Free Republic

When they first met as United States president and Israeli prime minister, George W. Bush made clear to Ariel Sharon he would not follow in the footsteps of his father. The first President Bush had been tough on Israel, especially the Israeli settlements in occupied lands that Mr. Sharon had helped develop. But over tea in the Oval Office that day in March 2001 — six months before the Sept. 11 attacks tightened their bond — the new president signaled a strong predisposition to support Israel. “He told Sharon in that first meeting that I’ll use force to protect Israel,...

ITHACA, N.Y. — In May, scores of dead fish started washing up along the eastern shoreline of Lake Ontario. James O. LaPlante, 59, first noticed them at a friend’s house. By the following week, so many carcasses had come ashore, they littered the beach near his home in Cape Vincent. “There were lots,” he said. “When I say lots, I mean hundreds and thousands.” The fish had fallen victim to an unknown disease. At first, residents and fishermen were not alarmed, since the victims were round gobies, a nuisance fish that consumes the eggs of more prize-worthy catches. But in...

CAMBRIA, N.Y., July 31 — Reaching out to rural voters in New York and elsewhere in the nation, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Monday for increasing federal support for struggling farm communities to revitalize rural America. In a speech delivered on a 152-year-old family farm, Mrs. Clinton called for major federal investments to expand broadband Internet access in rural communities, promote the development of alternative fuel sources like corn-based ethanol and encourage medical school graduates to practice in agricultural areas. “We can build a new rural future,’’ Mrs. Clinton said, after listing economic problems that she said have led...

Alan Beggerow has stopped looking for work. Laid off as a steelworker at 48, he taught math for a while at a community college. But when that ended, he could not find a job that, in his view, was neither demeaning nor underpaid. So instead of heading to work, Mr. Beggerow, now 53, fills his days with diversions: playing the piano, reading histories and biographies, writing unpublished Western potboilers in the Louis L’Amour style — all activities once relegated to spare time. He often stays up late and sleeps until 11 a.m.

WASHINGTON, July 28 — Two summers ago, on a Congressional trip to Estonia, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton astonished her traveling companions by suggesting that the group do what one does in the Baltics: hold a vodka-drinking contest. Delighted, the leader of the delegation, Senator John McCain, quickly agreed. The after-dinner drinks went so well — memories are a bit hazy on who drank how much — that Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, later told people how unexpectedly engaging he found Mrs. Clinton to be. “One of the guys” was the way he described Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, to...

WITH Israel at war with Hezbollah, where, you might wonder, is Al Qaeda? From all appearances on the Web sites frequented by its sympathizers, which I frequently monitor, Al Qaeda is sitting, unhappily and uneasily, on the sidelines, watching a movement antithetical to its philosophy steal its thunder. That might sound like good news. But it is more likely an ominous sign. Al Qaeda’s Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah. It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy...

That’s far from the issue. Mr. Lieberman is not just a senator who works well with members of the other party. ...., he has become one of the Bush administration’s most useful allies.... Mr. Lieberman prides himself on being a legal thinker and a champion of civil liberties. But he appointed himself defender of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the administration’s policy of holding hundreds of foreign citizens in prison without any due process. He seconded Mr. Gonzales’s sneering reference to the “quaint” provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He has shown no interest in prodding his Republican friends into investigating...

TEHRAN, July 29 — These should be heady days for Iran’s leaders. Hezbollah, widely regarded as its proxy force in Lebanon, continues to rain down rockets on Israel despite 17 days of punishing airstrikes. Hezbollah’s leader is a hero of the Arab world, and Iran is basking in the reflected glory. Yet this capital is unusually tense. Officials, former officials and analysts say that it is too dangerous even to discuss the crisis. In newspapers, the slightest questioning of support for Hezbollah has been attacked as unpatriotic, pro-Zionist and anti-Islamic. As the war in Lebanon grinds on, Iranian officials cannot...

POUND for pound and pounding for pounding, the Israeli military is one of the world’s finest. But Hezbollah, with the discipline and ferocity of its fighters and ability to field advanced weaponry, has taken Israel by surprise. Now that surprise has rocketed back to Washington and across the American military. United States officials worry that they’re not prepared, either, for Hezbollah’s style of warfare — a kind that pits finders against hiders and favors the hiders. Certain that other terrorists are learning from Hezbollah’s successes, the United States is studying the conflict closely for lessons to apply to its own...

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes. ...

As the bloodbath in Lebanon spilled past its second week — with at least 400 Lebanese dead and many more presumed buried in rubble; some 800,000 refugees, nearly a quarter of the population, on the run; and the fragile nation’s infrastructure shattered — there was no easy way out for either Israel or Hezbollah, the combatants locked in what each saw as a deadly existential struggle.

ROCKY HILL, Conn., July 28 — Senator Joseph I. Lieberman commissioned a poll in January as he prepared for his fourth campaign for the Senate, and the results were sobering. Mr. Lieberman was tied against a hypothetical primary opponent, described only as a Democrat who was opposed to the Iraq war and was critical of Mr. Lieberman’s ties with President Bush, an aide recounted. That poll was one of a number of early warnings that emerged well before Mr. Lieberman found himself locked this summer in a career-threatening battle with Ned Lamont, a Democratic primary challenger who is opposed to...

JIYEH, Lebanon, July 28 — As Israel continues the bombing campaign that has turned parts of Lebanon into rubble, environmentalists are warning of widespread and lasting damage. Spilled and burning oil, along with forest fires, toxic waste flows and growing garbage heaps have gone from nuisances to threats to people and wildlife, they say, marring a country traditionally known for its clean air and scenic greenery. Continues ...============================================================= Media drink Hezbollah Kool-Aid, as "losing" side -- Israel -- widens control of southern Lebanon Has the critics' response to Israel's response been disproportionate? Just now there is growing criticism that Israel's...

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight. Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements. http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/

Isn't it generally assumed that when two countries are at war, that it is the right and duty of those countries actually in the conflict to decide when that war might be over and how it is prosecuted? Certainly other nations might attempt to diplomatically intervene to help resolve the crisis but, when all is said and done, isn't it still the duty of the warring parties to arrive at their own conclusions? Not according to The New York Times. The Times has pronounced it the duty of the vaunted "World Powers" to end Israel's security measures in Lebanon as...

Hezbollah is still launching 100 rockets a day at Israel, nearly as many as it did at the start of the war. Soldiers return from forays into Lebanon saying the network of bunkers and tunnels is more sophisticated than expected. And Iranian-made long-range missiles apparently capable of hitting Tel Aviv remain in the Hezbollah arsenal. Israeli military commanders say they are not surprised. The struggle is so difficult, they say, because Hezbollah is an organized, well-trained and well-equipped force and is fighting hard. “Hezbollah is organized more like an army than the Palestinian militias, and they are supported with some...

MIAMI, July 24 — The Avon Park City Council rejected an ordinance Monday that would have cracked down on illegal immigrants after one member changed her vote in spite of strong protests. The ordinance, called the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, would have fined landlords $1,000 for every tenant found to be an illegal immigrant, denied city permits, contracts and grants to businesses that employed illegal immigrants and required city documents to be in English only. Mayor Tom Macklin of Avon Park, a city of about 9,000 in Florida’s citrus belt, proposed it last month after hearing of a similar plan...

Jan-Peter Boening for The New York TimesStudying the genetics of domestication, Dmitri K. Belyaev developed colonies of silver foxes, river otters and minks, as well as rats, starting in 1959. On an animal-breeding farm in Siberia are cages housing two colonies of rats. In one colony, the rats have been bred for tameness in the hope of mimicking the mysterious process by which Neolithic farmers first domesticated an animal still kept today. When a visitor enters the room where the tame rats are kept, they poke their snouts through the bars to be petted. The other colony of rats...

It was the neck rub heard round the world. At the Group of 8 summit meeting in St. Petersburg last week, President George W. Bush walked up behind the seated German chancellor, Angela Merkel, placed his hands upon her shoulders and gave what appeared to be a double squeeze. Merkel threw her arms into the air and seemed to grimace, and the news media and public were left to decipher the meaning of the incident. The German news media decried what Bild-Zeitung called a love attack, and in the United States, conservative and liberal bloggers slugged it out over whether...

DAMASCUS The Bush administration's hands-off approach to solving the crisis in Lebanon is doomed to failure, Syria said Sunday, stressing that the chaos engulfing the region could only be tamped down by directly involving Damascus and Hezbollah as key players in any negotiations. Washington is ignoring reality if it thinks that groups like Hezbollah and Hamas can be purged by allowing Israel to bomb at will, an influential Syrian minister said, stressing that only solving the Arab-Israeli dispute would ultimately curb extremism. "The United States has to get realistic about addressing issues in the region instead of taking steps that...