Free Republic

For an event that would turn a page in American history, former president Jimmy Carter has agreed in principle to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States starting this week. Carter's term as president was dominated by the rupture in relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days until the day he left office. Iranians made the overture for the meeting, and the Carter Center in Atlanta is working on the possible timing, said Phil Wise,...

When I wrote about Jimmy Carter's antics recently, some suggested I should quit wasting my time discussing someone so irrelevant. Well, I'd be happy to comply, except that their assumption is incorrect. What this misguided and increasingly bitter man says, especially on foreign soil, does matter. Don't forget that the Democratic Party leadership embraces Carter, as witnessed by his prominent role in the party's national convention, where he called President Bush -- in no uncertain terms -- a liar. Remember that when you're tempted to think of Carter as just a benign senior statesman. I'll concede Carter has done some...

In an exclusive interview, President Carter made it plain that he sees Mr Blair's lack of leadership as being a key factor in the present crisis in Iraq, which followed the 2003 invasion - a pre-emptive move he said he would never have considered himself as president. "We now have a situation where America is so unpopular overseas that even in countries like Egypt and Jordan our approval ratings are less than five per cent. It's a shameful and pitiful state of affairs and I hold your British Prime Minister to be substantially responsible for being so compliant and subservient."...

August 21, 2006   The Honorable Jimmy Carter The Carter Center 453 Freedom Parkway Atlanta, Georgia 30307 Dear Mr. President: I just read the transcript of your interview with the German magazine, Der Spiegel, in which you accuse Israel of launching an “unjustified attack on Lebanon.”   Even after the interviewer reminded you that Israel was the first to get attacked, you charged Israel with lacking “any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.” As someone who served in the White House as a spokesman for a President, I am reluctant to criticize...

In the history of any nation there are high and low points. There are events and people that make the nation proud or, frankly, cause it shame and embarrassment. I, for years, felt one of our proudest moments was Ronald Wilson Reagan telling Gorbachev, ''Tear down this wall.'' I always thought the shame of slavery would forever be our low point. That was right up until Jimmy Carter took office in 1977 and again last week when he spewed his hate-filled venom against his country and its president in Der Spiegel magazine. Jimmy, you are a disgrace to our nation....

JIMMY CARTER – A BRAIN IN NEUTRAL - REDUX © by Norman Liebmann [Note: Had it been anticipated that Georgia would one day produce a Jimmy Carter, Abe Lincoln would have the first one to endorse that state’s secession from the Union. Carter has made much of his barn building for rustics most of whom think a toilet is an indoor wishing well. Carter’s enterprise, such as it is, does not redeem his treachery, although one could hardly foretell such duplicity could be conjured up by that Tobacco Road mentality. In the light of Carter’s recent re-eruptions of treason and...

There are so many sad things to write about today but we all need the cathartic diversion of a true laughingstock, so let us talk about Jimmy Carter. Carter, by all biological indications, is still alive, so we may speak of him ill. Very, very, incurably ill. From Jan. 20, 1977, through Jan. 20, 1981, our nation endured an unpleasant, aberrant, tragicomic episode. In the somewhat confused political atmosphere subsequent to the resignation of Richard Nixon, the electorate succumbed to the blandishments of a folksy Georgia governor who espoused a form of bland centrism. The theory, presumably, was that boredom...

President Bush has pursued an "erroneous policy" that has fostered violence in the Middle East, said former President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the historic Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. "In my opinion, maybe the worst ally Israel has had in Washington has been the George W. Bush administration, which hasn't worked to bring a permanent peace to Israel," Carter said Friday during a stop in West Michigan. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were here as part of a fundraiser for their son, Jack Carter, who is seeking a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada. The $500-a-person event, attended by...

CAIMITO, Cuba (Reuters) - They do not come to Cuba for the beaches and tropical mystique that draw more than 2 million other visitors each year. Instead they come to spend their vacations working in the countryside under a blazing sun, eating rice and beans and sharing a room without air-conditioning or toilet with seven others. They are so-called revolutionary tourists who arrive each year from about 50 countries for a "total immersion" in one of the world's few remaining socialist countries. "I call it a revolutionary vacation. I dedicate my free time to doing something concrete for the Cuban...

The longest day of my short life occurred a week and a half ago. At some point while I slept in Pullman, the sun rose Thursday morning. That evening, I watched the gray sky fade from the top of the Space Needle in Seattle. On the road back to Pullman, the early morning rays lit up the sky again on the hill down into Washtucna. It was a long road trip. What was the purpose of this borderline insane trip? Former President Jimmy Carter, of course. Eighteen members of the WSU Young Democrats had an important meeting with the man...

In his acceptance speech for the 1976 Democratic nomination, Jimmy Carter said a memorable phrase: The income tax system, he said, “is a disgrace to the human race.” It is certainly the best rhyme of Carter’s presidency, and it is still apt, because it describes Carter himself to a T. After flunking as president, Jimmy Carter has now become an unalloyed embarassment. As president Carter almost managed to drive the US economy off the road, with the highest combined inflation and unemployment rate in a half century. Even worse, it was Carter who brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power, by refusing...

SEATTLE -- Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the war in Iraq on Wednesday, urging a troop drawdown as the United States enters its fourth year of conflict in Iraq. "It was a completely unnecessary war. It was an unjust war," said Carter, the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner. "It was initiated on the basis of false pretenses. All of those are true, but we can't just pre-emptively withdraw."

HENDERSON, Nev. (AP) -- Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program Monday and said he believes the president has broken the law. "Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision - we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Carter told reporters. "And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act." Carter made the remarks at a union hall near Las Vegas, where his oldest son, Jack Carter, announced his candidacy...

CNN) -- Hamas deserves to be recognized by the international community, and despite the group's militant history, there is a chance the soon-to-be Palestinian leaders could turn away from violence, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday. Carter, who monitored last week's Palestinian elections in which Hamas handily toppled the ruling Fatah, added that the United States should not cut off aid to the Palestinian people, but rather funnel it through third parties like the U.N. "If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think...

Georgia lawmakers are proposing a resolution making February 6th Ronald Reagan Day, in honor of the 40th U.S. President. But according to Plains residents, there's just one small problem with that. Former President Jimmy Carter, the only President from Georgia, doesn't even have his own day. We got some strange reactions we got when residents found out that the 39th President of the United States, and their hometown hero, doesn't have his own day in the State of Georgia. Jimmy Carter was born and raised in Plains. From his old high school, to City Hall, everyone we spoke to had...

CARTER UNMASKED "Jimmy Carter's reputation for idealism has been one of the great swindles of American politics for two decades." -- The New Republic The Real Jimmy Carter by Steven F. Hayward The Nobel Prize is just the beginning: Jimmy Carter is enjoying a new day in the sun, with left-wing historians taking a "fresh look" at his disastrous presidency and trying to bamboozle Americans into thinking that it was actually successful. This ongoing Saint Jimmy campaign would be laughable if it weren't part of a larger strategy to whitewash the records of failed Democrats and justify Carter's outsize influence...

Take me to your leader: Former President Jimmy Carter told GQ magazine for a January article that he saw a UFO in 1969 in southwest Georgia as he was preparing to speak at a Lions Club meeting. He recalled that it was a bright light that got ''closer and closer to us,'' but then ''changed color to blue,'' then to red, then back to white, and then ''receded into the distance.'' However, he said, ''I've never believed it came from Mars.''

It's been said that the best way to get a heated discussion going is to bring up one of three subjects: religion, politics or sex. In his book "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," former President Carter does all three - sometimes simultaneously. Where is America going wrong - or right? Carter has many strong opinions, and although he says that he is a major advocate of separation of church and state, this book weighs in with a bent that's more religious than not. It's no secret that Carter was a spiritual sort before, during and after his years in...

As President, Jimmy Carter may not have consulted an astrologer to decide the details of his schedule - á la Nancy Reagan directing her husband's busy days. But Ronald Reagan's predecessor did once employ a woman in a trance to locate a downed government plane in Africa. "We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic. A twin-engine plane. Small plane. And we couldn't find it," the 81-year-old 39th President reveals to GQ magazine's Wil S. Hylton. "So we oriented satellites that were going around the Earth every 90 minutes to fly over that spot where we thought...

NEW YORK (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter supports the move by Democrats yesterday to force an update on the investigation into pre-Iraq-war intelligence. Carter says claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction were "manipulated, at least" to mislead the American people. He says he thinks the decision to go to war was the "culmination" of a long-term plan to attack Iraq that resulted from the first President Bush not taking out Saddam. Carter says President Bush should tell the American people "the truth" about why he decided to go to war.