Free Republic

Thursday, John F. Street, mayor of Philadelphia, endorsed Hilary Clinton. Wait, what? You mean the same Mayor John Street who was caught waiting in line for hours to buy an iphone? The same Mayor John Street who has presided over Philadelphia's highest homicide rate ever? The same Mayor John Street who has been accused again and again for public corruption? In fact, Mayor Street is so unpopular that the current Democratic Mayoral Nominee, Michel Nutter, ran ads against Street-- even though Street isn't running for mayor! And Nutter won the election! Apparently Marion Barry was unavailable. Hilary's numbers are expect...

The rule of thumb for the last century or so has been that for a guerrilla force to remain viable, it must inflict seven casualties on the forces of the government it is fighting for each casualty it sustains, says former Canadian army officer John Thompson, managing director of the Mackenzie Institute, a think tank that studies global conflicts. By that measure, the resistance in Iraq has had a bad week. American and Iraqi government troops have killed at least 1,200 fighters in Fallujah, and captured 1,100 more. Those numbers will grow as mop-up operations continue. These casualties were inflicted...

Four University of Wisconsin students were arrested and charged with unlawful trespassing Thursday following a sit-in protest at the U.S. Army Military Recruitment Station in University Square. The anti-war protest, which drew between 35 and 50 protesters outside the office, sought to bring attention to current recruitment practices and how they “focus on people who have little access to opportunities,” according to UW sophomore and protest participant Joel Feingold. Associated Students of Madison Academic Affairs Chair Ashok Kumar, one of the four arrested, said he and the other protesters walked in and demanded the office be turned into a financial...

"UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - UN employees are expected to issue an unprecedented vote of no confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), union sources say, after he pardoned the body's top oversight official over a series of allegations. The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the more than 50-year history of the United Nations (news - web sites), was set to approve a resolution withdrawing support for the embattled Annan and senior UN management. Annan has been in the line of fire over a high-profile series of scandals including...

"In the age of mass media and instant news, if we don't see images of something how long will our memories of it last? Our troops fighting in Fallujah have reportedly discovered several slaughterhouses--places where terrorists killed innocent civilians in brutal, disgusting fashion--around the city. But have you seen any pictures of those slaughterhouses? I haven't, and I think it's important that we do. We need to see what our enemy has been doing that led to the fighting there. We need to see why the Marines needed to be sent into that hellhole. The terrorist butcheries are part of...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran obtained weapons-grade uranium and a design for a nuclear bomb from a Pakistani scientist who has admitted to selling nuclear secrets abroad, an exiled Iranian opposition group said on Wednesday. The group, that has given accurate information before, also said Iran is secretly enriching uranium at a military site previously unknown to the U.N., despite promising France, Britain and Germany that it would halt all such work.

Commentator Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, says American troops returning from Iraq are surprised to find such a pessimistic view of the war in the media.

Project prevention goes beyond asking addicts to use birth control. Rather, we offer cash incentives to men and women who act to prevent pregnancies while using drugs. Temporary or permanent, the choice to use birth control while taking drugs can prevent the suffering and potential death of an innocent child. Avoiding unwanted pregnancies. Preventing abortions. Lowering the caseloads of social workers. All this while saving taxpayers millions of dollars. A common sense approach to a very serious problem! A substance exposed infant is born more frequently than once every 90 seconds. The US General Accounting Office estimates that parental abuse...

"I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the U.N. inspections were over," Clinton said in a Time magazine interview that will hit newsstands Monday, a day before the publication of his book "My Life." "That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for," Clinton said in reference to Iraq and the fact that U.N. weapons inspectors left the country in 1998.

The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq — that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons — were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday. Intelligence analysts fell victim to "group think" assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, the bipartisan report concluded. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community — which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said. Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the...