Free Republic

When Miami’s new art museum opened in December, namesake Jorge Perez spoke easily about a once-taboo topic among Cuban-American powerbrokers: his desire to increase artistic exchanges with those on the communist island. Then, this week, billionaire sugar baron Alfonso Fanjul—whose family’s business was seized by Fidel Castro in 1959—spoke publicly for the first time about investing back in Cuba. Both men are among a growing number of powerful South Florida Cuban-American business, civic and political leaders breaking the long-held public line on U.S. relations with Cuba and the Castro government. For all the talk of changing attitudes among second-generation Cuban-Americans...

In the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks, some Guantánamo Bay prisoners were sent back home to work as double agents, and help the U.S. find and kill terrorists. … Some of the men who passed through the program did in fact help the CIA target top al Qaeda operatives, but others stopped providing helpful information and the spy agency lost touch with them. …

Putin says spies expelled from US had 'tough lives' Russian PM Vladimir Putin during a visit to Ukraine. Photo: 24 July 2010 Mr Putin said that the spies "had a tough life" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says he has met the Russian agents recently deported from the US - and claimed they were living "tough lives" and had been "betrayed". He told journalists that he had sung Soviet-era patriotic songs with the agents. However, Mr Putin did not say where the meeting took place. The 10 Russians admitted in a US court earlier this month to being agents for...

The Bush administration's anti-terrorist surveillance efforts are more extensive than top officials have acknowledged, going beyond the controversial no-warrant eavesdropping program, the U.S. intelligence chief said Tuesday. President Bush acknowledged a program allowing the government to wiretap phone calls without obtaining a warrant in 2005. The program, run by the National Security Agency, is at the center of disputed congressional testimony by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales is defending himself against allegations that he lied to Congress about a 2004 dispute between the White House and Justice Department over the legality of the eavesdropping program. In a letter defending the...

Tone what down, Mr. Bush? Who are you talking to? To conservatives? I think he is. And I think Laura Ingraham, thinks he is, too. And, proud of God Knows What, he slighted the conservatives who are suppose to sit around and watch their hair turn white as year after year after year after year betrayal, and now having given so much to put the Republicans and the Bush family BACK in power, who believed the oath Bush gave to church leaders, to conservative leaders, in back door meetings, when lots of money exchanged hands, and money from common people...