Free Republic

Ukraine needs “powerful and long-range weapons” — fighter jets, in other words — because Russia’s air superiority over the battlefield has allowed them to “stop our counteroffensive”, President Zelensky said. Russia is denying air superiority to Ukraine and using that to “stop” the counteroffensive, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday, the latest in a line of remarks addressing the difficulty the Western-armed Ukrainian army has had this year turning back the tide of the Russian occupation. Speaking at a conference in Kyiv on Friday, Zelensky said Ukraine needed “powerful and long-range” because: “We are not in the sky and...

The Ukrainian military has halted a Russian advance in the east of the country and is now moving south, officials said on Friday. “We had very fierce battles in the Kupiansk and Lyman directions, but our soldiers stopped the enemy there,” Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar told Ukrainian television. Ukraine’s summer counterattack has won multiple small victories, but Russian officials have denied Ukrainian claims that it has taken eight villages and pushed back Russian forces. That offensive is still in its early stages, with Ukrainian forces not yet advancing on the best-defended Russian positions in Donetsk and Luhansk.

A top Democratic pollster is warning his party’s candidates not to buy into the GOP’s rosy messaging on the economy and tax cuts, arguing they need to spotlight the economic headwinds and rising health care costs their base voters still face heading into the midterm elections. The advice stems from new polling provided exclusively to HuffPost from Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, Greenberg Research, and Democracy Corps. The polls, conducted by phone and web panel, surveyed more than 3,000 registered voters in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin – all states...

HOUSTON—A split between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner over whether the metropolis should have been evacuated is raising questions about officials’ response to damaging floodwaters as a catastrophe continues to engulf the region. Mr. Turner, a Democrat, and other local officials urged residents to stay in their homes as Hurricane Harvey, which has since downgraded to a tropical storm, approached Houston on Friday. But at a Friday news conference, Gov. Abbott, a Republican, suggested otherwise. “Even if an evacuation order hasn’t been issued by your local official, if you’re in an area between Corpus Christi and...

According to Sarah Westwood, at the Washington Examiner, fewer than half of the projects undertaken by the Clinton Global Initiative since 2005 have been completed, with roughly a third underway and more than 200 others "stalled" or "unfulfilled." Between 2005-2015 there were 3,452 commitments made through CGI. Of those, according to the newly disclosed report, six percent were “unfulfilled,” or failed. But that number might not tell the whole story. An additional 11 percent of commitments in the report — and excluded from the analysis — are labeled “unresponsive,” which means that no progress has been reported in more than...

Hope I'm not overdoin the vanities... The Dems and their traitor conspirators in the media attempted to stampede the Trump herd over the cliff....we lost some worthless strays but the vast majority of the main group has held. Now the comeback is nigh. Nothing wrong with condemning Trump's remarks, but calling for him to step aside is a betrayal of America herself. Not telling Clinton to step aside is also a betrayal of America. Better to lose the Senate and gain the Presidency than the other way around. Stand fast, hold the line, adapt and overcome, full speed ahead. Lets'...

Way back in the 1970's, I purchased an excellent book written by my hero and good friend Fulton J. Sheen entitled "The Electronic Christian" and published by the Macmillan Publishing Company. In this important book (indeed every book written By Sheen could be labelled as important), the saintly Archbishop who thoroughly intrigued his audience throughout the 1950's as "Uncle Fultie" - a Catholic counterpart if you will to Milton Berle's "Uncle Miltie," explains the importance and indeed the necessity of a religion with Dogma. Here is his essay: The modern man must decide for himself whether he is going to...

The economy has stalled. Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but that’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). We need well over 250,000 new jobs per month in order to begin to whittle down the vast number of jobs lost in the Great Recession. At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people. With only 115,000 jobs in April, the hole is...

The problem is that earnings growth has ground almost to a halt — profits for companies in the S.& P. 500 are expected to grow just 1 percent in the first quarter and 2 percent in the second. That means that the only real hope for additional stock market gains this year is expansion in the P/E ratio, which may be bumping up against a ceiling. “We already got a year’s worth of returns in just three months,” says Mark D. Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, referring to the first-quarter gain of 13 percent in the S.&...

WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) - The White House is under pressure from consumer activists to follow through with its plan to force government contractors to disclose their political contributions, a rule that companies say will politicize awards of government business. Consumer group Public Citizen said on Tuesday it is among those worried that the White House attempt to throw more light on campaign spending will be put on the shelf after harsh criticism from the business community. President Barack Obama is working on an order to compel bidders for federal contracts to disclose two years worth of political contributions. ......

More than two months after the Obama administration lifted its ban on drilling in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are still waiting for approval to drill the first new oil well there. Experts now expect the wait to continue until the second half of 2011, and perhaps into 2012. The administration says it is simply trying to enforce new safety rules adopted in the wake of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig (Snip) The impact of the delays goes beyond the oil industry. The Gulf coast economy has been hit hard by the slowdown

* No more new drugs today than 60 years ago * Diversification push as blockbusters stumble * 200,000 jobs could go across the industry * Can biotech and contract research pick up the pieces? LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) - At just 28, Duncan Casey has already been from the university science bench to the world of Big Pharma research and back again. Now working in an Imperial College lab tucked behind London's famous Science Museum, he has no illusions about the prospects for researchers in the pharmaceutical industry. "The unit I used to work in -- GlaxoSmithKline's place in Harlow...

LOS ANGELES – The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese...

President Obama sharply criticized Republicans on Tuesday for following a “familiar script” to “block healthcare reform.” The president, seeking to prod the Democratic-controlled Congress to show significant progress on healthcare reform before the August recess, directed blame at the GOP for the stalled legislation. Obama blasted the "familiar script" of Republicans who "have openly declared their intention to block healthcare reform."

A federal judge canceled plans to tour California's new execution chamber later this month and temporarily halted proceedings in a lawsuit challenging the state's death penalty. U.S. District Court Jeremy Fogel (FOE-gol) in San Jose delayed litigation in the federal lawsuit filed by condemned killer Michael Morales because a state court judge on Oct. 31 invalidated the state's death penalty on administrative grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court has also been halting executions nationwide while it considers a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection execution method. Fogel ordered lawyers to return to his courtroom in Jan. 17 to consider the next steps.

~~snip~~Diplomats from different countries, who declined to be identified because they were discussing sensitive classified information, said Iran appeared on the verge of assembling 164 centrifuges, the number needed to form a "cascade" mechanism that could enrich uranium for nuclear energy or, eventually, bombs. In effect, they said the 164 centrifuges would significantly increase Iran's ability to make weapons, in defiance of demands by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and the United States that it cease its uranium activities immediately. "What this means is that time is not on our side," a European diplomat said. "It means that while...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - With negotiations between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders at a halt, both sides are poised to go to political war in a Nov. 8 special election, even as the number of ballot measures dwindle and new calls are made by some to cancel the balloting all together. "We are so deep into it now, I don't see how you can get the toothpaste back into the tube," said Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles. "We are so far down the path, I think we should have the special election and put the whole issue to rest."...

Pardon me while I wipe the egg off my face. Last week I was one of a handful of conservatives praising the Senate compromise on judicial nominees, which preserved the filibuster while guaranteeing several of President Bush's most conservative nominees an up-or-down vote. I argued Democrats would be chastened into using the filibuster judiciously -- only "under extreme circumstances" in the words of the compromise itself. Boy was I wrong. In less than a week, the Democrats were back to their old tricks, filibustering John Bolton's nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. Democrat Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia,...

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says enacting a spending control measure is "Job No. 1." But the committee charged with selecting what kind of measure should be put before voters appears deeply split. Schwarzenegger wants a spending control plan to prevent massive state budget deficits such as the one that helped drive former Gov. Gray Davis from office and to curb "autopilot" spending formulas that grow faster than tax revenue. Citizens to Save California, a business-led group aligned with the governor, has not yet decided whether to back a spending control similar to Schwarzenegger's plan or a tighter limit backed...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House is having trouble finding a new national intelligence director amid doubts about the job's practical authority over all U.S. espionage operations, officials and intelligence experts said on Tuesday. Six weeks after President Bush (news - web sites) signed the intelligence reform bill into law, a former CIA (news - web sites) director who served under the president's father said he had been offered the position but turned it down. Robert Gates, currently president of Texas A&M University, announced his decision in a statement this week to quell media speculation about his candidacy. "I was...