Free Republic

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday during her weekly press briefing called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "tyrant" and said it was "stunning" to see him enter Ukraine. "It's stunning to see in this day and age a tyrant roll into a country. This is the same tyrant who attacked our democracy in 2016," Pelosi said during the briefing.

Note: Photo included. SNIPPET: "Bout and American-born pal Richard Chichakli were accused of creating a new business, Samar Airlines, which they thought was clean of any connection to their own bloody dealings. Starting in the summer of 2007, Samar Airlines started making deals for airplanes and crews to ferry contraband between the United States and Tajikistan, the indictment said." SNIPPET: "The Russian-born Bout is accused of wiring $1.7 million from bank accounts in Kazakhstan, Cyprus, Russia through banks in New York City and Salt Lake City to finance the scheme." SNIPPET: "Bout, who is accused of supplying weapons to real...

The right is calling Obama weak, but his wily foreign policy is paying off The spluttering of the American right — and some European conservatives — over Barack Obama’s foreign policy reached a new level of vituperation last week. “Is Obama naive?” pondered Michael Ledeen at National Review. “I don’t think so. I think that he rather likes tyrants and dislikes America.” Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation wrote in The Daily Telegraph: “[Obama’s] appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear-free world ... have all won him plaudits in the large...

Panetta orders internal probe of secret spy program after some members of Congress say CIA misled them. ### CIA Director Leon Panetta has ordered an internal inquiry into the agency's handling of a contentious and still highly classified intelligence program that has caused a heated dispute between the CIA and Democrats on the House intelligence committee. The move by Panetta appears to be an implicit acknowledgment by the agency that it should have disclosed information about the post-9/11 secret program to Congress much earlier than it did. *snip* CIA and congressional officials have refused to describe the nature of the...

TULSA, OK -- Tulsa Congressman John Sullivan has checked himself into the Betty Ford Center in California to treat an alcohol addiction. "To ensure my success in this fight, I've decided to take a temporary leave of absence from Congress," he said in a statement. "I value my relationship with the citizens of Oklahoma's First Congressional District, whom I am privileged and honored to have served for the past eight years. So, I wanted to be open and honest on this tough situation. "I ask for your continued support and prayers as I face the challenges that lay ahead. I...

Despite strenuous and continuing efforts to portray each other in the most negative light possible, both Democratic presidential contenders responded affirmatively to the question of the other’s electability during their recent debate in Pennsylvania. “Yes, yes she can,” was Senator Barack Obama’s assessment of Senator Hillary Clinton’s potential to defeat Republican nominee Senator John McCain. “She has the raw cunning and guile necessary to succeed with American voters. She’s proven this by surviving scandal after scandal during her husband’s political career. Ever time she’s been down, she has risen again—just as scum always rises to the surface of a pond.”...

Harry Potter and "the Death of God" - by Michael D. O'Brien Special to LifeSiteNews.com Editor's Note: LifeSiteNews.com, the news service which first put online the letter signed by Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI - against the Harry Potter books, is proud to present Michael O'Brien's latest essay on the Potter series.  The author, North America's foremost Potter critic, has written many articles that analyze in detail the Harry Potter novels. Here he reflects on the significance of the series as a whole. Well, July 21st has come and gone and the world is muggling onward. The date,...

'SERIOUS tensions" exist between U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Washington-based presidential campaign staff and those working on her campaign in New York, Democratic insiders say. "Her New York crew is fighting like hell with her D.C. folks, and it's worse than the normal stuff, real serious tensions," said a Democratic Party source. "The New York folks are the ones who got her elected to begin with. They've done it and know what to do. The D.C. folks are the 'geniuses' who do 'national elections' and think everyone here is a rube. "The Washington types hold meeting after meeting and then...

Either Bill Clinton is not telling the truth now about the terrorist threat posed by Iraq during his administration - or he fibbed to the American people while he was in the White House. Clinton recently told his former staffer-turned TV commentator George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. government had "no evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. But a recent report in the The Weekly Standard headlined "Clinton Revisionism" unmasks Clinton's flip-flops over the Iraq weapons of mass destruction issue. For example, during an appearance on "Larry King Live" back in July 2003, the former president...