Free Republic

It's almost as if Sen. John Kerry never stopped running for president. He still jets across the country, raising millions of dollars and rallying Democrats. He still stalks the TV news show circuit, scolding President Bush at every turn. His campaign Web site boasts of an online army of 3 million supporters. The Massachusetts Democrat, defeated by Bush in 2004, insists it is far too early to talk about the 2008 race, but some analysts assume he has already positioning himself for another shot at the White House. "Obviously, Kerry has all but said he wants another crack at the...

George Bush suffered heavy international criticism for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, but it now appears he was exactly right: The treaty is a "fiasco,” Forbes magazine declares. The treaty was negotiated in 1997 as a way to slow global warming, and formally took effect in February, without U.S. participation. The Clinton administration agreed to the protocol, but the Senate refused to ratify it, in part because developing countries that were major polluters and trade competitors, particularly China and India, refused to participate in the Kyoto accord. So right now "Kyoto is essentially a western European proposition,” Forbes reports. But "China...

John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has laid it on the line: Reform or we'll take our business elsewhere. According to today's Washington Post, Bolton warned the controversial international organization that the U.S. might bypass it in dealing with thorny global problems if the U.N. is unable to make management changes that will make the world body more effective and prevent a recurrence of the kind of corruption revealed in the scandal-ridden Oil-for-Food program. Bolton told reporters the General Assembly has "essentially not made progress" since President Bush and other world leaders convened a U.N. summit in...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is "The Most Influential Man in the World," according to Esquire magazine. The magazine has designated him as "the most powerful agent of change in the world" despite his lack of electoral standing and the fact he was laid low by a heart attack ahead of last year's presidential election. The magazine highlights Clinton's accomplishments in its December issue, which goes on newsstands on Thursday, profiling the world's "Best and Brightest" men and women. Since leaving office, Clinton has been so active that his post-presidency amounts to "a third term" for...

Adding breast cancer to the list of health causes he champions, former President Bill Clinton is establishing a fund in honor of his mother, who died of the disease in 1994. "She had a very upbeat attitude and never thought of herself as dying from the disease but living with it," Clinton said in a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press. "She was totally at ease with her own mortality and yet ferocious in fighting against the disease." The Virginia Clinton Kelley Fund will be part of the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund. Clinton and leaders of the advocacy...

Three teenage Christian girls were beheaded and a fourth was seriously wounded in a savage attack on Saturday by unidentified assailants in the Indonesian province of Central Sulawesi. The girls were among a group of students from a private Christian high school who were ambushed while walking through a cocoa plantation in Poso Kota subdistrict on their way to class, police Major Riky Naldo said. The area is close to the provincial capital of Poso, about 1000 kilometres northeast of Jakarta. Naldo said the heads of the three dead victims were found several kilometres from their bodies. In Jakarta, President...

Sen. John Kerry says President Bush should bring home 20,000 troops from Iraq over the Christmas holidays if the December parliamentary elections there are successful. Defeated by Bush last year and a potential candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Kerry called for a "reasonable time frame" for pulling back troops rather than a full-scale withdrawal advocated by some Democrats. He said it could be completed in 12 to 15 months. "It will be hard for this administration, but it is essential to acknowledge that the insurgency will not be defeated unless our troop levels are drawn down, starting...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cindy Sheehan, the military mother who made her son's death in Iraq a rallying point for the anti-war movement, plans to tie herself to the White House fence to protest the milestone of 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. "I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home," Sheehan said in a telephone interview last week as the milestone approached. "And I'll probably get...

STANFORD, Calif. Cameron Diaz surprised a class at Stanford University when the "Charlie's Angels" star helped lead a lecture on environmentally friendly design. Diaz's appearance Thursday came as part of taping for an mtvU program called "Stand-In" in which celebrities teach a class. On Tuesday, Madonna lectured students at New York's Hunter College. A champion of environmental causes, Diaz served as a sidekick for friend and renowned environmental architect William McDonough, a consulting professor at Stanford. "He's very charismatic, captivating," Diaz said of McDonough, who Time magazine once called "Hero for the Planet." "Bill is one of those people who...

Here is the text of former Vice President Al Gore's remarks at the We Media conference on Wednesday in New York: I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions. How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's...

NEW YORK -- Vice President Dick Cheney's feud with Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel was perpetuated Wednesday when the 75-year-old congressman said Cheney "ought to be ashamed of himself" for a remark about his age. Months of verbal attacks from Rangel turned into a back and forth on Monday when the 64-year-old vice president said Rangel is "losing it," later adding that "Charlie is a lot older than I am, and it shows." After an appearance at City Hall on Wednesday, Rangel was asked when the dispute would die. "I think it ends when he apologizes for attacking me as a...

Michael Jackson is indeed serious about recording that charity single with an all-star cast. But he knows it won’t be easy to convince other stars that his stigma is gone. What to do? Jackson, I am told, is making a full court press on R&B star Usher to be first to say yes. Sources say Jackson feels if Usher agrees, everyone else will follow. Jackson has already spoken with Usher’s manager, his mom, Jonetta Patton. Now he has to pitch the idea to the young singer himself. Meantime, I’m also told that the usual chaos is occurring in the Jackson...

CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, an avid mountain biker, got a chance to test his mettle against cycling superstar Lance Armstrong on Saturday. The seven-time Tour de France champion joined the president for a two-hour, 17-mile trek through the canyons and river-crossings of Bush's 1,600-acre Texas ranch. Armstrong, a fellow Texan and Bush friend who nonetheless disagrees with the president on the Iraq war, called it a "dream scenario" to cycle with the president. While many Americans wonder what attracts Bush to the Prairie Chapel ranch, where is he spending the month of August, Armstrong said he...

(CNSNews.com) - Members of religious, youth and environmental organizations are taking part in a four-day fast timed to coincide with the G8 summit on poverty and climate change to try and convince U.S. officials to "lead the world in serious efforts to combat global warming now." The Fast to Slow Global Warming is being sponsored by the National Global Warming Coalition, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Energy Action, and is set to be held from sunset on Tuesday, July 5 until sunset on Friday, July 8, according to a press release from the organizations. The main location for the...

Stephen Spielberg's "Balanced" View of Terror By Debbie Schlussel FrontPageMagazine.com | June 28, 2005 Much is being made about Steven Spielberg's upcoming inaccurate, revisionist history and "balance" (code for morally equivocating Islamic terrorists with their victims) in his new film, Vengeance -- about the Israeli Mossad's tracking down of Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But anyone who knows the history of this movie, based on a George Jonas book of the same name, should not be surprised. Jonas admits he has only one "source" for most of the information in his book and that...

In what may be an unprecedented act of media censorship, several major TV and cable networks – including NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox and CNN - have cancelled planned appearances of the author of the new, red hot book on Hillary Clinton. Edward Klein's sizzling new biography "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It and How Far She'll Go to Become President" has caused a storm of controversy after Sen. Clinton lashed out at it. Her aide called the book "full of blatant and vicious fabrications contrived by someone who writes trash for cash." [Editor's Note:...

Kerry Touts Bush Impeachment Memo Failed presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday that he intends to confront Congress with a document touted by critics of President Bush as evidence that he committed impeachable crimes by falsifying evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "When I go back (to Washington) on Monday, I am going to raise the issue," Kerry said, referring to the Downing Street Memo in an interview with Massachusetts' Standard Times newspaper. Story Continues Below "I think it's a stunning, unbelievably simple and understandable statement of the truth and a profoundly important document that raises stunning issues...

Clinton Library Attendance Disappointing When it opened two months ago, Bill Clinton's presidential library was supposed to draw so many visitors that the city of Little Rock would become a tourist mecca. However early reports claiming that over 100,000 had visited in just the first six weeks have turned out to be bogus. The National Archives and Records Administration, which operates the facility, tells U.S. News & World Report that only 42,054 paid to enter. The rest were guests of the former president and freebies to VIPs. Despite wall-to-wall television coverage of its opening, and a deluge of favorable press,...