Free Republic

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday. Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited the Democrat's response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision. "I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve...

New book fights popular narrative on radical leftists.. Andy Ngo fell to the concrete, bleeding from his ear. Vessels in his brain had burst, doctors later told him, and blood pooled on his brain. Ngo, a journalist, had been attacked by members of Antifa while covering one of the "antifascist" group’s demonstrations in Portland in 2019. "No hate, no fear," Ngo recalled the group shouting around him. The Portland native learned early on, however, that hate and fear are bedrocks of this radical movement. Ngo began covering Antifa for the Portland State Vanguard, where he went to graduate school, taking...

BATA, Equatorial Guinea—Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials. The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon. Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October on a mission to persuade...

Buckets of blood dripped from Ebrahim Raisi, the 8th president of Iran, for his roles on the “Death Committee” and other atrocities under his direction. He wore a black turban to claim that he descended from the Prophet Muhammad. The Shiite president did not survive the helicopter crash of May 19, 2024. Who will mourn the death of an evil man who presided over the death and torture of so many? Dissidents were tortured, subjected to cruel inhuman treatment, and killed. A political purge against political dissidents lasted five months during 1988. Ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini, the “Death Committee” was...

In 1979, Saddam Hussein publicly accused 68 of his own party members of treason.

I recently found some interesting articles about anthrax, the domestic theory, and Hatfill that gave me some new ideas to consider. Foremostly, I found that the first comments espousing the domestic theory often arose in the context of a war on Iraq, or finishing the war, depending on how you look at it. For years the government tried to build the consensus to getting rid of Saddam. Before and immediately after 9/11 Bush made it clear he wanted to complete the job. Interestingly the first voice after 9/11 against finishing off Iraq and dissuading consideration that the anthrax was Iraqi...

On her best-selling studio album, Summer began to bring new influences into the disco sound that had made her a star.By 1979, Donna Summer had cemented her status as the “queen of disco.” Singles like “Love To Love You Baby” and “I Feel Love” had taken her into the upper echelons of the charts and made her a global star. She’d also gained a reputation as a master of the double album through 1977’s Once Upon A Time, a record that was described by critic Robert Christgau upon release as the first “disco opera.” Once Upon A Time showed...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he intends to partially reopen the “Jungle School,” where up to 9,000 troops a year trained in jungle warfare from the 1950s to 1999 in the former Panama Canal Zone. Secretary Hegseth made the announcement to U.S. troops in Panama amid an ongoing trip to the Central American country, where he will attend the Central American Security Conference (CENTSEC). Thanking the troops for their service, Hegseth said, “We will have your back; President Trump has asked me to share that with all the groups of troops I talk to,” stressing the importance of...

Leon Panetta While a Southern California based congressman in the 1970s and ’80s, CIA director and Obama Secretary of Defense nominee Leon Panetta, was close to a pro-communist, Santa Cruz based “peace activist” named Lucy Haessler. In spite (or perhaps because of) Haessler’s involvement with the Women’s International Democratic Federation, Panetta placed a tribute in the Congressional Record, April 11, 1984, to mark Haessler’s 80th birthday. Panetta noted that Lucy Haessler attended several conferences of the East German based organization in France, the Soviet Union, Poland and East Germany. He did neglect to mention however that the W.I.D.F. was...

A US Vela Hotel satellite captured the Vela Incident, also known as the South Atlantic Flash on September 22, 1979. The incident was a double flash of light that beamed off Antarctica near the Prince Edward Islands. To date, there is no official account of what caused the double flash leading to several hypotheses being advanced on the probable cause. Some sources claim that the incident was characteristic of a nuclear test while others believe that the flash was as a result of an aging satellite generating electrical signals. Other sources also claim that the lights were as a result...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought death, destruction and debate over historical analogies. Is this the summer of 1914, with great powers stumbling into a horrific global conflict? Or is it the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939? What about Moscow’s 1939-40 Winter War against Finland? Will Vladimir Putin’s gambit end like the Soviet Union’s 1979-89 misadventure in Afghanistan? Matt Pottinger has been thinking of another conflict. Mr. Putin’s attempted conquest, and his burgeoning partnership with China’s Xi Jinping, reminds Mr. Pottinger of the Korean War. “In 1950, Stalin and Mao and Kim Il Sung badly miscalculated how easy the...

Keith Ellison is Minnesota’s incumbent Fifth District congressman, deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee and DFL candidate for Minnesota attorney general. He was a long-time apostle of hate on behalf of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, though the local Minnesota media haven’t gotten around to revisiting the issue as Ellison seeks statewide office. Now he is an apostle of hate on behalf of the causes of the increasingly mainstream far left of the Democratic Party. Speaking last week at a debate with GOP candidate Doug Wardlow, Ellison explained that he had operated under the impression that Farrakhan...

Iranian Terrorist Attack Against U.S. Revealed How Bill Clinton concealed it from the public and U.S. intelligence. October 7, 2015 Arnold Ahlert    A bombshell report by the Washington Times reveals that fecklessness in the face of terror isn’t a condition exclusive to the Obama administration. "Bill Clinton’s administration gathered enough evidence to send a top-secret communique accusing Iran of facilitating the deadly 1996 Khobar Towers terrorist bombing,” the Times states, "but suppressed that information from the American public and some elements of U.S. intelligence for fear it would lead to an outcry for reprisal, according to documents and interviews.” Nineteen American...

U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom By Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee Aug. 2, 2016 7:51 p.m. ET 52 COMMENTS WASHINGTON—The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward. Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane,...

Some conservatives have begun speculating the unrest in American cities—even as late as Monday night in Washington, DC, as “protestors” unsuccessfully worked to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson and set up an autonomous zone across the street from the White House—may in part be an attempt to affect the upcoming presidential election, with the chaos and violence intended to make it as difficult as possible for Donald Trump to win a second term. Lending credence to this idea is the fact that at least one board member of Thousand Currents—the group fiscally sponsoring the most organized part of...

As America witnessed inflation and expanding government spending in the 1970's along with political scandal in the form of Watergate a new face came onto the political scene. The new face created a notion of someone who was a different kind of Democrat who looked like he was from the outside of politics... Early on in the 1976 Presidential Campaign the media would seize on the religious aspect of Jimmy Carter's life with description: "Born-Again Christian" Jimmy Carter won a narrow victory in 1976... Some watershed moments would certainly be Iran where Carter would pull the rug out from under...

New depths to Jimmy Carter’s fecklessness have emerged through the declassification of State Department cables relating to the fall of the Shah of Iran. As reported by the BBC, the Ayatollah Khomeini, in January 1979, secretly sought Carter’s assistance in overcoming opposition from Iran’s military, still loyal to the shah. Khomeini promised that if he could return to Iran from exile in France, which the United States could facilitate, he would prevent a civil war, and his regime would not be hostile to Washington. The soon-to-be Supreme Leader of Iran certainly knew a sucker when he saw one. What Carter...

Had you have taken a direct flight from London to Seoul yesterday afternoon, by the time you would have landed you might have been none the wiser that anything had happened at all. At near midnight South Korean time, President Yoon Suk-yeol imposed martial law across the so-called “land of the morning calm.” Only six hours later it was subsequently, and pointedly, revoked. As South Korean citizens continue with their daily lives, the political establishment has once again entered a period of precarity. Yoon has scored a significant own goal; its implications do not end there. It is no understatement...

It is becoming apparent that some very powerful people behind the scenes have been running the country independently of who is in the Executive, Legislative or Judicial seats of power. When they get upset, they drive whomever they don't like or over whom they have no control out of power. These same people or entities have know all of the things that Obama and Hillary and those directed by them did, but said nothing about it because they were doing the bidding of the powerful. They also know what the media has been doing and obviously approve of it. All...

Totalitarian killers in pursuit of a murderous utopian agenda can always count on the New York Times to transform them into noble representatives of the popular will. Whether Stalin or Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao, Fidel, Che or Arafat, the Times will humanize them. The archetype was cuddly Uncle Joe Stalin as seen through the eyes of Walter Duranty. Count on Duranty's successors to enlighten us about how personable these tyrants are...