Free Republic

Amid renewed scrutiny of the Clinton Foundation's foreign ties this week, Hillary Clinton pointed to the success of its low-cost contracts with pharmaceutical firms in a rare acknowledgement of her family's controversial nonprofit network. However, the same pharmaceutical firms that donated to the Clinton Foundation and sought the foundation-funded contracts Clinton described were also lobbying the State Department at the same time as some pursued taxpayer-funded contracts to do similar work. Executives at those companies have also contributed heavily to Clinton's presidential campaign, complicating her attempts to attack the pharmaceutical industry as a political "enemy" akin to Republicans.

President Obama said Friday he was "not personally aware" of any request for more security by U.S. diplomats in Libya before the Sept. 11 strike on the consulate.

Across 166 pages of internal State Department documents -- released Friday by a pair of Republican congressmen pressing the Obama administration for more answers on the Benghazi terrorist attack -- slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and the security officers assigned to protect him repeatedly sounded alarms to their superiors in Washington about the intensifying lawlessness and violence in Eastern Libya, where Stevens ultimately died. On Sept. 11 -- the day Stevens and three other Americans were killed -- the ambassador signed a three-page cable, labeled "sensitive," in which he noted "growing problems with security" in Benghazi and "growing...

KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. government will spend $511 million to expand its embassy in Kabul, the U.S. ambassador said Wednesday, describing the work as a demonstration of America's long-term commitment to Afghanistan. "We make this commitment by commemorating the recent award of a $511 million contract to expand the U.S. Embassy here in Kabul," Ambassador Karl Eikenberry said during a ceremony at the construction site that marked the formal announcement of the contract. "We're going to get a day when that embassy's up and there's not going to be these barriers out there, there's no barbed wire, there's not...