Free Republic

On Tuesday, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps forcibly commandeered the Maersk Tigris as navigated its way through the Straits of Hormuz. Iran controls the strategic waterway through which 40 percent of seaborne oil and a quarter of seaborne gas transits to global markets. The Maersk Tigris is flagged to the Marshall Islands. The South Pacific archipelago gained its independence from the US in 1986 after signing a treaty conceding its right to self-defense in exchange for US protection. According to the treaty, the US has “full authority and responsibility for security and defense of the Marshall Islands.” Given the US’s...

What television actress Alyssa Milano just experienced at Britain’s Heathrow Airport represents only a small glimpse of the moronic mindset and inane laws its citizens have allowed. Milano tweeted yesterday that prior to departing Heathrow, airport staff confiscated her breast milk; it was “taken away with no discussion.” She tweeted: “They said they would let the pumped milk through if I had the baby with me. Why would I need to pump if I had the baby with me? “Why can you test my toiletries to make sure they are safe but you have to throw away my breast milk?”...

When I was growing up we used to make fun of countries in Central and South America for the flimsy governments that were run by two-bit dictators who made up the script as they went along. In fact, we made so much fun of these operations that Woody Allen made a movie in 1971 called Bananas which parodied the governments and their haphazard operations. It is probably considered insensitive today to even refer to our southern friends in such terms. More importantly, the question is: How much are we becoming a similar operation? This is not to state that the...

The Obama administration's plan for thwarting the Islamic State, which it carefully calls ISIL, is to encourage multisectarianism in Iraq. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter explained the administration's vision when he testified last month before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "What happened last year was an unwillingness of the Iraqi security forces to fight, using the equipment and training that the United States had given them," Carter told the committee. "And the reason for that was a political failure on the part of their government to keep the promise that had been made to the country to keep it a multisectarian...

Freedom House, which publishes an annual report measuring freedom around the world, rating nations based on political rights and civil liberties, has recently issued its 2015 report. According to this report, there is only one free nation in the Middle East region. It so happens that it is the one nation that seems to trouble our American president the most – Israel. Freedom House rates on a scale of 1 – 7, “1” being the most free and “7” the least. Israel is rated 1.5, receiving a grade of 1 on political rights and 2 on civil liberties. The Israeli...

On Tuesday, the people of Israel spoke. They gave a clear mandate to the nationalist camp, led by the Likud and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, to lead the country. Now that the people have spoken, our leaders must consider the steps they must take, immediately upon entering office, that will enable them to advance their agenda and so meet the public’s expectations. To understand why this is necessary, we need to recall why Netanyahu decided to dismantle his last coalition government and opt for an early election. What made Netanyahu decide that he would be better off going to an...

The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations. Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways. First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime. As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week...

Hopefully, the shaky truce between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela Merkel, will hold. For nothing good, but much evil, could come of broadening and lengthening this war that has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians. The longer it goes on, the greater the casualties, the more land Ukraine will lose, and the greater the likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of France on the doorstep of Europe. Had no truce been achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced to surrender...

1) It’ll finally give Obama a chance to pursue his real passion, golf. 2) And it will also give Joe Biden a chance to pursue his lifelong passion: chasing squirrels. 3) Al Sharpton will have to start paying his taxes again. 4) We’ll finally have someone in office who doesn’t think it’s a good thing when more Americans end up out of jobs and on the dole. 5) Forcing public school kids to eat kale and tofu dogs will suddenly drop way down the priority scale for the President of the United States. 6) The day after a Republican...

It was extremely encouraging to see the United States and Sony eventually stand up to the cyberbullying of the North Koreans by allowing the movie "The Interview" to be released despite threats of retaliation. Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are hallmarks of American life, and we must jealously guard these values from both internal and external threats. In fact, all of the freedoms guaranteed to American citizens by our Constitution must be steadfastly preserved, or they will be eroded. Vigilance and courage are necessary every day if we are to remain a free society. I am proud of...

AFTER FIVE YEARS in a Cuban dungeon, American aid contractor Alan Gross was finally freed Wednesday, his release part of a deal to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. But there will be no freedom for the many thousands of Cuban citizens locked in the Castros' prisons — not even after a US embassy is reopened in Havana. The United States has always had diplomatic ties with nasty regimes. In that sense, President Obama's announcement last week that he intends to normalize relations with Cuba merely adds another to the list. But Cuba isn't just another...

Editor'Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison.Well, here’s the problem. No wonder the U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks are going nowhere. Sec. of State John Kerry has had to kick the can down the road--again. He just gave Iran another extension on the West’s deadline to come to an agreement about Iran’s drive for a nuclear weapon. Deadline? Red line? Dead red line? Secretary Kerry has entered into talks with Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif. These are the highest level contacts since the Ayatollah Khomeini sparked the revolution in 1979 that brought the Mullahs to absolute power in that Shiite nation....

As if we needed more reminders of just how despotic and power mad some world leaders can be, we’ve been confronted lately by a number of examples of liberty under assault and reminders we must be vigilant in its defense. Some so-called leaders simply will do anything to impose their will on others. No lie is too big or absurd to tell because, in their position, no one has any authority, moral or otherwise, to challenge them. Who would’ve thought a government, and a leader, would endure in the 21st century, and be so threatened by reality, so insecure in...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. Several years ago, the Israeli satirical series, Latma, produced this funny sketch on the Iranian mullahs’ push for a nuclear bomb. “The bomb, the bomb, I’ll get the bomb. Listen to me, Honey, it ain’t gonna be too long” sings the frolicking mullah in the online version of this humorous look at a most serious subject. The Israelis can joke about an Iranian nuclear bomb because they are on the front line. They know what it would mean. They don’t go on and on about “stability” in the Middle East the...

According to former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a frustrated President Barack Obama has given up on leading. World events refuse to break his way. Commentator Dan Balz opined on Hugh Hewitt's radio program that the Ebola epidemic reflects "this notion" that global events are spinning out of control." Yeats, in his post-WWI poem "The Second Coming," wrote, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." Yes, we have lived this before, with better leaders and ennobling eloquence. 2014's stressed and spinning might think on the debilitating setbacks, disappointments and bloody disasters the WWII...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration urged the international community Friday to view outbreaks of Ebola, MERS and other deadly diseases as global security threats that require broad and rapid responses to protect the safety of populations and economies. Top U.S. officials from the White House, Pentagon and State Department met with representatives from 44 countries and multilateral agencies, including the United Nations and World Bank, to call for implementation of 7-year-old global standards for dealing with deadly epidemics and other health dangers, including biological attacks. President Barack Obama, who this week urged members of the United Nations to do...

Barack Obama pledged to radically transform America when he took office. He didn't stop at America. President Obama's greatest legacy may be the radical reshaping of the global map. Fast forward three years. Here's where we stand. Given Europe's failure to stand up to Russian aggression in Crimea, Russia's borders have expanded to include Eastern Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan and larger portions of Moldova. As of 2014, Russia had consolidated its hold on Transnistria, the Eastern region of Moldova, which is heavily Russian; Russia had annexed Crimea; Russia had placed troops inside Eastern Ukraine. But it didn't stop there. Russia began...

Unlike someone we know, it sounds like United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron has a strategy for defeating Islamic extremists. At a press conference today on the growing threat of ISIS, Cameron offered a passionate speech with plans to disrupt the terror group. Just a glimpse at his comments proves he knows exactly who we’re dealing with: “The threat we face today comes from the poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism.” “The terrorist threat was not created by the Iraq war ten years ago. It existed even before the horrific attacks on 9/11."  “This threat cannot be solved simply by dealing with...

In my opinion, that’s 16 percentage points too high (via Vox and Weasel Zippers): Nonetheless, these numbers send shivers down my spine. In essence, the poll suggests that a growing number of French citizens sympathize with ISIS, a group known, among other things, for using terrifying acts of cruelty and other forms of barbarism to expand their Islamic caliphate. “No just God would stand for what [ISIS] did yesterday and what they do every day,” President Obama recently said, referring to the brutal slaying of an American photojournalist last week. And yet what we’re finding out is that thousands and...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- U.S. airstrikes that have helped Iraqi and Kurdish forces recapture a strategic dam and halt, at least temporarily, the advance of ISIS terrorists on the Kurdish capital of Erbil are a welcome pushback against a relentless enemy that for a time seemed invincible. But it may be of no more strategic significance than Jimmy Doolittle's bombing run against Japan in World War II. Doolittle's raid gave a psychological boost to the United States, but it had to be followed by much sterner stuff before victory was achieved. Just as Japan and Germany were once threats to...