Free Republic

Bill Clinton’s picture is again a fixture on cable news. Republicans are sternly demanding a special prosecutor. And legal commentators are bickering over the finer points of federal criminal statutes on bribery and graft. It feels like 1997—but it’s 2010. And Barack Obama can’t be happy. The White House’s confirmation Friday that it enlisted former President Bill Clinton in an effort to get Rep. Joe Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary has sent the regular players in Washington’s scandal industry to their battle stations – to pick over the very sort of insider special dealing that Obama had promised...

HAVANA (AFP) - More than a thousand cigar lovers from 60 countries ringed the center of the cigar universe in Havana, comparing notes and celebrating Cuba's finest smokes. Distributors, specialists and simple aficionados packed opening day of the Eighth Habanos Festival, an annual event sponsored by Habanos, a global distributor of the esteemed Cuban cigar. British actor Joseph Fiennes was among a hundred celebrities on hand for the festivities, dedicated this year to Habanos' leading brand, Cohiba. The presence of the 36-year-old actor at the event, who played the lead of Will Shakespeare in the 1998 film comedy "Shakespeare in...

Is there more than a whiff of truth about Gallic charm? By Kim Willsher in Paris (Filed: 09/10/2005) It is one of the most enduring and insulting of national stereotypes: the Frenchman as a workshy character whose unpleasant body odours owe as much to his aversion to soap as to his love of garlic and onions. The French dismiss such talk as no more than cruel caricature, dreamt up by their beer-swilling, overweight and perfidious English neighbours. Now a leading French journal has produced figures suggesting that it may be closer to the truth than anyone – except perhaps rush-hour...

<p>ASSEMBLY Speaker Herb Wesson finally woke up and smelled the rotten odor of politics-as-usual.</p> <p>After a deluge of unwelcome media attention, Wesson canceled four consulting contracts that reeked of being either a little help for his friends or the second part of a ``you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours'' arrangement.</p>