Free Republic

ROME — Pope Francis tied Russia’s war on Ukraine to Joseph Stalin’s 1930s Holodomor, when the Soviet leader engineered a man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. “Let us pray for peace in the world, and for an end to all conflicts, with a special thought for the terrible suffering of the dear and martyred people of Ukraine,” the pontiff told pilgrims and tourists gathered in the Vatican Wednesday for his weekly general audience. “This Saturday is the anniversary of the terrible Holodomor genocide, the extermination by hunger in 1932-33 artificially caused by Stalin,” the pope continued. “Let us pray...

Those oh-so-handy USB power charging stations in the airport may come with a cost you can’t see. Cybercriminals can modify those USB connections to install malware on your phone or download data without your knowledge. “Plugging into a public USB port is kind of like finding a toothbrush on the side of the road and deciding to stick it in your mouth. You have no idea where that thing has been,” says Caleb Barlow, Vice President of X-Force Threat Intelligence at IBM Security. “And remember that that USB port can pass data.”

House Democrats plan to hold an event intended to highlight what they say is President Trump’s deteriorating mental health. House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said he and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) will host Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale School of Medicine psychiatrist who edited the bestselling book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” “We are planning to do something where she can make a presentation to other members, so that they'll be aware of what she's been working on,” Yarmuth told The Hill in a brief interview

When night falls, Chinese restaurant chef A-Shun heads out in his SUV with a box of Red Bull in tow. A-Shun patrols various south Sacramento neighborhoods from 9 p.m. until the early hours of the morning, waiting to respond to potential crimes targeting Asians. He is part of a self-organized volunteer patrol group of at least a dozen Chinese immigrants. Their ranks include waitresses and construction workers, store owners and massage therapists.

Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s campaign will go to court Tuesday to ask a judge to extend voting hours in Hartford to accommodate voters who may have been turned away from the polls this morning. Some polling places in Hartford opened at 6 a.m. without a voter list. State Rep. Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said that he was told by Garey E. Coleman, the Democratic Deputy registrar of voters, that the printer the registrars’ office uses to print its voter lists failed Monday night and there was no backup available. It’s not clear at the moment how long it takes to...

Current military members and retirees are to be “grandfathered” from any retirement changes that the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission recommends to Congress next February. Current force members shouldn’t let that dampen their interest in the work of the commission or its final recommendations, because any retirement reforms proposed almost certainly will include an “opt-in” feature. Many currently serving members will get the chance to choose to switch to a more modern, less generous retirement plan. Who would do that? If past behavior is a reliable guide, thousands will. Economists use the term “personal discount rates.” More simply, its...

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration and federal regulators are reversing course on some of the biggest postcrisis efforts to tighten mortgage-lending standards amid concern they could snuff out the fledgling housing rebound and dent the economic recovery. On Tuesday, Mel Watt, the newly installed overseer of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said the mortgage giants should direct their focus toward making more credit available to homeowners, a U-turn from previous directives to pull back from the mortgage market. In coming weeks, six agencies, including Mr. Watt's, are expected to finalize new rules for mortgages that are packaged into securities by private investors....

Haley understands why many politicos interpret Gingrich’s maneuvers as a retreat. Haley’s job, as he sees it, is to keep the campaign in survival mode until then — out of debt, in the news, and prepared for a floor debate. “We clearly have an opportunity to win,” Haley says. “Now, it’s clear from the delegate math that we have an almost impossible hurdle. But we also believe that Romney will have a very difficult time reaching the necessary 1,144 delegates he needs to be the nominee. If the Republican National Committee follows its rules regarding Florida and Arizona, Romney will...

Gerald Celente Says History Is Repeating: First Comes Depression, Then World War Gus Lubin Feb. 4, 2011, 11:05 AM Trend forecaster Gerald Celente says his theory that history is repeating is coming true. Specifically he points to austerity riots and food riots as manifestations of the sort of tensions that led to the Second World War, in an interview with King World News. "The experts… are saying what's going on in Tunisia and Egypt, this is going on in Arab nations. Nah, this is the beginning of something much greater. Figure it out. Civil wars to regional wars to world...

Bill Clinton hit a $700,000 windfall in April 2006 by selling off some stock he received for a speech given in 2004. The Washington Times reports that the stock sold at $3.50 a share despite being millions of dollars in the red, and the Clintons have not released the name of the sap buyer who shelled out the cash. Scandal or snorer — and do the connections to China portend worse revelations? The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from...

...the challenges facing the next president were almost identical to those he vowed to address in 1992. Why, after Clinton’s two terms in office, were we still thinking about tomorrow? In some areas, most notably health care, Clinton tried gamely to leave behind lasting change, and he failed. In many more areas, though, the progress that was made under Clinton — almost 23 million new jobs, reductions in poverty, lower crime and higher wages — had been reversed or wiped away entirely in a remarkably short time. Clinton’s presidency seems now to have been oddly ephemeral, his record etched in...

The desperation of legislators to extend their careers reached new extremes with the recent introduction, and immediate revision, of an initiative to loosen term limits. The circus surrounding this initiative makes clear that the majority of legislators put their own personal careers before the needs of California. The conventional wisdom is that the governor and Legislature are working on a combination of redistricting reform and term-limits extensions. Why are redistricting reforms so openly linked to term-limits extensions? Because the incumbents refuse to vote for a vital measure--redistricting reform--unless they get career-extending term-limits changes. The two are not naturally related. In...

"...So, is neoconservatism dead? Far from it. Neoconservative ideas have been vindicated again and again on a string of major issues, including the Cold War, Bosnia and NATO expansion. It is the war in Iraq that has made "neocon" a dirty word, either because Bush's team woefully mismanaged the war or because the war (which neocons supported) was misconceived. But even if the invasion of Iraq proves to have been a mistake, that would not mean that the neoconservative belief in democracy as an antidote to troubles in the Middle East is wrong, nor would it confirm that neoconservatism's combination...

WASHINGTON -- As Congress returns to work after Labor Day, Republicans face a burning question: whether to try again to pass a minimum-wage increase, or risk facing voters in November without having done so. Some Republican lawmakers, particularly those facing tough re-election fights, want another chance to back an increase from the current $5.15 an hour, a move that would deprive Democrats of a major campaign talking point. "After 10 years, good grief, it's not like we're increasing it in a way that would cause unemployment," says Rep. Chris Shays, a Connecticut Republican locked in a close race. "I think...

If you reside in Detroit, as I do, your radio and TV broadcast airwaves are dominated by live coverage of Rosa Parks' funeral. All other programming is pre-empted -- so we can be lectured by racists and race merchants. Right now, I'm listening to Louis X a/k/a Louis Farrakhan. Why is this racist loon a prominent speaker at this woman's funeral? If he had it his way, Catholics and other Christians, Jews, Whites, Asians, Gays, Arabs, and anyone not Black Muslim would not be riding in the back of the bus: they'd be dead. Is Rosa Parks' funeral the place...

Barry Richard and David Boies, two of the courtroom stars of the infamous 2000 presidential ballot recount fight in Florida, are set to do battle again if voting problems arise in the George W. Bush-John Kerry contest in November. And Boies predicts that there will indeed be litigation. Richard, 62, a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig in Tallahassee who is one of Florida’s top appellate litigators, said he agreed last week to represent the Bush/Cheney campaign, but only in matters arising after the election. Joseph Agostini, spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida, declined to confirm or deny Richard’s hiring. Richard...