Free Republic

The ruling United Russia faction has revealed in the Duma the amendments it will attach to the new START III arms control treaty. The ratification draft will contain several points that mimic two US Senate non-binding resolutions approved together with the ratified treaty, requiring the spending of $85 billion over ten years to modernize the US nuclear arsenal and a pledge to continue unrestricted development of ballistic missile defense (BMD). The Duma draft is lengthy, but not precise: it demands the “upholding of Russia’s strategic nuclear potential on a level, sufficient for safeguarding national security,” calls for the “development, testing,...

The Russian Duma delivered two embarrassing blows to the Obama administration over the holidays on the START treaty, one of which may end up scotching the deal altogether. First, the Russian legislature refused to do what Barack Obama insisted of the US Senate, which was a quick ratification. More importantly, however, the Duma will do what Senate Republicans wanted, which was to amend the treaty to clarify the relationship between START and missile defense. However, the Duma’s changes will link the two and recast START into a de facto anti-missile defense pact: The State Duma (the lower house of the...

The new Russia-US nuclear arms pact may have been hailed as historic but analysts said that all Moscow really has to do is phase out Soviet-era missiles and warheads that are already out of date. The new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) was ratified by the US Senate on Wednesday after a passionate months-long debate and given initial approval by Russia's State Duma lower house of parliament two days later. It will face two more hearings in Russia and almost certainly come into force within the next few months. The first nuclear pact in two decades has been feted as...

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid says the Senate's ratification of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia solidifies President Barack Obama's role as a world leader. [According to Reid] the treaty was about ... whether Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Reid says Obama has turned around American foreign policy.

Another GOP senator today came out in favor of the START pact – and it’s no less than the chamber’s number-three Republican. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-TN, said he will vote in favor of ratification. “I will vote to ratify the treaty because it leaves our countries with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to Kingdom Come,” Alexander said in a speech on the Senate floor. “In short I’m convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the new START treaty than without it,” he noted. Alexander said he and three other senators had written to President Obama earlier...

Dear Friend, On Tuesday — tomorrow — the lame duck Senate will vote on ratifying the START treaty with Russia. It needs 67 votes and we must not let it pass!!! While maintaining parity in strategic nuclear weapons, it locks in a 10,000 to 200 Russian advantage in tactical nuclear weapons and bars the US from developing interceptor missiles as part of a shield against incoming warheads — whether Russian or Iranian or North Korean. Putin snookered Hillary and Obama and they are desperate to pass the treaty to appease the left. There are ten key Republican swing votes. Please...

The Obama administration is frantically trying to deliver a ratification win on the New START (or START II) nuclear arms treaty. The harder Democrats push the agreement, the more troubling questions arise.On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, "It is time to move forward on a treaty that will help reverse nuclear proliferation and make it harder for terrorists to get their hands on a nuclear weapon." Rebranding START as a counterterrorism tool in this way is disingenuous. The treaty has nothing to do with terrorism, and the word doesn't appear anywhere in the text. The treaty limits...

Fate of Arms Treaty Tied to Policy on GaysBy JENNIFER STEINHAUER Published: December 17, 2010 WASHINGTON — Vexed and cornered, Republican opponents of the advancing effort to allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military pulled out a final card Friday, suggesting that the future of an arms treaty with Russia was endangered by Democratic efforts to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell” at the end of the lame-duck session. “It poisons the well,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, on the floor of the Senate during debate on the New Start treaty. Mr. Coker said he...

UPDATE, 4:11 p.m.: In an interview with me just now, Senator Bob Corker doubled down on his contention that if Dems move on DADT, Republicans will be less likely to support START. "I felt like momentum was growing for START," Corker said, adding that since Reid announced he was holding votes on DADT and DREAM, it has had a "chilling effect." "I'm watching support for the treaty erode, because of highly partisan political issues being brought up solely because activist groups in the Democratic Party want this done," he continued. Corker said he wasn't issuing a personal threat, and was...

SDI: Despite claims by this administration, our 40th president would not have agreed to the New START treaty if it meant abandoning U.S. missile defense. He had that choice with the Russians and just said "nyet!" When Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, he hoped Reagan would be willing to trade his Strategic Defense Initiative in exchange for arms-control agreements and vague promises of making nice with America. But America held all the cards and didn't fold. Reagan refused to negotiate SDI away. He opposed the proposed nuclear freeze and put Pershing missiles in...

The Obama administration has an impeccable track record of caving in to Russian demands, as part of its controversial “reset” policy. Last year, it threw key US allies Poland and the Czech Republic under the bus, ditching plans for Third Site missile defences in deference to Russian opposition. It is now planning another surrender to Moscow, by pressing for Senate ratification of the new START Treaty in the lame duck session of Congress. Instead of allowing the newly elected Congress to vote on the treaty, the Obama administration is trying to ram New START through without proper debate. No major...

While Americans are thinking about turkey and the TSA (and turkeys in the TSA), as is often the case, the most destructive governmental shenanigans are occurring behind the scenes. On Thursday, November 18, the Senate held hearings on the UN’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a treaty that could be used to justify sweeping social engineering across the nation. While the CEDAW was adopted way back in 1979, the Senate has thus far refused to ratify it. But with the Obama administration at the helm, and some lame-duck Democrats in office, plus the...

National Defense: The election obviously means big changes coming on fiscal policy. But one national-security-conscious GOP senator just proved it's a whole new ballgame on defense, too. The Republicans may have fallen short of gaining a Senate majority, but Minority Whip Jon Kyl just let it be known there will be no rubber-stamp approval by the lame-duck Senate of President Obama's highly questionable nuclear arms deal with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Under the Constitution, 67 senators are needed for ratification. Kyl says New START can't be considered this year "given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex...

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, pressing for quick Senate ratification of a U.S.-Russia nuclear arms-reduction treaty, summoned a number of former secretaries of defense and state, Republicans and Democrats, to the White House to rally support for the imperiled agreement. The White House said Obama wanted to discuss at the gathering why it is in the national interest for the Senate to approve the treaty this year, a move that a key Senate Republican says would be premature. Those invited to the Roosevelt Room meeting Thursday include Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry,...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is offering to add billions of dollars in funding for the U.S. nuclear stockpile in a deal that it hopes will win enough Republican support for approval of a nuclear arms control treaty with Russia. White House officials outlined the proposal to Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who is seen as the key to winning enough support to ratify the New START treaty, according to a congressional aide briefed on the proposal Friday. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMtpCnqIQ&feature=player_embeddedTHE UN RIGHTS OF THE CHILD TREATY IN A NUT SHELL... 1. First of all, the government (unelected in this case)will be the parent not you. Dont like it, you lose them. 2. Your child has a right to be forced to go to a communist indoctrination center (school) to be dumbed down, and conditioned to be a loyal marxist who will never question authority and grow up to be an illiterate factory worker 3. Your child has a right to grow up in a marxist country with no freedom of speech, freedom of the press and has the right...

British Foreign Secretary William Hague signed a “treaty between nations” with Palestinian Authority leaders on Wednesday. “This agreement is the first ever bilateral treaty between the two nations,” the British Consulate-General site proclaimed. The treaty covers cooperation in the film industry. Hague signed a similar agreement with Israel. Aside from its reference to the “treaty between nations,” the UK Consulate site also referred to Hague's trip to visit PA leaders in Ramallah as “his first visit to Palestine,” apparently recognizing a new country of “Palestine” before even PA leaders have declared one to exist.

A Russian parliamentary committee has withdrawn its recommendation to ratify a new nuclear disarmament treaty with the United States after the results of the mid-term polls, an official said Wednesday. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev signed the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in April but the accord has still to be ratified by the Russian lower house, the State Duma, or the US Senate. The passage of the treaty -- which envisages major nuclear weapons cuts -- through the Senate already looked complicated before the elections and the polls have seen Republicans pick up seats at...

The Case for a ‘Repeal Amendment’ Randy Barnett • September 16, 2010 6:00 am William Howell, the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and I have an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal making the case for a constitutional amendment giving 2/3 of state legislatures the power to repeal any federal law or regulation. Here is the wording of the Repeal Amendment: “Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose...

A Treaty (Berit, Covenant, Amana) between Jewish and Greek believers in Yeshua haMashiah (Jesus Christ).