Free Republic

Does Putin know about this? The Adler Arena at Sochi, venue for Olympic speedskating, was hit by a feline attack.

The London Daily Mail reported this week that “CNN caused a firestorm when it included a war monument in Brest, a city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, in an article on the 'world's ugliest monuments' published last month.” This isn’t Ted Turner’s CNN, where a reporter would be disciplined for saying the word “foreign” in a sentence. The online article from a travel-piece contributor was intended as humor. A Russian news commentator responded by suggesting the Marine Corps War Memorial – the Iwo Jima sculpture just north of Arlington National Cemetery – is “easy to mock” for its...

US figure-skating champion Jeremy Abbott lashed out at his critics in a foul-mouthed rant after his and teammate Jason Brown's spectacular slump at the Sochi Olympics. Olympic champion Evan Lysacek did not defend his title and Abbott and pony-tailed teen Brown failed to sparkle in the Iceberg Skating Palace, to leave the United States off the men's podium for the first time since the 1998 Nagano Games.

In a surprise visit Russian President Vladimir Putin dropped in on U.S. Olympic headquarters Friday to chat about the Winter Games and the upcoming Russia-U.S. hockey showdown. He even wore a red 'Happy Valentine's Day from Team USA' pin on his lapel. Putin spent about half an hour at USA House in Sochi's Olympic Park, sitting on a couch talking with U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Larry Probst and CEO Scott Blackmun. From there, he made a stop at Canada House next door.

SOCHI, Russia ― The Russian fans were quite gracious in the aftermath of the Americans' epic shootout victory over their men’s hockey team on Saturday. The tech wizards at the Bolshoy Ice Dome? Nyet. The Olympic hockey palace has been putting the final scores of games on its roof at night, complete with dazzling lights and colored flags. Here is how it looked following Canada's 6-0 win over Austria:

SOCHI, Russia. Shani Davis was bristling with frustration and trying to keep it in check, talking about how this Winter Olympics will haunt him for the rest of his life. Brian Hansen's coach was starting to weep as she spoke of the catastrophic turmoil that turned a bunch of predicted gold medals into a collective and embarrassing failure. Joey Mantia tried to find a polite way of saying that his colleagues have yet to grasp that there is no "I" in the word "team," and coach Ryan Shimabukuro was dismissing the avalanche of criticism as nothing but the talk of...

I have seen many Americans, particularly blacks, do nothing when the national anthem is played. And yet, here is a Jamaican sprinter who has the class to stop an interview, and pay tribute to Americans. I an now an Usaniac!

Maybe it wasn't the suits after all. After shedding their new, high-tech skinsuits for their old-fashioned gear, American speedskaters still were without a medal at the Sochi Olympics. Zbigniew Brodka won Poland's first gold medal in the men's 1,500 meters, finishing 0.003 seconds ahead of Koen Verweij of the Netherlands. It was one of the closest 1,500 finishes in Olympic history.

Do you think President Obama will reach across the aisle to make sure our Olympic champions won't be taxed on the medals they win? Yes No

The snow in the Caucasus Mountains is dissolving, the white patches shrinking, and many athletes on Team USA seem to be melting down with them. Some Americans are drained, and others are dragging. When they ski or they skate, they think they went fast, but then they look up at the clock and are stunned to find they were a second slow, and finish eighth. Team USA’s self-esteem is leaking away, and it’s triggering anxious super-secret coaching meetings and conspiracy theories. What’s in the Russian water table — and why are those Swiss timers so suspiciously slow? It must be...

The White House said Thursday that President Obama still believes American Olympians shouldn’t have to pay income taxes on the medals they win. But a bill by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) never moved in the Senate. Three Republican lawmakers — Reps. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), Walter Jones (R-N.C.) and Pete Sessions (R-Texas) — proposed a bill similar to Rubio's before this year's games, but it has also failed to gain traction.

On Saturday in Sochi, forward T.J. Oshie scored four goals in a climactic shootout to lead the United States to a dramatic victory over Russia. This was not the Miracle on Ice—this was no massive mismatch, Al Michaels was not on the microphone, and the letters CCCP were not emblazoned across the Russians’ chests. Even so, it’s impossible to suppress a swell of patriotic pride when the USA takes down Russia on Olympic ice. That goes double when the American hero hails from Hockeytown, USA. Earlier this month, the New York Times’ Jeré Longman filed a dispatch from Warroad, Minn.,...

Team USA won against Russia in Olmpics Men's Ice Hockey this morning after regular time had run out, as well as a 5-minute overtime period. A shootout finally determined who won, with T.J. Oshie of the St. Louis Blues (hometown: Everett, WA) scoring the winning goal.

SOCHI, Russia — T.J. Oshie scored four times in the shootout and got the winner in the eighth round, leading the United States past Russia 3-2 Saturday in the thrilling revival of an Olympic hockey rivalry. Cam Fowler and Joe Pavelski scored in regulation for the Americans in the marquee game of the preliminary round. Jonathan Quick made 29 saves and stopped five attempts in the shootout.

As a kid, I remember watching the Army and Navy bobsled teams competing at Lake Placid on ABC Wide World of Sports. Check out this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bYntbG6SWU

Without skating a single moment Thursday night at the Iceberg Skating Palace, Yevgeny Plushenko was once again the talk of Sochi. Actually, the talk of the Olympic sporting world. The 31-year-old Russian made a dramatic exit from the sport in the men’s short program – skating to the boards and taking his name out of contention with referee Mona Jonsson – effectively ending a 16-year career that some call the greatest of all time.

Hannah Arendt coined the term "the banality of evil" to describe the galling normalcy of Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann. Covering his trial in Jerusalem, she described Eichmann as less a cartoonish villain than a dull, remorseless, paper-pushing functionary just "doing his job." The phrase "banality of evil" was instantly controversial, largely because it was misunderstood. Arendt was not trying to minimize Nazism's evil, but to capture its enormity. The staggering moral horror of the Holocaust was that it made complicity "normal." Liquidating the Jews was not just the stuff of mobs and demagogues, but of bureaucracies and bureaucrats. Now...

The 5,000-plus cups of the Greek yogurt that were supposed to be sent to the Sochi Olympics but were denied by Russian customs will instead be donated to New York City food pantries — but they are a tough sell, workers said on Thursday.

Olympic-gold snowboarder Jamie Anderson confesses she and the other female athletes are checking out “a lot of cuties” in Sochi with the dating app Tinder, according to US magazine. The 23-year-old from Lake Tahoe, Calif., said matchmaking has reached new levels in the Olympic Village. “Tinder in the Olympic Village is next level,” she told US. “It’s all athletes! In the mountain village it’s all athletes. It’s hilarious. There are some cuties on there.” But, she warns, the preoccupation with Tinder can be “way too distracting,” so she deleted her account. And it seems to have paid off. Anderson clinched...

<p>Over the last few months, while well-intentioned people around the Western world were protesting antigay actions by Russia, conditions for gay people in much of Africa were going from terrible to even worse. Last month, the president of Nigeria signed a law prescribing 14 years behind bars for individuals in same-sex marriages and up to ten years for members of gay organizations, and since then dozens of people have been arrested and gay-rights activists have gone into hiding. In the northern (which is to say Muslim) city of Bauchi, a gay man was whipped 20 times in a courtroom – a disappointment to the crowd outside, which wanted him to be stoned to death in accordance with sharia law.</p>