Free Republic

Hamas has reportedly issued orders to shoot any opposition protesters in the head. Sources in the Palestinian Authority told the Palestine Press news agency on Saturday that the Interior Minister in Hamas’s government in Gaza, Fathi Hamad, has instructed security forces to be tough on any anti-Hamas demonstrator who will take part in a campaign by the opposition scheduled to begin on November 11. …

Having now finished with the first Bond era (Sean + George), it’s time to recap the “Best Of.” The only problem is that I knew I wouldn’t be able to rank the Bond films in the aggregate. They are all so disparate that it’s like trying to compare seven different types of fruit. Perhaps, by the time I finish the series, it will be easier. However, through the first seven flicks, there is just no clear ranking to me.

Sometimes a sympathetic and perceptive journalist paints a more devastating portrait of a public figure than even his most vitriolic detractors could. A prime example is Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article titled "The Consequentialist" and subtitled, "How the Arab Spring remade Obama's foreign policy." Lizza's article, characteristically well reported and well written, reads less like the story of an adult politician's evolving view of foreign issues and more like the story of the wildly oscillating opinions of a college student now in his junior year. As Lizza points out, Obama didn't think much about foreign policy during his years as...