Free Republic

All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state's lengthy pension code. The changes became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis. Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes...

> > The schedule illustrates that no one else in the White House now has a range of responsibilities equal to Jarrett's. When Obama took office, she was the least seen of his four senior advisors. Now Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, chief political strategist David Axelrod and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs have all departed. Jarrett, 54, remains, picking up new duties from each of them. Long the closest personal confidant of Barack and Michelle Obama, she is steadily becoming more visible at the president's side. New Chief of Staff Bill Daley may be the White House major-domo, but when...

The fall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to the rise of the Praetorian Guard. (snip) Empires are dead, or at least increasingly untenable; but even a modern polity needs a Praetorian Guard. In India we call it the Special Protection Group, created for a select band of ruling class VIPs rather than just a dynasty. Pakistan has its own and more appropriately named Elite Force. The job requires grit and courage, because implicit in its discipline is the compulsion to act as a human shield between the assassin and the leader. What happens when the shield becomes the...

Roman Silantyev, the controversial Russian specialist on Islam, says that “more than 90 percent” of the money Muslims abroad sent to promote an Islamic rebirth in the Russian Federation, was diverted by those who received it for other selfish and corrupt ways, a development he says Moscow can only be pleased by. Because that meant that fewer Islamist radicals were trained, he insists in a new article on the Antiterror.ru site, this misappropriation was “extremely useful” for Russia.

Sagbo isn't the first black in Russian politics. Another West African, Joaquin Crima of Guinea-Bissau, ran for head of a southern Russian district a year ago but was heavily defeated. Crima was dubbed by the media "Russia's Obama." Now they've shifted the title to Sagbo, much to his annoyance. "My name is not Obama. It's sensationalism," he said. "He is black and I am black, but it's a totally different situation."

American David Levy, who runs a factory making electric cables in Dongguan, has witnessed the generational shift in China's work force. He described the first waves of migrants, who planned to send most of their money home and eventually return to their village to build a house. "Fifteen years ago, the expectation was: a place to work, a salary and then they didn't care much about anything else. Life was just going to suck for a couple of years," he said. Photos of his factory workers from five years ago document the generational change. None show workers with the wild...

Moscow’s dreams of turning Russia into a global power to counter the West have proved illusory. Today, Russia has more to gain by cooperating with the world’s prevailing powers than by opposing them. Its foreign policy should aim to turn cooperative relationships with the European Union, the United States, and others into transformation at home. Two decades after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and nearly 20 years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has shed communism and lost its historical empire. But it has not yet found a new...

PARIS — France has agreed to sell Russia an advanced amphibious warship and is considering a Russian request for three more, French defense officials said Monday. It would be the first major arms deal between Russia and a NATO member. French President Nicolas Sarkozy approved the sale of one of the Mistral-class force projection and command vessels after months of discussions. Since then, Russian naval officials requested three more, said Jacques de Lajugie, head of international development at the French arms agency DGA. "We are in the process of examining" the request for more ships, de Lajugie told a news...

There is an American Express commercial that comes on about ten times a day but I cannot find it on Youtube. Instead of relying on others to provide a video, I may have to actually record it and learn how to post on YouTube. Anyway, this commercial makes me sick. A man and a woman, possibly American I assume, are having a business lunch/dinner with three Germans, two men and a woman. The Americans are pitching something and the Germans are interested, impressed. A deal is made. The American man offers to pay for lunch and pulls out his credit...

Compare that relatively small $2.7 million in federal aid to the $310 million originally set aside for a U.S. radar base project in the Czech Republic. It’s totally unjustified to fund unproven missile technologies and radar bases in foreign countries while U.S. roads, bridges, dams, levees and tunnels are in dire need of repair. As Czechs and Americans see U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech officials sign off on a document signaling the acceptance of the Czech government to the installation of a radar tracking system on Czech soil, there are more than a few ironies worth noting.