Free Republic

SNIPPET: "According to the paper, in accordance with contracts signed between the two, Russia has supplied Syria with S-300 and Iskander missile defense systems, and there are contacts between the sides for the provision of new models of MiG aircraft and air defense systems."

Abu Talhah al-Amrikee, avowed South Park critic, American hardline jihadi-Salafi, who admins The Mujahid Blog, contributes to RevolutionMuslim.com and a reader/interlocutor of this blog recently published a piece to his website entitled, “Fomenting Disunity in the Counterterrorism Movement.” I can appreciate the overall thrust of Abu Talhah’s approach (seeking to divide and conquer) as it’s one that I’ve embraced in my own writings and thinking about how degrade al-Qaida movements. The approach was actually the conceptual backbone of the “Stealing AQ’s Playbook,” article that I co-authored in 2006, which has been cited now several times by Ayman al-Zawahiri specifically because...

Independent voters have been leaning toward the Republicans for the entire 2009-10 election cycle in North Carolina, but that's reached a new level this month that Democrats will have to turn around by the fall to avoid a disastrous result at the polls. This month we found them planning to vote GOP by a 47-18 margin for the legislature and by a 46-19 margin in their Congressional races. You don't have to go too far to find an explanation for why they're leaning so heavily toward the Republicans. 63% of them disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing to...

In 2006, Russia lost 732,000 people. Don’t bother searching for them, because most of them were never born. Its neighbor Ukraine also misplaced 361,000 folk. On the other hand, Indians got busy: in 2006, they added just over 17 million new tax deductions. This beat China by a lot: through its enlightened mandatory abortion policy, China lagged about 10 million behind India, adding just 7 million. The USA did OK for itself, coming in at number four in the race to add mouths to feed, adding about 3 million. But countries in and around Eastern Europe—Romania, Poland, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia,...

SNIPPET: "In fact, Mower said, the pilot described it as "a serious security risk." Mower was unable to see the man who was taken off the plane, she said. " SNIPPET: "Two sources confirmed to Fox News that the man in question, a citizen of Gambia, had been added to the no-fly list while Flight 215 was in the air. The man had already been on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, which is comprised of more than 500,000 people with even limited ties to known terrorists, one source said."

Originally, I intended to devote my commentary to tributes to Benjamin Hooks and to Dorothy Height, admired courageous civil rights leaders who died this past week. Each exemplified the best of efforts aimed at helping our nation move closer to a realization of the full promise of our Constitution. Dr. Height had marched against lynching as a teenager. As she developed as an activist, her vision of freedom was as large as all women, as well as all African Americans. She understood that in this democracy there should be no boundaries around freedom or hierarchies of privilege. So my plans...

I just answered the 2010 census, and thought I'd pass along what my answers were. After looking it over, I decided that the government is asking for far more information than the US Constitution allows. From my reading of Article I, Section 2, all they're authorized to do is take a head count. I answered question one and two, to satisfy what I feel is my obligation under the Constitution, and left the rest of the form blank. To assist the census bureau to understand why I left the rest of the form blank, I printed off the following and...

SNIPPET: "Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) put out a new audio production through their media outlet, Al-Malahim Media, by way of Al-Fajr, featuring former GTMO detainee, Shaikh Ibrahim al-Rubaysh, who is now a religious authority for AQAP. I’m drawing your attention to this, not because his statement entitled, “How Could You Abandon Jihad?” was that compelling – because it wasn’t (although it was pretty alarmist) – but because of the banner graphic they used featuring a personal audio player. I’ve seen this before but for some reason I was inspired to comment this time. The notion that kids anywhere...

SNIPPET: "The Tea Party Express's endorsement of Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) has had little real political impact so far. After the endorsement, TPE's Sal Russo couldn't tell when we might see, say, a TV ad or mailer for Minnick -- although Mark Williams claimed that the group had planned to run ads supportive of Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) until he decided to support the final version of health-care reform. So what impact have we seen? A vast and efficient cheesing-off of tea party groups in Idaho."

...Of course, they're favorite line is that the "stimulus" package supposedly "saved and/or created" millions of jobs. But, as the post points out, in order to be able to do that, they had to retroactively change the baseline...

American Communism Revisited Bethany Stotts, April 20, 2010 Accuracy in Academia was recently contacted by University of Maryland at College Park English Instructor Kara Fontenot regarding my coverage of her 2008 Modern Language Association convention presentation, “American Hysteria, Civil Liberties, and the Literary Left: Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry.” Fontenot takes exception to my February article, “2008 MLA Unplugged,” in which I write that “Graduate student Kara Fontenot falsely claimed that the Communist Party USA had no connection to the USSR while furthering stereotypes about Senator Joseph McCarthy” (formatting in original). More specifically, in the linked article I quoted her...

...I suppose we were foolish and naive to have expected the Secretary of the Treasury to actually understand economics...

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In the United States, We Patriots set aside one day a year to remember our Fallen Heroes. We owe them so very much,it is hard to put it into perspective as the numbers grow continuously and seemingly without end. We pray for them and their families and honor their memories every single day, even though only one day is marked on our calendars. Today, I would like to take a minute of your time to remember Israel's Fallen as well. In these dark days, when Israel seemingly stands alone in the world, one moment away from war every day of...

"China's regulations on open government information went into effect in May 2008 after they were passed a year earlier by the State Council, China's cabinet. Similar to the U.S.'s Freedom of Information Act but weaker, they were established to comply with World Trade Organization transparency requirements as well as to help the central government uncover local corruption and increase Chinese companies' competitiveness, said Peking University law professor Shen Kui, a specialist in constitutional law." Activists tried to make use of the regulations early on, but agencies are still reluctant to comply with information requests, and loopholes make it relatively easy...

SNIPPET: "This past Sunday, six terrorists were captured in Medan, North Sumatra province, by Indonesia's counter-terrorist unit, Special Detachment 88. All were thought to be linked to a paramilitary camp in Aceh that was raided in February and two of them, Pandu Wicaksono Widyan Putro and Bayu Sena, were said to be tied to the twin hotel bombings in Jakarta last July." SNIPPET: "Special Detachment 88 will likely continue its raids in and around Aceh to round up those camp members that have thus far evaded the police dragnet."

This morning the New York Times ran a story about the dramatic change in the relationship between the United States and Israel. It seemed to point out how the people who are advising the President on Middle East issues, most of whom have long histories of anti-Israel leanings (Jim Jones, Samantha Powers, Robert Mally, Zbigniew Brzezinski, among others), have succeeded in getting the United States to step back from its vital alliance with the Jewish State. Not that the President needed much convincing as his track record against Israel is problematic also. When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running...

Carnage That College Ignores Malcolm A. Kline, April 15, 2010 Storied Soviet dictator Josef Stalin once famously said that one man’s death is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic. He and his successors compiled so many human statistics that the unfortunately few academics and intellectuals who are trying to ascertain the true number are still working on it. “One cannot discuss the past, present, or future while they lay there unacknowledged,” University of Pennsylvania historian Alan Charles Kors pointed out in a speech to the Atlas Foundation last November. “We are surrounded by slain innocents and the scale is...

...(Senator) Harry Byrd established in 1942, in effect a ‘Disappropriations Committee.’ I think every state should have a committee like that in both the House and Senate. And one of the commitments the Republicans ought to make is if they (become) a majority this year, they’ll establish a committee on reducing government. Which the Byrd Committee did, and it had a real impact on eliminating agencies...

SNIPPET: "One of the many new taxes imposed by ObamaCare is a 2.3% excise tax on medical device manufacturers. Although this may not seem like much, it could be devastating to small companies working with thin profit margins. For instance, the Zoll Medical Corporation is one of the leading manufacturers of automated external defibrillators (AEDs). These devices are commonplace in airports, shopping malls, and other public places. They are meant to be used by members of the general public to give immediate life-saving electrical shocks to someone suffering sudden cardiac arrest. Advances in hardware and software have made these devices...