Free Republic

Musk understands what many commentators don’t: The war will end in a negotiated settlement or it will escalate, possibly into nuclear war.As if to burnish his reputation as a super-villain in the eyes of the corporate press, Elon Musk this week floated an idea on Twitter for a possible resolution of the Russo-Ukrainian war. For his trouble, he was swiftly accused of being a pro-Putin stooge by guardians of the Official Narrative. His suggested peace plan was dismissed out of hand as “Russia-friendly” and, as The Washington Post’s Olivier Knox put it, “designed to lock in Russian territorial gains.”But Musk’s...

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program appears to be in a state of suspended development, with little progress made in 2021 toward improving its lackluster performance. The latest report by the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) reveals stagnation and even backsliding in some fleet reliability measures.And that’s just the public DOT&E report.In an unprecedented move, DOT&E is concealing many of the key details of the F-35’s poor performance. For the first time ever, the testing office created a non-public “controlled unclassified information” version of its report, and although there is much overlap between the two versions, the meaningful...

Georgia officials on Thursday caved to requests for a statewide signature matching effort after President Trump’s campaign has repeatedly asked for the study since the Nov. 3 elections. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced a statewide effort to review signatures for absentee ballots in all of the state’s 159 counties. The move is an attempt to rebuild trust in the state’s election process. The announcement comes less than three weeks before the Georgia Senate runoff elections on Jan. 5, which will determine what party holds the majority in the upper chamber. Mr. Raffensperger announced the partnership with the University...

On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said “all transcripts” from the House’s impeachment inquiry will be made public. Jon Karl asked, “Congressman, why is this all happening behind closed doors? Why the secrecy? This is not a classified deposition. Why not do it out in the open?” Himes said, “First of all, all transcripts will be scrubbed for classified information and made available for the American public to see. There’s two reasons why these depositions are happening behind closed doors. One reason is when you’re talking to ambassadors...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” House Majority Chief Deputy Whip Dan Kildee (D-MI) stated that President Trump’s behavior is pushing many Democrats to support impeachment and his behavior is reminiscent of “some of the darkest moments of the Nixon administration.” Host Wolf Blitzer asked, “Your Democratic colleague from Virginia, Congressman Gerry Connolly, says the president’s actions…are ‘pushing a lot of Democrats into the impeachment camp.’ Do you think that’s true?”

Minxin Pei With the imposition of 25% tariffs on $68 billion worth of their merchandise trade ($34 billion of exports each), the U.S. and China have fired the first salvos of their trade war. If one were to borrow a military analogy, the first round of the U.S.-China trade war is either a skirmish or a probing attack, as the amount of the two-way merchandise trade affected by the tariffs is about only 10% of the total U.S.-China trade. But everyone knows that the main battle will be joined soon. Besides the additional $32 billion merchandise trade targeted for punitive...

The head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, which monitors diversity in the NFL, expects the league to institute a rule where players would be penalized 15 yards for using the N-word on the field. John Wooten, the head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, anticipates that the NFL's competition committee will enact the rule at the owners' meeting next month. "We did talk about it, I'm sure that you saw near the end of the year that Fritz Pollard (Alliance) came out very strong with the message that the league needs to do something about the language on the field," said...

Capitalizing on the shooting in Tucson this afternoon, CBS furthered the lunatic left rhetoric that Sarah Palin was somehow responsible for this heinous crime. The theory being that the shooter was inspired by Palin’s midterm election map, which featured Gabrielle Giffords as a potential target. “…critics of Sarah Palin have already drawn a link between the shooting and the fact that the former Alaska governor put Giffords on a "target list" of lawmakers Palin wanted to see unseated in the midterm elections.” It’s a little concerning that CBS would fall for such a

2009/11/10 15:43 KST N. Korea demands apology from South over naval clash SEOUL, Nov. 10 (Yonhap) -- North Korea demanded an apology from South Korea over a naval clash on the western sea border on Tuesday, calling the skirmish a "grave armed provocation" by the South that targeted a patrol boat on routine duty. "Today the north side let a patrol boat of the Navy of the KPA (Korean People's Army) on routine guard duty promptly go into action to confirm an unidentified object that intruded into the waters of its side," the North's Supreme Command of the KPA said...

She may have let Tom Cruise jump all over her couch, but Oprah Winfrey says that Sarah Palin can't even sit on it. Fans of Oprah debate whether the talk show host is being bias but not invited Palin on her show before the election. At least not until after the presidential election, that is. Responding to media reports first publicized on Matt Drudge's "The Drudge Report" claiming there was turmoil at Winfrey's Harpo Studios about whether to book the GOP vice presidential nominee on the popular talk show, Winfrey's camp said today that while she has nothing against Palin,...

On Monday, February 26, 2007 the U.N.'s highest Court will hand down the judgment as to whether Serbia as a nation will be held accountable for the alleged genocide perpetrated against the Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s. I'm posting here an essay written shortly after September 11, 2001 by Sandy Marquette that will hopefully provide some perspective. It may even be more relevant now than it was six years ago when it was written. AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST MUSLIM TERRORISTS: A WAR THAT THE ORTHODOX SERBS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING FOR YEARS By Sandy Marquette September 23, 2001 Imagine what it must...

In what could be a coup for antimarijuana forces, new research shows that rats exposed to pot's active ingredient at an early age devour more heroin as adults than rats without early exposure. Some experts, though, say the jury is still out on whether the finding is enough to officially label marijuana a "gateway" drug. According to statistics from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, most adults who take illicit drugs start doing so in their early teens. In addition, the earlier kids start smoking dope, the more likely they are to use harder drugs later on. For example, of...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - The across-the-board collapse of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions came down to this: They were ideas with narrow appeal, further damaged by a flat-footed campaign and an unpopular messenger, the governor himself. And that's just what Schwarzenegger's fellow Republicans said. California's celebrity governor was elected in 2003 as a centrist Republican - an essential pedigree in a state that votes reliably Democratic. But by the end of his initiative campaign Tuesday, Schwarzenegger had alienated Democrats and independents and allowed his opponents to paint him as an extremist. "What was defeated yesterday was a caricature of Arnold...