Free Republic

A Laois Fine Gael Councillor said he believed people who spoiled their vote shouldn’t be entitled to State benefits. Councillor John King made the comment at the Laois Presidential Election Count Center in Scoil Chríost Rí (Christ the King School) in Portlaoise this morning. In Laois, more than one in ten voters chose to spoil their vote rather than select any of the candidates on the paper. In total there were 4,156 spoiled votes, representing 14.6 percent of the Laois vote. “I am disappointed with the spoiled votes because our forefathers fought to get those votes,” Councillor King said in...

Something strange is going on. Why is the EU so keen to shoe-horn America back into the nuclear deal with Iran? Former US president Donald Trump ditched the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal three years ago and imposed heavy sanctions on the mullahs’ regime under his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Since then, the Iranians have boasted about how they have flouted the terms of the deal by accelerating their advanced centrifuge program and enriching uranium to almost weapons grade fissile status. The Biden administration is being ultra-cautious. But the EU’s high Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security, the Spanish...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the newly elected president of Iran, is a slight man with a clipped, graying brown beard and a quiet manner, who lives simply, dresses casually, and presents himself as a man of the people. As mayor of Tehran the religiously conservative Ahmadinejad distinguished himself by his lack of ostentation (he maintains a Web site called Mardomyar, "The people's friend") and by warring against endemic bribery and corruption, which is how he won the popularity that thrust him into national prominence. He also repealed the social reforms put in place by his predecessors, insisted that male city employees wear...