Free Republic

[Biden's] liberal internationalism is proving to be costly. In case you missed it amid the war news, the Journal this week reported that Saudi Arabia is edging closer to accepting the yuan as payment for oil shipments to China. This is one more cost, and a potentially significant one, of the Biden Administration’s bungled handling of a strategically important ally. Details of the potential new Saudi-Chinese oil-trading arrangements remain vague. The two sides have talked for years about pricing some oil sales in yuan, and it may not happen. Some 80% of global oil sales are priced in U.S. dollars,...

With security in Afghanistan deteriorating rapidly, U.S. troops were dispatched Thursday to evacuate personnel from the embassy in Kabul, according to a U.S. official. U.S. troops are being sent to the Kabul airport where they will provide air and ground support to help process Americans hastily exiting the country. The move comes alongside news that the Taliban have seized the country's third largest city of Heart, a strategic provincial capital near Kabul.

<p>With some lawmakers chanting "Death to the America," Iran's parliament voted to ban access to military sites, documents and scientists as part of a future deal with world powers over its contested nuclear program.</p> <p>The bill, if ratified, could complicate the ongoing talks in Vienna between Iran and the six-nation group — the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — as they face a self-imposed June 30 deadline. The talks are focused on reaching a final accord that curbs Iran's nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.</p>

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Todd: White House was 'caught off guard' MSNBC’S Chuck Todd observed Tuesday that the White House was “caught off guard” by the disastrous public roll out of their prisoner exchange for Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Todd and Andrea Mitchell agreed that the White House had likely thought there would be “some euphoria around this, the only POW that was remaining in Afghanistan, that there would be a rally around the flag. That didn’t happen.” “They were expecting criticisms of Gitmo, criticisms of the detainees that were chosen,” Todd said. “They did not expect this criticism of the attempt to...

The U.S. government’s plan to give away authority over the Internet’s core architecture to the “global Internet community” could endanger the security of both the Internet and the U.S. — and open the door to a global tax on Web use. “U.S. management of the internet has been exemplary and there is no reason to give this away — especially in return for nothing,” former Bush administration State Department senior advisor Christian Whiton told The Daily Caller. “This is the Obama equivalent of Carter’s decision to give away the Panama Canal — only with possibly much worse consequences.” The U.S....

Despite repeated, self-serving claims by Obama officials that the Administration did everything it could to head off and then respond appropriately to the violence against American facilities in Libya and Egypt last week, their blunders in policy, intelligence and security illustrates an incompetence every bit as profound as exhibited by the administration of Jimmy Carter in Iran 33 years ago. It appears nothing has been learned in more than three decades; despite significant gains in technology available to the U.S. government during those intervening years. In 1979, the Carter Administration precipitously abandoned the Shah of Iran, Washington’s long-time and loyal...

CNN poll: 52% say Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012 By Michael O'Brien - 02/16/10 01:35 PM ET 52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll. 44 percent of all Americans said they would vote to reelect the president in two and a half years, less than the slight majority who said they would prefer to elect someone else. Obama faces a 44-52 deficit among both all Americans and registered voters, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Tuesday. Four percent had no opinion. The reelection numbers are slightly more...

Barack Obama, the US presidential candidate, has called the situation in Afghanistan "precarious and urgent". Obama, who visited US troops in Afghanistan and met Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said on Sunday the US should start planning immediately for a shift of soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan. "I think the situation is getting urgent enough that we have to start doing something now," he told the US TV network CBS. Television pictures showed a relaxed Obama at the heavily guarded presidential palace in Kabul, talking to Karzai and flanked by Afghan ministers and fellow senators Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed....

Many left-wingers insist that Al Gore really won the 2000 election, and Gore's endorsement of Barack Obama shows that he also believes this. After eight years of incompetence, neglect and failure, we need change. Our country fortunately does not need change, because we avoided making this mistake in 2000, even if Al Gore and his supporters really do believe he is the President of the United States. In Obama's case, by the way, POTUS would mean Pothead Of The United States.

President Bush’s advocacy of an immigration overhaul and his attacks on critics of the plan are provoking an unusually intense backlash from conservatives who form the bulwark of his remaining support, splintering his base and laying bare divisions within a party whose unity has been the envy of Democrats. It has pitted some of Mr. Bush’s most stalwart Congressional and grass-roots backers against him, sparking a vitriol that has at times exceeded anything seen yet between Mr. Bush and his supporters, who have generally stood with him through the toughest patches of his presidency. Those supporters now view him as...