Free Republic

The Senate's inability to move forward on a bipartisan immigration reform bill preserves a broken system with ineffective and insufficient laws. Maintaining the status quo is unacceptable and would be a serious setback to those of us who are charged with securing our homeland and advancing our nation's competitiveness. Effective immigration enforcement requires the right tools and resources -- precisely what the new bill would give us. By denying our law enforcement critical assistance, the current system impedes their brave efforts to protect our country.... Supporters of the Senate bill have a solution that is both clever and just. They...

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee. "The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor... "I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy...." The White House responded...

The Duplicity of Peter Drier on Affordable Housing in the Dupli-City of Los Angeles The Pasadena Pundit - April 13, 2007 Sum: The impossible affordable housing problem in Los Angeles is propelled by images of two persons who never talk to each other. One is of the pro-immigration activist; the other the technocratic affordable housing official, academic and politician. The insolvability of the housing problem is that of the two images are personified by the same person - Pasadena's Dr. Peter Drier. There is a prominent professor of urban policy at a local Los Angeles university who is an apparent...

The U.N. Human Rights Council is nothing but a farce.....

Russia's list of terrorist organizations does not include Hamas or Hezbollah cnews.canoe.ca July 28, 2006 By HENRY MEYER MOSCOW (AP) - Russia on Friday published a list of 17 groups it regards as terrorist organizations, but did not include the Palestinian militant movement Hamas or Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group, both regarded as terrorists in Washington. Separately, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Hezbollah must have a say in any agreements in the Middle East crisis, Russian news agencies reported - another sign of differences between Russia and the United States about the region. "Any agreements must be co-ordinated with all...

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected the prospect of talks with the United States on the nuclear program, saying nothing would be gained, state television reported Tuesday. "Negotiations with the United States would have no benefit for us, and we do not need them," the television quoted Khamenei as telling Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. Developing...

For a long time now, the political Left has been a source of widespread puzzlement. Many people instinctively suspect its insidiousness, but are uncertain of its precise nature. The confusion is further compounded by the apparent incongruence between the Left’s flowery rhetoric and the detrimental effects of its actions. Unable to grasp its nature, many have followed with uneasy apprehension its growth into a powerful force whose seemingly inescapable influence has been increasingly felt in virtually every sector of our society. Duplicitous by disposition, the Left indeed does not lend itself to easy analysis. Although its corrosiveness has been intuited...

New Delhi, October 21: Despite the tall talk on de-hyphenating US relations with India and Pakistan, the impending American sale (to be announced next week) of 80 F-16s to Pakistan has begun to cast a shadow over the Indo-US regional security dialogue which is being held tomorrow. There’s growing concern on the Indian side that US tactical interests in Pakistan might begin to overwhelm the proclaimed long-term American commitment to build a strategic partnership with India. As they survey the Asian security scenarios tomorrow, the challenge for Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran and US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns is...

U.S. Senator Chris Dodd Senator to Speak at the July Chamber Breakfast Meeting http://www.towntimes.com/articles/2005/07/21/news/local_news/news15.txt Larry Marino, chairman of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce, announced that the Chamber's Monthly Member Breakfast U.S. Senator Chris Dodd will be held on Monday, July 25, from 7:45 to 9am at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Cromwell. Middlesex Hospital is sponsoring the breakfast meeting. Connecticut's Chris Dodd is a senior Democratic leader in the United States Senate. Chris Dodd is best known for bringing much-needed attention to children's issues. He formed the first children's caucus and spent almost a decade fighting to...

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean Wednesday night for using "religion to divide." Obama told reporters gathered at the Rock the Vote awards dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., that Dean needs to tone down his rhetoric. Dean said on Monday that the Republican Party was "pretty much a white, Christian party." "As somebody who is a Christian myself, I don't like it when people use religion to divide, whether that is Republican or Democrat," Obama said. "I think in terms of his role as party spokesman, [Dean] probably needs to be...

I really get tired of these kinds of arguments.http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_05/006275.php Look, having six-party talks regarding issues affecting the Korean peninsula has been an overwhelmingly bipartisan project ever since the end of the Korean War. Any effort to pretend that the Bush Administration is the first one to have come up with the concept is wrong. Ridiculously wrong. And even beyond the traditional nature of the demand for six-party talks, they make sense. If you don't have six-party talks, then North Korea will try to push South Korea out of the diplomatic equation altogether and will be able to avoid getting any...

THE African Union yesterday accused army commanders in the West African state of Togo of staging a military coup following the death of the president, Gnassingbe Eyadema, by imposing Eyadema’s son, Faure, as the new head of state. Gnassingbe Eyadema, 69, who died of a heart attack on Saturday, came to power himself in a military coup and led his tiny, impoverished country - just over two-thirds the size of Scotland - for 38 years, making him the world’s longest-serving ruler after Cuba’s Fidel Castro. He was one of the last of Africa’s so-called "Big Men". A general when he...

By Edward L. Daley On September 23, 2004, Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Below are some excerpts from that speech, and the hurried and predictably pessimistic response to it by John F. Kerry from a firehouse in Columbus Ohio. I am also including a few other recent statements by Senator Kerry concerning the Iraq War, the alternative positions of President Bush, and my own comments (preceded by the * symbol) regarding the issues raised. Furthermore, flecked throughout this article are quotes from several historical figures, added for the purpose of sharpening...

Mrs. Heinz-Kerry and her connection to The Tides Foundation is not ‘new‘ news. The Tides Foundation’s connection to moveon.org isn’t breaking news, either. Nor is moveon.org’s connection to Texans for Truth. What is lesser known is the Communist Party’s willingness to back Kerry in this election. They’ve encouraged their members to vote for him instead of their own candidate. Their sole reason? Getting rid of President Bush. The W.W.W.P. (The Socialist Party) openly brags of infiltrating the unions. They brag about having Party members placed in positions to negotiate contracts for union memberships. Many of the people who give money...

Right wing radio has created clouds of controversy over Kerry (search), but have the attacks gone too far? Bill investigates the right and wrong of talk radio, don’t miss this! See you in the No Spin Zone, tonight at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!

If your average, naive, gullible citizen visits the CBS website, they'll assume all of this buzz about forgeries is no cause for concern. See BS continues to hide the truth

The Senate, facing an unprecedented confrontation with one of its members, wrestled Monday with whether to go to court to force Republican Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon to turn over hundreds of pages of personal diaries as part of an ethics committee investigation into allegations of sexual harassment and possible criminal wrongdoing. After seven hours of often tedious debate over legal technicalities and constitutional questions, the Senate retired for the night, its leaders vowing to vote sometime Tuesday on whether to support the committee's effort to obtain the diaries by subpoena. So sensitive was the issue that by nightfall Monday...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Putting Words in the President's MouthNotra TrulockThursday, Nov. 6, 2003 Congressional Democrats and their friends in the media continue to distort President Bush’s case for war on Iraq. The controversy that erupted over the president’s reference to Iraq’s quest for uranium is one example of how his opponents have misrepresented what the president has actually said. Recall that in his State of the Union address, the president said the British told us that Iraq had been seeking to purchase uranium in Africa. A British parliamentary investigation recently validated that conclusion. David Kay’s interim report on the search...

<p>"Saddam Hussein's Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th century and warns us of what we must know about the 21st. In this century, we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination, and when necessary action. "</p>

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Bin Laden in Pakistan?Charles R. SmithSaturday, July 26, 2003 Pakistani Government Helping Al-Qaeda Hide Osama bin Laden is living in Pakistan, according to a former Indian general, and members of the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) know where he is. "Some of the ISI know his whereabouts," stated K.P.S. Gill, a former Indian general and a leading expert on international terrorism. "Certainly not the hierarchy but some of the lower-level members know." "The footprint of every major act of international terrorism over the past decade invariably passes through Pakistan," stated Dr. Ajai Sahni, the executive director of...