Free Republic

Kamala Harris on Friday became the first woman to give the commencement speech at the United States Naval Academy when she addresses the 2021 graduating class. During the speech, Harris touched on some of the biggest threats to the nation and its armed forces, including the pandemic, cybersecurity, and climate change. One White House official said the address was her first broad speech focused on the military and the threats the country faces today. During her speech, she also spoke about ushering in a new era for America under the Biden-Harris administration and decided to mention the marines at the...

* Tesla’s stock had its best single day of trading since May 2013. * The electric automaker turned in an unexpectedly profitable third-quarter and better than anticipated progress toward getting its Shanghai factory operational. * “Skeptics had legitimate concerns in the past, but Tesla is now building cash, winning market share, and boosting margins,” Piper Jaffray says. Tesla’s stock popped big when trading began on Thursday, after the electric automaker turned in an unexpectedly profitable third-quarter and better than anticipated progress toward getting its Shanghai factory operational. “Skeptics had legitimate concerns in the past, but Tesla is now building cash,...

NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a new era of shared prosperity in America and told thousands at a presidential campaign rally Saturday that workers can trust her to fight for them. "It's America's basic bargain," Clinton said. "If you do your part, you ought to be able to get ahead, and when everybody does their part, America gets ahead too. "That bargain inspired generations of American families, including my own," the former secretary of state and first lady said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces using a new Raytheon Co interceptor missile downed another missile in space in a high-stakes test of a shield built to thwart growing capabilities of countries like North Korea and Iran. The mission off Hawaii late Tuesday was against a medium-range, separating ballistic missile, the Pentagon agency responsible for it said. The mock warhead split from the target's booster section, presenting what is supposed to be a more realistic attack scenario. "Initial indications are that all components performed as designed resulting in a very accurate intercept," the Missile Defense Agency, or MDA, said in a...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he will boost military cooperation with China, including holding more joint exercises, after the United States announced plans to shift most of its warships to the Asia-Pacific by 2020. Putin referred to recent Sino-Russian joint navy exercises in the Yellow Sea as an example of military cooperation which, he said, would go on. "We will continue cooperation also between our military," he told Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping in Beijing, where he is attending a security summit and meeting his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. "Recently joint navy exercises were held in the Yellow...

NEWTON, Iowa – Marking Earth Day with a pitch for his energy plan, President Barack Obama on Wednesday called for a "new era of energy exploration in America" and argued that his proposal would help the economy and the environment at once. ... But Obama's promise of preserving natural resources and jump-starting the economy ran smack into the reality of this economically struggling town about 30 miles east of Des Moines. The wind energy plant where he spoke, and received a tour beforehand, is a shadow of what it replaced — a Maytag Corp. appliances plant that built washers, dryers...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/foreign_policy/ THE AGENDA • FOREIGN POLICY THE AGENDA FOREIGN POLICY President Obama and Vice President Biden will renew America’s security and standing in the world through a new era of American leadership. The Obama-Biden foreign policy will end the war in Iraq responsibly, finish the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, secure nuclear weapons and loose nuclear materials from terrorists, and renew American diplomacy to support strong alliances and to seek a lasting peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Afghanistan and Pakistan Afghanistan: Obama and Biden will refocus American resources on...

Hundreds of embryonic stem-cell lines that provide hope for treating devastating disorders such as sickle cell anemia and Down syndrome are available for research but are off-limits to federal scientists because of White House restrictions, scientists said Wednesday. The three presidential candidates - Republican John McCain and Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - all support expanded federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. Their actions would lift a restriction imposed by President Bush in 2001 that limits federally funded research to fewer than two dozen embryonic stem cell lines. --snip-- Wednesday's first-ever conference of the Global Forum of...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The killing of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi is a "new beginning" for Iraq, the interior minister said on Friday, as authorities enforced a traffic ban in an apparent effort to prevent al Qaeda reprisal attacks. The Interior Ministry said the ban in Baghdad and in the volatile town of Baquba, near where U.S. warplanes killed Zarqawi on Wednesday, would be in effect from 11 a.m. (0700 GMT) until 3 p.m., when most Iraqis go to mosques for Friday prayers. Suicide car bombers sent by Zarqawi have targeted Shi'ite mosques in the past as part of a campaign...

NORFOLK, Va. (NNS) -- The last two H-3 Sea King helicopters made their last operational flight Jan. 27, taking to the air before making way for their replacement, the MH-60S Knighthawk. Military personnel and civilians gathered in hangar SP-35 aboard Naval Station Norfolk, home of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 2, the Fleet Angels, as their Commanding Officer, Cmdr. H. Kris Croeber, addressed the crowd. “Whatever the mission they were tasked with, the H-3 found a way to get it done.” said Croeber. “There is only one King.” Throughout its 45-year history, the H-3 has been involved in many missions,...

Brokaw, Rather, Jennings and other old lions know a new age is coming, and so they're muttering a bit as they leave the stage. Who can blame them? The world in which they acquired wealth and celebrity has crumbled with startling speed. A new order has arisen. Journalism, no longer a redoubt of the illuminati, has become a vessel of grubby democracy. Anybody — literally, anybody — can play these days. They can insert their views in a weblog. They can call talk radio. Eccentric plutocrats, such as George Soros, get to spend bundles on advertisements in any and all...

The Dan Rather story has so far been reported from two angles: The mainstream media views his retirement as the first nail in the coffin of network news; the blogosphere views it as the crowning triumph of the "Pajamahadeen"—the conservative bloggers who helped blow up the story of the fake 60 Minutes memos into a full-fledged media scandal. Neither, it seems to me, quite gets it right. With Rather's retirement from the nightly news, the news anchor may have been replaced by a new paradigm of TV journalism—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. To the likely dismay of...

Whatever the precise result on Monday, and whoever forms a government, one thing should by now be clear: The political landscape of Canada is on the verge of historic change -- radical, permanent, and mostly for the better. Eight decades of Liberal dominance, punctuated by occasional Tory interludes, are about to come crashing to an end. This isn't 1984. It isn't 1979. It isn't even 1957. It's something completely new. It's new, in part, because this Tory party is something we haven't seen before. Previous Conservative uprisings have been rooted almost entirely in popular disgust with Liberal excess, and though...

Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger's bipartisan transition team includes some of the state's most-dynamic, civic-minded people, as well as a wealth of experience -- a promising start for the "people's governor" and his war against "politics as usual." Team Arnold has reached beyond traditional -- and polarizing -- ideological divisions to bring in those representing the left, the right and the center. He tapped business people and community activists, professors and policy analysts, former and current mayors -- including Los Angeles' own Mayor James Hahn and former Mayor Richard Riordan -- political friends and onetime rivals. This is exactly the kind of...

LOS ANGELES — With no obvious driver to power an economic recovery, economists with the UCLA Anderson Forecast predict that the national economy is looking at a “very sluggish period ahead,” with considerable risk of another recessionary dip. In his report titled “This is Our First Business Cycle,” Edward E. Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, and economics professor at The Anderson School at UCLA, notes that past recoveries have been fueled by consumer spending on goods and real estate - essentially “consumer cycles” driving the economy. But since these key sectors have remained steady throughout the recent recession...