Free Republic

(Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers Hani Hanhour (right) and Majed Moqed (left) at an ATM machine on Sept. 5, 2001.) (CNSNews.com) - The number of Saudi Arabian students in the United States has increased by more than 500 percent since Sept. 11, 2001--when Hani Hanjour, a Saudi national who came here on a student visa flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, killing 189 people. According to the Institute of International Education--whose numbers on foreign students in the United States are used in official reports published by the U.S. Department of Education--there were 5,579 Saudi nationals enrolled in U.S....

A new survey reveals the dramatically changing face of religion in America, with the number of Muslims in the U.S. soaring 67% in the decade since the 9/11 attacks. Data released Tuesday from the 2010 U.S. Religion Census shows Islam was the fastest growing religion in America in the last 10 years, with 2.6 million living in the U.S. today, up from 1 million in 2000. Mormonism too saw remarkable growth, with a 45% increase in adherents. It added nearly 2 million members since 2000, bringing their number in the U.S. to 6.1 million. Ads by Google "Both of these...

Why did radical Islamic terrorists kill almost 3,000 Americans a decade ago? Few still believe the old myth that prior U.S. foreign policy or support for Israel logically earned us Osama bin Laden's wrath. After all, the U.S. throughout the 1990s had saved Islamic peoples from Bosnia and Kosovo to Somalia and Kuwait. Russia and China, in contrast, had oppressed or killed tens of thousands of their own Muslims without much fear of provoking al Qaeda. Moreover, thousands of Arabs have been killed recently, but by their own Libyan and Syrian governments, not Israeli Defense Forces. Al Qaeda still issues...

If your sister were among the nearly 3,000 people murdered in the World Trade Center on 9/11, how would you react to Osama Bin Laden's death? More specifically, if you were to write an opinion piece on the subject for a major newspaper, what would you most want to communicate?One would think that anyone who had lost a loved one on 9/11 would write about bin Laden's guilt, about evil and about experiencing some degree of moral and emotional satisfaction that the loved one's murderer had been killed by American forces.But not Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia...

I am an Ahmadi Muslim American living in Bel Air and am currently a high school senior. I was born in America, but my parents are from Pakistan. I was 8 years old at the time of the 9/11 attacks, sitting in my 3rd grade class. From grade school on, I have personally encountered racism and extremism. I have endured snide comments, people calling me "terrorist," and people generally hating me for no reason but my race and religion. Nine years later, after all the ways people have treated me, I wonder, are the terrorists winning? What was the point...

Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday accused Democrats and Republicans in Congress of politicizing the trial of the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, saying it "disturbs me a great deal" that their bickering has disrupted the administration's timetable for dealing with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-conspirators. In unusually blunt language, the attorney general expressed deep frustration with the way Congress has kicked around his trial plans. Holder announced last year that he wanted to try Mohammed and four other defendants in civilian courts in New York City, but the idea generated so much bipartisan controversy that it's all but been...

After the 9/11 attacks, members of Congress set aside bitter, partisan disputes -- at least for a season -- in a show of unity and resolve on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They linked arms. They sang God Bless America. Democrats pledged support to the President Bush, a Republican. Much of the post-9/11 reform agenda in this previously gridlocked Congress passed with unanimity. But the Christmas attack on Northwest Flight 253 has produced no such bipartisan moment. Instead, it's amplified the partisan sniping on Capitol Hill on issues ranging from national security policy to end-of-year fundraising. After losing bids...

NEW YORK — A judge cited national security concerns in ruling Wednesday that the CIA does not have to release hundreds of documents related to the destruction of videotapes of Sept. 11 detainee interrogations that used harsh methods. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said he believed he had an obligation to let the CIA director decide what should be released when it pertains to methods used to make uncooperative detainees divulge information. "The need to keep confidential just how the CIA and other government agencies obtained their information is manifest, and that has to do with the identities of...

In blind retaliation, we wreaked havoc on Iraq and continue to slaughter peasants in Afghanistan. What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan, as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would then-Vice President Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law? As assaults...

From the BNO Newsroom. WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) -- President Obama on Thursday extended the national emergency declared following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. President Bush first declared the national emergency on September 14, 2001, three days after the terrorist attacks which left thousands of people dead in three American cities. The National Emergencies Act requires each national emergency to be ended or continued every year. "Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2009. Therefore,...

BOISE, Idaho - A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government’s improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was “repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.” The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism...

BOISE, Idaho – A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history." The court found that a man who was detained as a witness in a federal terrorism...

Ashcroft liable for detentions, court finds By Tony Romm - 09/04/09 04:18 PM ET Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may be sued and held liable for wrongly detaining witnesses after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. In its decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen detained as a material witness for two weeks, may sue the former attorney general for breaching his constitutional rights. Al-Kidd claimed during the case that his brief imprisonment caused him to lose a scholarship and crippled his chances of finding employment, according...

WASHINGTON — Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials. Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants. Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force. A decision to...

The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, New York, suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects, the New York Times reported. WASHINGTON - The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, New York, suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects in what would have been a nearly unprecedented use of military power within the United States, The New York Times reported. Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with...

If you need to recall what National Pride feels like, take a moment to view this video. Please keep the comments to the event of Oct. 30, 2001. (The MSM gave King Obama enough accolades over his 1st pitch already!)Video of a great American moment!

On Sunday, the New York Times struck another blow against the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism measures with a front-page story alleging that a CIA program was kept secret from Congress for eight years. The orders to keep Congress out of the loop — which sound flagrantly illegal — came, according to the story, straight from then Vice President Dick Cheney.

So forget politics for a moment and just watch the video below. It’s a great behind-the-scenes look at the build-up to Bush’s first pitch at the 2001 World Series, and the strike he fired with the lights shining bright.

Via The Hill: With their Speaker behind them, House Democrats are pushing ahead with plans to hold a series of hearings investigating instances in which intelligence officials may have misled members of Congress.Senior Democratic aides said that a major announcement could come by the end of week, but it was already clear on Monday that House Democrats are seizing on weekend news reports that former Vice President Dick Cheney hid information from Congress.

(2009-07-15) — With Democrats in Congress already alarmed at revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a covert scheme to kill terrorist leaders like Usama Bin Laden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly set to announce a probe into allegations that the CIA may have also “conspired to conduct espionage operations against America’s enemies.” Although the “vague” plans to dispatch small CIA teams to hit senior al Qaeda leaders never materialized due to legal, logistical and diplomatic obstacles, current CIA Director Leon E. Panetta cancelled the program in June, and sold several planning documents to the producers of Fox...