Free Republic

A member of Venezuela's electoral council admitted in an interview published today that he has seen no evidence that Nicolas Maduro won the country's election as he claims. Since the July 28 vote, governments around the world have expressed skepticism, and even outright disbelief, over President Nicolás Maduro’s claim to victory. But the statement by Juan Carlos Delpino — an opposition-member of the government body that announced Mr. Maduro’s win — represents the first major criticism from inside the electoral system. Speaking on the record to a reporter for the first time since the vote, Mr. Delpino said he “had...

A man who left vulgar messages on an assistant district attorney's voicemail cannot be charged with second-degree aggravated harassment for what a judge concluded was protected speech that did not rise to a "true threat." In dismissing the misdemeanor case on Monday, District Court Judge Valerie Alexander in Nassau County observed that the state's harassment statute unconstitutionally infringed on the defendant's First Amendment rights, saying the law's "vagueness and overbreadth" was clear and "cries out to be reworked." For an almost two-month period in 2010, Nicolas Pierre-Louis left expletive-laced voicemails for an unidentified assistant district attorney, calling for the arrest...

Before Haiti became the world's first black republic, it was a slave nation. On the island, there were quarantines, where a new slave was broken down, beaten physically, informed of his inferiority and told to be thankful to his captors — because it was the work that the slave would do for his masters that would lead to forgiveness and acceptance into heaven. Now, more than 200 years after the slaves revolted, a former Colorado couple wants to commemorate the quarantine, which they believe is the source of the Western world's violence, racism and greed. "Our culture, our society did...

The old assumptions about transatlantic relations are being junked – by two men with big hopes of leading Britain and France. Nicolas Sarkozy, who wants to win the French presidency, recently criticised his country’s “arrogance” in its dealings with Washington, earning a rebuke from Jacques Chirac, the present incumbent. And across the channel David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative opposition who currently leads in UK opinion polls, criticised Britain’s “slavish” stance towards the Bush administration – and upset US officials. Yet the two men’s speeches, delivered a day apart last month, were hardly at odds. Indeed, certain passages were...