Free Republic

It seemed like one of those movies with twin brothers played by the same actor, one with glasses and one without. There is the brash, undisciplined one and the nerdy, engaging one. In my case it wasn’t a movie but a 45-minute interview with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. I was a tough critic of his performance in 2012, but so is he. He told me, “2011-12 was a frustrating, painful, humbling experience but not a bad one in the sense we sometimes learn the most when we are humbled.” He said one lesson is that you have to be physically...

<p>In theory, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has it largely right on immigration reform. Our current system is broken. We cannot deport everyone.</p>

In February, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) was asked during a panel what he thought about Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin saying negative things about him. Amash dismissed it and suggested people should go look at how often Rubin criticizes Rand Paul instead. So I did. Jennifer Rubin mentioned Senator Rand Paul’s name 143 times in the first three weeks of March (March 1-21) on her Right Turn blog. The only other political figure mentioned more often than Paul was President Obama at 206 times (not including “Obamacare,” but just President Obama specifically). The most frequently mentioned named after Sen....

Barry Rubin, a great strategic thinker and cartographer of the emerging post-American world, died today in Tel Aviv. I read him regularly and cited him in After America re the collectively insane urge of almost everyone Nidal Hasan encountered as he wafted upwards through the US Army to look the other way and not see what was staring them in the face: As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in US history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave it to...

A federal judge on Monday sentenced eco-saboteur Rebecca Rubin to five years in prison -- less than what prosecutors sought for the former fugitive from Canada. Rubin, voice shaking, apologized to her family, the court, firefighters as well as targets of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. "I was so convinced at the righteousness of my beliefs, that I chose to ignore my own wrongdoing," Rubin said. Chief U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, who presided over the sentencing hearings in 2007 of Rubin's co-conspirators in Eugene, praised Rubin's statement, calling it "the most thoughtful, well-stated, honest, unvarnished apology/explanation."...

It is hard not to be cynical about the right-wingers’ racket. They promote confrontation in which there is no hope of victory, assail other Republicans when it fails and, along the way, raise a great deal of money and get a whole lot of media attention. There are two things going on here. First, the short-term incentives for Lee to engage in this stunt are obvious. He’s not ever going to be president of the United States and will forever be in the shadow of people like Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). (Lee...

Rubin rose before Chief U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Portland, where she pleaded guilty to a dozen crimes – in Colorado, Oregon and California – as part of the underground Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front. ... Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen F. Peifer recounted Rubin's crimes as part of the largest group of eco-saboteurs ever taken down by the FBI. They called themselves The Family and committed an estimated $40 million in damage from 1996 to 2001. ... the terms of the highly structured plea agreement sets limits on the number of years Rubin will spend in prison....

Just hours after the Egyptian army deposed Mohammed Morsi on July 3, President Obama expressed "deep concern" at the ouster of Egypt's first democratically elected leader and reiterated U.S. support for "the democratic process and respect for the rule of law." He instructed the State Department to re-evaluate more than 1 billion dollars in aid earmarked to Egypt. Now is not the time to punish Egypt, however. If democracy is the goal, then the United States should celebrate Egypt's coup. Morsi may have won an election, but he despised the democracy which propelled him to power. Rather than consult and...

The private-equity tycoon Stephen A. Schwarzman, backed by an array of mostly western blue-chip companies with interests in China, is creating a $300 million scholarship for study in China that he hopes will rival the Rhodes scholarship in prestige and influence. The programme, whose endowment represents one of the largest single gifts to education in the world and one of the largest philanthropic gifts ever in China, was announced by Mr. Schwarzman in Beijing on Sunday. The Schwarzman Scholars programme will pay all expenses for 200 students each year from around the world for a one-year master’s programme at Tsinghua...

"My time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience." It was close to midnight on Jan. 20, 2009, and I was about to go to sleep when my iPhone beeped. There was a new text message. It was from Richard Holbrooke. It said, "Are you up, can you talk?" When I called, he told me that Barack Obama had asked him to serve as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He would work out of the State Department, and he wanted me to join his team. "No one knows this yet. Don't tell anyone. Well, maybe...

As most of you have read or seen by now, a journalist and NBC/MSNBC media consultant named William “Bill” Arkin has created quite a stir by viciously insulting American soldiers in Iraq. He wrote at his Washington Post blog, “Early Warning: William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security” column (1/30/07), that “… this NBC (Nightly News) report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer force that thinks it is doing the dirty work” re Iraq. The “report,” according to Arkin, featured “a number of soldiers (who) expressed frustration with...

Rebecca Rubin A 39-year-old woman accused of eco-sabotage in three Western states turned herself in to U.S. authorities at the Canadian border on Thursday morning. Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, a Canadian, had been on the run for a decade before surrendering in Blaine, Wash. She is accused of multiple counts of arson as part of a conspiracy with 12 other people from 1996 to 2001 in five Western states. The charges against Rubin include a Nov. 30, 1997, arson at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management Wild Horse and Burro Facility in Harney county near Burns and the Dec. 22,...

This week financial news organization CNBC gave some mainstream attention to the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History, in which “Banksters” and their U.S. racketeering partners are being accused of laundering of 43 trillion dollars worth of ill gotten gains. The lawsuit is said to involve officials located in the highest offices of government and the financial sector. Since this information was surprisingly revealed by the mainstream news organization there has been a very suspicious and deadly fallout at the CNBC headquarters. Within hours the original page for the article was taken down, and CNBC senior...

Central bankers are “counterfeit money printers” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke should resign for messing up the U.S. economy so badly, Marc Faber, author of the Gloom, Doom and Boom, told CNBC on Friday. He said Bernanke was one of the main proponents of an ultra-expansionist economic monetary policy that was to blame for the latest financial crisis. “If I had messed up as badly as Bernanke I would for sure resign. The mandate of the Fed to boost asset prices and thereby create wealth is ludicrous — it doesn’t work that way. It’s a temporary boost followed by...

NBC News special correspondent Tom Brokaw was taken by ambulance to a Charlotte hospital this morning after an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Brokaw, 72, who stepped down as anchor of “Nightly News” after the 2004 election, has been working a break-neck pace the last two weeks first at the RNC and this week at the DNC. Brokaw has been up early, appearing on “Morning Joe,” then reporting throughout the day and into the night. Last night, he appeared on Sean Hannity‘s Fox News show. An MSNBC spokesperson tells TVNewser, “On the set of ‘Morning Joe’ this morning, Tom Brokaw...

Ari Ephraim Rubin, vice chairman of the Jewish Defense League long led by his father, Irving (Irv) Rubin, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on July 20. He was 30. Ari Rubin had been active since his youth in the militant JDL, which has long been rejected by mainstream Jewish organizations for its violent tactics, and he became vice chairman in 2006. His death was ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, whose spokesman, Craig Harvey, said that a neighbor found Rubin in his car with the self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. The report was confirmed...

Thanks to Professor Jacobsen of Legal Insurrection and Dan Riehl of Riehl World View for their timely and informative posts. First of all, I'll share a conversation I had with a Democrat in Michigan yesterday. She asked me why she had only heard of Rick Santorum within the past week. I answered that because of party politics and money-on-hand of the candidates other than Romney, the rest of the candidates are having a difficult time getting their name across. "Well, I don't like that Romney, he's buying the election," she said, "and I'd vote for Santorum but everything about him...

Bahrain is strategically important and an incredibly diverse country, not only ethnically (with Arabs and those of Persian origin, not to mention South Asians and Filipinos if one includes the expatriate workers), but also religiously: The majority are Shi'ite Muslims, the ruling and more elite class are Sunni Muslims, and there are also a number of Christians and Jewish families, the latter mostly of Iraqi origin centuries ago. The Bahraini ambassador to the United States is Jewish. Because most of the opposition is Shi'ite, there is concern in American policy circles and among many journalists that a hidden Iranian hand...

Says they remind him of previous  attacks on Sarah Palin emanating from  these same useful idiots illuminati...  Shillin' for Mittens: The Great One yesterday: 'Well, Good Lord I have never seen an attack on somebody like I'm seeing on Newt Gingrich- it reminds me of Sarah Palin at this point' 'You go read Jennifer Rubin there in the Washington Compost...(lol), she's making a career out slaughtering conservatives- and Newt Gingrich in particular- because she's in Romney's back pocket.  No offense, Jennifer- it's just obvious, you're writing, I'm reading.' 'Look at George Will... I think his bow-tie popped off his neck. The fact is,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Senate will soon issue findings of a probe of the US mortgage meltdown that fueled the global financial crisis, with Goldman Sachs likely to face fresh embarrassment over its role, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose high-profile inquiry commission subpoenaed Goldman's and other executives last year, is due to release its report on the subprime implosion of 2007 and 2008. The paper, citing people familiar with the matter, said the report was expected to release emails from securities firms that developed or sold subprime mortgages and financial vehicles including...