Free Republic

About a third of the way up Paris’s iconic Avenue des Champs Élysées, in front of a Marks & Spencer store, the trunk of a trimmed horse chestnut tree is ringed by two knotted ropes from which dried, wilted flowers hang. The tree and the decaying tributes tied around it are easily overlooked, unless you know what happened here in April. In the nearby lampposts bullet holes remained gouged into the painted green metal like someone had pushed a finger into a pile of play dough. Evidence of when an Islamist militant fatally gunned down 37-year-old French police officer Xavier...

Some 250 teenage boys will pile onto the carpet of the Islamic Center of Passaic County on Sunday to catch the Super Bowl on a big screen. But when the much-buzzed-about commercials come on, they won't be watching. A youth leader manning the projector slaps a piece of paper over the lens, blocking out images the center considers inappropriate, such as beers and bikinis. "The purpose is to keep them away from bad influences," said Emad Hamdeh, the youth committee director. "The beer commercials show people happy while drinking; that's not reality." During the self-imposed blackouts, the boy fans don't...

Nobody else is saying it, so, once again, it is left to me to explain what really happened in Iraq yesterday. Iran declared war on the U.S. The signs have been there for a long time. I don't know if they have been intentionally ignored by U.S. forces in Iraq, or whether there is some master plan at the Defense Department to deal with this scenario. All I can tell you is we are now fighting a regional war. Our local opposition in Iraq is being trained, armed and directed with foreign support – by neighboring Iran. The uprising yesterday...