Free Republic

A very merry Christmas to Pussy Riot, Greenpeace and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, not to say to Vladimir Putin. At his somewhat bizarre annual press conference, with 1,300 journalist waving flags to capture his attention, Putin announced that Khodorkovsky, like the others, would be released from prison. Putin may not be a very lovable or gentle creature, but yet again he has shown himself to be unusually cunning, for all that he has been not only derided but consistently underrated. Since the implosion of the Soviet Union, more than 20 years ago, the west has made every conceivable mistake in dealing with...

David Stockman Writes Huge Unhinged Screed About How America Is Doomed And How You Should Get Out Of The Market NOW Joe WeisenthalMarch 31, 2013, 1:05 PMFormer Reagan budget director David Stockman has a new book coming out on Tuesday, and he's warming up the public with a massive piece in today's New York Times titled Sundown in America, which basically says the future of America bleak because of massive government debts, crony capitalism, bailouts, megabanks, the removal of the gold standard, and even green energy. The piece can truly be characterized as Hard Money Buzzword Bingo, as Stockman tries...

At a town hall meeting on his campaign-style tour of the Midwest, President Obama claimed that his economic program "reversed the recession" until recovery was frustrated by events overseas. And then, Obama said, with the economy in an increasingly precarious position, the recovery suffered another blow when Republicans pressed the White House for federal spending cuts in exchange for an increase in the national debt limit, resulting in a deal Obama called a "debacle." "We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months...

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

Australia must continue to shun a US-led holy war against AIDS, writes Bill Bowtell. The detection in New York City of a new strain of HIV virus that is highly resistant to anti-retroviral drugs is deeply worrying. If the existence of an HIV supervirus is confirmed by tests now being performed by the HIV authority Dr David Ho and others, then there will be genuine grounds for concern about whether existing HIV containment strategies are working, or need to be radically overhauled to meet the potential threat of a new strain of the virus. These questions are important and must...