Free Republic

Michigan players and coaches are lashing out at Jim Harbaugh over remarks the former Wolverines quarterback and current Stanford coach made about his alma mater in a newspaper interview. Michigan tailback Mike Hart says he has no respect for Harbaugh.

BAGHDAD Many of the American soldiers trying to quell sectarian killings in Baghdad don't appear to be looking for reinforcements. They say a surge in troop levels some people are calling for is a bad idea. President Bush is considering increasing the number of troops in Iraq and embedding more U.S. advisers in Iraqi units. White House advisers have indicated Bush will announce his new plan for the war before his State of the Union address Jan. 23. In dozens of interviews with soldiers of the Army's 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment as they patrolled the streets of eastern Baghdad,...

Thomas McPherson, a Millvale resident and unsuccessful Republican mayoral candidate in the borough last year, was arrested yesterday on charges that he threatened a minority family moving into a residence next door to his house. Mr. McPherson, 46, of Sample Street, was charged with ethnic intimidation, simple assault, terroristic threats and disorderly conduct. Police said after words were exchanged between Mr. McPherson and members of the family, Mr. McPherson went inside his house and came back out with a gun in its holster strapped on his body. Police said he pulled the gun half-way out at one point in the...

Foreigner Found With Prepaids, Cash In Murrysville Is Held By Feds GREENSBURG, Pa. -- A man from the Republic of Georgia is being held in the Westmoreland County Prison after he and another man from that country were found with 15 prepaid cell phones and $4,200 in cash, police said. The Tribune-Review reported that Malkhaz Zakutashvili, 53, was held through the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Murrysville police said the federal agency told police not to hold the second man, Zurabi Maisuradze, 25. Police said the men were questioned just before 8 p.m. Saturday because their van, which...

Some say Dick Cheney is toast. He's too hot to handle, throw him over the side if he won't drop himself into the waves. Don't look now, but that isn't water surrounding the Bush ship of state. It's gasoline. The issue titled "Dick Cheney" is just one of many embers. Have you ever noticed how on a scale of one to 10, every untoward event in the life of the Bush presidency goes straight to a 10? The Abu Ghraib photos? A 10 forever. Dick Cheney catching a hunting buddy with some birdshot? An instant 10. The Bush National Guard...

Washington — How did American interrogation tactics after 9/11 come to include abuse rising to the level of torture? Much has been said about the illegality of these tactics, but the strategic error that led to their adoption has been overlooked. The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession.

ONE of the reasons so many people admire Richard Armitage, the outgoing Deputy Secretary of State, is his well-earned reputation for fierce honesty. He is George Orwell-like in his ability to face hard facts straight up, and deal with them. Although he always manages to do this with a smile, he'll tell you the things you don't like to hear as well as the things you do. With his best friend and boss Colin Powell, Armitage, according to Bob Woodward's account of the period leading up to the war in Iraq, was the member of the Bush administration who urged...

SEATTLE, Dec. 22 - After a bitter and protracted recount fight in the Washington governor's race, elections officials announced Wednesday that the Democratic candidate, Christine O. Gregoire, was leading her Republican opponent by 10 votes - a minuscule margin but a stunning reversal of the Nov. 2 election results. The preliminary results elated Democratic Party officials and came only hours after the party scored another victory, when the State Supreme Court agreed with the Democrats' contention that more than 700 newly discovered and erroneously disqualified ballots in heavily Democratic King County should now be considered. Since those ballots came from...