastic intentions....

Sen. Ted Cruz criticized the Obama administration's decision to reopen U.S. and Cuban embassies in the countries' respective capitals Wednesday, calling the move "a serious mistake." Cruz's comments followed President Barack Obama's announcement Wednesday that the United States formally will restore diplomatic ties with Cuba.

Kuwait’s parliament, reacting to a suicide bombing last week that killed 26 people, adopted a law Wednesday requiring mandatory DNA testing on all the country’s citizens and foreign residents. The legislation, requested by the government to help security agencies make quicker arrests in criminal cases, calls on the interior ministry to establish a database on all 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents. Under the law, people who refuse to give samples for the test face one year in jail and a fine of up to $33,000 (29,700 euros). Those who provide fake samples can be jailed for seven...

Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal on Wednesday pledged his entire $32-billion (28.8-billion-euro) fortune to charitable projects over the coming years. He said in a statement that the "philanthropic pledge will help build bridges to foster cultural understanding, develop communities, empower women, enable youth, provide vital disaster relief and create a more tolerant and accepting world." He said the donation "will be allocated according to a well-devised plan throughout the coming years" but stressed there was no time limit on when the donation would be spent.