Free Republic

Banner headline events almost always flow from quieter real-life causes, and the worst attack on Israel in fifty years is not an exception. The coordinated raids and massacres on October 7 were possible only because of more subtle interventions over two and a half years in rooms at the State Department and the White House, with indirect help from nonprofits like the Soros-funded International Crisis Group. These interventions were driven by a small network of government and interest group insiders whose actions have gone unreported in establishment media. Though their further consequences aren’t yet clear, they’ll almost certainly involve a...

A senior Chinese diplomat on Monday bluntly warned the visiting American deputy secretary of state, Wendy R. Sherman, that the Biden administration’s strategy of pursuing both confrontation and cooperation with Beijing was sure to fail. China’s assistant foreign minister, Xie Feng, told Ms. Sherman that the United States’ “competitive, collaborative and adversarial rhetoric” was a “thinly veiled attempt to contain and suppress China,” according to a summary of Mr. Xie’s comments that the Chinese foreign ministry sent to reporters. Ms. Sherman’s meetings offered the latest gauge of the Biden administration’s strategy of stepping up pressure against the Chinese government on...

France, Israel and Saudi Arabia confront an administration conducting a make-believe foreign policy. When the history of the Obama administration's foreign policy is written 20 or so years from now, the career of Wendy Sherman, our chief nuclear negotiator with Iran, will be instructive. In 1988, the former social worker ran the Washington office of the Dukakis campaign and worked at the Democratic National Committee. That was the year the Massachusetts governor carried 111 electoral votes to George H.W. Bush's 426. In the mid-1990s, Ms. Sherman was briefly the CEO of something called the Fannie Mae Foundation, supposedly a charity...

DUBAI DUETS Late Friday, Department of Justice lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel were attempting to determine if former President Bill Clinton had registered as an "Agent of a Foreign Principal." Federal statute requires that anyone -- even a former President -- doing political or public affairs work on behalf of a foreign country, agency or official must register with the Department, and essentially update his status every six months. It was not clear the Clinton had done so. If his status is less clear, here is what we do know: If Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not know...