Free Republic

Maria Conchita Alonso, who co-starred with Sean Penn way back in 1988's "Colors," went off on Penn in a way we've rarely seen -- basically saying he's a moron when it comes to politics -- especially his support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The Cuban born actress was raised in Venezuela and says Chavez is a "killer."

IN LETTER, ORACLE ADMITS TO ERRORS IN WORST-EVER '08 Warren Buffett admitted to doing some "dumb things" in 2008 - the worst year for Berkshire Hathaway in the 44 years he has run it. A brutal stock market decline amid a teeth-gnashing recession pushed Omaha-based Berkshire to a 96% drop in profits, its fifth straight quarterly earnings decline. Buffett, known as the Oracle of Omaha for his decades-long record of picking value investments, said buying ConocoPhillips shares when gas and oil prices were at their peak was perhaps the dumbest move in 2008. Berkshire bought 84.9 million shares at $82...

(entitled "Friend Mao")

Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees. Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike. The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions...

Obama has begun discreet talks with Iran, Syria by Sylvie Lanteaume – Sat Jan 31, 9:54 pm ET Featured Topics: Barack Obama Presidential Transition … WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama has already used experts within the last few months to hold high-level but discreet talks with both Iran and Syria, organizers of the meetings told AFP. ...

Matt Damon always comes across as such a mild mannered chap and I’m quite surprised to read he’s taken time out to slam the Bond franchise. Speaking with the Miami Herald, he trampled the world of Bond and indicated his all round displeasure for the world in which our top agent has his roots firmly based. "They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films. Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive." Fair enough Matt, I actually don’t mind any of those...

A leader is a blank slate for the projection of all our hopes, Barack Obama perhaps more so than most. To some he symbolizes an end to racism, to some an end to partisan politics, to some a salve for economic wounds. To me, he cuts a symbolic figure as our first cosmopolitan president. He is, that is, a citizen of the world. I project cosmopolitanism onto Obama because of his background: The Kansan mother and Kenyan father, the upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia. His political birth took place in Chicago. But to me Obama is a global citizen in...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- To hear pro-life advocates tell it, attorney and Obama apologist Douglas Kmiec sold out his alleged pro-life, Catholic views for backing the man who could become the most pro-abortion president in history. In a new editorial in Commonweal, Kmiec strikes back at the pro-life people who blasted him. Kmiec claims the so-called "right-wing Catholic" bloggers were the ones leading the charge -- as if to say that they are out of touch with the pro-life views of the Catholic Church. Never mind that mainstream pro-life groups of every stripe called Kmiec on the carpet for underplaying...

Reporting from Tyre, Lebanon -- Hiba Qassir dreams of making movies. She's ambitious and precocious enough. At 18, she's taught herself how to edit video and sound on a computer, and has her sights set on directing gripping social and psychological dramas. But if the movie business doesn't work out, that's OK. She has other dreams: perhaps to become a cop or a pilot. Or maybe a suicide bomber. "Martyrdom is the shortest way to heaven, and the history of martyrdom is not like any history," Hiba says. "It made victory. We wouldn't have achieved victory without these martyrdoms."

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Dozens of Iranians burnt posters of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in Tehran on Tuesday and waved Palestinian flags in support of Gaza, according to a witness and photographs. Iranian demonstrators have often burnt effigies or pictures of U.S. presidents in protests. This appeared to be the first time Obama's picture had been defaced so publicly, a week before his inauguration as president.

The director of the movie "Che" which will be released later this month is disingenuously claiming that he has no political axe to grind. In a CNN interview, director Steven Soderbergh absurdly stated that he only wanted to present the "facts" about Che Guevara's life: Steven Soderbergh made certain his new movie, "Che," about the life of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, couldn't be attacked -- at least on a factual level. "I didn't mind someone saying, 'Well, your take on him, I don't really like,' or 'You've left these things out and included these things.' That's fine," Soderbergh said. "What...

U.S. journalist John W. Powell, whose 1950s articles alleging American use of germ warfare in Korea sparked sedition charges, has died at 89, his son says. Powell, who had lived for many years in San Francisco, died in the city Monday of complications from pneumonia, son John S. Powell told Wednesday's New York Times. U.S. prosecutors put Powell on trial in 1959 on a rare charge of sedition, after he authored articles for his Shanghai publication The China Monthly Review asserting that U.S. military had employed germ warfare against North Korea, using methods they had allegedly learned from the defeated...

The Bambu rolling-paper company is smoking mad at a Barack Obama-loving artist for using its iconic packaging on T-shirts that show the president-elect smoking a joint. Seamus McGovern and his "Love Fatigues" Web business were hit with a trademark-infringement suit for putting Obama's name and face on the beige and white cover of "the world's finest rolling papers." The Manhattan federal court case claims the $22 "Obambu" shirts expose Bambu to "criticism and scorn" because they show Obama smoking weed, and could "confuse the consuming public" into believing they came from the company.

The Mumbai metropolitan area is home to an estimated 19 million people, but it took just 10 men to shut the city down. Last week's terrorist attacks involved a handful of men armed only with guns, grenades and homemade bombs. But they killed more than 170 people, closed universities and businesses, shut down India's National Stock Exchange and did incalculable economic damage to a country that boasts the world's third-largest military and internationally respected police and intelligence services -- none of which managed to prevent the attacks. Sound familiar? It should. It should remind you of 9/11, when 19 men...

A Lesson for Sarah Palin: Being a Real American First I bristled and then I was horrified as I watched Sarah Palin draw a distinction between “real Americans and those that are not” during the 2008 presidential campaign. Notice the absence of any mention of Native Americans in her call. An immigrant from India, I am a Sikh-American, and wear the markers of my faith – long unshorn hair covered by a turban. Sarah Palin had just sundered the nation into “us and them,” and relegated people like me to the category of incomplete Americans. I wondered what makes one...

"And the KGB, I think, was an honorable place to work. And it, it gave people in the former Soviet Union, a communist country, an opportunity to do something important and worthwhile."

When deer hunting season opens this weekend, Wisconsin’s poor deer hunters are going to be at even more of a disadvantage than usual in their annual attempt to match wits with highly intelligent animals. This year, deer hunters are going to be burdened by carrying heaping armloads of guns into the woods with them. Deer hunters and other gun lovers have been absolutely terrified ever since Nov. 4 that President-elect Barack Obama is going to swoop down on their homes and confiscate all their guns. In a panic, thousands of gun owners have raced to their nearest gun dealers to...

The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq. In his address, Mr. Baghdadi also said that the election of Mr. Obama - and the rejection of the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain - was a victory for his movement, a claim that has already begun to resonate among the radical faithful.

Jane Fonda returns to Broadway in 2009 after an absence of more than four decades.The Oscar-winning actress will star in "33 Variations," a play by Moises Kaufman about a present-day musicologist (played by Fonda) and her study of Beethoven's fascination with a particular piece of music. Kaufman will also direct. The production will open this winter at a theater and date to be announced, producer David Binder said Monday. "I am very excited about being in Moises' new play," Fonda said in a statement. "I can't wait to get back on stage with him in this role that I understand...