Free Republic

The UK government announced that the country will observe a moment of silence to honour the Ukrainians and demonstrate Britain’s “solidarity” with the war effort against Russia. In a move reminiscent of the “clap for carers” initiative during the Chinese coronavirus crisis to celebrate healthcare workers and even the annual Armistice Day commemoration remembering the huge sacrifice of the British and Empire in two worlds wars, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has announced that there will be a “national moment” of silence on February 24th. The silence late this month marks the one-year anniversary since Russia launched its invasion of...

Facing the deadly threat of freezing temperatures and starvation at Valley Forge, George Washington famously wrote, “unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place in [the supply] line, this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things. Starve, dissolve, or disperse.” Today in Ukraine, winter has begun, and President Volodymyr Zelensky faces his own Valley Forge as millions of Ukrainians are confronting months without heat, electricity, or basic sustenance. To help meet this challenge, America must immediately act to cut through the bureaucracy and politics to deliver the billions in humanitarian aid that has...

A former Trump White House official on Thursday condemned the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as a "coup attempt" and said the former president "failed to meet the moment" in reflections on the anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol. Sarah Matthews, who served as a deputy press secretary in the Trump White House and resigned on Jan. 6 over the day's events, called the riots from a year ago "one of the darkest days in American history."

Ahead of the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, former President George W. Bush is looking back on the moment he found out that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center — and that an attack was underway in America. In the new BBC documentary 9/11: Inside the President's War Room, Bush details the emotions he felt when he first learned about the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. His reaction was famously captured on camera during a previously scheduled school trip. At the time, he was visiting Emma E. Booker Elementary in Sarasota, Florida, where he was reading to a...

Former CIA Director David Petraeus called the chaotic evacuation of Americans and Afghan civilians from Afghanistan a “Dunkirk moment” — as Biden administration officials reveal they are unaware of the exact number of US civilians in the nation now under Taliban control. “This is a Dunkirk moment and our decisions created it. We need to acknowledge that. And we should now act as if we do recognize the catastrophe that we have created for Afghans who supported us​,” ​Petraeus, who commanded US forces in Afghanistan during the Obama administration, said in an interview with the Cipher Brief on Tuesday. “​​We...

The utterly nauseating and unnecessary abandonment of Afghanistan to its fate recalls a similar humiliation at the hands of Islamist radicals in the Jimmy Carter administration. President Biden’s profligate spending policies are unleashing inflation that is sparking voter distrust so noticeable that even NPR is sounding the alarm. He is begging OPEC to come up with more oil while interfering with US production. He announced barely a month ago, with great confidence, “The Taliban is not the South — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. “There’s going to be no circumstance...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – When President Richard Nixon was neck deep in the Watergate scandal and faced impeachment in the House of Representatives and a trial in the U.S. Senate, Tricky Dick said he would never resign. After all, Nixon was sure that he could beat conviction in the Senate, where he merely had to hold on to a third of the members in order to remain in office. As gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote at the time, any president who couldn’t use the vast powers of their office to keep 33 senators in line by hook or by...

Former First Lady Michelle Obama said the defeat of former President Donald Trump allows activists the chance to “breathe for a moment” in a new interview published Wednesday. “We breathe for a moment, but there’s still work to be done,” she said when asked about the results of the 2020 campaign.

A Perfect Moment When one stops reviewing what happened yesterday and planning for tomorrow… Where eternity comes ever so close; there, exists that perfect moment… and time stands still. Where time ceases, we live in the grasp of eternity… In a single moment that opens the door to a Kingdom in itself. Here, we live in the power of the Spirit of God… Most people are never aware of those moments; being, focused upon the cares of the world… the thoughts of yesterday and tomorrows necessity. Yet, nothing is so simple nor less complicated than perception… if one will only...

The moment of passing appears to bring an expression of relief to the deceased. But what is going on in our minds? In a new collaborative series with The Conversation, we answer that question. People often look like they are sleeping just after dying, having a neutral facial expression. But one of my relatives, who had intense pain the hours leading up to his death and lacked access to medical care, had a radiant, ecstatic expression. For decades, I have wondered whether the last minutes of life can be euphoric. Could dying perhaps trigger a flood of endorphins, in particular...

On Monday’s broadcast of ABC’s “The View,” the co-host discussed some in the crowd chanting “lock him up” at President Donald Trump during game five of the World Series. Meghan McCain said, “That’s in the middle of the Washington, D.C. swamp If he had been in, I don’t know, Diamondbacks game, it might have been a different reaction.” Whoopi Goldberg said, “Just look — I think people are pissed at him. People are legitimately angry at him.” She added, “It was a whole bunch of folks — black, white, Latino, Asian. It was just a whole bunch of people, and...

A “Well Duh Moment” Young college educated chatter in a political chat room I visit insists that America is a Democracy. He is adamant in his position and no manner of documentation will persuade him that America is a Republic. The fact that the founders published their disdain for Democracies meant nothing to him. The fact that the word “democracy” never once appears in the Declaration of Independence was not persuasive. The fact that the word “democracy” never once appears in the Constitution didn’t carry any weight. The fact that none of the Constitutions’ of the fifty states contain the...

Exclusive: Barry Farber says Romanian dictator, Obama 'share a lamentable trait' Just before Christmas of 1989 Ceausescu felt no reason for unease. His Securitate, Communist secret police, kept the nation in fear as effectively as Hitler's Gestapo. His order of lights out at 7 p.m. to save resources drew Romanian profanity, colorful but not deadly. His pet project, a palace that would rival Versailles in senseless grandeur, was progressing on schedule, and Ceausescu used to visit the site often to rub his bare hands over this monument to his greatness. His desperate subjects trying to escape by swimming the Danube...

The tender moment a groom reassures his nervous wife-to-be in prayer - without catching a glimpse of her wedding dress. Weddings prove stressful for many couples, with the honeymoon offering a much welcome escape. But one candid shot of a bride and groom shows how they successfully managed to steal a moment of peace amidst the fray of their big day. The groom is seen sitting around the corner to uphold the tradition of not seeing the bride in her bridal gown. Mrs Curtas, 23, told the Daily News that she was frantically fussing over her hair and make-up in...

A thought experiment: A child is born somewhere, anywhere, on the earth in the past decade. The family of that child wishes or needs to leave its home—to escape tyranny, war, the possibility of war, or simply to find a better life. Now, assume the family has access to every conceivable bit of information it can gather through Google about the relative conditions of the nations of the world. Where would the family of that child wish to go? The family would know that the United States is going through its most worrisome time since the late 1970s. Its labor...

News about the terrorist acts in Egypt and Libya are hard to keep up with. We’re learning more of the horror every hour. It seems that all that this administration and his supporters in the media can do is apologize for the United States and blame America for the assaults. We’ve seen this before. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was defined by the word “malaise.” It was a succinct summary of all that went wrong. But if there was one event that expressed the utter failure of Carter’s four years in office; it was the capture of the United States Embassy in...

More than 140 people were injured when gas-filled balloons exploded at a governing party campaign concert in the Armenian capital.

A major Israel TV station on Sunday night broadcast a detailed report on how Israel will go about attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in the event that diplomacy and sanctions fail and Israel decides to carry out a military strike. The report, screened on the main evening news of Channel 10, was remarkable both in terms of the access granted to the reporter, who said he had spent weeks with the pilots and other personnel he interviewed, and in the fact that his assessments on a strike were cleared by the military censor. No order to strike is likely to be...

I am not a fan of Barack Obama, but I have not criticized him as harshly as many other writers do. I have a different view of him. I see him as a rather run of the mill Progressive/Liberal who firmly believes his ideology and acts somewhat consistently on those ideas. Rather than pillory him personally, my approach has been to criticize the philosophy of which he is a product. In my mind, it's all about ideas. I detest his ideas because I believe they are anti-intellectual and they don't work.  There are many like Mr. Obama out there. His admirers...

Posted by Caroline Glick Jun 18th 2011 at 11:00 am in Iran, Israel, Middle East | Comments (46) Every day, major stories come out of the Middle East. And behind each of these stories are major developments that deserve of our attention and, more often than not, our intense concern. Just this week, major stories have come out of Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen and Pakistan that are all deeply disconcerting. In Syria, dictator Bashar Assad’s violent repression of the popular revolt against his tyrannical, minority regime has exposed the Syrian leader as a vicious murderer. While...