Free Republic

Suppose a foreign country, whichever, mexico, china, Russia, Etc, sent an army to March into San Francisco and then annexed it into their country. Rhe citizens of San Francisco would now pay taxes to that country and would would follow thier laws. Would you fight or have your son fight to liberate the city although it's values are very different from your own? Would you view them as fellow Americans that deserve Liberation just the same? Or would you gave the opinion that is not worth fighting for?

Let's get it right.

Friday Morning recording 11 Feb 06 Russia's Vladimir Putin, bold and brave is plunging into the Middle East peace process inviting one on one talks with Hamas. Says no way can he do worse than the other peace mediators who seem paralyzed. Washington considers Hamas a terrorist organization and won't talk to them at all. Putin figures he can't do worse than that

“The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others,” declared President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union speech. Such a bald assertion of American arrogance is not surprising, coming from a man whose worldview has been termed “messianic militarism.” But this was one of Bush’s biggest applause lines, which I find discouraging. Can we voice a more attractive alternative to this jingoistic patriotism? It has long been a conceit of North Americans that we operate on a moral plane above the rest of humankind. But in the transnational era, the rest of the world...

<p>In the run up to a conflict in Iraq, foreign news websites are seeing large volumes of traffic from America, as U.S. citizens increasingly seek news coverage about the coming war.</p> <p>"Given how timid most U.S. news organizations have been in challenging the White House position on Iraq, I'm not surprised if Americans are turning to foreign news services for a perspective on the conflict that goes beyond freedom fries," said Deborah Branscom, a Newsweek contributing editor, who keeps a weblog devoted to media issues. In January, for example, half the visitors to the Guardian Unlimited news site, an umbrella site for Britain's left-leaning Guardian and Observer newspapers, were from the Americas.</p>

<p>America's consumer watchdog has a bone to pick with the US Trade Representative. The USTR is lobbying foreign countries to adopt America's liberal approach to issuing patents and to honor US patents granted for business methods, such as Amazon's 1-Click ordering. Backed by his advocacy group, the Consumer Project on Technology (www.cptech.org), Nader argues that exporting a flawed policy is a mistake. We caught up with him in Washington to find out why he believes US patent evangelism is a problem.</p>