Free Republic

"Stop portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a suicide bomber or more Muslims will become suicide bombers and murder you blasphemers." That's pretty much what Algeria's Ambassador to the U.N., Idriss Jazairy, who serves as chairman of the U.N.'s Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards told the Associated Press in an interview about efforts by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to pass a U.N. treaty banning blasphemy against Islam.The exact quote from the AP:"If we keep hitting this glass wall and say there's nothing you can do about Islamophobia — you can do something about anti-Semitism but Islamophobia is...

British bookies supposedly will offer you odds on just about anything...including possible poliical races. If I were heading over to London in the near future, I'd love to place a few bob on the odds of a Palin-Clinton race for the WH in 2012. Because it's a good chance that we will see such a race, and BTW, I wanted to be the first to predict such a possibility..so bookmark this thread...here's why

If Hillary Clinton had been any less supportive of the Obama admin's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in Manhattan, she might have had to quit her Secretary of State job . . . Clinton damned the decision with faint praise during her Meet The Press appearance today. Asked by host David Gregory where should stood on the matter, her response was the ultra-tepid: "I'm not going to second-guess any decision the Attorney General made." And a bit later: "If the Attorney General and veteran prosecutors think this is the best way to achieve [the desired] outcome, then I think...

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she would be happy to talk to Sarah Palin over coffee. In an interview for broadcast Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Clinton says she's never met the one-time GOP vice presidential hopeful and former Alaska governor and thinks it would be very interesting to sit down and talk with her.

Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican known for his efforts to block influence domestic immigration and health-care issues, has scored a foreign-policy coup by helping to compel the Obama administration to shift its stance on strife-ridden Honduras. After demanding for months that deposed Honduran President Mel Zelaya be restored to power, senior State Department officials now say they'll accept the outcome of Nov. 29 elections in the Central American country even if Zelaya doesn't reclaim his post. "We support the elections process there," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Thursday. "We have provided technical assistance. ... These elections will...

The U.S. drops its support for Honduran former president Manuel Zelaya. Hugo Chávez says nothing, a development in itself. The October 30 Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord (translated here), under which the United States and other nations are to recognize the results of the November 29 Honduran elections, was hailed by the U.S. government and by the Organization of American States (OAS) as “as bringing an end to a months-long political crisis.” It seems to have fizzled because former President Manuel Zelaya insisted that he be reinstated before the unity government took office. Under the accord, the unity government took office, as...

It’s bad enough that President Obama could not be bothered to attend the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But Hillary Clinton’s refusal to even acknowledge the role played by Ronald Reagan in the Wall’s demise as well as the downfall of Communism was highly insulting towards one of the greatest figures of our time, and reeked of petty and partisan mean-spiritedness. The Secretary of State’s remarks yesterday in Berlin completely erased from history the huge contribution played not only by President Reagan but also by the United States in confronting the Soviet Empire....

Honduras, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya says he has pulled out of a deal struck to end the country's political crisis. Speaking to local radio Friday, Zelaya said the deal with the interim government led by President Roberto Micheletti was off as far as he was concerned, The Wall Street Journal reported. "This deal is dead. The other side has failed to uphold their end," Zelaya reportedly said. Under the terms of the deal, a government of national unity would be created and the Honduran Congress would be allowed to determine if Zelaya could return to...

Last night, the New York Yankees made history by defeating the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series to capture their record 27th World Championship. It is the Yankees’ first championship in nine years. The significance of the Yankees’ victory cannot be overstated. With their 27th championship, the Yankees have reaffirmed their place as the most dominant franchise in professional sports. More importantly, the Yankees have destroyed the curse of Hillary Clinton. On October 26, 2000, the New York Yankees were on top of the world. They had just defeated a cute little team from the outer boroughs,...

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

On Thursday, in an effort to convince Pakistan to raise taxes on its impoverished masses, Secretary of State Clinton told government officials the United States enforces confiscatory taxation on the American people. Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in Lahore, “The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world. We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she proudly proclaimed. Hillary Clinton Proclaims “We Tax Everything in the USA”

Health Reform: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says it's constitutional to mandate insurance coverage. Congress, he insists, has "broad authority" to make us buy things to provide for the "general welfare." Democrats' Alice In Wonderland interpretation of what they consider to be a "living Constitution," where words mean what they say they mean based on political considerations, gets more bizarre by the minute. (snip) We've been down this road before. In 1994, Hillary Clinton's secretive health care task force was trying to nationalize health care. "A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of...

Now, instead of being embroiled in the Democrat’s lose-lose health care mess (a debacle that she no doubt would have been smack dab in the middle of as Vice President or as a senator), she has mostly been isolated from the political misfortunes of the Democrats. Those political misfortunes could very well cost the Democrats dearly in 2010 and could force Obama out in 2012 unless he is able to recover quickly. If Hillary can make it through the next few years without making any major foreign policy gaffes, she can launch a political comeback and tout these years as...

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday night rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's demand that Israel freeze all settlement activity as a precondition to negotiations. Stopping construction in the settlements "has never been a precondition, it has always been an in issue within the negotiations," Clinton said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. In a strong show of support for Israel, she said she approved of Netanyahu's decision to issue a moratorium on new construction permits. "What the prime minister has offered... a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he...

The big news in Honduras is that the good guys seem to have won a four-month political standoff over the exile of former President Manuel Zelaya. Current President Roberto Micheletti agreed yesterday to submit Mr. Zelaya's request for reinstatement as president to the Supreme Court and Congress, and in return the U.S. will withdraw its sanctions and recognize next month's presidential elections. Mr. Zelaya, whose term would have expired in January, isn't likely to be reinstated, given that the court has twice ruled against his right to remain in office. The Honduran Congress, which voted in June to remove Mr....

Hillary Clinton has flatly said she’ll never run for president again. She’s even mused about retirement. But can a woman who fought so hard and came so close to bagging the big enchilada last time around suddenly flip off the ambition switch? Ask yourself: particularly in light of her trip to Pakistan, who’s sounding more like a Commander-in-Chief these days: Hillary Clinton or that hope-’n-change fella back in DC? This morning’s Today show ran part of Andrea Mitchell’s interview of Hillary in Pakistan. You can question the wisdom of Clinton having scolded the Pakistanis for providing al Qaeda a “safe...

Hillary Clinton faced anger during her visit to Pakistan after she attacked the failure of the government to tackle al-Qaeda. The US Secretary of State also faced angry questions about America's use of drone attacks inside Pakistan as she ended her three-day visit on Friday. Mrs Clinton was earlier forced to soften her criticism of Islamabad for its failure to capture of kill al-Qaeda's leaders.

Diplomacy: The restoration of a president with dictatorial dreams in Honduras is being touted by the administration as a triumph of "dialogue." In truth, it's just old-fashioned yanqui interventionism. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed Thursday night's agreement in Tegucigalpa as "a restoration of the constitutional order," and praised it highly. "I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that, having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order, overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue." What worked here, though, wasn't dialogue, but U.S. diplomatic muscle. A last-minute mission from Assistant Secretary of State...

Democrats choice for President a year ago & now. The question says it all. .

SHAWANGAI, Pakistan -- An alleged member of the Hamburg, Germany, terror cell linked to the Sept. 11 attacks is believed to be among al Qaeda leaders helping the Taliban fight Pakistani forces in South Waziristan, Pakistani authorities said Thursday. A German passport belonging to Said Bahaji, a close associate of Sept. 11 lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in the 2001 attacks, was among documents recovered this week by Pakistani troops from an abandoned militant compound in Shawangai. The mountain village in South Waziristan was used as an al Qaeda and Taliban command base until as recently as this week, a military...

A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a “coup” and demanded reversed for its illegality. To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing Zelaya for his crimes against their constitution, although they determined that his exile broke Honduran law. Now John Kerry wants the Law Library to retract its findings, apparently trying to rewrite history to hide the facts of the case:

Bush dinner tastes sour for Obama - PMO decision to entertain former President causes hurt in Washington K.P. NAYAR Washington, Oct. 24: Preparations for Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington on November 24 have begun on a negative signal to the Obama administration with a decision by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to host former President George W. Bush for dinner at Singh’s residence at the end of this month. Bush is visiting New Delhi on October 30 and 31 at the invitation of an Indian newspaper and will speak at a conference organised in New Delhi on October 31 on...

So much for politics ending at the water's edge . . . Hillary Clinton has gone to Pakistan and bragged of having opposed Pres. Bush during her entire Senate career. Clinton also depicted the difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush as being "like daylight and dark." For good measure, Clinton played the moral equivalency game, declaring "we cannot let a minority of people in both countries determine our relationship." The Pakistani minority she had in mind is presumably composed of al Qaeda and its sympathizers. Clinton didn't specify which Americans she would apparently equate with them.

Hillary Clinton meets Pakistani Prime Minister

ISLAMABAD: SNIPPET: "‘But we worry about proliferation and we have good reason to worry about proliferation,’ she said, alluding to Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan. The United States has warned that the scientist, who was effectively put under a five-year house arrest after he admitted leaking nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, is still a proliferation risk. ‘We want to encourage Pakistan to join with us in the non-proliferation review conference that will be held next spring,’ Clinton told reporters travelling with her. ‘We want them to work with us on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty. We want them...

At least five people have been killed and 35 wounded by a large blast in a market in Peshawar, Pakistani, local media say. Huge plumes of black smoke were seen drifting over the city. Pakistan has seen an increase in such attacks in recent weeks as the military carries out an operation against Taliban militants in South Waziristan. The blast comes as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton begins a visit to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Pakistani television showed footage of burning shops in Peshawar, in the northwest of the country, and ambulances rushing to the scene

“Two people showed up saying they are responsible for making the consular changes demanded by Mrs. Patricia Rhodes, that of Marta Zuniga and Fernando Espinosa,” said David Hernandez, minister counselor of the consulate of Honduras in Washington. “They came in and locksmiths changed the locks without saying why.” The consulate is now run by people appointed by former Chancellor Rhodes, Hernandez said. Mario Fortin explained that Mrs. Marta Zuniga was named to the consular office by the former president Manuel Zelaya. The actions of former Foreign Minister Patricia Rhodes affects thousands of Hondurans living in the U.S., who now cannot...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration expressed mild disappointment Friday that Iran withheld a decision on whether to accept a U.N.-coordinated plan that could ease fears about Iran's potential for making a nuclear weapon. The U.S., along with Russia and France, officially endorsed the plan Friday. The State Department said it was unhappy that Iran was not ready to embrace the plan, which calls for Iran to ship most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment and eventual use as fuel for a research reactor in Tehran that makes medical isotopes and is under regular monitoring by a U.N....

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama, but in one respect she now ranks ahead of Obama. The president's current favorable rating of 56% is down 22 percentage points since January. Over the same time span, Clinton's favorable rating has changed little, and now, at 62%, it exceeds Obama's.

Hillary Clinton recently claimed that she won't ever run for prescient again and the DUmmies actually believe her. Of course, Hillary would never lie. Right? In fact, not only do I believe that Hillary Clinton will run again for president, I think she can't wait for 2016 to arrive and will challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 Democrat primaries. So sure am I of this that I even POSTED the exact date of what I think will be her official announcement in the Free Republic: September 12, 2011. Think Ted Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter. However, the DUmmies completely buy...

Does anybody here buy Hillary Clinton's claim that she WON'T be running for president again? I sure don't. Okay, so assuming (not a big assumption) she runs again, when would that be? I think Hillary just can't wait for 2016 especially if things go south for Obama which is currently happening and if the Democrats lose big in the 2010 elections. Since Hillary would need a respectable gap between resigning as Secretary of State and announcing her 2012 candidacy, I am guessing she would resign by no later than April 2011 and announce her official candidacy in late summer of...

Here is a CNN video report by Candy Crowley on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's statement that she won't ever run for President again, and that she is "looking forward to retirement some day." Crowley takes a look at Clinton's current role, which many believe is not all that close to President Obama despite being Secretary of State. Crowley does not seem convinced that Clinton really means it when she says she won't ever seek the Presidency again. . . . (VIDEO)

Here it is the cackle, Hillary is asked is she will ever run for President again by Today Show Ann Curry (Video)

LONDON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the latest militant attack in Pakistan shows an "increasing" threat to the state, but voiced confidence Islamabad was in control of its nuclear arsenal. Clinton told reporters in London that the militants' brazen bid to storm the Pakistani military headquarters in Rawalpindi on Saturday highlighted the scale of the threat. The attack brought renewed US focus on Pakistan, which has won praise from Washington for its new crackdown on militants, just as the Obama administration tries to revise its strategy in neighboring Afghanistan. "Yesterday was another reminder that extremists...

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? SARAH PALIN: Before it got to the other side, I shot the chicken, cleaned and dressed it, and had chicken burgers for lunch. BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a change! The chicken wanted change! JOHN MC CAIN: My friends that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on theother side of the road. HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

But Congressional aides said that less than 10 days after Mr. Zelaya was ousted, Mr. Noriega and Lanny J. Davis, a confidant of Mrs. Clinton and a lobbyist for a Honduran business council, organized a meeting for supporters of the de facto government with members of the Senate. Mr. Fisk, who attended the meeting, said he was stunned by the turnout. “I had never seen eight senators in one room to talk about Latin America in my entire career,” he said. As President Obama imposed increasingly tougher sanctions on Honduras, the lobbying intensified. The Cormac Group, run by a former...

War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan? Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq. Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then...

The United States government, along with the rest of the Western Hemisphere’s governments, is so worked up about returning ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to power that it hasn’t thought through the long- or even medium-term consequences of its threats and demands. Millions of dollars in aid to Honduras–one of the poorest countries in Latin America–was cut off after Zelaya was arrested by the military and sent into exile in June. The U.S. is not only threatening to cut off hundreds of millions more, it’s threatening to impose sanctions and not recognize the results of the November election if he...

The Democratic Administration continues its assault on the truth of what is going on in Honduras. Soon after Former President Zelaya was deposed for trying to go around the countries constitution, the United States took a position against democracy, contra to the Honduras Constitution and on the wrong side of history. “America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies,” the president told graduate students at the commencement ceremony of Moscow’s New Economic School. “We do so not because we agree with him. We do so because we respect the...

Barack Obama is failing as President and the America is transforming into a military dictatorship, says Gore Vidal, the American novelist, essayist, and intellectual . . .

As diplomacy talks are set to begin today between Iran and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (the G5+1) to deter the Iranian regime from pursuing their nuclear weapons program, the Obama-Clinton foreign policy strategy to date appears to have strengthened Iran’s murderous regime. Last Friday, President Obama revealed that another Iranian uranium-enrichment facility is buried at an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps base near Qom. President Obama has known about this formerly secret facility since he became President-elect and was selecting his foreign policy team that would craft, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called...

The secretary of state jokes during an address to the U.N. Security Council.

Here is video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today saying "I kind of like being a President" - as she presided as President of the U.N. Security Council today. Her comments drew laughter from the other members in attendance. NOTE: Barack Obama clearly likes being President too. You've heard the saying, "Many a truth is said in jest." Maybe, if Obama's numbers continue to spiral downward, Hillary will decide to do what the late Ted Kennedy did to then President Jimmy Carter in 1980 - run against a sitting President in her own party. . . . (VIDEO)

NEW YORK -- A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced former Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu to more than 24 years in prison for illegally funneling tens of thousands of dollars to U.S. political candidates and for his role in a Ponzi scheme. The sentence of 292 months in prison, handed down in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan by Judge Victor Marrero, was less than the 30 years that the prosecution had requested. Before Judge Marrero announced the sentence, Mr. Hsu quietly told him: "I know apologizing will not make things better for anyone, but I would still like to apologize...

NEW YORK – Former Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu was sentenced Tuesday to more than 24 years in prison by a judge who accused him of funding his fraud by manipulating the political process in a way that "strikes at the very core of our democracy." U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero sentenced the 58-year-old Hsu, who raised money for Hillary Rodham Clinton and others, to 20 years in prison for his guilty plea to fraud charges and another four years and four months in prison for his conviction at trial for breaking campaign finance laws. In a lengthy criticism of Hsu's...

This from wcbstv New York, Democratic fundraiser sentence to 24 years, no response yet from Hillary Clinton who received more than $800k and had to return the it....

State Department: Gitmo Detainees Are "Refugees" A Republican sends over this video of the State Department press briefing today, in which Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley calls Gitmo detainees "refugees" at about the 24-minute mark. QUESTION: Talk to us a little bit about response and talks and any commitments that you may have gotten from our European and other friends in the international community about taking in Guantanamo detainees as the camp in Guantanamo is expected to close at some point in the near future. Have you gotten any commitments from our European friends and anybody else? CROWLEY: Ambassador Dan Fried...