Free Republic

From BBC News: One startling feature of the latest race to become the next president of the US – which begins in earnest with next week’s Iowa caucuses – is the runaway success in the opinion polls of the outspoken billionaire, Donald Trump. But this should not be so surprising, says Michael Goldfarb, as Trump is just the latest example of a tendency in American politics that goes back a very long way.

THE Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has expressed his anger at Britain’s failure to gag Alexander Litvinenko in the final hours of his life, the cabinet has been told.Margaret Beckett, the foreign secretary, told ministers that the Russian government had “taken exception” to the poisoned former spy’s deathbed letter accusing the Putin regime of murdering him. This weekend a potential suspect — Andrei Lugovoi — admitted he had been contaminated with the radioactive poison polonium-210 but insisted: “I’ve been framed.” Beckett, who spoke to her Russian counterpart before Thursday’s cabinet meeting, said the Russians had “seemingly failed to understand” that Litvinenko...

In a speech at Colorado Christian College earlier this week, Sarah Palin laid out a five-point set of standards by which the United States should commit its troops to military action. Bearing the palpable influence of her new foreign policy adviser -- Peter Schweizer, a scholar at the conservative Hoover Institution who has been on SarahPAC's payroll for less than three weeks -- Palin's criteria for military action seemed at first glance to be less aggressive than the hawkish foreign policy she has consistently espoused. As recently as February, Palin had been among the first prominent Republicans calling for a...

Sarah Palin has parted ways with the neoconservative foreign policy advisers who had been writing speeches and advising her on policy since she joined the McCain campaign. An aide to Palin, Tim Crawford, confirmed that Orion Strategies' Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb are no longer working for her PAC. They parted, both sides said on good terms. "Randy flat out said, 'We can't give you the time,'" Crawford said. (snip) Crawford said they've been replaced by Peter Schweizer, a writer and fellow at the Hoover Institution who blogs regularly at Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. The personnel shift carries an ideological...

Michael Goldfarb, online guru at the Weekly Standard, has taken a leave of absence from his post at the magazine to become deputy communications director for McCain. Standard chief Bill Kristol announced the move on their blog. In his new role, Goldfarb will use his grasp of the rightosphere to help drive the McCain message online and will also lend a hand in writing campaign materials. He'll focus especially on the rapid response element of a campaign that is already being fought hour by hour. A source at the magazine said that when Goldfarb announced his move at a staff...

MOSCOW--Until a week ago, Alexander Litvinenko, a former colonel in the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, was virtually unknown outside the murky world of Russian intelligence. With his death in London from a massive dose of the radioactive element polonium 210, however, his fate may lead to a fundamentally different relationship between Russia and the West. Beginning with the Yeltsin era, two U.S. administrations have muted their criticism of Russia. This was the case even in the face of a series of political murders in Russia. But if Litvinenko, a British subject, was murdered by Russian intelligence on British...

[...] You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value. You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women. You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you...

The treatment meted out by the western Press over the Litvinenko case is utterly predictable and a shocking and chilling example of how anti-Russian those responsible for perpetuating the Cold War myth remain. When the West needed Russia in two World Wars, Russia gave up the blood of 32,350,000 of her sons and daughters. And now we are speaking about London and Moscow, what about the terrorist Zakaev, walking free in London while the parents of Beslan mourn their children? Russia shed her blood for what? To earn a constant barrage of anti-Russian stories, whipping up sentiment to serve as...