Free Republic

Chevron's announcement this week that the Jack Field located in the Gulf of Mexico 270 miles southwest of New Orleans may have as much as 15 billion barrels of oil was not the only recent find of oil in the Gulf. In March, Mexico announced the discovery of a new huge oil find, the Noxal Field some 60 miles from the port of Coatzacoalcos on the coast of Veracruz state. Estimated to contain as much as 10 billion barrels of oil, the find could well be larger than Cantarell, Mexico's biggest oil field, near Yucatan. Like the Jack Field discovery,...

Footage of Masyaf shows missile shaped items; IAEA urges Syria to let inspectors visit reactor that IAF destroyed in 2007. A compound in western Syria with buildings and hundreds of missile-shaped items has been identified as functionally related to a nuclear reactor Israel destroyed northeast of Damascus in 2007. Satellite footage of the site in Masyaf was obtained by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and shows a compound built in a ravine and surrounded by what appears to be a line of trenches. While there are no security measures visible in the commercial satellite imagery, ISIS said...

AUSTIN – As Karl Rove makes the rounds this week with his memoir burnishing the Bush legacy, another book by another Texas Republican offers a decidedly different view. Former state GOP chairman Tom Pauken, a Dallas lawyer and foot soldier in the Reagan revolution, offers a sober counterpoint to Rove's full-throated defense of his former boss. In Pauken's view, the former president and "Bush's Brain" not only hijacked conservatism, they nearly destroyed it.

When former President George W. Bush addresses the Economic Club of Grand Rapids in June, will he be riding a wave of nostalgia? New York Times columnist Stanley Fish points to a few signs that Bush's image rehab has begun. One literally is a sign -- a billboard in Minnesota with an image of a smiling, waving Bush and a message that reads, "Miss Me Yet?" He also notes a Newsweek cover story that vindicates Bush's Iraq policy, "Mission Accomplished" and everything. Fish writes that Bush nostalgia, if it indeed exists, is the result both of Bush's relative silence since...

MIAMI — When Jeb Bush left office four years ago, his public appearances were as scarce as bi-partisan man hugs. He didn't want to upstage his successor in the governor's mansion nor his brother in the White House. Instead, he quietly cashed in by joining corporate boards and an elite speakers bureau, penned policy essays and gave infrequent interviews to conservative media. But in recent months, as the Republican Party of Florida has grappled with a leadership vacuum, Bush's political profile has grown as fast as the national deficit ...