Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let me start digging into this IRS Stack that I have here. UK Daily Mail: "When a Tennessee lawyer asked the IRS for tax-exempt status for a mentoring group that trained high school and college students about conservative political philosophy, the agency responded with a list of 95 questions in 31 parts, including an ultimatum for a list of everyone the group had trained, or planned to train. "'Provide details regarding all training you have provided or will provide,' the IRS demanded. 'Indicate who has received or will receive the training and submit copies of the training...

In those first minutes, they'll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They'll just stand there. Soon, you'll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and you'll think you mind is playing tricks. But it won't be. Their fingers will start to resemble stalactites, seeming to melt toward the ground. And it won't be long until the screaming begins. Shrieking. Moaning. Tens of thousands of victims at once. They'll be standing amid a sea of shattered concrete and glass, a wasteland punctuated by...

Mithal Al-Alusi, whose two sons were killed in a Baghdad ambush soon after he visited Israel, tells The Times of Israel he feels betrayed by the superpower which allowed him to return to his homeland Mithal Al-Alusi is angry. He is angry with Iran for supporting global terrorism. He is angry with Syrian President Bashar Assad for oppressing and killing his own people. He is angry with his own prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq, for colluding with the two. But most of all, he is angry with US President Barack Obama for allowing this all to happen. “Obama has...

Turkey’s prime minister vowed Sunday his country won’t be drawn into Syria’s civil war, despite twin car bombings the government believes were carried out by a group of Turks with close ties to pro-government groups in Syria. The bombings left 46 people dead and marked the biggest incident of violence across the border since the start of Syria’s bloody civil war, raising fears of Turkey being pulled deeper into a conflict that threatens to destabilize the region. Syria has rejected allegations it was behind the attacks. But Turkish authorities said Sunday they had detained nine Turkish citizens with links to...

Now China Says It May Own Okinawa, Too Agence France PresseMay 8, 2013 US Sale Of Armed Drones To Japan And South Korea Would Transform Tensions In The Pacific China's top newspaper on Wednesday published a call for a review of Japan's sovereignty over the island of Okinawa -- home to major US bases -- with the Asian powers already embroiled in a territorial row. The lengthy article in the People's Daily, China's most-circulated newspaper and the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist party, argued that the country may have rights to the Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa. The island is...

While there have been no new military attacks on Syria since Sunday morning, something more peculiar happened in the past few hours, when according to Akamai and various other Internet traffic trackers, Syria has literally gone "dark", or, as Umbrella Security Labs describes it, as if "Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet." Some more from Umbrella's blog: At around 18:45 UTC OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet. The graph below shows DNS traffic from and to Syria. Although Twitter remains relatively silent, the...

<p>Fresh strikes in Syria. Large explosions reported in Damascus and in northern Syria.</p>

The answer might seem obvious: one, at least since the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. But Harvard's Linda Bilmes and UCLA's Michael Intriligator argue that it's at least four: In addition to these two large-scale conflicts the US is also fighting a number of unannounced and undeclared “wars”. These unannounced wars are fought mainly with air power and increasingly with drones rather than ground troops. If we define war to include conflicts where the US is launching extensive military incursions, including drone attacks, but that are not officially “declared,” then the US is directly involved in at least three...

We saved them from the nazis and latterly helped them get rid of Gaddaffi, and this is what we get?

Chinese Soldiers March Into Indian Territory, Pitch Tents, Declare Land For China Jake Maxwell Watts, QuartzMay 2, 2013, 11:22 AM China and India are once again at each other’s throats over an unmarked border in the Himalayas. But this time, oddly, nobody seems to know why. In mid-April, around 30 Chinese troops marched across the de facto border between China and India and pitched tents 19 kilometers inside Indian territory, just when relations between the two were going so well. The Indian government, which has so far exercised relative restraint, was accused by opposition politicians as being “weak, cowardly and...

WASHINGTON -- More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote "The Art of War." In it, the Chinese strategist postulated: "One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. ... One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated." Two millenniums later, Prussian military theorist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz wrote a detailed exposition on the principles of warfare. His book "On War" -- published after his death in 1831 -- posits, inter alia, that inadequate, incomplete or incorrect intelligence will inevitably contribute to the "fog of war" and lead...

8 things to think about as we mark the conflict's 150th anniversary. Some ring strong: of course the end of slavery, perhaps the worst disgrace in the nation's history. And the 620,000 ancestors lost. Other vestiges have weakened with the passage of time but are no less legacies of the four horrific, heroic years that shaped us as one nation. Here are eight ways the Civil War indelibly changed us and how we live: 1. We have ambulances and hospitals. The Civil War began during medieval medicine's last gasp and ended at the dawn of modern medicine. Each side entered...

The chemical attack that killed Yasser Yunis’s family was a small, almost private affair. Had the 27-year-old car mechanic not managed to struggle out of the doorway of his home in Aleppo on to the street in the darkness of night, clutching his infant son to his chest, no one might have ever known what wiped out the family. They died twitching, hallucinating and choking on white froth that poured from their noses and mouths. Their doctors believe that they were killed by nerve gas. The Syrian regime prefers to gas its opponents in this small-scale way, testing the elasticity...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday accused the Obama administration of being overly cautious in analyzing intelligence about the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria, saying he feared the White House was looking for excuses not to get involved. “I’m worried that the president and the administration will use the caveats as an excuse to not act right away or to not act at all,” he told Fox News. “The president clearly stated that it was a red line and that it couldn’t be crossed without the United States taking vigorous action.”

One of the most famous sayings of the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky was this: "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." It's one of the few correct things that violent Communist ever said. President Obama is clearly not interested in war. And he has stacked his administration with people who are similarly not interested. This is especially true when it comes to Islamist terrorists. They may make war on us, but to Mr. Obama and his minions, these are "man-caused disasters" or, preferably, domestic crimes to be dealt with in the normal course of...

Leh: India today said that it hopes to use agreements with China to "resolve peacefully" the stand-off in Ladakh, where New Delhi says soldiers from the People's Liberation Army have set up camp in Indian territory. "We have asked the Chinese side to maintain the status quo in this sector" said Syed Akbaruddin, spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry. "By this I mean the status quo prior to this incident," he said. Here are 10 big developments in this story: 1. India and China held a second flag meeting today to discuss a stand-off over nearly a dozen Chinese soldiers...

Authorities believe neither brother had links to terror groups. However, two U.S. officials said Tuesday that Tamerlan Tsarnaev - who died last week in a gunbattle - frequently looked at extremist websites, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al-Qaida's Yemen affiliate. The magazine has endorsed lone-wolf terror attacks.

America is facing a jihadist enemy. It is an enemy that has proven it can inflict more civilian casualties on the United States than any other foreign enemy in almost 200 years. Just last week this enemy killed 3 innocent people, wounded more than 100 and paralyzed a major American city. Yet, our obsession with political correctness, with a strong desire not to offend our enemies makes our self-defense immeasurably more difficult. The evil nature and intentions of our jihadist enemies are already clear. They hate us enough to pack pressure cookers with ball bearings, to hijack airliners and turn...

At the time I wrote the column below, news had not broken about the massive and devastating explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas. Of course, all of my condolences and commendations about the victims and crisis care community in Boston I extend with profound correlations to my own heartbroken neighbors in Texas. One television news report estimated that 700 first responders were deployed immediately into action there. Let no one say the selfless and sacrificial American spirit isn't alive and well!As with others across the nation, my wife, Gena, and I are so proud of the first...

Washington (CNN) -- In a critical indication of growing U.S. military involvement in the civil war in Syria, CNN has learned Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is ordering the deployment of up to 200 troops to Jordan, according to two Defense Department officials. The troops, which will come from the headquarters of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas, "creates an additional capability" beyond what has been there, one official said. The group will give the United States the ability to "potentially form a joint task force for military operations, if ordered," he said. The new deployment will include communications...

Prime Minister of Georgia Bidzina Ivanishvili admitted responsibility of Georgia for the outbreak of the war in August of 2008. He stated that the actions of the authorities of the country before crossing the border of Georgia by Russian forces were inadequate. This statement will have tangible consequences, first of all, for President Mikhail Saakashvili. "The political noose" around the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's neck is getting tighter. He is not yet being investigated, but the new authorities have already talked about the possibility of his interrogation about the events of 2008. The country may begin a new investigation into...

Did we? I must have missed that in the media coverage of the 10th anniversary of the second invasion of Iraq, which provided the beginning of the end of a 12-year war with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the fall of Hussein’s tyranny, when the dictator fled Baghdad for points unknown for another eight months, at which point American soldiers dragged him out of a spider hole. On that occasion, the new leader of Iraq reminds us that the US not only stopped the brutalization of 25 million people, we gained an important foreign-policy partner in...

North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un is waiting for United States President Barack Obama to make a phone call to Pyongyang to discuss easing tensions on the Korean peninsula, according to Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass. The report cited United Kingdom diplomats, saying Pyongyang was demanding the U.S. president personally call Kim Jong-un as one of the conditions to relieve the current conflict at hand.

For several decades, China has been North Korea's closest ally, largest trade partner and primary source of aid. However, Kurt Campbell, the former head of the State department in Asia, said there are signs that a relationship once described by Chairman Mao to be "as close as lips and teeth" is wearing thin. "There is a subtle shift in Chinese foreign policy. Over the short to medium term, that has the potential to affect the calculus in north east Asia," Mr Campbell said at a forum at John Hopkins university. "You have seen it at the United Nations (Security Council)....

ROGUE state North Korea today sparked fears that it could trigger a nuclear strike as early as next WEDNESDAY. Crackpot Kim Jong-un’s regime today issued a chilling threat to British diplomats warning them to get out of Pyongyang. Alarmingly the North Korean government said it would not be able to guarantee the safety of embassies from April 10. Russian diplomats have also been advised to evacuate. Today the Foreign Office added that it is “considering next steps” after the threat. It is still unclear why next Wednesday has been set as a deadline – but it is sure to spark...

(Reuters) - North Korea has asked Russia to consider the possibility of evacuating staff from its embassy in Pyongyang due to increasing tension on the Korean Peninsula, a spokesman for the Russian embassy said by phone from Pyongyang on Friday.

The most probable outcome of all these tensions is a low-level "tactical" strike from North Korea. But don't worry, it'll be " a relatively small attack that won’t leave many people dead," Sue Mi Terry, a Columbia University professor who served as a senior analyst on North Korea at the CIA from 2001 to 2008, told Wired's Spencer Ackermann. Analysts in the military, political, and intelligence fields have all pretty much said the same thing: Kim Jong-Un has painted himself into a corner, and the only way out is a gunfight. Luckily they also say it won't be World War...

h/t Michelle Fields

SEOUL — The North Korean army said Thursday it had final approval to launch "merciless" military strikes on the United States, involving the possible use of "cutting-edge" nuclear weapons. In a statement published by the official KCNA news agency, the General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) said it was formally informing Washington that reckless US threats would be "smashed by... cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means". "The merciless operation of (our) revolutionary armed forces in this regard has been finally examined and ratified," the statement said.

The United States faces, in my opinion, a less than 0.5% chance of being hit by a crude or advanced fission type nuclear weapon by North Korea. In fact the delivery systems they currently possess limit the ability of the regime in Pyongyang to very few targets outside of their region, putting US troops at risk but worse, the ability to destroy America does exist in that region. One map illustrating the targets of highest probability demonstrates why:

The Law of Unintended Libertarian Consequences Over the past forty-five years since becoming politically aware, I have vacillated between conservatism and libertarian thinking in contemplating the world around me. I never feel completely at home with either camp when living out my own minarchist tendencies. It is of course oversimplification, but the former seem to think that everyone wants to be like us, and that the impulse for liberty is the yearning of the human spirit. Evidently they are not paying attention to what is happening in the nation and around the world where dependency is in full march. On...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - An Afghan teenager killed an American soldier in eastern Afghanistan by stabbing him in the neck while he played with a group of local children, officials said Monday. The killing comes as the monthly U.S. death toll rose sharply in March to 14 with the start of the spring fighting season when the Taliban and other insurgents take advantage of improved weather to step up attacks. Sgt. Michael Cable, 26, was guarding Afghan and U.S. officials meeting in a province near the border with Pakistan when the stabbing occurred last Wednesday, two senior U.S. officials said....

Dr. Jim Garrow is a renowned author and whistleblower who has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for his humanitarian work. He is the author of The Pink Pagoda: One Man's Quest to End Gendercide in China. He has spent over $25 million over the past sixteen years rescuing an estimated 40,000 baby Chinese girls from near-certain death under China's one-child-per-couple policy by facilitating international adoptions. He is the founder and executive director of the Bethune Institute's Pink Pagoda schools, private English-immersion schools for Chinese children. Today he runs 168 schools with nearly 6,300 employees. Dr Garrow was recently...

Nuclear War to Be Conducted on Korean Peninsula Pyongyang, March 29 (KCNA) -- A nuclear war has turned out to be an established one on the Korean Peninsula. Despite the repeated warnings of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the United States, for the first time, made B-2A fly from Whiteman air force base in Missouri State over south Korea on March 28 to launch an exercise of striking ground targets aimed at the DPRK. Earlier, a formation of U.S. B-52 based in Anderson air-force base on Guam flew to the sky above south Korea and staged nuclear war exercises...

North Korea said on Saturday that it was entering a "state of war" with South Korea, following a call to arms by the country's young leader Kim Jong Un and days of increasingly belligerent rhetoric from the isolated state. The North's official news agency KCNA published the joint statement issued by the government, political parties and other organizations. "From this time on, the North-South relations will be entering a state of war and all issues raised between the North and the South will be handled accordingly," it said. The statement also warned that if the U.S. and South Korea carried...

Reclusive North Korea is to cut the last channel of communications with the South because war could break out at "any moment", it said on Wednesday, days of after warning the United States and South Korea of nuclear attack. The move is the latest in a series of bellicose threats from North Korea in response to new U.N. sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test in February and to "hostile" military drills under way joining the United States and South Korea.

It's Holy Week, but what's not so holy is the assault on religious liberty in the U.S. Religious liberty has been called rightly America's "first freedom," not only because the right is contained in the First Amendment but also because it predates the U.S. and has its origin in God, not government, and the freedoms he endowed within us. But over the past few decades, that basic freedom has come under assault -- particularly, in recent years, regarding Christianity. Last week, I discussed how religious liberty in foreign countries is being suppressed. This week, I will begin to address...

South Korea Considers Surgical Strike On Statues Of Kim Jong-il Adam TaylorMarch 25, 2013 If North Korea provokes South Korea on the third anniversary of the ROKS Cheonan sinking, the South may respond with a military strike on statues of the North’s nation founder Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il, according to the Chosun Ilbo. Apparently this would be a big deal. From the Chosun Ilbo: The statues are considered sacred in the North, and any damage to them could deliver a huge psychological impact. "If North Korea launches another provocation, our military has developed a plan to respond...

For the US, UK, France, and its regional partners including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, nothing would have suited their interests more than if the recent chemical attack reported in Aleppo Syria turned out to be (or could have been portrayed as being) the work of the Syrian government, or even "loose" weapons that had fallen into the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists the West both arms and condemns simultaneously. However, a strange silence has fallen across the Western media regarding the chemical attack which Israel had even claimed to have "confirmed." Now, a recent report published in the...

“Today he said in a speech that the United States of America and Canada, that’s the comparison you look for. You look to the Palestinians and the United States or the Palestinians and Israel; it’s the same relationship as the United States and CanadaThat is the most I mean, I apologize to first graders, but ..a first grader would make a better comparison than that. That is unbelievable. It shows the man has absolutely no idea what’s really going on,” Glenn said. “To equate the Palestinians, who are lobbing missiles over the border, to equate them to Canada is beyond...

Ten years ago this week, the United States led an invasion of Iraq with the explicit purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The preceding months had been filled with vehement protests against the impending war, expressed in editorials, in advertisements, and in rallies so vast that some of them made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. With so many people against the invasion, who supported it? Well, if you were like the great majority of Americans – you did. In February and March 2003, Newsweek's polls showed 70 percent of the public in favor of military action against...

<p>The North Korean army on Thursday threatened a possible strike against US military bases in Japan, in response to the use of nuclear-armed US B-52 bombers in joint military drills with South Korea.</p> <p>The threat came a day after Pyongyang condemned the B-52 flights as an "unpardonable provocation" and threatened military action if they continue.</p>

Warning: A Drone video showing an IED being planted then American lives taken when a truck rolls over it.

(CNN) -- Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil. It has been 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom's bombs first landed in Baghdad. And while most of the U.S.-led coalition forces have long since gone, Western oil companies are only getting started. Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms. From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set...

Ten years ago, U.S. air, sea, and land forces attacked Iraq. So, how now does the ledger read, 10 years on? Of the three goals of the war, none was achieved. No weapon of mass destruction was found. While Saddam and his sons paid for their sins, they had had nothing at all to do with 9/11. Nothing. That had all been mendacious propaganda. Where there had been no al-Qaida in Iraq while Saddam ruled, al-Qaida is crawling all over Iraq now. Where Iraq had been an Arab Sunni bulwark confronting Iran in 2003, a decade later, Iraq is tilting...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Ten years have passed since the United States and its allies invaded Iraq, and it appears the majority of Americans consider this a regrettable anniversary. Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their country "made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq" and 42% say it was not a mistake. The March 7-10 results mark the first time Gallup has asked this question since the full withdrawal of American troops in December 2011. Although majorities or near-majorities have viewed the conflict as a mistake continuously since August 2005, the current 53% is down from the high point of...

The pro-aborts are losing. They know it, and they hate it. As LifeNews.com reported in January: “CNN released the results of a new poll showing a majority of Americans want all or most abortions prohibited – a clear pro-life majority.� Indeed, the winds of life are blowing free the foul stench of a pro-abortion culture of death. This is why President Obama and his fellow pro-abort zealot, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, have unilaterally, arbitrarily and unconstitutionally forced, through Obamacare, every taxpaying American citizen to fund “free� abortion-on-demand. This draconian overreach is in perfect keeping with the 2012 DNC platform, which,...

The Uriminzokkiri website, linked to the regime, mentioned targets including Yeonpyeong island, which was attacked by Northern forces in 2010. Pyongyang has made a series of threats since its last nuclear test in February prompted the UN to tighten sanctions. The US said on Friday it would refocus missile defences to its west coast to counter the North's threats. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said 14 more batteries would be placed in Alaska by 2017, adding to 30 already in place along the coast.

Apparently people have short memories. In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc the possibility of war on the European continent was considered so remote as to be laughable. Then came the horrors of the Bosnian war as cultural and ethnic divisions splashed blood over such pretensions. Quickly however most slipped back into complacency, this time is different they said, it can't happen again, this isn't the Europe of the 90s. They are right, the situation in Europe isn't the same....it's worse. Unemployment in Greece and Spain now rivals that of the Great Depression. In France "youths" (or...