Free Republic

THE North Korean crisis is a test of our future world, of whether the security structures of the past half-century are collapsing in the teeth of an assault by rogue states that presages a drift to anarchy. The powers that condemn North Korea's nuclear test and tried to prevent this eventarethe US, China, Japan, Britain, France, Russia and South Korea. This group includes the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the major powers of northeast Asia. It would be difficult to find a more sweeping failure. The world community and its mightiest states have been played for mugs...

On March 30th, the “Science, the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies” subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a hearing simply titled “National Aeronautics and Space Administration”, with NASA administrator Michael Griffin as the sole witness. By all appearances this looked to be a routine hearing where members of the subcommittee discussed issues regarding the fiscal year 2007 budget proposal with the administrator, a common early step in the overall appropriations process. As a result, the hearing—which, unlike many other congressional hearings today, was not webcast—got little attention in the press or the space community in...

To get out of Iraq, first we must first know why we are in Iraq. We did not invade Iraq to find Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. We did not invade Iraq to establish democracy in the Middle East. We invaded Iraq to deter Saudi Arabia and its client, Islamic Fascism, from staging more 9/11 attacks on the United States. Of course, nobody in a position of power will say so, but we invaded Iraq mainly to deter the predominant source of money and manpower used to attack us on 9/11: Saudi Arabia and its client, Islamic Fascism. We invaded...